02:22 PM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book General | Deals and Resources (No...

To celebrate its sixth anniversary, for a limited time only Fictionwise offers a 25 percent discount on any e-book purchased from their store. Palm Addicts has the details.

06:44 PM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book General | Deals and Resources (No...

This week when you go shopping for literature over at eReader.com, use the promo code ENDMAY to receive a 10 percent discount on any e-book purchase priced more than $3.00.

Thanks to Palm Addicts for meticulously keeping track of all those eReader discounts!

06:23 PM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book Readers | Sony Reader

The Sony Portable Reader is quietly en route. When Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher kicked off the forth edition of the D: All Things Digital conference this week, Sony grabbed the chance to talk about its forthcoming e-book reading device.

According to Eric Savitz of the Tech Trader Daily (Barron's new blog, btw), "earlier in the day Sony's Howard Stringer said the success of the device will depend in large part on consumer acceptance; he seemed enthusiastic about its prospects, but cautious. In the demo, it came across as a compelling product."

I wish I had more to say about this but I don't. Just sit back, relax, and realize that the world is a pretty wonderful place. Even if you don't own an E Ink device (yet).

05:40 PM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book General | News

While you're probably still scratching your head about the latest delay of the iRex iLiad, we show you another way how you can read your e-books:

• Get a First Class ticket with All Nippon Airways to Tokyo-Narita.
• Enjoy the fifteen hours flight (not to difficult with broadband in-flight Internet).
• Forget about a hotel - stay instead at the First Class lounge and take advantage of the newly introduced ANA Sky Library.

At the ANA Sky Library, First Class travellers can now lend out the Sony LIBRIe e-book reader at any time to access up-to-date literature and manga e-books from Japanese Timebook Town. Admittingly, with $15k for the ticket alone it's not exactly a bargain, but at least you won't have to wait until September.

01:34 PM by Alexander Turcic in More E-Book Readers | iRex

"Sales iLiad about to start," iRex Technologies said euphemistically on its web site today. To tell you the truth, I am somewhat disappointed about the news. It says, simply put, that if you're not among their chosen customers, you'll have to wait at least till September to receive the "consumer version" of the iRex iLiad reader. Heated discussions are already on the roll:

Check irex: game on..
Will you refrain from buying the irex Iliad? (poll)
Suggestions for Functionality of the "consumer" iLiad
Light at the end of the Tunnel (thanks Loeki)
Today is the last day of May!

Now, before you jump the iRex ship, one of our readers, JTurner, claims to have spoken to a Sony sales person saying that the Sony Portable Reader won't be out before end of August either. Anybody care to bite?

05:29 AM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book General | News

We are not sure this is going to win any hearts and minds, but Numly Inc., a company who provides authors a way of branding individual copies of digital content, just introduced BookFob, a USB stick with an embedded DRM-capable e-book reader.

The BookFob device must be attached to the computer to verify ownership of the e-book content. Entire documents or sections of the document can be password protected to insure an additional layer of security. In addition to passwords, the documents can be set to expire after a certain number of days or number of times accessed. This technique allows an author to distribute promotional material or full books for a limited time before making the content unreadable. Another important security feature of our e-book reader software is the ability to distribute books that are not printable as well as the ability to disable the copy and paste features. Since these documents are complied into the reader, this insures that no one will be able to hack or copy the contents unless the author approves.

That's exactly what we've craved for ages: crippled e-books that can expire, are not printable and have the copy and paste feature disabled - provided that you are using Microsoft Windows, because otherwise the reader won't work at all. And if this isn't enough to make fresh milk sour, check out their BookFob Library, where you can buy excellent public domain books such as Around the World in 80 Days, assuming that the "buy it now" link would actually work.

PS: It seems David of Teleread fully agrees that this is a gadget we could easily live without.

04:24 AM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book General | News

Momentum in e-paper technology and expected migration to color and larger-sized displays should spark a fresh round of growth for e-paper shipments from Japan, according to Yano Research Institute. Some early findings:

• E-paper shipments from Japan will reach 129 million units in fiscal year 2006 (yoy growth of 9.9%)
• Shipment value will reach 10.58 billion yen (US$94.7 million) in fiscal year 2006 (yoy growth of 174%)
• Shipment value will grow further to 19.96 billion yen in 2008 and 57.24 billion yen in 2010

Of course with this kind of strong relative growth, it is only natural to ask where all the shipments are being delivered to. So far e-paper seems to have failed to evolve in commercial mass production. Common guys, show us what's in your sleeves!

Related: Research firm optimistic about OLED and e-paper displays, Prime View launches E Ink ODM/OEM services

[via DigiTimes]

01:48 PM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book Formats | Workshop

Some people like to spend their weekends dressed up as Laurel and Hardy while blasting each other with paintball guns. And then there are others (truly yours included) who can think of nothing better than to go rummage online patent filings for something interesting. So this is how I came to discover that Microsoft has been awarded a couple of patents not so much time ago related to the generation and distribution of DRM-protected e-books.

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