An E-Book Buyer's Guide to Privacy (Electronic Frontier Foundation)

Commentary by Ed Bayley

As we count down to end of 2009, the emerging star of this year's holiday shopping season is shaping up to be the electronic book reader (or e-reader). From Amazon's Kindle to Barnes and Noble's forthcoming Nook, e-readers are starting to transform how we buy and read books in the same way mp3s changed how we buy and listen to music.

Unfortunately, e-reader technology also presents significant new threats to reader privacy. E-readers possess the ability to report back substantial information about their users' reading habits and locations to the corporations that sell them. And yet none of the major e-reader manufacturers have explained to consumers in clear unequivocal language what data is being collected about them and why.

As a first step towards addressing these problems, EFF has created a first draft of our Buyer's Guide to E-Book Privacy. We've examined the privacy policies for the major e-readers on the market to determine what information they reserve the right to collect and share.

Link

Asus Plans Dual-Screen E-Reader (PC Mag)

Yet more confirmation has emerged that Asus plans its own e-book reader, according to The Times of London, which reported the story on Sunday.

It's not especially clear what the Times was able to elicit from Asus versus an earlier report from DigiTimes, which quoted Asus president Jerry Shen (or paraphrased a comment he made, at least) committing to an e-book reader. An Asus representative in the U.K. appears to have confirmed this, with the additional details that there may be a value-priced as well as a premium version.

I assume that the following details are sourced from Asus, then: "Unlike current ebook readers, which take the form of a single flat screen, the Asus device has a hinged spine, like a printed book," the Times of London reports. "This, in theory, enables its owner to read an ebook much like a normal book, using the touchscreen to "turn" the pages from one screen to the next. It also gives the user the option of seeing the text on one screen while browsing a web page on the other. One of the screens could also act as a virtual keypad for the device to be used like a laptop."

Link


Technorati Tags: ebook,, asus, handheld

New Sony Reader is Like a Digital Library On Demand (Mashable)

Following the launch of two new e-ink based digital book readers earlier this month, Sony today announced a new eBook reader with a wireless connection – something that’s been notably lacking in their eReader lineup.

The Reader Daily Edition has a 7-inch touchscreen and connects wirelessly via AT&T’s 3G cellular network, but there’s a catch – with no built-in web browser, the only connection the device will be making is to the Sony eBook store.

However, one other notable addition to the eBook store itself is about to make that connection a lot more valuable. In partnership with thousands of public libraries and Overdrive.com, Sony Readers will be able to use a new free library finder service that allows you to check out digital ebooks and other content from your local public library.

Link

Technorati Tags: sony,, ebook

Handheld Librarian Online Conference 6/29

July 30, 2009

More people than ever are using mobile devices for a wide variety of purposes including communication, internet access, text messaging, and entertainment. It is important that libraries provide services on these devices as use increases.

The first ever Handheld Librarian Online on July 30, 2009 is the place to learn about these and other topics related to using wireless and handheld devices in your library. The program -- sponsored by Alliance Library System, LearningTimes and Infoquest -- will include a variety of ways to collaborate, network and learn from a great group of experts in the field. In addition to live interactive webcasts, we will have a collection of available resources, discussions boards, and access to the recording of all live events for one year after the conference.

[via Peter Scott's Library Blog]

Technorati Tags: handheld, smartphone, librarians

Report: EReader and EBook Market Ready for Growth (ReadWriteWeb)

According to a new report from Forrester, the eBook and eReader market has now hit a point where it is ready to break out of its niche and become a mainstream phenomenon. In the report, Forrester's Sarah Rotman Epps argues that while early readers like the Rocket eBook in 1998 and the Sony Librié in 2004 failed to garner a large enough audience, today's consumers have embraced mobile, on-the-go media consumption thanks to the prevalence of MP3 players and handheld video games. Thanks to this, consumers are now also more likely to buy electronic goods than ever before.

Epps acknowledges that Forrester's initial reaction to the Kindle as a niche device that would only attract a small number of book-loving early adopters underestimated the fact that consumers would fall in love with the Kindle's one-step shopping system and the immediate gratification of buying books in the Kindle store. Epps also stresses that while users could easily rip CDs and copy them onto their MP3 players when they first appeared in the 1990s, transferring paper books into an electronic medium is obviously a lot harder. So consumers, for the time being, are more likely to prefer a vendor that can provide an Apple-like integration between the hardware reader and the book store.

Link

Is This the Future of the Digital Book?

By BRAD STONE

PLENTY of authors dream of writing the great American novel.

Bradley Inman wants to create great fiction, dramatic online video and compelling Twitter stream — and then roll them all into a multimedia hybrid that is tailored to the rapidly growing number of digital reading devices.

Mr. Inman, a successful Silicon Valley entrepreneur, calls this digital amalgam a “Vook,” (vook.tv) and the fledgling company he has created with that name just might represent a possible future for the beleaguered book industry.

Publishing, of course, is feeling the same chronic pain as other media businesses, with layoffs, corporate restructurings and a general sense of gloom, doom and kaboom settling over name-brand giants like Random House and Simon & Schuster.

At the same time, there has been a flurry of optimism and activity around the once-derided idea that people might read books on a digital screen. Just this year, new electronic reading devices have emerged from Amazon, Samsung and Fujitsu, while mobile phones like iPhone from Apple have flowered seemingly overnight into acceptable reading devices for many bookworms.

And just as digital media have begun to change the nature of news, music and video, the emergence of e-books is causing various entrepreneurs and technologists to reconsider the kind of experience that books might one day deliver.

Link

Technorati Tags: ebook

Digital Book 2009: May 12th

Digital Book 2009: An eBook Stimulus Plan for Publishing will take place on Tuesday May 12, 2009 at the McGraw-Hill Auditorium in New York City. Our one day conference will discuss the sales, marketing channels and tactics that booksellers and publishers can leverage as well as opportunities to connect with the consumer. Adam Smith, Director of Product Management, Google Book Search will be giving one of the Featured Presentations this year.

New this year is a ½ day of workshops taking place on Monday May 11, 2009 from 1:30 – 5:00 PM. The workshop will have multiple tracks on eBook production, workflow as well as sales, marketing and business development.

Here comes the Palm Pre

At the Consumer Electronics Show, Palm unveiled it's new smartphone, the Palm Pre. Silicon Alley insider says it even gives Apple's iPhone a run for the money. SAI had a set of videos, but I'm not sure they're still there.

Technorati Tags: palm, handheld, smartphone

Kindle A Year Old, Hasn't Changed Reading... Yet (Silicon Alley Insider)

by Dan Frommer

Amazon's (AMZN) Kindle e-book reader celebrated its first birthday yesterday. How was its first year?

Amazon doesn't share sales figures, so we don't really know. Today, either supply is low or demand is high -- there's a three to four week wait to buy them for $359.

The only stat Amazon has shared recently: During its Q3 earnings call, CFO Thomas J. Szkutak said, "Kindle titles already account for more than 10% of unit sales for books that are available in both digital and print formats."

Impressive, we guess. But given that it's still a surprise when we see one on the subway or at the airport, it's safe to say the Kindle hasn't changed reading much in its first year.

(more. . . )

IPhone Steals Lead Over Kindle (Forbes)

by Andy Greenberg and James Erik Abels

It's official: The iPhone is more popular than Amazon.com's Kindle. And not just in the obvious categories like listening to music, browsing the Web or the other applications where Kindle barely competes. Now, the iPhone is also muscling into Amazon's home turf: reading books.

Stanza, a book reading application offered in Apple's (nasdaq: AAPL - news - people ) iPhone App Store since July, has been downloaded more than 395,000 times and continues to be installed at an average rate of about 5,000 copies a day, according to Portland, Ore.-based Lexcycle, the three-person start-up that created the reading software.

Link

Technorati Tags: apple, amazon, iphone, kindle

Amazon Confirms Student Version of Kindle (TechCrunch)

Amazon confirmed our speculation that they are planning to target colleges and universities with a new version of the Kindle, reports the Seattle PI. Textbooks are a $5.5 billion annual market, and most publishers now offer electronic versions of their textbooks. McGraw-Hill Education, for example, publishes 95% of their books electronically as well as in print. But there is no compelling device to read them on. The new Kindle will likely be a large screen version of the original, which is much better suited for textbooks.

Link

Technorati Tags: amazon.com, ebook, handheld, kindle

Samsung Instinct

I have the Samsung Blackjack and when I saw the Instinct. I thought, Great I can now try something different! The only problem, I am on AT&T and the Instinct is only on Sprint. Sale price: $129.99.
http://www.instinctthephone.com/

IMHO, a great iPhone clone.

Bad News For The Kindle: iPhone 3G + Apps (Silicon Alley Insider)

Who needs a separate e-book reader when your cellphone does the trick? For the last few days, we've been putzing around with our new iPhone 3G and a handful of apps from the App Store. Some of the best, so far: E-reader apps for reading books, blogs, offline Web pages, etc. These include:

• Instapaper, which brings Tumblr dude Marco Arment's simple "read later" service to the iPhone. Actually, it's much better on the iPhone than any other platform, since it doesn't just bookmark your stories, but downloads them so you can read them when you're offline.
  
• Stanza, a free e-reader app with built-in access to a huge library of free books/short stories, from "Anna Karenina" to "Paradise Lost," and some newer titles, too, like Boing Boing editor Cory Doctorow's "I, Robot."
• NetNewsWire, a decent port -- not great -- of the popular Web-based RSS reader.
• Byline, a $9.99 app to access your Google Reader RSS feeds.
• NYTimes, which lets you synch up NYT stories to read later.

Link

Smartphones Now Ringing for Women (NYT)

By LAURA M. HOLSON

If recent history is any guide, roughly a third of the people snapping up Apple’s new iPhone are likely to tote it in a purse.

In a big shift for the phone industry, women have emerged as eager buyers of not just iPhones but of all so-called smartphones — BlackBerrys, Treos and other models.

In the last year the number of American women using smartphones more than doubled to 10.4 million, growing at a faster pace than among men, according to Nielsen Mobile, which tracks wireless trends.

The trend is mirrored in sales of the iPhone. In October, nearly one out of four owners of the iPhone was a woman, according to Nielsen. By March that number rose to one in three. The iPhone model announced Monday, with faster Internet access and mapping features, may accelerate the shift.

Smartphones are cheaper now — as little as $99 for the petite BlackBerry Pearl — and are better designed. Women have been using them for years in business, of course, but many are finding that the phones can also help manage their families’ hectic schedules and keep them in touch with friends.

(more. . . )

Electronic Device Stirs Unease at Book Fair (NY Times)

By EDWARD WYATT
LOS ANGELES — Is the electronic book approaching the tipping point?

That topic both energized and unnerved people attending BookExpo America, the publishing and bookselling industry’s annual trade show, which ended at the convention center here on Sunday.

Much of the talk was focused on the Kindle, Amazon’s electronic reader, which has gained widespread acclaim for its ease of use. Jeffrey P. Bezos, the founder and chief executive of Amazon, spent much of a packed session on Friday evangelizing about the Kindle, which he said already accounts for 6 percent of his company’s unit sales of books that are available in both paper and electronic formats.

But excitement about the Kindle, which was introduced in November, also worries some publishing executives, who fear Amazon’s still-growing power as a bookseller. Those executives note that Amazon currently sells most of its Kindle books to customers for a price well below what it pays publishers, and they anticipate that it will not be long before Amazon begins using the Kindle’s popularity as a lever to demand that publishers cut prices.

Overall, traffic at the book fair seemed lower than in past years, a reflecting perhaps that some editors did not make the long trip west from Manhattan, as well as the fact that the growth in the book business has slowed.
(more . . .)

Reading the E-Leaves With Amazon's Bezos (Wired)

Condé Nast Portfolio contributing editor Kevin Maney interviewed Bezos before a packed auditorium at New York University's Stern School of Business:

Portfolio: Let's talk about the Kindle. What do you want it to be?

Bezos: Any book, in any language, ever in print should be available in less than 60 seconds. We worked on it for three years. It's been selling out since being released.

Portfolio: You sold how many?

Bezos: You asked that so innocently, but you know I'm not going to answer. We have a long-standing practice of being very shy about disclosure, and I'll stick to that practice. The Kindle has substantially exceeded our expectations.

Portfolio: Every effort at e-books has failed. Why should this one work?

Bezos: We decided we were going to improve upon the book. And the first thing we did was try to determine the essential features of a physical book that we needed to replicate. The No. 1 feature is that it disappears. When you're in the middle of reading, you don’t notice the ink or the glue or the stitching or the paper — all of that disappears, and you're in the author's world. Most electronic devices today do not disappear. Some of them are extraordinarily rude. Books get out of the way, and they leave you in that state of mental flow.

Portfolio: How do you improve on that?

Bezos: We looked at things that physical books could never do. One of them is that you can look up any word that you're reading. It used to be that if I came across a word that I didn't know, I guessed from context. I'm astonished at what a bad guesser I am. Now that I’m looking up the words, I'm like, "Huh. Really?"

(more . . .)