Don’t worry — you won’t start seeing ads for tattoo parlors while reading Girl with the Dragon Tattoo . Not yet, anyway. But there’s some interesting thinking going around the ‘net (kicked off by this article in the Wall Street Journal ) about how advertising may soon try to conquer the last bastion of entertainment: books. When you go to the movies, you see ads, when you watch TV and browse the Internet, there... 

If you were looking to pick up a Kindle to finish up your summer reading you may be disappointed. Amazon is currently showing that the Kindle is temporarily out of stock. The site is still taking orders for the ereader which will result in an email with an estimated delivery date when available. The Kindle supply shortage  Read More →

Even though most schools are now shut down for summer, that doesn’t mean that companies have given up trying to selling products to students. Amazon today announced that it has refreshed its Kindle DX. Now featuring an even better 9.7″ E Ink display that boasts a 50% increase in contrast ratio, the next-gen Kindle DX also received a price drop and now stands at an attractive $379. The only other major difference is that the Kindle... 

Yesterday, the international iBooks stores were almost empty. In Spain, there was a single, dusty volume on the shelf: “Les vies encloses” by Georges Rodenbach. It was in French. Today, the shelves are groaning under the weight of dull, beige-covered tomes from Project Gutenberg, all of which are available free. To see and download these e-books, you’ll need a copy of Apple’s iBooks application for the iPad, only available... 

Filed under: iPad Fellow TUAW blogger Michael Grothaus gave us his take on utilizing the iPad as an ebook reader over the weekend. It’s is a good look into some of the down sides of ebook readers like the iPad , Kindle , Sony Reader, et. al. I’m the type of bibliophile that reads a lot of different things at once. I’ll be reading a couple of novels, along with several volumes of manga, …  Read More →

Filed under: iPad Apple has released the iBooks app into the App Store. The iBooks app will only run on the iPad and includes a complimentary copy of Winnie-the-Pooh by A. A. Milne. Some of the features of the app allows you to highlight your favorite passages with the built-in bookmarking feature, read a free sample of any book on the iBookstore, built-in search, and spoken word. The app’s page also states that only the ePub format is... 

Filed under: iPad Two days ago we told you that Project Gutenberg’s ebooks should be compatible with the iPad , and we even showed you some ways to get around any possible restrictions Apple could have imposed on the vast catalog of free ebooks. Well, it looks like those workarounds won’t be necessary, because according to appadvice, the entire Project Gutenberg catalog will be offered for free from the iBookstore . Project …  Read More →

By Andrew Liszewski A couple of years ago I wrote about the Digitizing Line DL 3000 book scanner which is capable of scanning and digitizing about 3,000 pages an hour, or 50 pages a minute, for a mere $250,000. And it has the footprint of a 4-post king sized bed. On the other hand, Masatoshi Ishikawa, a professor at the University of Tokyo, has developed a high-speed scanner that can digitize a book as you flip through its pages, at a rate of about... 

By Andrew Liszewski If you’re not suffering from iPad fever, there’s a good chance you still have your eyes on an e-paper based book reader, and the Spring Design Alex we first brought you back in October , and spent some time with at CES , is now officially available for pre-order for those of you who’ve been patiently waiting. But for those of you who’ve forgotten, your $399 gets you an Android-powered eReader which... 

Filed under: App Store , iPad The number of eBooks in the App Store has surpassed the number of games for the first time, and the spread is widening. Mobclix , a mobile device advertising agency, reports that as of last month, there were over 27,000 eBook apps while games were relegated to the runner-up position of 25,400 apps. Over the last reported month, new introductions of eBook apps …  Read More →

By Andrew Liszewski Good for you ASUS! You looked at a crowded market that seems to double in size almost on a weekly basis and said to yourself, “I want a tiny sliver of that pie that in all likelihood will be replaced by more advanced technologies in less than a year!” Thankfully though their entry does slightly stand above the rest with a 9-inch, 1024  Read More →

Filed under: Software , iBook , Apple Amazon has run into more trouble with its pricing — after Macmillan and HarperCollins , a third company has pressured the online book retailer to raise prices on their Kindle eBooks. This time it’s the Hachette Book Group , and their CEO in an internal memo says that the company will switch to an “agency model” for eBook sales. What’s an agency model? Why, it’s the 70... 

Like newspapers before them, traditional book publishers are facing the reality of the new digital world. With Apple’s much anticipated tablet expected to debut within the next few months, they’re under more pressure than ever before to “Think Different”. Moving from print to digital isn’t a smooth or easy path, despite the fact that most authors are working digitally in the first place. As early experiences with... 

Announced today, the Alex E-book Reader is an interesting take on electronic books. The upper third of the device features a standard 6-inch electronic ink screen similar to Amazon’s Kindle and then the bottom part sports a 3.5-inch color touchscreen running Android (1.6). The two screens can be harmonized by taking a web page you’ve loaded up on the Android browser and shooting it to the electronic ink screen up above. So surf the web, find... 

By Andrew Liszewski In David’s “What’s Buzzin’?” post about this year’s CES he mentioned 3 early trends we’ve seen including 3D TVs, media players and ebook readers. And this afternoon Samsung delivered on all 3 fronts. In addition to a slew of 3D LED TVs and a new PMP with a see-through AMOLED display, the company also announced their E6 and E101 E-Books. They come in 6-inch and 10-inch screen sizes...