e-book

Score the best deals on iPhone e-books

I love reading books on my iPhone, but I don't love e-book prices. I mean, digital content requires no printing, binding, shipping, storage, or heavy lifting--so why does Amazon charge the same price for the Kindle edition of "The Kite Runner" as for the paperback?

That's a debate for another day (though let me go on record saying I'd buy a lot more e-books if they were priced in the $1 to $4 range). For now, let's look at ways you can read on the cheap--or, at least, the cheaper--on your iPhone.

Look for freebies Stanza, one of my favorite e-book viewers ( just acquired by Amazon, incidentally), connects you with thousands of freebies. For example, check out the Random House Free Library, which currently stocks 10 mainstream e-books. (Best bet: Charlie Huston's superb crime-noir series, which starts with "Caught Stealing.") Meanwhile, there's Google Book Search, a browser-based solution that connects you to a whopping 1.5 million public-domain books. Point Safari to http://books.google.com/m. Look for deals E-bookseller Fictionwise already discounts its e-books, but you can stretch your dollar even further by setting up a "Micropay" account (i.e., a debit account). Most books come with a Micropay rebate, meaning you get 10 percent to 15 percent of the purchase price added back to your account. But sometimes Fictionwise runs rebate specials, as it's doing right now with J.R.R. Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings" series: Buy any/all of the books and you get back 100 percent. You can read Fictionwise e-books using eReader or Stanza. (Just make sure to choose titles that are available in the Secure eReader format.) Try before you buy Amazon's Kindle app lets you read free of charge the entire first chapter of any book in the Kindle Store. That's a great way to see if you like a book before plunking down your $10. However, you can't browse the store from within the app: You have to queue up your sample chapters from your browser. Not so with Shortcovers, an e-book viewer with a built-in bookstore that offers sample chapters for many titles (but only forewords for others).… Read more

Five iPhone apps for writers

When people ask me if it's hard to be a writer, I tell them the challenge is not just thinking up the words, but putting them in the right order. Then they roll their eyes and walk away, reminding me I need to work on both my material and my delivery.

Anyway, like any professional, a writer relies on tools. Here are five that make a great addition to any iPhone or iPod Touch:

Dictionary.com Duh. Every writer needs a good dictionary and thesaurus. This one, a freebie, serves up 275,000 definitions, 80,000 synonyms, and even … Read more

Kindle owners stage e-book price protest

Wired's Gadget Lab blog has a story about how a group of about 250 Kindle owners are staging an online protest over Kindle e-books that cost more than $9.99. The weapon they're using is Amazon's own tagging system, as price offenders are getting hit with a special "9 99 boycott" tag.

The roving--and most likely growing--band of annoyed Kindle owners includes such folks as Connecticut librarian Crystal O'Brien, who spends "a few minutes every day in the Kindle book store tagging the more expensive digital books with the '9 99 boycott' tag … Read more

Shortcovers e-book reader falls a little, well, short

The Shortcovers e-book reader that's available now for BlackBerry, iPhones, and Google Android phones sounded like a good idea when we first heard about it back in February. It still is a good idea, but falls a little short in the execution.

Shortcovers is attractive and modern-looking with a nice, legible default font throughout and a menu system you can find your way around. What it trips on are the details. For instance, thumbnail images draw you in on the page of featured e-books, but are excluded from the actual content. Sometimes the only freebie you get is the … Read more

Buzz Out Loud 944: Natali needs a zombie team

We're not talking about a team of dancing zombies; we mean a team of friends to form her Zombie Preparedness task force. Because it is Zombie Preparedness Day. We also bring it with some open-source good news for DVR builders, and the Linux folks talking tough to Microsoft.

Listen now: Download today's podcast EPISODE 944

Time Warner rationale for bandwidth caps doesn’t add up http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/04/get-ready-for-metered-broadband-texas.ars

Verizon promises 4G wireless for rural America http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-12261_7-10209933-51.html

MPAA: Box office up, but 'sober epic' underway in home video … Read more

Buzz Out Loud 938: Dork day afternoon

Ron Richards from iFanboy joins us as we finish today's show with a discussion of "geek" vs. "nerd" and decide "dork" is the next wave. We also talk about a cow that poops money, also known as Jonathan Coulton's business model. And we get mad at AT&T.

Listen now: Download today's podcast EPISODE 938

AT&T working with RIAA http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10203799-93.html

How it works for a real musician http://www.jonathancoulton.com/2009/03/24/payday/

John Mellencamp: Back In The Good Old Days… … Read more

Samsung's Papyrus e-book reader nears launch

Samsung's upcoming e-book reader, the Papyrus, had its debut at CES in January, but the stylish looking device is now making the rounds in Europe with some new details in tow. What's interesting about it is that it seems to have quite a bit of PDA in it as Samsung's gone with a touch screen (an aluminum stylus is included), and is bundling some utility applications such as a calculator, scheduler, and contacts. The Papyrus is an A5-size e-ink device (it's 5.8 inches by 8.3 inches while the entire Kindle 2 measures 5.3 … Read more

Apple hit with lawsuit over iPhone as e-book reader

Earlier this month Apple got hit with a lawsuit over an "exploding" iPod Touch. Now it appears to be getting hit with a suit over the exploding e-book market.

A couple of blogs, including Apple Insider, are reporting that a Swiss communications firm, Monec Holding, has filed suit in a Virginia district court. Monec accuses the iPhone maker of "patent infringement, unfair trade practices, monopolization, and tortious interference for allegedly treading on its January 2002 patent No. 6,335,678 titled 'Electronic device, preferably an electronic book.'"

We've never heard of Monec, but the mission … Read more

Calibre: iTunes for e-books?

Calibre is a cross-platform, open-source library for your e-books that can also sync them to your e-book reader. Available for Windows, Mac, and Linux, it offers a massive range of individual book customizations, as well as format conversion and newspaper-style RSS feed grabbing, but lacks a slick interface that would go a long way toward convincing skeptics that it's a powerful tool.

The number of things that Calibre can do for your digital book collection is stunning. You can view books in a basic spreadsheet layout or with an adaptation of Apple's Cover Flow. Cover Flow here lacks a default image, and the sudden white rectangle where the book cover should be is jarring. It can be toggled with the big, white arrow icon in the bottom-right corner of the main window--an equally awkward placement. … Read more

Google deal brings classic books to Sony Reader

Sony's e-book reader is about to get a little help from Jane Austen in its battle with the Kindle.

Sony announced a partnership with Google Wednesday night that will bring a half-million classic books to the Sony Reader Digital Book. Users will now be able to access the free book downloads through Sony's eBook Store.

For years, Google has scanned books and converted them to digital format--at least in part--for its Google Book Search project. For now, Google is providing books to Sony whose copyrights have expired, which means most of the new additions to the Sony Reader … Read more