reading

It's an awesome time to own an iDevice. You can get unlimited movie and TV streaming from Netflix, unlimited music from the likes of Rdio and Spotify, and even unlimited magazines from Next Issue (for iPads, anyway).

Great news for comic-book fans: Now you can get unlimited comics as well. Marvel Unlimited, previously a Web-only service, just debuted for iOS. (It's coming soon for Android.) Less-great news: The app needs work.

True to its name, Marvel Unlimited provides full access to the publisher's extensive library of comics, which currently numbers over 13,000 titles. You'll find … Read more

Call me old-school, but I still like magazines. Reading them, writing for them -- heck, I even started one many moons ago.

If you feel the same way, but prefer digital editions to their paper counterparts, check out Next Issue. A kind of "Netflix for magazines," the service offers unlimited access to over 80 titles, all for a flat monthly rate.

The rate: $14.99 for Next Issue Premium, or $9.99 for Basic (more on all that in a minute). For a limited time, however, CNET is offering a three-month Next Issue Premium trial absolutely free. (You'… Read more

Read any good books lately? I know, e-book prices can make it tough to indulge your love of the printed word. That's why I'm jazzed to see that the folks at StoryBundle have cobbled together another great batch of books for whatever price you want to pay.

It's true! The Indie Fantasy Bundle includes six full-length novels (actually, eight, as two of the selections include the first two books in their respective series), and you get to decide how much you want to pay.

As you might suspect from the "indie" designation, these aren't … Read more

Tablets are great and all, but if you're mostly into reading, it's hard to beat an e-reader. Eye-friendly screens, ultra-light designs, amazing battery life -- the perks go on and on.

And let's not forget price. Amazon's entry-level Kindle is now down to $69. But here's an even more wallet-friendly option: Best Buy has the Kobo Mini e-reader for $59.99 shipped (plus sales tax). That's for the white model; the black one literally sold out while I was writing this post.

So that's only a $10 difference, right? And when you factor … Read more

E-books are all kinds of awesome. E-book prices? Not so much.

That's why I'm always on the lookout for freebies, relying on sites like Hundred Zeros to help me find gratis reading for my Kindle.

Lately I've been exploring another source: Freebook Sifter, a new site that lists over 35,000 no-cost books available from Amazon. It's not the prettiest site I've ever seen -- all links and text, no cover art or images -- but it definitely delivers on its promise.

When you first visit the site, you'll see a random listing of … Read more

LAS VEGAS--Some of you may recall that one scene in "Back to the Future II" where Marty McFly travels forward in time to 2015 and plays a shoot-'em-up arcade game. After getting a seemingly great high score, a jaded youth remarks, "You mean you have to use your hands? That's like a baby's toy!"

I couldn't help but remember that quote when I slipped on Interaxon's Muse -- a lightweight headset that turns your mind into an input device by converting your brainwaves into digital signals. … Read more

LAS VEGAS--TLDR is software that summarizes Web information automatically when you don't have time to read the whole story. It's available now as a plug-in for Firefox, Chrome, and Safari, but developers Stremor say the Android and iPhone apps have been submitted to the major app stores, so you'll be able to use it on your smartphone as early as this week.

A quick demo was all it took to see how well this software works. Once you download the free plug-in for your Web browser, you simply restart and you're ready to go. The … Read more

The Google Play Books app was recently updated with a "Read Aloud" feature for Android devices. Once enabled, your Android device will read the text of books acquired from Google Play Books.

There's just one problem; the voice reading the books sounds horrible. It's slow, words are awkwardly broken up, and it just doesn't lend itself to a great experience. The good news is you can enable a high-quality voice to read the book to you directly in the app.

I've been an e-book fan for as long as I can remember. Ever since I found myself stuck on a slow-moving mountain train with nothing but my PalmPilot and an e-book, I've been hooked on digital reading.

Flash-forward some 15 years and e-books are everywhere, thanks in no small part to the Amazon Kindle -- a dedicated e-reader with a special "e-ink" screen that I still consider a marvel of modern technology. (Know why Kindles and other e-ink devices have such phenomenal battery life? Because every pixel on the screen is either "on" or &… Read more