I am a willing subscriber to The Wall Street Journal's online edition. It's $100 a year, which is a lot for online content, especially considering that you can generally find a way to get for free. But I'm a professional writer, and times are hard for all of us. I consider it a professional courtesy to pay, even handsomely, for excellent work. What I won't do is pay for twice. Unfortunately, that's what the WSJ wants me to do:
I recently downloaded the iPhone app for the WSJ, and discovered that getting access to the stories that I'm paying for already on the Web was going to cost me another $52 a year. And that's the discounted rate for existing subscribers. iPhone and BlackBerry app access is $78 a year if you don't already have either a Web or print subscription. It's only if you subscribe to both the Web and print editions of the WSJ that you get iPhone app access for "free."
No, I don't think so.
(Credit: Screenshot by Rafe Needleman/CNET)This is madness. I'm paying for online access to the stories. Why on earth should the publication charge me for it twice, or differently, just because I want to view that content, sometimes, on another connected device?
A Dow Jones spokesperson replied, "Each platform or device provides a different experience, and our model reflects that."
By this logic, I'm surprised the WSJ doesn't try to charge me an additional fee for reading stories on a second computer. At least a WSJ Web password can be used on any browser, including the browser on the iPhone.
But what if I want to read on yet another device, like an e-book? Actually, and sadly, Amazon's Kindle content delivery system seems to take a play from the Journal's book. If you're already a subscriber to the WSJ in any form, don't ask about the Kindle version of it. You don't want to know. The Kindle system is so divorced from its content producers that people who subscribe to electronic editions of one service, such as The New York Times' Electronic Edition at $175 a year, must pay again to get that same content delivered to their e-readers. In the case of the Times, that's another $167 a year. For the same stories, except stripped of color.
Granted, for most papers so far there are no corresponding non-Kindle payment plans. You only have to pay for USA Today if you want it on your Kindle ($144 a year), but it's still completely free over the Web; even the iPhone app gives you the content for nothing, save the crossword, which is a paid app.
Here's a better idea for Amazon, the Journal, and the Times: Set up a way for users to subscribe to a content service, and let them get that content electronically wherever they want. Kindle, iPhone, Web, whatever. It should be a right: if you have to pay for content, it should follow you around like a devoted puppy. (To be fair, let's let newspapers charge extra for actually delivering newspapers, since printing and distribution does incur non-trivial additional expenses.)
This idea is already working its way through the television industry. It's called TV Everywhere. In a nutshell, it says that if you pay for certain shows or networks via your cable bill, you should be able to watch what you're paying for online as well, even when you're not on the cable company's network.
Another emerging idea that augurs for this is the concept of the "digital locker." We can hope that Apple's purchase of Lala.com will mean that the music you purchase from iTunes, as well as the tunes you upload from CDs you own, will be stored by Apple for you, to be streamed when you want, to wherever you are, for as long as Apple stays in business.
That's the way to do it. Paying for content that's restricted to a platform is an analog anachronism that should die in the digital age. It's not fair nor sustainable, since delivery methods and platforms shift all the time. It is fair for content providers to charge for their work, but they should sell the content itself, not the media that holds it or the connections that transmit it.
If you're an avid reader, and you don't want to pick up a Kindle or a book from your local library, several Web sites let you read while you're surfing the Web.
Admittedly, the experience is less than ideal. Those of us who already spend time staring at a computer screen for work don't necessarily want to stare at a screen to read a book. I should also note that not all the books the sites offer will feature the kind of content you love. Many of the services offer many out-of-print books or classics due to copyright disputes. That said, using these sites, I still think you will find at least some titles that will suit your fancy.
Start reading
Alex Catalogue of Electronic Books: As someone who focuses much of my time reading history and philosophy works, Alex Catalogue of Electronic Books is an ideal site for me.
The majority of titles on Alex Catalogue of Electronic Books includes great literary works over the past few hundred years. The site also has prominent titles on Western history and philosophy. They range from books by Niccolo Machiavelli to Ralph Waldo Emerson. When you click on a title you're interested in, the site quickly delivers the text.
I was generally impressed by the Alex Catalogue. Although I would have liked to see more historical content on the site, the books that are available were worth checking out. And thanks to a quick load time, it made the site all the more useful. You can also print the texts so you don't need to sit at your computer screen to read them.
The Alex Catalogue features some great historical content.
(Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)AskSam: AskSam is an interesting site. It doesn't feature nearly as many books as I would have liked (in fact, it has just a handful of classics), but it makes several documents available that make it a viable alternative for those who aren't necessarily looking to read an e-book online.
When you first get to AskSam, you'll see a listing of some of the "classics" it has available. When you click on those titles, you can typically read them on the site. A few books require you to download the text, but those are few and far between. Overall, the selection is poor. I would have liked to see more books. But in the end, it didn't detract too much from the service.
I found that AskSam's extras provided the most value. They include several interesting documents, like a collection of all the speeches President Barack Obama has recited, legislative texts, transcripts on important political events, and more. It's a nice collection to sift through. And if you don't want to read them online, they can all be printed out from your browser.
AskSam features important documents to check out.
(Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)
On Monday, Amazon.com put out a small tweak to its Kindle application for Apple's iPhone (iTunes link) that takes users to an iPhone-optimized store when they click on the "get books" button.
There's now a page that lets users search either by title, author, keyword, or category. It also lists some of the New York Times best sellers, and items that have been recommended based on past purchases and browsing habits. Previously it would simply offer up a link to the desktop version of Amazon's Kindle Web store, which required a whole lot of pinching and zooming around to find what you were looking for.
Despite the change, the application still kicks users out to the Safari application instead of implementing the browsing experience within the Kindle app itself. It's safe to assume this will change in the next iteration, since Amazon acquired the company that created the popular Stanza eBook reading application in late April, which includes a built-in catalog of books that users can purchase.
There's also the soon-to-be-released iPhone 3.0 OS update, which will allow developers to add in-app micropayments--something that's perfect for eBooks. As it stands you still need to handle that end of the transaction on Amazon's site, instead of on the Kindle app.
Clicking on the "get books" button in Amazon's Kindle app for the iPhone now takes users to a thumb-friendly version of Amazon's storefront. However, clicking any of these options will kick you out to Amazon's Web app in Safari.
(Credit: CNET)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.
Calibre's lackluster interface is nevertheless replete with features.
(Credit: Screenshot by Seth Rosenblatt/CNET)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 moreBy now, you know you don't need a Kindle 2 to read books electronically. You can use the new Kindle for iPhone app.
But Kindle's not the only way to read books on a iPhone or iPod Touch. There are two other readers well worth checking out:
The apps
eReader
eReader's slidebar makes flipping pages easy.
(Credit: Don Reisinger/CNET Networks)eReader is designed extremely well, and it makes flipping through pages of your free books or premium titles easy. If you want to skip to a certain page, you can use a slidebar above the text to flip through the book. It's a simple feature, but you shouldn't overlook it; this is an ideal way to skip pages that more eBook readers should adopt.
eReader has great features. When you decide to stop reading for a while, it remembers the page you are on in each book you have in your account, and it allows you to wirelessly transfer eBooks to the iPhone's local memory so you don't need to worry about a Web connection to keep reading.
That said, I was a little disappointed with the eReader's dictionary integration, which is too difficult to use. And while the program allows you to change font styles and sizes, I found that the bigger the text size, the worse the experience. And due to the fact that the iPhone has such a small screen, it was somewhat difficult to see default text at times, so I found myself playing with the font size often in an attempt to cut down on scrolling left and right to read the book.
The selection of books offered in eReader is outstanding. Believe it or not, there are over 60,000 titles available to purchase, which include authors ranging from Stephen King to Howard Stern. And much like Stanza, you can buy those titles from Fictionwise.com. If you don't want to pay for the books, you can get some titles for free from Project Gutenberg. Regardless of whether you want new titles like Artie Lange's "Too Fat to Fish" or classics like "Romeo and Juliet," eReader has it all. And the sites are constantly updated with new titles, so you won't be missing out.
If eReader was a paid app, I'd be hesitant to recommend it because of how difficult it can be (at times) to read certain books. But since it's free and offers a slew of titles at no cost, it's definitely worth trying out and using if you don't want to buy a Kindle 2.
Stanza
Stanza makes personalizing the text quick and easy.
(Credit: Don Reisinger/CNET)Unlike the Kindle for iPhone app, Stanza allows you to read much more than just books. In fact, the program also lets you access newspapers and online sites, and supports MS LIT, epub, Mobipocket, and PalmDoc eBook formats. You can even view Word documents and PDF files in Stanza.
Buying books and getting them into Stanza is simple. The easiest way to access titles and start reading them is through the Fictionwise Reader Store, accessible within the app. It claims to have over 50,000 titles. In my search, it had everything I was looking for on topics ranging from history to sports to fiction. I didn't have any trouble getting those books and reading them with the app.
Reading eBooks in Stanza is easily the most appealing when compared with its competitors. The app provides for multi-column views or standard book layout view. And by swiping the screen, you can move up, down, left, and right. You can flip pages with just a tap on the screen. You can also change the color, size, and font of your text with a slidebar. Combine those options and you can easily create an experience that can be tailored to your liking.
Much like eReader, I was impressed by the selection Stanza offered. If you want newer titles and you're willing to pay for them, Stanza allows you to download books from Fictionwise.com. If you want free titles or those you simply can't find elsewhere, you can also use Project Gutenberg. That may not help Stanza differentiate itself from eReader (the selection is practically the same), but I found that with both services at your disposal, you won't be wishing for more titles. In fact, I found books from Stephen Ambrose, Edger Allan Poe, and a slew of other writers. Suffice it to say that, like eReader, Stanza's title selection is outstanding.
The real value of Stanza goes beyond books you can buy or those you can get for free from Project Gutenberg. Because it supports periodicals and Web sites, Stanza is the closest you can get on the iPhone to using the Amazon Kindle--the real Kindle, not the iPhone app. And although it's hobbled by the iPhone's smaller screen, it still provides an outstanding experience (for free, no less) that you definitely should try out in place of Amazon's device.
Kindle for iPhone
Kindle for iPhone is good, but not great.
(Credit: Don Reisinger/CNET)Getting going on the Kindle for iPhone application is a snap. When I loaded it for the first time, I was prompted for my Amazon username and password. Once entered, I was brought to the Amazon front page, which featured all of the books that I had purchased for the Amazon Kindle device prior to this review. Since I already purchased those titles, I was able to quickly access them and start reading. And much like the eReader app, Kindle for iPhone remembers where I left off, so I never needed to flip through pages to find my spot.
I was generally impressed by the experience Kindle for iPhone created. Turning the page is achieved by swiping your finger across the screen, and as on the Kindle itself, you can bookmark pages, change font size, and sample the titles before you decide to buy.
But one feature is conspicuously missing: the Kindle application does not support newspapers. You'll be forced to read only books in the application. And if you want to read articles from the newspaper, you'll be forced to do it the old-fashioned way by using Safari.
You also can't buy any books in the app. Instead, you'll be forced to use Safari on the iPhone to go to Amazon's Kindle Store and buy a book there. It's annoying and a confusing decision that makes the value of this app decline significantly. However, you can't beat the selection of current titles that Amazon has available for download.
Reading books on the Kindle app was appealing, and I was generally impressed with the experience. Amazon did a nice job of making the iPhone feel like the Kindle. Kindle for iPhone is free, so you won't need to worry about dishing out any more cash than what's necessary to buy books for the device. But since it's difficult to buy those books and you can't read newspapers, I'm hard-pressed to recommend this program. If you really want a Kindle, don't use this app; buy the device.
Books as apps
You don't need an Reader to read Shakespeare.
(Credit: Don Reisinger/CNET)The App Store has a relatively limited number of books for sale as apps. Since you don't need an additional e-book reader to read through them (the books have reader software built-in), it's an affordable way to get into the e-book market.
I downloaded a few titles on my iPhone and found that, generally, the experience was about the same as you would expect from any other reader on the device. That said, you won't be able to customize the way the books are displayed as easily and each title is a standalone, so you can't have multiple books housed under one icon, like you can with eReader or Stanza.
Overall, the reading experience was fine when I picked individual books and each title remembered where I left off. Swiping to the left allowed me to go to the next page and the "pinch" feature let me zoom in on different parts of the page. It made reading intuitive, but once again, trying to find the sweet spot that balances both font size and readability was difficult.
Individual book pricing is all over the map. Some titles are free in the App Store and others cost more than $20. It all depends on the book. But you probably won't be blown away by the selection. And at $20--given the price of "real" books--I'm not convinced that it's even worth it.
Cream of the crop
If you don't want to switch to the Kindle 2 and you want to use your iPhone to read eBooks, try Stanza first. It's free, it's full-featured, it offers the best reading experience, and it does much of what the Kindle can do in a smaller (and more affordable) package.
Google is opening a new chapter in its book digitization saga, this time taking on the likes of Amazon.com's Kindle and Sony's eReader.
The search giant on Thursday launched a mobile version of its Google Book Search, giving iPhone and Android users instant access to more than 1.5 million public domain books. The works of authors such as William Shakespeare, Jane Austen, and Charles Dickens were optimized to be read on the small screen, a challenge the Google Book Search team called "daunting" in a blog post announcing the launch:
There's an interesting backstory about the work involved to prepare so many books for mobile devices. If you use Google Book Search, you'll notice that our previews are composed of page images made by digitizing physical copies of books. These page images work well when viewed from a computer, but prove unwieldy when viewed on a phone's small screen.Our solution to make these books accessible is to extract the text from the page images so it can flow on your mobile browser just like any other web page. This extraction process is known as Optical Character Recognition (or OCR for short).
However, as the team notes, there are frequently obstacles that keep the printed word from being accurately extracted, such as smudges, fancy fonts, old fonts, and torn pages. As an example of an "extreme case," the team presented the this page image from Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures Under Ground:
(Credit:
Google.com)
...and the resulting extraction:
=> "lV~e.il!" .ÍAoHyU- AUte. U brstty/affc. su.it a. f o.tl as ~tk¿* , I s&O.IL .éfiiíjz tiotkun-) of-ttmlr1¿*y ¿i^n. sta¿rs ! Jfo» ura.ve ...
The e-book reader market has exploded in the past year, with analysts estimating Amazon sold 500,000 Kindles in 2008. Last month, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos credited the "unusually strong demand" for the unit in helping the e-tailer beat Wall Street's fourth-quarter revenue and earnings expectations.
Google, which last year settled a 3-year-old lawsuit over its scanning project, may have timed this launch to upstage Amazon, which is rumored to be releasing its next-generation Kindle later this month.
Auctioneers at eBay were asking for more than double the retail price of Amazon's Kindle e-Reader on Friday.
A check of eBay at 2:45 p.m. PST showed prices for the e-Book reader went as high as $930. TechCrunch reported that a Kindle, which retails for $399, was bid up to $1,500 earlier in the week.
Has Amazon really discovered untapped consumer demand for digital-book readers?
The e-tailer, dabbling in electronics manufacturing for the first time, sold out of Kindles soon after introducing them last month. The device connects to the Web to download books--a feature that separates it from other e-readers that must sync to a PC to load a book.
Amazon has said it won't start delivering on new Kindle orders until after Christmas.
The company said it sold out of the Kindle in under six hours after the handheld went on sale. Some critics questioned how many Kindles Amazon had in stock. The company declined to say.
In the house: Amazon's new Kindle
(Credit: Sarah Tew/CNET Networks)The slow drip of rumors and leaks about the Amazon Kindle e-book reader exploded into a full-blown flood over the weekend, once it was revealed as this week's Newsweek cover story. Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos filled in all of the remaining blanks (or most of them, anyway) at this morning's New York press conference that officially introduced the product to the world. Some relevant details, finally confirmed:
- Measurements: The Kindle weighs 10.3 ounces and is about the size of a trade paperback book. It's both taller and thicker than the Sony Reader.
- Connectivity: The Kindle connects to the Web via the "Amazon Whispernet," a free high-speed cellular wireless network (Sprint EVDO). Books and other content are available for direct download, without the need for connecting to a PC (though a USB port does provide PC connectivity for transferring files). The Kindle's internal memory can store up to 200 books, and it's expandable via an SD slot (which can also be used to load additional media).
- Books: Once you're online via EVDO, electronic books are available directly from Amazon for up to $10--just click on the title you want, and it's downloaded (and you're charged) in about a minute's time. Amazon is currently offering more than 90,000 titles, including 90 percent of the current New York Times bestsellers. The first chapter of most books can be previewed on the Kindle for free. Amazon keeps track of your purchases, so you can delete the file on the Kindle (to make space for more content) and then download it again later for no additional charge.
- Newspapers and magazines: The Kindle can also be used to subscribe to a variety of periodicals, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Time, Le Monde, and Forbes. Newspaper subscriptions are $6 to $15 a month, and magazines are $1.25 to $3.49. Dailies are automatically delivered to the Kindle overnight, and each periodical includes a free two-week trial. (There appears to be no discount for existing subscribers of these periodicals.)
- Blogs: The Kindle also offers more than 300 blogs, including Slashdot, The Onion, BoingBoing, and Techcrunch--but these are customized Kindle versions that cost at least $1 a month. Moreover, unlike your RSS feeds, you can't add your favorite blog--if it's not on Amazon's list, you can't subscribe to it.
- Web browsing: The Kindle can also browse the Web at large (it has its own QWERTY keyboard directly below the screen), but--unlike the Kindle-ized premium content listed above--most standard Web pages are something of a disaster. The CNET home page, for instance, was rendered as 18 separate pages. Likewise, don't expect support for any plug-ins such as Flash.
- Notation and bookmarks: You can bookmark key passages of what you're reading, and (using the keyboard), make, edit, and export notes. The Kindle also saves your place when reading anything, so you can always pick up where you left off.
- Price and availability: The Kindle reader is now available from Amazon.com for $400.
CNET got one of the first review samples, and we've gotten a chance to put it through its paces. What do we think so far? Here's a quick and dirty appraisal, based on just a couple of hours of use:
The Good: Excellent high-contrast screen does a great job of simulating a printed page; large library of tens of thousands of e-books, newspapers, magazines, and blogs via Amazon's familiar online store; built-in "Whispernet" data network--no PC needed; built-in keyboard for notes; SD card expansion slot; long battery life.
The Bad: Design is ergonomic, but not very elegant; pricing for nearly all the content seems too high, especially considering the periodicals and blogs are available for free online; black-and-white screen is fine for books, but less impressive for periodicals and Web content; lacks a true Web browser; included cover is clumsy and poorly designed; yet another dedicated device you'll need to lug around with you.
The Bottom Line: With its built-in wireless capabilities and PC-free operation, Amazon's Kindle is a promising evolution of the electronic book (and newspaper, and magazine)--but overpriced content could be its Achilles' heel.
In other words, the Kindle is a very promising gadget that offers the potential to revolutionize how we read books and periodicals--but I just don't see myself buying one (and I read about two books a month). But again, that's a very preliminary evaluation. The full review is coming soon. In the meantime, let us know if you have any questions about the Kindle's capabilities. And, of course, your opinions: is the Kindle the next must-have gadget, or is there a dealbreaker or two that keeps it from missing the mark? And how many of you are just holding out for the iTunes Bookstore on your iPhone or iPod Touch? Or would prefer to spend your $400 on an Asus EEE PC instead?
Correction: This article initially misstated the Kindle's built-in connectivity options. It connects to the Web via a high-speed wireless network called Amazon Whispernet.
NEW YORK--"Why are books the last bastion of analog?" Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos asked an audience at New York's W Hotel in Union Square as he unveiled Amazon Kindle, the online-retail giant's new electronic book reader.
"Books have stubbornly resisted digitization," he elaborated. "I think there's a very good reason for that, and that is, the book is so highly evolved and so suited to its task that it's very hard to displace."
Indeed, where hardware companies like Sony have failed. No e-book reader has ever been a market success.
CNET News.com reported last week that Amazon would be debuting its much-delayed e-book reader, which the retailer on Monday started selling for $399.
Kindle tips the scales at a total 10.3 ounces--"That's less than a paperback book," Bezos said--and uses an "electronic ink" technology to mimic paper, not a computer screen. There is no backlight. Currently, the screen is black-and-white; Amazon executives have confirmed that E Ink, which manufactures the screen technology for Kindle as well as for other e-book readers like the Sony Reader, has a prototype of a color display; however, that technology is not yet ready for market.
The battery life, company representatives said, will last several days to a week. A charger can juice up the battery in a matter of two hours.
Notably, Kindle does not require a PC for synchronization or any software to be installed. "Instead of shopping from your PC, you shop directly from the device. The store is on the device, and then the content is wirelessly and seamlessly delivered to the device," Bezos explained.
Amazon's new "Kindle Store" now stocks more than 90,000 titles, "including 101 of 112 current New York Times Best Sellers and new releases, which are $9.99, unless marked otherwise," according to a release from the company.
Kindle, which was manufactured by an undisclosed Chinese original equipment manufacturer, connects to its specialized Amazon store via an EV-DO (Evolution Data Optimized) cellular network through "Amazon Whispernet," built atop Sprint's EV-DO network. No data plan or monthly bill is required. "We pay for all of that behind the scenes so that you can just read," Bezos said, adding that he estimated that it would take "less than a minute" to download a book.
The device can hold about 200 books, the CEO explained. A slot for a standard SD memory card can increase that capacity to about 1,000 books.
Bezos also announced that dozens of newspapers, from The New York Times to France's Le Monde, would also be available for the device, as well as magazines and 300 of the most popular blogs, such as BoingBoing and Slashdot. "On Kindle, newspapers are delivered while you sleep, automatically," he said. The publications will receive a cut of the subscription fee revenue, as no advertising will be displayed on them.
Additionally, Kindle comes with an electronic dictionary and access to Wikipedia. Each device, as News.com reported, also provides the user with a personal Kindle e-mail address so that word-processing files such as Microsoft Word documents, as well as image files, could be sent to the e-book reader.
After unveiling the device, Bezos showed the audience a video of numerous literary and technological luminaries who provided testimonials about Kindle; including authors Toni Morrison and Neil Gaiman, and entrepreneur Guy Kawasaki, who said, "This is BlackBerry for blogs."
But even though the development of Kindle took three years, Bezos said, it still couldn't be entirely perfect. "We never did figure out how to do virtual book signings," he said. Nevertheless, the Amazon chief executive reiterated that the book is due for a 21st-century makeover.
"We forget (that the printed book) is a 500-year-old technology, and we sort of forget that it's even a technology," Bezos mused. "Gutenberg would still recognize a modern-day book."
DRM and electronic books could help lower college educational expenses while at the same time improving the health of students.
Here's why: the economics of textbook publishing are broken. There's a reason that an introductory biology textbook costs $125 new, and it's not because it's printed on high-quality paper using a special 12-color press. It's because when the student is done with the book, he or she sells it back to the campus bookstore, or to another student. The publisher is thus deprived of recurring revenue on the title. So it raises book prices, heaping the revenue it would get from multiple students over multiple years onto one unlucky soul. But the more expensive books get, the more likely students are to recycle them. It's a death spiral of cost.
Peter's new Sony PRS-505 Reader.
(Credit: Peter N. Glaskowsky)This is how digital rights and e-books can help: what if, instead of selling paper books to students, publishers sold digital copies? Already some textbooks are available online or in downloads, but students need easier access to information than a standard 7-pound, battery-limited laptop can provide. An instant-on electronic book is just the ticket. The technology is here, or nearly so. If the textbook content was licensed to the user and not resellable, then the publisher could sell it to each individual who needed it. There'd be no secondary market and the publishers would not have to inflate their prices to make up for that.
And the health benefits? It's a lot better for your back if you're just carrying one 3-pound e-book instead of a half-dozen 8-pound printed texts.
Now, there are dozens of ways publishers could screw this up, mostly by overpricing their content, which would encourage hacking of the DRM, which would in response lead to onerous copy protection that could make e-books unworkable. But if--and it's a big if--publishers get on board and start selling licenses to their texts instead of the books themselves, everyone (except bookstores) could benefit. I would be surprised if e-book manufacturers weren't pushing on this angle right now. See the hands-on hardware and software reviews of Sony's new PRS-505 electronic book.
See also Textbookflix (book rental) and CafeScribe (downloadable texts, but limited selection).
