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Here’s another cool thing I came across concerning ereaders on Nintendo’s DS handheld. It looks to be an ereader for comic books only. This one’s a homebrew (read: will void your warranty) program and probably has less funtionality than the lackluster comic readers on the iPhone anyway, but it’s nice to see even homebrewers and hackers getting aboard the ebook wagon.
 [via 4 color rebellion]
 The box seems thicker than normal, I wonder why? This was announced a couple of months ago, but I thought I’d share it here: apparently there is an ereader program coming for Nintendo DS. It looks like it will contain the usual suspects of public domain titles, but even so, a prepackaged 100 books will save a lot of downloading and organizing headaches–ask Nico how’s his 100 free classic downloads from Sony went. I’m a little concerned that the slightly fuzzy resolution of the DS will make this less than satisfying, but the blurb and screen shots seem to imply a fair amount of features (including the ability to download additional books–no word yet on pricing or availability for the DLC) that may make this little collection worthwhile, even if not as an everyday ereader. Right now it’s only announced for the UK, but we’ll grab an import when it’s ready to see if it is worth anticipating a release on our side of the pond. [via 1up.]
Plastic Logic makes a hell of a slick-looking ereader, but you won’t be able to get your hands on it for another year. However, they are getting the pieces in place: according to MobileRead they’re announcing their content provider during the same press conference that we’re assuming will include the announcement of Kindle 2.0. The video above looks great, but this thing is the size of a sheet of paper, much bigger than a regular book. This would be like the MacBook Air of ereaders (not very useful for normal people). It’s designed to replace paper in offices, so that you can email reports to people’s Plastic Logics, and read them wherever you are. Nifty. Can we have a small one for books please? [via SlashGear via MobileRead]  I'll forgive you, Calibre, even if it is your fault I really like Calibre, the open-source elibrary and ereader manager. I wrote a post not long ago extolling Calibre’s virtues as my new go-to ereader software after I gave up on Sony’s official program. One of the things I liked was being able to edit the metadata of books, such as the author’s name that shows up in my Reader’s library. It’s a great feature for when you get a book from Gutenberg or elsewhere, you convert it to a different format and your name becomes the author’s. Or the file title itself is in weird_annoyin_forma3212. This is also easy to do and intuitive (you just double-click on the title or author that you want to change). The problem is that it doesn’t appear to be permanent. A few times since I renamed my problem books, they’ve spontaneously regrown their old names, which is weird. I have yet to replicate the problem in a control setting, and so I can’t pin down the culprit (I really want to blame you, Sony eBook Library, but I can’t just yet). More news as I figure it out.
 Not so fast, Huck, you're not in this post Google Book Search recently reached a “groundbreaking agreement” which is great for searching the text of books, not so great for reading those books, abysmal for reading anything on an ereader. [UPDATE: The ebook version is now $14, the same price as the paperback, and the links take you to the The Enchantress of Florence at those various ebookstores. So consider this an account of how silly things used to be. They're still quite silly, but maybe not this silly.]  The book goes for $14. But how much are they charging for the paper, and how much for the words? Here’s something odd. On the Random House website, you can buy several different versions of The Enchantress of Florence, the most recent novel by Salman Rushdie, which I’m currently reading (review out soon). You can buy the trade paperback for $14, you can buy the hardcover for $26, or, on either version’s page you can find a link to the ebook version. The odd part? Both the hardcover and the paperback pages link to the same ebook, which is priced at $26, the full hardcover price. Now this is obviously a ludicrous, and frankly insulting, pricing system, but that’s far from the only silly thing they’re doing.
 credit guardian.co.uk So everybody’s getting excited over the Kindle 2.0, and it hasn’t even been announced yet, let alone released. Even the Guardian is now reporting that Amazon will probably introduce a new Kindle during a special press conference a week from Monday. A couple of things caught my eye about this article. One was:
What? Not available in Europe? Turns out that yes, Kindles are not available in Europe, and the whispernet doesn’t work there. Sony Reader is available in England (though just the old model), and is in the midst of rolling out Readers in France and Germany, according to reputable sources. This sounds like yet another case of the two major ereader producers battling to see who can suck the least. Sony barely even seems to be trying, but Amazon continues to waste buzz best, just like they did when Oprah plugged the Kindle, and then they embarrassingly ran out of stock. For 3 months. But wait! There’s more! … From Boing Boing: a writer or entity called MCM has released a new edition of an anti-DRM kids’ book called “The Pig and the Box.” PDF downloads are available, non-DRMed of course, for both $2.99 and $0.00. I suppose this is one possible future for kids’ books. This comes through Cory Doctorow, who does a lot of great work with copyfight and Creative Commons, and the struggle against DRM. He releases all his books as free downloads when they’re published, and he’s widely admired (including by me) as a pioneer in the field of ebooks. But…  At least they didn't use Brad Pitt. I found this reader in the form of a free download of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (no, I didn’t download it because I saw and loved the movie; I didn’t see it and probably wouldn’t love it). I have never really been a fan of Fitzgerald’s, always thought the lore around him and his wife kind of masked some of his flaws as a writer still worth reading. But I like stories with fabulous turns, so I figured I’d kill two birds with one iPhone and read the story while checking out some reader software. My opinion: the TouchBooks Reader isn’t bad, but it isn’t all that good either. Now I know I got it for free (it is ad supported, which, due to the limited real estate on the iPhone screen, is a little more frustrating with reader programs than say iShoot), and while that should be a plus it’s actually more of a negative to me. It’s the business model du mode and it’s helping a lot of small potatoes get in there with the big guys, so I won’t bark about the ad support so much. My complaint (and this extends far beyond the app store, that’s just the best known example I can think of–see also Wii titles, WordPress widgets to name a few) is that when companies like Apple open up their products to individual developers, for every gem there are 235 pieces of shovelware. So while the reader is a competent piece of software, the fact that I can only read this one story by a writer I find mediocre is a tad disappointing. Yeah, you say, it’s free, so throw it out when your done. Don’t worry, I will. Now the TouchBooks Reader site has a picture of what appears to be a library page, next to the programmer’s claim to offer the best reader for the iPhone. There are better (this, dear reader, will be a link once I get around to writing about Bookz and Stanza) already, but with a library feature integrated, the touchbooks reader could stand a decent shot. Right now I’m not sure if the picture is disingenuous or a promise of what’s to come (though the “carrier” on the service bar gives away that the photo is probably doctored, and the readme implies that the software is designed for individual book releases), but I hope it’s a planned feature.
 The display is nice, but the ads chew away screen space. As for the software itself, there are a fair amount of features. Chapters, bookmarking, scrolling or page up/down, text resizing, auto-scrolling (which defaults way too fast, but can be adjusted) are all covered. There’s no landscape mode, which find a little disappointing, though it’s never a dealbreaker. The presentation is nice as well, with an off white back ground the text is easy on the eyes, and a few graphics headers give the ebook a typeset feel that I like. So the biggest disappointment is still the one-time-use feel that comes from the lack of library. The bookmarks are frustrating in that the reader seems to allow for more than one, but every time I open a different chapter (even if on accident) the bookmark I placed manually disappears. Maybe I’m doing something wrong, but it’s still frustrating. I should also mention that every time you open the ebook, it asks to report your location, which, though harmless, I find off-putting and hit “Don’t Allow.” It doesn’t remember this choice, and thus asks me again and again, which bugs me.
 Benjamin Button should mind his own business.
All in all, the Curious Case of Benjamin Button by TouchBooks Reader isn’t a waste of a download (though the story didn’t sway my opinion of FSG), but you’re probably better off using a full reader program to get the story off of Project Gutenberg and save yourself a home screen slot. If TouchBooks Reader ever evolves into an actual reader, or if they publish some original stuff that isn’t public domain, I might be swayed to give them another shot–even pay them. Until then it’s the iPhone equivalent of a periodical left on the subway, and I’ve already dropped it in the wastebasket at my stop.
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Just came across 