Gadgets, E-book | featured news

... Yes, the words are the same, whether perceived on paper or on a small, illuminated screen. But the experience is not. One can read “One Hundred Years of Solitude” on a Kindle or an iPad, but one cannot see, hear, feel and smell the story in the same way. I’m unlikely to race to the sofa, there to nuzzle an electronic gizmo, with the same anticipation as with a book. Or to the hammock with the same relish I would with a new magazine. Somehow, napping with a gadget blinking notice of its dwindling power doesn’t hold the same appeal as falling asleep in the hammock with your paperback opened to where you dozed off.

Amazon.com Inc. is expected to unveil a new Kindle Fire on Thursday as it seeks to take a bigger bite of the tablet computer market and boost sales of digital goods like e-books and movies.

Five years ago, South Korea mapped out a plan to transform its education system into the world’s most cutting-edge. The country would turn itself into a “knowledge powerhouse,” one government report declared, breeding students “equipped for the future.” These students would have little use for the bulky textbooks familiar to their parents. Their textbooks would be digital, accessible on any screen of their choosing. Their backpacks would be much lighter.

Apple on Thursday lifted the veil on its plans to remake the educational landscape in a way that centers on its best-selling tablet computer, the iPad. "Education is deep in Apple's DNA and iPad may be our most exciting education product yet," Philip Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of marketing, said in a statement.

Apple is slated to announce the fruits of its labor on improving the use of technology in education at its special media event on Thursday, January 19. While speculation has so far centered on digital textbooks, sources close to the matter have confirmed to Ars that Apple will announce tools to help create interactive e-books—the “GarageBand for e-books,” so to speak—and expand its current platform to distribute them to iPhone and iPad users.

Kindles, Nooks and iPads can do many amazing things, but they can’t bump you ahead in line at the Reston Regional Library. In fact, if you want to borrow a book, it may be quicker to put down your sleek new device and head into the stacks.

Amazon announced Thursday that it has launched a Kindle lending library for owners of its e-reader who are also subscribers to its Amazon Prime service. Prime members can borrow one book a month, with no due dates. Users are allowed to have one book out at a time, the company said in a press release. All notes, bookmarks and highlights made on the borrowed book will still be there if the customer later purchases or re-borrows the book.

In the midst of an essay on teaching long-form reading that’s well worth your time, Alan Jacobs sticks in a little tidbit about how the Kindle saved him from losing the ability to read books.

In a pair of moves that suggest Apple is enforcing rules for selling content on its devices, Kobo, the Canadian e-book retailer, and The Wall Street Journal said they will no longer sell content directly to customers.

Last week, a consortium of Dutch publishers unveiled the so called “delay app”, which allows the reader to choose a story to read while waiting. It allows the user to chose a story from a well-known Dutch author to match the time you spent waiting, from 5 to 60 minutes. It still has some issues: the app contains a certain amount of stories so no new content can be added and it is only for the iPad and iphone.