Life in the cloud can have its consequences. Remember back in 2009 when Amazon unilaterally decided to remove copies of George Orwell's 1984 and Animal Farm from customers Kindles due to a copyright issue. And what if we suffer a prolonged power outage? Or god forbid the Kindle becomes obsolete? How will ever be able to access our ebooks? Thanks to Jesse England and his E-Book Backup project we now have an insurance policy. Says England of the project: E-book backup is a physical, tangible, human readable copy of an electronically stored novel. The purchased contents of an e-book reader were easily photocopied...
Introducing the Kindle Flare
[youtube]http://youtu.be/fDBzQkWeQ5g[/youtube] The Onion has the scoop on Amazon's latest release, the "Kindle Flare," a new tablet that will "loudly and repeatedly" announces the title of the book you're reading. A spokesperson for Amazon says "the Kindle Flare’s repetitive shouting will appeal to fans of print, who miss the ability to display a book’s cover to strangers." It also offers the revolutionary new technology "auto-explain" for the user who has a little shame about their reading choice. "Auto-explain" offers a rationalization for the book you're reading while also boasting about a high-brow title that you also like. God bless the Onion. h/t Poets and Writers.
The art of broken Kindle screens
The book is called “56 Broken Kindle Screens” and is the brainchild of digitial artist Sebastian Schmieg in collaboration with Silvio Lorusso. It is a compilation of found images depicting broken Kindle screens.“56 Broken Kindle Screens” "takes as its starting point the peculiar aesthetic of broken E Ink displays and serves as an examination into the reading device's materiality. As the screens break, they become collages composed of different pages, cover illustrations and interface elements."Of course, the book is available as a print on demand title only and is selling for under $5.Video of how the book appears on the Kindle: 56 Broken Kindle...
A Look Ahead: The Kindle 9XXXD
"Kindle skips ahead 9 models to bring the biggest, highest powered e-reader ever conceived"Here's a little gem from LandlineTV , a hysterical one minute spoof on where the Kindle might be headed.It was done in May 2009, soon after the Kindle DX was announced.Thanks to TeleRead for the lead
Dreadful E-Books Offered Gratis By British Library
One of the Most Popular Penny Dreadfuls, Starring Dick Turpin, Highwayman. (Circa 1866.)It's a red-hot, red letter day for Amazon Kindle owners. The British Library has announced that 65,000 rare 19th century literary first editions will be offered as free downloads to owners of the device beginning in Spring of 2010. Thanks to a joint venture with Microsoft, the no-cost titles will reproduce the original type-face and illustrations from such classic works as Charles Dickens's Bleak House, Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, and Thomas Hardy's The Mayor of Casterbridge.While having an electronic facsimile of a valuable first edition is a...