Other regional papers, such as The Baltimore Sun, The Dallas Morning News, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, The Boston Globe, International Herald Tribune, The Providence Journal, The Washington Times, The New York Observer, The Salt Lake Tribune, The San Jose Mercury News, Barron's, The Christian Science Monitor, The Columbus Dispatch, Reason and the New York Review of Books will also be added shortly.

Even better—the Reader Daily Edition is now shipping to those who pre-ordered the ereader, though if you didn't lodge your interest with Sony previously, you'll have to wait until the 15th of January before you can get your hands on one. Pre-ordered and already received your ereader? Let us know how you're getting on with it. [PC Mag]

I'm not sure the rumored BlackBerry and Mac Kindle apps will do much for the Kindle or ereader industry as a whole, either.

It's still just hearsay for now, but Fudzilla's placing a lot of confidence in its sources, who are claiming a Kindle app for Mac computers and BlackBerry devices is on the way, after launching the iPhone app back in March. Reading ebooks on a Mac makes sense, though I'm sure people will quibble over the merits of reading books for a great length of time on an LCD as opposed to e-ink.

The BlackBerry Kindle app, well—where do I start? Ok, I can see it working on a Storm, but on any other BlackBerry model, no way. For starters, the screens are too small, so you'd be pressing that 'next page' button every 10 seconds. And what it'd do to the already pitiful battery life, well—I wouldn't dare. Yes, I'm a BlackBerry user. Still, Fudzilla's claiming it'll be a free download, and as long as the ebooks cost less on the BlackBerry platform than they do on the Kindle (and as proper books), then it might be a good supplement to those occasions where you want to progress in the book you're reading, but can't carry your Kindle around with you.

Really, it's about time the industry takes a leaf out of the Blu-ray Disc Association's book, and explores the idea of providing digital copies with every paperback sold. [Fudzilla via TechRadar]

Publisher Bonnier has worked with design agency BERG to come up with the Mag+ tablet, which has the magazine pages run vertically, rather than on the next screen like we've always seen so far. It actually replicates the experience of reading a magazine really well, as pages can be flipped like you would with a normal magazine, and when you encounter an article you'd like to read, you scroll down to view it.

If this is the future for the magazine industry, suddenly I feel a lot more hopeful. [BERG via SlashGear]

Take a gander at the video of BERG talking through the concept here:

Mag+ from Bonnier on Vimeo.

And video footage of the prototype here:

Mag+ (video prototype footage only) from Bonnier on Vimeo.

Users at nookDevs are reporting that, after a little clever input tricker, they've managed to get the Pandora radio app running—terribly, it's worth adding—on the Nook. At this point the install process is still pretty intimidating: the rooting procedure itself requires a screwdriver, a microSD reader, a computer running Linux and comfort with the command line, while app installs require setting up a VNC server on the Nook (touchscreen controls evidently don't work properly yet) and launching from an ADB shell session, since the app launcher doesn't work yet. If this sounds overcomplicated, that's because it is.

But the point is, hey, Android apps on the Nook! Pandora's just the first, but a web browser, an email client, and a new homescreen can't be far off. That's when things could get sticky for Barnes & Noble, whose cellular partner, AT&T, won't be too happy about a slew of Nook users trying to use their devices' free data connections for streaming music, browsing the web or downloading more apps. Barnes & Noble had to know this would happen, so I expect devs will find a few roadblocks between hacked apps and the Nook's 3G connection, but who knows? Virtually nothing about the Nook's launch went exactly to plan, so who's to say this will?

Either way, Nook: hacked. Interest: piqued. Eyes: peeled. [nookDevs]

The Kobo service is already live and will apparently allow downloading of "content to the most popular smartphones, including the Apple iPhone, Research in Motion BlackBerry, Palm Pre and Google Android devices."

Everything sounds quite lovely, right down to the point of Borders and Kobo wanting to make everything an open platform, but I'm just curious to see what sort of device the partnership will produce and when we'll actually see it on the market. [NY Times]

And not hacked like "oh, cool, now we can change the system font" hacked, or "sweet bro, now we can watch the Linux boot sequence" hacked. I'm talking about splayed-open, ready for custom apps, probably-gonna-get-Barnes & Noble-and-AT&T-kind-of-upset hacked. In other words, it's been rooted, like so many Android phones, which means that core OS changes, hacks, and almost certainly apps are all in the cards. Here's the software breakdown, according to Nookdevs:

[The Nook] appears to be running a generic Android image with B&N customization on top to hide the Android underpinnings:

[With]:

• Android 1.5 Cupcake
• Built Tue Dec 1 14:50:20 CST 2009
• turboboot bootloader
• asound
• pvplayer

So what we've essentially got here is a full-fledged Android device, with two screens, a few gigabytes of removable storage and a SIM card with a data connection. The rooting process isn't exactly easy—it involves a screwdriver, a knife, and an Linux computer, if that tells you anything—but the hacking prospects here are massive. AT&T, whose free, unlimited, ebook-only data connection is the Nook's gateway to the internet, can't be too happy about this. That, or they've got some kind of provision for blocking non-ebook data transfer, which the new class of Nook hackers will spend the rest of their devices' lifespans actively trying to circumvent. This should be fun.

And for anyone dying to fill the gaps in the Nook's spec sheet, well, here you go:

• Samsung S3C6410 Processor
• Synaptics TM1369 Touchscreen controller
• Internal 2GB Sandisk microSD card for internal storage
• 3 Partitions
• sdb1: system: ext3 250MB
• sdb2: update possibly?: ext3 150MB
• sdb3: internal memory: ext3 1309MB
• Sierra Wireless MC8777V wireless modem in data only mode

[Nookdevs]

Books, in the paper and ink form, have been around for over a thousand years. You can bet your prized copy of Cloud Computing For Dummies that when the first book, the Diamond Sutra, was finished, those still chipping their chisels into stone, or carving papyrus downed their tools and said something along the lines of "thank the lord, reading's become even easier now!" It was a much-needed change, unlike the electronic books manufacturers like Sony and Amazon have been trying to flog.

A few ereaders existed before Sony swaggered onto the playing field, but it wasn't until 2004's DRM-riddled Librie (upon hearing of the Librie, Boing Boing's ever-militant Mark Frauenfelder exclaimed "This self-destruct feature is sickening. Who would buy a Librie with this deadly defect built in?") that they came into prominence, much like a curried egg sandwich on a humid day. In a rainforest. In Indonesia. With a placard saying ‘SMELL ME' and a marketing budget backing it up the size of, well, Sony's.

A handful of people since then have invested the amount they could've spent on a couple of phones on one of these devices, but that's not the last time they've had to dig deep in their pockets, ignoring the loose change they'd normally spend on a paperback, searching instead for their credit card or Amazon gift vouchers.

With ebooks costing between $10 - $15, you're forced into continually feeding your Kindle/Reader/Nook/Other-warm-and-nurturing-sounding-device with cash, and as the ereaders are so physically large you also need to invest in a manbag just to avoid being mugged. Did we say mugged? We meant "laughed at." There's a reason why you don't see people using them on public transport.

They're impractical and expensive. It's such a Sony trait, to reinvent the wheel when the current model is still going ‘round perfectly. While Blu-ray may've eclipsed the deceased HD DVD (RIP), barely anyone uses an SACD player anymore (disclosure: except, err, me. But only with one album – Dire Straits' Brothers In Arms. Cough.) Even less people than that still use Betamax and MiniDisc. They, like the ereader, are futile exercises in trying to create a market for something that has little demand.

That's the crux of my argument. Any company that attempts to own market share in that area is fighting a losing battle. Consumers won't buy an electronic book when they can get a paperback for the same price or even less, and when they can lend it to friends, read it in the bathtub or even sell it on and make a percentage of their money back.

Our grandchildren won't be housing first edition ebook copies of War and Peace in an antiquated Kindle, passed down from generation to generation. There's no opportunity to get sentimental over an e-book, and when it comes to works of fiction and non, which have had thousands of man-hours injected into them, surely that's the reason people read them? To escape for a few hours turning some pages, and then eventually handing it to a friend with a glowing recommendation to read it from cover to cover?

Instead, we're now encouraged to send links to one another or rely on Amazon to recommend titles, and to poke a button to turn the pages. I imagine the writer of Diamond Sutra never would've put up with e-ink page lag, nor been too impressed with having to charge the device after only a few days' worth of pressing a button repeatedly, trying to turn the bloody page.

I have no beef with reading ebooks on a mobile phone or tablet, however.

During September of this year, there were more ebooks added to Apple's App Store than there were games, according to San Francisco-based analysts Flurry. There's an obvious advantage to reading an ebook on an iPhone, as chances are you already own one. You don't have to fork out several hundred dollars on a new device that just displays lines of e-ink. iPhones are devices which serve more than one purpose, and while some ereaders allow for music playback and even gaming, you'd never buy one just to play MP3s on.

Same story with tablets—whether you've got an Archos, ASUS or a secret Apple tablet no-one knows about. Provided the cost of the ebooks doesn't outweigh the cost of a paperback, it's an extra bonus for anyone who owns one of these multi-purpose devices.

Not even the comments of Nintendo President Satoru Iwata bothered me, when he told the Financial Times that they're considering equipping the next version of the DSi with 3G connectivity to download ebooks on. At its heart, any Nintendo product will always be bought for gaming, and if it offers other features such as ebooks, then that's a nice extra. But it won't be bought for the ability to read books on.

While analysts Forrester Research claim that 3 million e-readers will be sold in the US during 2009, it seems even Amazon and Barnes & Noble aren't too confident of the lasting power of their devices. Both companies have launched apps for the iPhone, which give close to 40m users access to hundreds of thousands of books on devices they already owned. Is this a case of Amazon and Barnes & Noble shooting themselves in the foot, or safeguarding themselves over what they know will be a short-lived industry? My money's on the latter, but tell me your thoughts.

Simon & Schuster sees what's happening: Real people are buying ebooks now, and the market, in its infancy, is forming habits and expectations. Like bestsellers for just 10 bucks—bestsellers that sell for 30 dollars in their hardcover form. Or should, anyway, but the devaluation of verbiage has been trickling over to real books too, since nobody fucks with Walmart, and they've been aggressively price matching, resulting in all out price war.

It's the worst of all possible scenarios: Publishers aren't just making less money on ebooks, but on the paper ones too. And people will get the crazy idea in their head that that's what books are worth, the same way we all think a song is worth 99 cents. (Or, um, nothing to the unscrupulous.)

So Simon and Schuster's plan is to plug ebooks into their own special place in the publishing cycle: Four months after hardcovers. Meaning you'll have to wait 1/3 of a year after a book's published to read it on a Kindle or Nook or tablet or whatever. It establishes a value hierarchy, that looks, as the WSJ points out a lot like the theatrical release cycle for movies. It's true, the movie industry has fared better than the music industry in preserving the perception of value of their content. But if you look, digital movies have slowly crept up to be same-day as DVD. They're just really damn expensive—15 bucks.

It's hard for the publishing industry to do the same thing—charge a premium for the digital version—since they're trying to get this whole ebook thing off the ground, not to mention the experience just isn't as good as a real book, at least not yet. They're still trying to hook people. It's not an easy place to be, at least not until the ebook experience stacks up more definitively with the real book one. Making people wait 4 months to buy books on their Kindle will, at best, simply hurt ebooks, because no one wants to wait for new stuff, least of all, words. At worst, it'll put people off of buying those books entirely—they'll wait for them to hit nook at $10, but'll have lost interest by the time it comes out. And then the publisher's still screwed. More to the point, like the music industry found out, and as the movie and TV business is struggling with, the new model is going to break the old one, and arbitrary limitations, will fall like the dead trees they print things on.

I do not envy you, Mr. Publisher Man. [WSJ]

Let's start with Sherman Alexie, author of a fair number of popular (and quite good!) books, including Reservation Blues and Flight. He's known for his sense of humor, but he's dead serious about ebooks—specifically, about how they will destroy literature, forever, or something: His points are as follows:

1. Ebook readers are a threat to privacy
2. Jeff Bezos makes cryptic comments about "changing how people read," which is sinister, even though it's fairly obvious that he's speaking literally
3. The music industry was crippled by piracy; therefore the book industry will be crippled by piracy
4. Once books are digitized by publishers, they will be stolen (this part is true)
5. The "open source" culture destroys the concept of ownership

The way he throws around the term "open source" seemingly without knowing what it means, the way he cites unease with how much personal information is stored on the Kindle (does he have nightmares about cellphones, too?), and his apparent lack of understanding about the mechanics of piracy makes me think he's just a bit misinformed about the details of his case, which he obviously feels very strongly about. If he had his facts straight, I'm not sure his case would change, and I think he'd still be able to make good points—this is zeal, not malice.

Which brings me to Alan Kaufman, poet, novelist, and maker of unfortunate analogies:

When I hear the term Kindle I think not of imaginations fired but of crematoria lit. And when I hear the term "hi-tech" I think not of helpful androids efficiently performing household chores or light-speed rockets gliding seamlessly through space but of the fact that between 1933-45, modern technology was used to perform in ever more efficient ways the mass murder of six million of my people.

That's right, people. Ebook readers are like war criminals. It's uncanny!

Today's hi-tech propagandists tell us that the book is a tree-murdering, space-devouring, inferior form that society would be better off without. In its place, they want us to carry around the Uber-Kindle.

The hi-tech campaign to relocate books to Google and replace books with Kindles is, in its essence, a deportation of the literary culture to a kind of easily monitored concentration camp of ideas, where every examination of a text leaves behind a trail, a record, so that curiosity is also tinged with a sense of disquieting fear that some day someone in authority will know that one had read a particular book or essay.

Crematoria lit? Seriously? What's especially vexing here is that buried underneath all the Godwin's Law-ing, there's a real point: It's scary that Amazon can reach into your pocket and delete a book that you've purchased, and, though to a much lesser degree, that they know what you're reading. (I mean, so does the dude behind the counter at your totally not-genocidal local book store, right? Your library?) Plus, Kaufman fails to make a distinction between a regime that would have like to have control over all books so it could censor them, and companies that happen to be gaining more control over books because they want to make money.

And seriously, do I really have to point this out? Nazis didn't burn books because they though paper was wasteful and dumb—they burned books to destroy ideas.

Tune in next week, when I'll be explaining why Steve Jobs is nothing like Pol Pot, and how it would be in poor taste to invoke the Rwandan Genocide to explain why MiniDisc didn't succeed. It's possible to talk about consumer electronics without exploiting our century's greatest human tragedies. Try it! [HuffPo via TechDirt]

Sesame Workshop, the drab corporate body behind the warm, suneshiney smile that is Sesame Street, has always been a little late to the digital party. This time they're nipping at the heels of Disney, which opened up its own Digital Books site in September. Well, better late than never.

Sesame Street books available digitally? Terrific. What's not so hot is how they're handling it, along with their publishing partner Impelsys. They'll start tomorrow by offering five free e-books at sesamestreet.org/ebooks, but those titles can only be read on your monitor, not downloaded. They'll introduce more titles sometime next spring, but will still leave about 98% of their back catalog to be rolled out at an indeterminate pace for an indeterminate subscription price (Disney charges around $80 a year). So let's see: a long wait for a few books that I can't download? Might have to pass on this one.

That's not even to mention the biggest inherent problem, which is that most e-readers currently available on the market aren't built for kids, and can't handle color. At least not yet they can't. And until they can, e-books for toddlers make about as much sense as Snuffleuphagus's taxonomy report. [Impelsys via WSJ]

"The current thing being talked about is extremely limited. You can lend to one friend. One time. You can't pick two friends, not even serially, so once you've loaned one book to one friend, that's it...It is 'Sopie's Choice'," he told the Times.

Ah, but to lend once is better than never, right Jeff? As the BusinessInsider speculates, this could be Bezos positioning for multiple Kindle lending options in the future.

Smart positioning, if true, but to compare the Nook's one-friend-only sharing feature to an utterly depressing Nazi concentration camp book-turned-movie? Surely, we can find something more depressing to compare that book to, yes? How about we compare it to what happens to Amazon's bottom line when it sells an eBook?

Update: It needs to be noted that the interviewer suggested Sophie's Choice as a comparison, and then Bezos ran with it. Also of note, Bezos claimed that 48 Kindle versions sell for every 100 physical version of the same book. That's impressive, even if they're losing something like $2 per eBook. [NYT Magazine via BusinessInsider via Silicon Alley Insider's Twitter]

While the injunction's been denied, Spring Design has been granted an expedited pre-trial process to push the entire mess into court a bit faster, but at the rate Barnes & Noble will be making the Nook available, there's hardly any rush. [Engadget]

Step 1: Market a device for two whole years
Step 2: Issue a price drop a few months before the holiday season
Step 3: Remain the exclusive retailer for said device
Step 4: Profit! (To an extent that is completely and intentionally unclear to everyone!)

When Amazon tells you that the Kindle is the highest-selling product on Amazon, you're supposed to think of it as you'd think of anything else: as a strong, reliable metric in gauging how well a product is doing in general. The thing is, there is no "in general" for the Kindle. There is only Amazon. Anyone who wants a Kindle and doesn't normally shop at Amazon has to make an exception. Anyone who wants a Kindle and doesn't normally shop online has to make an exception. The Kindle didn't outsell the iPod Touch—not even close.

It's worth noting that, as always with the Kindle, Amazon is not giving us any sales numbers to look at. They've consistently claimed this is to protect competitive interests, which led journalists, and the public, the consistently believe that the figure must be kind of embarrassing. But with this exceedingly proud announcement, Amazon has revealed at least part of their reasoning: good PR. To proclaim that the Kindle has outsold every other product in the world (on Amazon!) makes it sound like the device is, at the very least, not a failure. Which it probably isn't! But let's look at what we really, honestly know: The Kindle outsold every other products in its parent company's online store, which has an exclusive on the device. We have no idea how many units are sold, nor do we have any idea how many Amazon expected to sell, or how many they'd need to sell for Kindle to be considered successful. We know that sales have gone up during a heavy shopping period, but that's about it. It's a closed system.

In other words, we know nothing new. Well, except that a certain other book store with a noticeably similar strategy and much hotter hardware is just about to show up piss-drunk at the Kindle's Christmas party, to try to steal its girlfriend. [Press Release]

Pixel Qi's last announced manufacturing date—residue of which still graces their website—was "the second half of 2009." In big, bold type, they've updated the claim: "We are starting mass production of this screen in December 2009," is proudly emblazoned on Pixel Qi's worryingly retro website, while "We totally totally promise this time," a comforting, if slightly desperate adjunct, is not. But this is:

We have begun design of a sub-10 watt HDTV that can be used in hundreds of millions of households that don't have steady, if any, access to electrical power. The typical HDTV uses more than 100 Watts and often draws several hundred watts. We are working on a way to massively lower the power consumption, and significantly lower the price with a target price of $100. Thus this HDTV can run off of battery that can be charged up when the power is on, or charged with a small solar panel, crank, or so forth.

I'm sure there are about a million different applications for a low-power screen tech that displays full-motion color, static e-ink and works in the sunlight, but don't get ahead of yourselves: we haven't seen a single non-prototype device yet. Throw us a bone, guys! And by bone, I mean the name of any hardware partner who's willing to make a product with this screen tech once it starts shipping. [Pixel Qi via Blogeee via Slashgear]

As many Kindle owners already know, keeping a large number of books on the device can get a bit unruly—so this would be a welcome update. It's also good news for people on the fence about whether or not to get a Kindle or a Nook over the holidays. It appears that the Kindle is going to be the only game in town until after the new year. [Kindle Facebook via Gadgetell]

Granted, it's a little worrisome that Barnes & Noble was taking preorders before letting reviewers have their say, so this enforced waiting period—which was probably a planned PR stunt, like the ones that pretty much every other hardware manufacturer ever does ever time they have a new product—is a good thing. At any rate, it'll be January—well after we'll have run B&N's Android-powered ereader through its paces—before anyone who hasn't already placed their order can get one.

UPDATE: Some mild reprieve, from B&N themselves:

Barnes & Noble expects to have a limited stock of devices available in its highest-volume stores during the holiday season.

So, go, if you dare! (In a few weeks.) [B&N via Bits]

Qualcomm says it'll be up to the various manufacturers to create devices built on this reference design, but Wi-Fi and 3G connectivity would make multiplayer gaming pretty interesting. Just depends if ARM-based operating systems, like Android, get the right games.

The concept has a 5.7-inch display that uses Qualcomm's "mirasol" screen technology that provides better battery life and smooth video playback. Problem is, for now, this reference is just a static-image prototype. Yet another eReader angle that we'll be watching for you, though. [SlashGear]