E Ink, capital E in this case, could be just around the bend if EE Times is on target. But a pesky issue arises. Will huge media conglomerates use ties with E Ink Corporation to promote truly oppressive DRM and thwart people and businesses with a different approach?

No smoking guns here. Just askin'.

E Ink's reassurances on this question, as well as those of newspaper and magazine companies with investments in the corporation, would be most welcome. Here's an excerpt from Sony leads eBook venture, a Nov. 14 story in EE Times:

TOKYO — Sony Corp. and 14 major publishing, printing and newspaper companies are planning a new eBook business that will focus on rental service based on OpenMG, Sony's digital rights management technology.

The partners established an eBook distribution company for Japan called Publishing link, Ltd. here on Nov. 4 to begin an eBook rental business next spring. Initially, Sony will own a 41-percent stake in the company, while Kodansha and Shinchosha, both major publishers in Japan, each hold 15.38 percent. Dai Nippon Printing and Toppan Printing are the third largest shareholders, owning 10.25 percent each. The remaining nine founders share the rest.

A prototype eBook reader to be used by the partners will employ E Ink's electronic paper display measuring approximately 6 inches diagonally. "The electronic paper display has a big contrast ratio, which is close to paper and easy to read," said a Sony spokesman.

Toppan Printing has been E Ink's major strategic partner since May 2001, and has invested $30 million on the joint venture with the Massachusetts company. Last year, E Ink, Toppan and Philips said they have succeeded in developing electronic paper that can display moving images in color. Toppan is now preparing volume production of monochrome electronic paper.

The new Sony-led company will provide contents, which users can download to PCs. For security reasons, the reader does not have telecommunication capabilities. With USB or Memory Stick, users can "check out" materials from their PC to the reader based on the OpenMG scheme, which is already used to manage music files on PCs without allowing duplication without permission. The reader program allows users to read downloaded materials in a certain period of time.

This service will use Sony's proprietary BBeB format as its data format. Sony developed the format for electronic publishing using XML as the intermediate language.

Sony declined to disclose details about the reader, saying only that it would make the reader available before the services begins next spring...

The Cybook, a spiffy new e-book reader with word-processing and Web-surfing capabilities, keeps looking better and better, even if the public price is still unknown.

Open standards boosters, rejoice! These people Get It and meanwhile want to help customers deal with The Tower of eBabel--at least to the extent that the DRM barons will allow. Remember the difference between reading .lit files for the Microsoft Reader and being able to read "protected" files. Same for Adobe formats.

Via an e-mail this morning, here's the latest from Laurent Picard at Bookeen, the French company behind the color-screened tablets based on the Windows CE operating system:

Availability: "The Cybook is already available and we sell it to people who get in touch with us directly. For current and future upgrades, our customers just have to download an upgrade file which replaces the full OS or adds the new modules."

Public price "We have not yet fixed a public price. For this, we are going to wait a bit more to be able to offer more features."

Features on the way: "Import add-ons. An English text-to-speech engine (we already do French with synchronized highlighted word tracking). A PDF viewer. A contact manager to synchronize with Outlook. Mobipocket Reader should also be available soon. Does it sound like the optimal open e-reading tablet to you? Would you be missing anything?"

Formats: "The Cybook can already read ASCII, RTF and HTML through Pocket Word and Internet Explorer. But this is not really what we call e-reading. We are developing import features to be added to both Boo Reader and Boo Reader Vision, with true dynamic layout and pagination. As you must guess, this will allow to read many formats, including Microsoft's.

"To tell you a bit more, Boo Reader natively supports the Open eBook format as well as our own format XOEB (eXtended Open eBook, managing packaging, compression and encryption). With the additional import functionalities, it will support many more. To keep all e-reading features, we dynamically convert all formats to OEB."

Form factor: "Rather similar to the Softbook or GEB 2150...The Cybook is very compact: the GEB offered only a 8.2” screen while the Cybook has a 10” color screen for about the same external dimensions."

People from whom Bookeen would like to hear: "If you know of people, libraries or companies who are interested in an e-reading solution, please let them get in touch with us."

Making the Match:The Right Book for the Right Reader at the Right Time, Grades 4–12, now online for free in .pdf, is a collection of writings on the title topic. You can also order a p-version from Stenhouse Publishers.

The editor-author is Teri S. Lesesne, an Assistant Professor at the Department of Library Science at Sam Houston State University, who specializes in electronic mentoring and at-risk teenagers. Beyond her formal credentials, including 15 years of teaching English in middle school, Prof. Lesesne has another credit that might qualify her in the ESP area when it comes to fathoming young people. She's a licensed motorcyclist.

By vastly increasing tne number of e-books available, even in the smallest town, TeleRead, of course, would make it easier for librarians and educators to live up to the motto in the subtitle of Teri Lesesne's book. In fact, a well-stocked national digital library system like TeleRead could teem with guidance for English teacher and librarians, so that humans, not just computers alone, could connect books and readers.

To solve the "right book" riddle, Prof. Lesesne turned to "some wonderfully talented authors of books for young adults and asked them to reflect on their own reading during their youth."

What were the memories of books and reading? What did they enjoy as young people? Why do they write for young adult readers? Why is reading so critical to the lives of our students?

"...Apple's much-rumoured launch of a tablet-style device may come to fruition early next year--possibly at Macworld Expo San Francisco," says The Register. Details:

The device is believed to be a mobile, wireless display that communicates with a desktop unit. You can use the LCD either as a desktop display, or as a portable terminal. A touch-screen and Mac OS X's Newton-derived Inkwell technology eliminates the need for a keyboard as you check your email, or listen to music streamed from iTunes running on the base unit.

They'll reportedly come out next year at competitive prices. From PCWorld:

...industry sources say that Toshiba and several other companies, including Matsushita Kotobuki Electronics Industries, are working on development of drives with 0.8-inch or 0.7-inch diameter platters. That's smaller than the CompactFlash form-factor Microdrive produced by Hitachi, which is based on a 1-inch platter, and less than half the size of the 1.8-inch drive used in Apple Computer's IPod portable music player.

Could a well-timed entry into the e-book machine market help save the besieged Eastman Kodak Company? No news stories spotted about this. But it just might make sense, given Kodak's prominence in imaging and its need to move on to new, digitally related markets. Keep in mind, too, the value of the brand name--on par with Disney (in fact, better to the well-informed--given that "Disney" now means copyright-related sleazy in DC). What prompted this speculation? In a photographic context or for whatever reason, Kodak already has a relationship with Kent Displays. From a Kent news release put out in July:

“We are confident that Kodak will apply this technology to create new categories of products. Kodak’s leadership in materials and manufacture of both consumer and commercial goods could significantly increase the visibility and use of this innovative technology,” stated Joel C. Domino, President of Kent Displays.

A small earthquake hit us here in Virginia--or rather gently teased us. The real quake happened elsewhere when Al Gore endorsed Gov. Blogger. So much for loyalty to Joe Lieberman, whom Gore once wanted to be his VP. Now, what about the copyright angle in the headline?

Thought One: Should we care what Lieberman thinks? Well, if nothing else, by taking a sensible position on Net-related copyright issues, he could set a good example for the so-far-more-successful candidates. And who knows, maybe if he ran against the me-too pols on a collection of "minor" issues, he could help turn things around.

Thought Two: Lieberman is at odds with Hollywood on the issue of morality. So is there at least a chance he'd stand up to Hollywood on copyright? Hard to say based on contributions. Howard Dean has received at least $470K from entertainment-related contributors, while Lieberman has collected a mere fraction of that ($128,000 or somewhat more). But Lieberman's total campaign kitty is smaller, so his 128K means more. Frustratingly I also notice the following on Lieberman's campaign site advocating an "innovative economy":

A key U.S. trade priority must be to prevent foreign piracy of U.S. intellectual property. According to industry estimates, foreign copyright violations alone cost the U.S. more than $20 billion in annual losses. U.S. copyright-based industries contribute almost $800 billion to the U.S. economy, and almost $90 billion in exports and foreign sales.

On balance...few in the entertainment field see Lieberman as a great friend. Barbra Streisand, for one, recently contributed money to all the leading Democratic candidates, with the pointed exception of Lieberman.

"The biggest damage he's done is to associate the national Democratic Party as the party with the most hostility toward youth culture," says Danny Goldberg, a longtime record-industry executive active in Democratic politics. "It turns off a core group--young people--that should be Democratic voters. I'm not sure what he gets for it in return."

If you want to know why both e-books and p-books aren't doing as well as they should be, then consider this gem from a librarians' special interest group sponsored by the Open eBook Forum. Karen Coyle, a library consultant, shared with the world the following:

One of the more fascinating tidbits (which didn't make it into the minutes) was a publisher's rep who stated that they had excluded cookbooks from the scanned titles on the assumption that once someone found a recipe they'd not need to buy the book. By error, some of their cookbooks were included in the scanned group and before they could pull them from the search service the sales of those books had exceeded the sales of other scanned books. But they pulled them anyway, probably because they didn't have the proper agreement with the authors.

Could China end up as E-Book Central? We've raised this issue several times, and the latest evidence is the news that the Chinese are making spray-on electronic ink for e-paper. U.S. companies are headed in similar directions. Still, a China View item below might be of interest to the U.S. pols who have been so smug about American technology:

A different wallpaper every day in your house? It may soon be a possibility, as electronic paper and ink will soon make it easier and cheaper, just like the way you change the wallpaper on your desktop.

Researchers with the Southwest China Normal University announced earlier this week their success in building the country's first e-paper prototype, which combined organic transistors with e-ink that could be sprayed at very low cost on virtually any material: plastic, metal, cloth and conventional paper.

E-paper, a small, ultra-thin, radiation-free screen that consumes little power and gives a dynamic display of massive information, was designed to imitate to the maximum advantages of conventional paper and ink: flexibility, low cost and the ability to be read using ambient light.

"By replacing conventional paper with e-paper, we can protect our ecological environment by cutting less trees and minimizing pollution brought by the traditional paper mills," said Prof. Fu Xiangkai with the university's Applied Chemistry Institute.

E-paper could be used widely in publication, advertising, commerce and many other sectors and would "make your life easier and more colorful," said Fu, head of the research team.

"You can bring a library with you all the time when newspapers,magazines, textbooks and novels are 'printed' on a portable little screen," he said. "And you'll have clothes, dresses, walls and decoration papers in richer colors."

Fu and his colleagues are seeking business partners who are expected to translate the state-of-the-art technology into end products at an earlier date.

The e-paper technology was first developed by the US-based Xerox Corp. in the 1970s. In 2000, the American E-Ink Corp. worked out the world's first e-paper prototype in collaboration with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

More than 10 e-paper prototypes are now available in the global market, and are used mainly in the advertising sector.

The old Rocket eBook machines let you click on words to discover their meanings--just the ticket for enjoying old classics full of archaic language. In fact, for free, you can download a clickable dictionary add-on for Microsoft's e-book software. But what if you're a beginning reader and don't know how some written words sound even in modern books?

Then you might enjoy Talking eBooks, a Net-based, child-oriented service that promises: "Every word is clickable." You can, indeed, hear the entire narratives. The 10 downloadable titles range from Grow Your Own Gargoyles to Who Did Patrick's Homework?, all written by Carol Moore, one of the authors featured at Children's Storybooks Online. Her prose and the accompanying art are stylish; what's more, she herself did most of the illustations. The Talking eBooks and Storybooks sites include generous written samples, so you can judge for yourself. Her e-books cost $3.50 or less, so we're talking major value here.

Parents of children with learning disabilities such as attention deficit disorder might be especially interested in Talking eBooks, as well as in software that let books of all kinds speak. One example is Freedom Scientific's Wynn Wizard, which TeleRead contributor Amos Bokros, a substitute teacher with attention deficit disorder, will discuss later this month. Among other potential users might be families where English is a second language.

The Talking eBooks approach isn't a be-all and end-all solution, but the right sounds, associated with the right words, matter endlessly in the art of teaching reading. Research by a branch of the National Institutes of Health suggests that the old-fashioned method was right--that children do learn better if they can associate sounds and words. Of course, it also would be nice if Talking eBooks could combine both the sound-out feature with a definitions feature (perhaps it does--I've simply tried some online demos). But that's nitpicking. Carol Moore, a UCLA grad who herself had difficulty learning to read, depicts her books as existing for the pleasure of problem readers rather than as scientific therapy.

Besides providing clickable sound-out capabilities, Talking eBooks lives up to the name and offers books that read out the entire narrative--complete with sound effects in at least one case. Try out the demonstration of Wind Song, a Western story illustrated with the picture of the covered wagons (drawn by an artist from India). It would be nice if this e-book also lit up or otherwise identified the words being read (available in the actual e-books for sale?). To address another matter, some educators would argue that the sound effects distract the children, but as an adult listener, I myself enjoyed them. You can hear the "gusting moans." Again, remember that these books are for fun rather than therapy, and Ms. Moore's talents as a writer make them succeed at that level.

Also interesting is the copy protection system, but not all the news is good. Here is a full explanation from the Talking eBooks:

Our eBooks are downloadable from the internet and must be viewed on a desktop or laptop computer with audio sound capability. Once the book is downloaded it can be read offline at your convenience without logging onto the internet. However, each book is copy protected with a username and password and requires that you log back onto the internet occasionally to automatically verify that the password remains valid. A message will alert you to remind you to log back on. Passwords cannot be shared but can be uninstalled and moved to a different computer. eBooks are viewable for four years. Printing is not offered.