And, no, your PDA doesn't have to be inside the microwave for something to happen. Here, slightly edited, is the word from a poster to a Sony Clie list:

Just to let you know about a stupid mistake I have done. I put my Sony Clie on top of the microwave oven and forgot about it. Later I reheated some food in the oven without knowing the Clie was there. Now the thing is dead!

In The End of Television as We Know It, Bryce Zabel, chairman and CEO of the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences from 2001 to 2003, writes: "The best model to replace what's on the way out may be TiVo meets iTunes." Excerpt from an LA Times article:

...Today my youngest child probably has as much control over his viewing options as CBS patriarch William Paley did. Everywhere Jared turns, he makes choices: what he wants to watch, when he wants to watch it, which set he wants it on and so forth. There's a lot more than good old-fashioned TV competing for his interest. In our technology-crazed house, his attention can get hijacked by an iPod (maxi and mini versions), cellphones that take photos or download music or send instant messages, GameCube, the CD stacker, Xbox, broadband network, wireless this and that, PlayStation 2, TiVo, DirecTV, Netflix, the big screen, TVs in five rooms, five desktop computers, one laptop, cable, satellite music and all the piled-up screening tapes sent out by the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences.

...Broadcast pundits try to get us to call these new choices by the important-sounding term "convergence." Around our house, the only thing converging is kids with outstretched palms looking for cash to buy DVDs, CDs, PCs, music downloads, cellphones and every other new piece of hardware needed to play all of the software.

The OpenReader Consortium hopes that many, many platforms will be able to read OR-format books--even $50 Palms. Even if OR won't run on old Palm machines, we'd like to see third-party developers such as Plucker's do appropriate conversion mechanisms. With that in mind, we were interested in a post from Brad at Epublishing Blog:

I can see what eBookCulture is talking about now with perhaps using Plucker for ebook conversion of OpenReader XML based ebooks to a format usable on the Palm OS handheld. Why Plucker? Because Plucker format is open source. Others can make readers and compilers for the format so the format is less likely to die out if one company goes out of business. Hopefully the commercial companies like Mobipocket and iSilo will also support conversion of OpenReader format.

A Korean e-book device includes MP3 capability and is being marketed with students in mind, including those who want to hear the language they're learning. According to a news story below:

...domestic electronic bookmaker Booktopia came out with an e-book, which contains 15-volume books, seven for humanity majors and the other eight for science and engineering students.

In addition to its mobility, the e-book is also cost-effective as its overall contents cost just 20,000 won compared to 180,000 won when purchased separately at bookstores.

When studying Korean language and English, the e-book supports listening tests without needing cassette tapes thanks to its MP3 functionality.

Starting this month, high school students preparing for the college entrance exam will be able to use personal gadgets to study instead of textbooks on the bus or subway.

Koreaedu said Friday the nation’s leading online education firm will launch services providing lectures via personal multimedia player (PMP) through a business alliance with Iriver.

The mobility-specific educational services will start on Sept. 22, when Iriver, the sales unit of local MP3 maker ReignCom, releases the PMP-100 in stores.

Koreaedu will offer lessons from 12 top lecturers for the College Scholastic Ability Test (CSAT), and students...

Observers project the so-called m-learning market will overhaul the landscape of the local education market along with the TV lectures broadcast over EBS.

In an effort to tame the nation’s ever-increasing private tutoring costs, the government launched free lecture programs via TV and high-speed Internet from April.

"More than half of the working-age people in Los Angeles have trouble reading and writing, according to a report by the United Way charity. Local leaders say the problem threatens the city's economy." - Voice of America, via LISNews.

The TeleRead take: The many new immigrants in LA, some illiterate even in their native languages, add to the challenge. Details from VOA's Mike Sullivan:

Joe Haggerty, who heads the Los Angeles branch of the United Way, says a combination of factors make the problem worse in Los Angeles than in other U.S. cities. The survey shows that 53 percent of working-age people in Los Angeles have poor literacy skills, and he says part of the reason is poverty. "We have over two million people living below the federal poverty level here in Los Angeles County, so it is 20 percent of the county...

Some two million residents are unable to read a map, which puts them at the lowest end of the literacy scale. Another 1.5 million are unable to write a letter to complain to their local utility about a billing error...

Local corporations, like the telecommunications firm Verizon, are contributing money to the literacy effort partly because they want to improve the skills of the local workforce. Verizon executive Timothy McCallion says his company's telephone operators, equipment installers, and clerks all keep track of their work on computers.

The results of low literacy can cause problems in other areas, from drivers who cannot read traffic signs to medical patients unable to read the instructions on medicines.

Programs to improve reading skills for adults are offered in public schools, community colleges and libraries. Non-profit institutions and religious organizations are also helping. But Terri Clark of the Literacy Network of Greater Los Angeles says there is little coordination, and few efforts to identify which programs are effective. National figures show that half of the adults who enroll in literacy classes quickly drop out.

"While the debate wages on regarding the impact of backpacks on school children, a recent study by the University of California Riverside determined that backpacks can in fact cause long-term pain for children who wear them. According to the study published in the Journal of Pediatric Orthopedics, the backpacks could be causing permanent back problems for the students. 'This is truly alarming. Research has shown that adults with severe back problems often had pain as kids. You can suffer all your life from this kind of injury,' said lead author Dr. David Siambaes." - Study Links Long-Term Back Pain to Backpacks, in the September 8 issue of Ergonomics Today.

The TeleRead take: So what are we waiting for? Here's to more use of e-books in schools. Of course, we are waiting for better technology and lower prices, but they will happen in time. Further details from Ergonomics Today:

In 2003, the state of New Jersey was the first in the nation to set up a commission specifically to study ergonomics in educational environments, and nationwide, school districts have started to consider alternatives to children lugging books to and from school, either by replacing heavy textbooks with electronic versions of books or by keeping an extra set of books specifically in the classroom while having children leave a copy of the book at their home for homework. Backpack manufacturers in particular have stressed the importance of purchasing a backpack that fits a child properly and ensuring that the backpack is worn as intended and packed in a manner that places the least impact on the wearer’s back.

At the same time, though, more and more schools are also removing lockers from the schools either for space or security purposes leaving students to haul their school work, books, and other items from class to class each day. Additionally, school children are spending more of their days using computers in schools as well as in homes. Unfortunately, due to budget restrictions, in-school computer workstation setups are not always ergonomically suited to the children who are using them. Home computer systems may also not be fitted to the child-sized user.

Every now and then, in explaining a new idea, it helps to return to the basics. And when discussing OpenReader and its potential to aid the e-book industry--not just consumers--we can't help but recall the history of U.S. railroads and the many millions that entrepreneurs lost without standards in place. Here is a reproduction from a TeleBlog post from June 6, 2003:

...Many of the format chauvinists forgot the concerns of most book-lovers, who care more about convenience and functionality and other boring stuff than about technological purity. Nongeek readers are like railroad passengers. They'd rather not have to change trains to accommodate different track widths.

Thank goodness that the gauge chauvinists of the 19th century didn't prevail in the railroad world. Check out A history of track gauge, a Trains Magazine article by George W. Wilson, a UCLA history professor and author of "American Narrow Gauge Railroads," which the magazine calls "the definitive history of the subject." He writes:

The editor of the principal railroad trade journal of the 19th century, Matthias Nace Forney of The Railroad Gazette, in the course of his opposition to the narrow-gauge movement in the 1870's, reported that railroad engineers with whom he had discussed the question had responded, in general, that 4 feet, 8-1/2 inches was slightly suboptimal, and that something around 5 feet 0 would have been better. Forney agreed, but felt that homogeneity for free-running of equipment nationwide at 4 feet 8-1/2 was more important than any gains that could be gotten by an effort at change.

No doubt modern engineering techniques could be used to identify an optimal gauge, but short of an impressive demonstration to the contrary, Forney's view of the 1870's remains the most valid judgment.

Mightn't many of the e-book formats be the equivalent of the old narrow-gauge railroads for mining or whatnot? Nice for buffs and specialized apps, but please don't inflict them on the world at large, which needs standards. We're not all fixated on the Colorado Comstock.

Could Open Media, the mostly video project started by J.D. Lasica and Marc Canter, help fill in the content gap now afflicting portable media players? Imagine the possibility here for lively grass-roots content under Creative Commons licenses without the burden of DRM.

Such thoughs come to mind in the wake of a New York Times article to which Jerry Justianto of Pocket PC eBooks Watch pointed us--a piece headlined Is Portable Video Ready for Its Close-Up? The article quotes Ross Rubin, the director of industry analysis at a marketing research firm called NPD Group:

Digital music players took advantage of the Napster free-for-all," he said of the not-so-long-ago era of rampant file-sharing. "Lots of consumers acquired digital music on their PC's. There's been nothing like that for video, even though there are video files available on networks like Kazaa.

The scarcity of video content for devices like the Portable Media Center is magnified by the very way video - constituting much larger files than music - is consumed, Mr. Rubin said. While people are happy to listen to the same songs repeatedly, "video is more disposable," he said. "In many ways, people have a more voracious appetite for new video than for music."

Microsoft is taking steps to expand the video offerings for the Portable Media Center, striking agreements with Major League Baseball and CinemaNow, an
online film store and rental service.

None of the Microsoft-powered portables can directly copy content; they must be plugged into a computer running Windows XP to move copies of a computer's stored video, music and pictures into the mobile device. No Macs. No Linux.