TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home

Archive for the ‘David Rothman’ Category

By David Rothman

SolomonScandals.com is where I’m now posting some items on books, newspapers, etc., that you won’t find on TeleRead.

That’ll reward repeat visitors to the Scandals site and help TeleRead stay focused on E, although I intend to be stricter with myself than with others.

If you know of a great book in E and want to review it, for example, that’s cool. Just include format info and other e-specific details.

Among the recent Scandals entries: Deep Throat is dead—and so are the old rules of investigative journalism and ‘The Impotence of Proofreading.’ Photo is of Deep Throat, aka the late Mark Felt of the FBI.

By David Rothman

Psst! Advance promo copies of The Solomon Scandals are on sale now in e-book format (retail $5.95 USD). Twilight Times Books is also taking advance orders for First Editions in trade paperback (retail $16.95 USD). The paperbacks will ship in early January 2009. These are “pre-release promotional copies.” Twilight’s phone number is 423-323-0183, and other ordering information is ahead.

A mix of suspense and satire, Scandals is the only Washington newspaper novel with a bio-enhanced Afghan Hound doing a Harry Truman act at the Cosmos Club, Scandals, inspired by Sen. Abraham Ribicoff’s actual secret investment in a CIA-occupied building, is set mainly in the 1970s. But it includes a foreword and afterword written in the late 21st century by Dr. Rebecca Kitiona-Fenton of the Institute for the Study of Previrtual Media.

I’m putting the final touches on version 1.0 of the Scandals Web site (screenshot), which covers matters ranging from Barack Obama vis-a-vis my fictitious president to the novel’s Internet references. Via email I’ll welcome suggestions for posts on other topics (and typo catches, too—involving either the site or the book). I’m very interested in making the book meaningful to readers outside the U.S., and the right posts could help. The site also includes sample chapters  as well as blurbs from James Fallows, author of Breaking the News ; James Polk, winner of the Pulitzer for Watergate coverage for the Washington Star; and Bettina Gregory, the former ABC News correspondent.

(more…)

By David Rothman

I’ve got Skype, I’ve got Yahoo Messenger, I follow RSS feeds, various online aggregators, you name it. So Twitter wasn’t that high on my list.

Twitter, though, is very high on other people’s, and maybe I can find time if I cut back a little on RSS feed-watching. So now you can follow me via twitter.com/davidrothman—or click on the “Follow David link” near the top of the second column of the TeleBlog home page. I’ll be adding a photo when the Twitter gods permit. The system is currently too busy for that.

My Twitter posts will be a mix of personal odds and ends, TeleRead and news of The Solomon Scandals, my Washington newspaper novel.

My e-mail address—in case you want to act on the note’s request for feedback: dr at teleread.org.

(more…)

By David Rothman

Doc W. today reduced my cardio rehab sessions to once a week and said I might have another two or three decades left after my quad bypass.

But if you’re not as optimistic about your own prospects, here’s some News You Can Use.

The latest craze in funerals is to include an iPod in the casket, so that the e-hip dead can enjoy music or other entertainment in the afterlife.

Does this mean that my family should bury me with my iPod Touch—and the Stanza program displaying The Great Gatsby in ePub?

Nope. When you’re done, you’re done. I say, Just toss some of my ashes off the Woodrow Wilson Bridge into the Potomac—not all, since I’m anti-pollution. No gadgets, no fancy ceremonies. But in case you feel otherwise and maybe even want your iPod playing The Grateful Dead’s best, here’s the lowdown from the Inquirer:

(more…)

By Paul Biba

Exclusive to PB News: In a remarkable series of events, an outbreak of general copyright stupidity has swept national legislators on a worldwide basis, reports PB News’ copyright correspondent …… ….. was the first one to connect the rampant stupidity infection with the spread of senseless copyright extensions. Along with this symptom, other frightening side effects have appeared, such as an irresistible urge to filter internet content. (In a sad note I must report to our readers that …..’s name will never again be used by this journal. Having recently published a book entitled The Solomon Scandals, ….. inadvertently copyrighted his own name and so is not allowed to use it without his permission - which he has been unable to obtain.)

First appearing in the United States, the virus lowered the IQ of American legislators enough so that they passed something called the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, which makes pretty much everything illegal. Further information about the Act is not available, because the Act is copyrighted and telling our readers anything about it would be a felony. In an action that should have alerted health officials to the oncoming viral surge, the same legislators passed the Mickey Mouse Protection Act which granted Walt Disney Studios extended copyrights on its properties. These copyrights will run until everyone who could possibly see or read any of the copyrighted properties has been dead for over 70 years.

As reported earlier in this journal, the Australian legislature has had a severe attack of the filtering version of the virus. Australian pols have decided to filter out “stuff” from the Internet. (more…)

By Paul Biba

In a project that I am sure is close to David’s heart, Europeana opened on November 20. Here is the object of the site, as stated on its Web site:

Europeana – the European digital library, museum and archive – is a 2-year project that began in July 2007. It will produce a prototype website giving users direct access to some 2 million digital objects, including film material, photos, paintings, sounds, maps, manuscripts, books, newspapers and archival papers. The prototype will be launched in November 2008 by Viviane Reding, European Commissioner for Information Society and Media.

The digital content will be selected from that which is already digitised and available in Europe’s museums, libraries, archives and audio-visual collections. The prototype aims to have representative content from all four of these cultural heritage domains, and also to have a broad range of content from across Europe.

The interface will be multilingual. Initially, this may mean that it is available in French, English and German, but the intention is to develop the number of languages available following the launch.

(more…)

By Paul Biba

O’Reilly’s annual Tools of Change Conference will be held in New York on February 9 - 11. David and I covered the conference last year for you here on TeleRead, and we will be doing the same thing again.

David and Joe Wikert, an O’Reilly executive who regularly appears in the TeleBlog, will be on an e-book panel. Other participants will be CEO Russell Wilcox of E Ink and writer-publisher April Hamilton, who herself has written for TeleRead. The moderator will be Mark Coker of Smashwords. Here is the blurb:

(more…)

By Paul Biba

Here’s an update on David.  I spoke with him for about 1/2 hour today and he asked me to do a post thanking everyone, from the bottom of his heart, for all the expressions of sympathy that were posted on the blog.  He asked me to send his regrets that he is unable to reply to each one individually.

David sounded pretty good and he says that he is recuperating from his pneumonia and is now walking 3/4 miles per day in short increments. He is now back home, which is a great boost to his spirits.  David says that his main priorities right now are recovering and getting his book, The Solomon Scandals,  ready for publication.  If things go well he hopes it will hit the stores sometime in December. David tells me that he would dearly love to see the blog evolve into more than a “David Rothman operation” and would love it to become a multi-contributor work with lots of interactivity between readers and participants.