Tag: BOOKS

There were some interesting discoveries noted when the Android Market website went live recently. Specific URLs behaved differently than the categories listed on the site -- they ended with books, music, and movies. Now, TechCrunch reports that the Books subsection is active. Right now, however, the Books tab will only appear for users who access the it via the Market App on an Android 3.0 ...

Amazon's Kindle eBook app for iOS devices just got an update to version 2.6, which adds some minor (but useful!) features. You can now view the actual page numbers of thousands of Kindle books -- which correspond to the physical editions -- making it easier to cite passages or jump from screen to paper without losing your place. And speaking of finding your place in a book, Kindle for iOS 2.6 ...

Amazon announced back in October that its Kindle e-reader platform would allow users to lend books to one another "by the end of the year." Today, Amazon introduced a lending feature for US customers just ahead of the deadline. Kindle users across the entire range of Kindle apps and devices can now lend each of their purchased books one time only, for a period of 14 days. To lend a book, go to ...

Google, in association with a couple of boffins from Harvard University, has just released an awesome tool that should entertain you for at least 10 minutes, and possibly more. It lets you compare words, or phrases, from a corpus totaling 500 billion words from 5.2 million books -- in Chinese, English, French, German, Russian and Spanish. The potential applications for such a tool are ...

Google's e-book retail operation, Google Editions, may be in business by the end of the year. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that even though Google missed its target of a summer 2010 launch, recent deals with publishers and independent booksellers mean the service will be ready for action in the US by the end of the year and internationally in Q1 of 2011. Google Editions is a potential ...

Well, it's no Amazon Library, but the Kindle e-book platform will soon let users lend books to one another for a limited amount of time. You'll be able to loan out a book for up to 14 days at a time, and you won't be able to read the book while a friend is borrowing it. Not all books will support lending, though. Allowing or blocking lending will be up to the publishers and other ...

Blurb, the king of self-published coffee table books, has just launched a new Web-based tool: Bookify. The downloadable desktop app Blurb BookSmart still exists -- and it's still the preferred tool for complex book layouts -- but for speed, ease of use and convenience, Bookify is now the thing to use. The road to glossy, self-published narcissism begins by simply selecting the size and shape ...

There are loads of books and magazines available for perusal on Google Books, but the web interface is a bit... lacking. It's cluttered, and it doesn't have that trademark laminate bookshelf background which is apparently a required component for eBook apps. Fortunately, there's GooReader. And while the name isn't particularly awe-inspiring the app itself is very good. Fire it up and search ...

Audio and video on Amazon's Kindle? They'd have to launch a whole new device to do that, right? Nah, they're doing it anyway, but only as part of the Kindle iPad app. That's right: Amazon's just introduced new features that can only be accessed on a competitor's reading device. What the heck are they thinking? Well, they're probably thinking that there's more profit in selling books on every ...

I jumped for joy when I saw a post at Lifehacker explaining how to read PDFs on your iPhone or iPad using Apple's new iBooks app. I figured someone would come up with a way to do it, and I should have known it would rely on the ultra-useful Dropbox. Dropbox is an amazing cloud storage app that works on several platforms, and one of them happens to be iOS, making it possible to transfer PDF files ...

Although details about Google's forthcoming digital bookstore, Google Editions, are still hazy, at least we now know that it's going to have a huge number of books. Google has said that "nearly all" U.S. publishers will be included in the bookstore. Over 20,000 publishers and individual authors will be part of Editions, accounting for 2 million of the projected 4 million books on the site. The ...

Since everyone and their mother is in the e-book business now, it makes sense that Google would jump in with its own digital book offering. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Google's bookstore could go live as early as next month. The service, called Google Editions, plans to make its books compatible with as many operating systems and devices as possible. There's definitely a niche for ...

Amazon hasn't really made a big deal out of its Kindle for Mac launch today, but rest assured that you can download the app today and start reading your eBooks. The featureset is basically identical to the other apps in the Kindle family -- it's got Whispersync and page bookmarking, for example -- but Kindle for Mac is kind of the ugly duckling of the bunch. There was a lot of potential to ...

The Book Depository is one of those frumpy-looking sites that are actually pretty incredible once you get past the plain looks. It's a massive bookstore, and what makes it so attractive for non-US customers is that it offers free worldwide shipping on everything. No minimum orders, no hidden costs. I have no idea how they do it, but I just bought a book there for $11 including shipping. That ...

Just days after Amazon.com decided to stop selling all books by Macmillan and its imprints, the online book giant has relented and added buy buttons back to Macmillan titles. The publisher vs. retailer dispute arose when Macmillan wanted to raise prices on its eBooks to $15, which is well over what Amazon currently charges (and, arguably, more than consumers will pay). You can get the details of ...