e-books - page 6

About twelve hours after iOS 5 was officially released, I went through the considerable bother of downgrading my iPad 2 back down to iOS 4.3. iOS 5 was a great update, but for me, it had one fatal problem: it broke my beloved Stanza e-reading app irrevocably, and going without Stanza on my iPad was as impossible to contemplate as living without Mail or Safari.

For Stanza lovers, the situation is extremely frustrating, because Stanza breaks so totally under iOS 5 that you can’t even load an ebook without the app crashing. However, the original developers can’t update the app, because they sold it to Amazon.

When Amazon originally bought Stanza back in 2009, they promised they weren’t buying Stanza just to kill some of the free competition to their own Kindle e-reader. And, in fact, Amazon has updated the product several times since 2009, notably to bring excellent iPad support to the app.

But with iOS 5, Amazon appears to have abandoned all support for Stanza. That’s particularly frustrating, because not only was Stanza the best non-commercial e-reader around, it had many features the competition still doesn’t have: for example, its excellent typesetting and formatting options, its wide range of supported formats and its killer swipe-to-dim feature, which makes reading ebooks easier on the eyes.

Thanks to the success of the Starbucks App Store ‘Pick of the Week’ promotion, Starbucks has announced that it will also be offering free eBook Picks of the Week in a partnership with iTunes and the iBookstore.

Michael Hart, founder of free ebooks repository Project Gutenberg, died this week. He was 64.

The latest class action lawsuit against Apple has been filed by law firm Hagens Berman and accuses Apple and five major publishers of conspiring to raise the price of ebooks.

Amazon’s Kindle application was recently at risk of being removed from the App Store because it contained a link to purchase content outside of Apple’s ecosystem — something Apple no longer allows developers to do under its latest App Store terms. In order to secure its place in the App Store, Amazon issued a last-minute update to its app to remove the link, but in a move that subtly tells Apple where to stick its new rules, Amazon has launched a web-based Kindle reader with support for the iPad. And it’s awesome!

Just a few days after rumors started springing up that Apple intended on buying streaming video service (and Netflix competitor) Hulu comes an even odder rumors, courtesy of BGR: Apple is in talks to buy Barnes & Noble out from under them. What?

The most impressive ebooks on the iPad aren’t ebooks at all, but dedicated iOS apps. With the power of HTML5, CSS3, Javascript and ePUB3, though, there’s no reason that has to be the case at all: you can put together a truly interactive, animated ebook right within iBooks.

Check out this awesome look at the iBook put together by Walrus Books for the upcoming Lovecraftian tome Kadath: The Guide To The Unknown City. Not only does it feature interactive maps, embedded fonts, integrated pop-ups and more, but it even has its own in-book meta game and version of in-app purchases.

This is super cool. I wish we saw more iBooks like this, but unfortunately, it seems like most publishers design their ebooks for the lowest common denominator platform — the Kindle.

Illustration student Rachel Walsh was assigned a seemingly impossible design task by her professor: explain the concept of the Amazon Kindle to Charles Dickens. Her solution is ingenious, and applies just as well to iBooks, but just imagine if she’d been asked to explain the iPad to Dickens instead.

While a number of publishers ink special deals with Apple to bring their content to the App Store, Apple’s new in-app purchasing rules are forcing publishing middle men out of business. That’s the message from the creators of iFlow Reader, which just shut down.

“We put our faith in Apple and they screwed us,” Philip Huber of BeamItDown Software told users. The developer got squeezed between Apple’s demand for a 30 percent cut and other expenses. “Our gross margin on ebooks after paying the wholesaler is less than 30 percent, which means that we would have to take a loss on all ebooks sold,” Huber explained.

Here’s a peek at Al Gore’s new book, “Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis,” which has been turned into a very cool interactive iPad app.

The former vice president’s book features text, images, interactive infographics, documentary video and audio commentary.

It looks like a great, immersive experience (and probably pretty scary, given the subject matter) — the climate change equivalent of the beautiful The Elements app.

Check it out:

The app ($4.99 on the App Store) was designed by Push Pop Press, a San Francisco startup by a pair of ex-Apple engineers, including Mike Matas, who helped design Delicious Monster. Push Pop Press is working on a Mac desktop application to create similar eBooks, which will be “very affordable” when it eventually ships. Reporter Brian Chen has more detail at Wired.com: Gore, Ex-Apple Engineers Team Up to Blow Up the Book

Here’s another video showing Gore’s app/book in more detail:

It’s Education Week on CultofMac.com. How’s Apple doing in schools these days? What are the best education apps? Is iTunes U worthwhile? Join us as we learn more about Apple in Education.

The iPad is going to be very big in schools, predicts Professor Mark Warschauer, one of the world’s leading experts in technology and learning.

In an exclusive interview, Prof. Warschauer predicted that schools may soon start buying iPads in big numbers to replace not just desktops and laptops, but also textbooks and other reading materials.

“Until a couple of years ago, the majority of book reading — and a lot of magazine and newspaper reading — was done in print,” he said in a phone interview. “I think we’re going to see that change now.”

There is a persistent — and perhaps understandable — fear on the part of some Canadians that viral American culture is overwhelming Canada’s own cultural heritage, but a recent decision by Canada’s Privacy Council Office to probe Apple’s iBookstore seems like it borders on paranoia.

The order, first issued on August 20th, puts Apple and iBooks under scrutiny to make sure that the large e-bookstore “aids Canadian culture,” a vague responsibility to be sure. The authority comes from section 15 of the Investment Canada Act, which allows the government to review any investment that “is related to Canada’s cultural heritage or national identity.”

A probe is just a probe, and it seems, for right now, like Canada wants to make sure of Apple’s plans before they allow the full launch of the iBookstore to go through. It seems strange, however, that Apple would be put up the standard of being “of direct cultural benefit to Canada.” How can the widespread proliferation of millions of books be suspected of being a detriment to culture? At least twenty or thirty of those books have to be written by Canadians, right?

Publishing house Simon & Schuster  just launched a new product dubbed “vook,”  a dumb name for what sounds like a smart video book.

The idea? Vooks blend text and video into a reading and viewing experience, so the next time you’re not really getting a sense of place from a novel, or want to see how exercises are done you can watch a video. It’s also got all of the social media trappings, so you can discuss, rant etc. about the vook, (pronounced to ryhme with book), too.

The first four titles, available for $4.99  each on iTunes, are workout book “The 90-Second Fitness Revolution,” a book of DIY spa treatments called “Return to Beauty,” a thriller by Richard Doetsch called “Embassy” and romance novella “Promises.”

Whether you were disappointed or elated with the new products and services on Tuesday’s Rock n’ Roll event, you have to admit there was a lot of stuff going on.

One small, almost overlooked new-ish item: “Mayhem”  the first standalone digital book is for sale on iTunes 9.  (Fortune’s Jon Fortt ran into singer/actor Tyrese Gibson who produced it at the event, or he says he might have missed it, too.)

Although there are plenty of comic book apps and magazines on iTunes, this one is different.
Mayhem is more like a book on steroids. For the $1.99 purchase price, you get the comic book,  an iTunes LP with an exclusive track, plus storyboards, a making-of video and two freebie comic books.

This is the first digital book that Apple had a hand in designing and it shows — reports say the interface is versatile enough to work as well on a touch-screen as it does on a full-size screen.

The Mayhem iTunes LP was designed by Sam Herz, one of Apple’s user interface engineers for  iTunes, and Barry Munsterteiger, creative director for rich media and Internet technologies.

After the event, Steve Jobs once again stated that Apple won’t be trying to encroach on Amazon’s territory any time soon — should we believe him?

Via Fortune