Hasta La Gadget!

Since switching over to e-books for everything except cookbooks, I have a stack of dead-trees on my shelf doing nothing. As there are only so many iPad and Kindle cases I can make by gutting the hardback covers of their pages, I’m all fired up to try this great Book Lamp by Instructables member fungus amungus aka Ed Lewis.

The project is dead simple: Chop some pages from a book (Ed used the appropriately-titled Illuminatus! Trilogy from Bob Shea and Robert Anton Wilson), cut a route for the cable and insert a light. The donor lamp in this case is the $5 Lampan from (where else?) Ikea. This light also comes with a 7 Watt compact fluorescent bulb, but you could also opt for a nice cold LED bulb (avoid incandescent, though, unless the book you’re using is Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451).

Your chopping doesn’t have to be neat (look at Ed’s effort for a demonstration of just how raggedy edges can get) as it will all be hidden when you close the cover. The resulting light gives a pleasantly studious atmosphere to any shelf or side-table. I actually have a spare Lampan right here, with a broken shade. I think my weekend DIY project has just been decided upon.

Book Lamp [Instructables via CrunchGear]

Sony predicts digital content will overtake print ‘within five years’ originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 03 Jun 2010 14:33:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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You don’t need to sit down, we’re not about to hit you with any shocking news, but a recent BookExpo America convention has given publishers the chance to air out their laundry list of complaints. Seriously, do these guys ever have anything positive to say? Now they’ve managed to pinpoint a flaw in the Kindle and iPad’s resounding success, identifying the two ebook reading platforms as closed, and expressing a yearning for a universal and open format that all books can be published and consumed on. Of course, they wouldn’t be publishers if they didn’t also lust after robust DRM measures, which might explain why they’re not roundly supporting the readily available EPUB format. It has DRM options, but perhaps they’re not gnarly enough for the dudes responsible for bringing us the psychological horror of the Twilight series. We still don’t like the suggestion that the people, Amazon primarily, who popularized this market should just open it up out of the goodness of their own hearts — maybe we would if publishers ever showed themselves capable of doing similarly noble things.

Ebook publishers seek universal format, lament Apple and Amazon’s closed ecosystems originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 01 Jun 2010 06:56:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Self-publishing has long since been possible through Amazon, but you won’t catch us kvetching about a little competition in the market place. In an attempt to do for indie writers what InstantAction has done for indie game developers, Barnes & Noble has just announced its intentions to open up a self-publishing portal this summer. We wouldn’t say that the PubIt! name is the greatest of all time (for a variety of reasons, frankly), but the world’s largest bookseller is hoping to expand its importance in the digital realm by giving wannabe authors the ability to upload and sell their material through B&N’s website and eBookstore. Details on the compensation model (read: profit split) will be announced “in the coming weeks,” but the real kicker here is this won’t be limited to the Nook; pretty much any e-reader, tablet or PC will be able to tap in and make purchases, so the potential audience is quite large. Hit that source link if you want to be notified when invitations are going out, and given just how close we are to this mythical “summer” thing, we’d suggest you start putting pen to paper — and fast.

[Thanks, Victor]

Continue reading Barnes & Noble to open ‘PubIt!’ self-publishing portal this summer

Barnes & Noble to open ‘PubIt!’ self-publishing portal this summer originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 19 May 2010 10:50:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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I honestly can’t tell you what it’s like to see and touch and consume news, magazines and comics on the iPad. You just have to experience it. But I can tell you what to read to blow your mind. More »