Yesterday the news that Barnes & Noble would have an application for the iPad started passing around, making the usual jumps from site to site, from blog to blog and people seemed amazed by it.  It struck me as downright weird that this should amaze anyone. Barnes & Noble has been on the iPhone forever, as has Amazon and other ebook readers, retailers, publishers, etc.  I’m an avid reader of electronic books and have been since around 2001, when it became practical to be one.  In that time, I’ve read a considerable number of titles, most of them purchased from FictionWise, which...

I just read a great interview with Toni Waisskopf, publisher of Baen books. The interview is all about how Baen handles eBook publishing and pricing and Mr. Waisskopf’s words are as an island of good sense in a sea of… Well, you get my meaning… I strongly recommend this interview to everyone interested on ebooks. Bookmark It

If you are a frequent or even infrequent reader of the Longo Review blog you may have noticed that it has gone through a general face lift.  As of this month the tempo of new articles and comments on this website should increase considerably. I hope you like the new look and continue to come back for more comments on books and ebooks. Bookmark It

Ever since Apple’s iPad was introduced last month everyone has started writing about how magazines and books should now have embedded videos and animations.  The more I’ve given thought to that I keep getting to the same question: Why? While I can understand the desire to have user controlled animation in the advertising of a car, so that the user can swivel it around and see what it looks like from all sides, I could not see why I would want anything of the sort in a book.  In non-fiction titles you could add interactive charts, which could prove to be interesting and even...

After eleven years I’ve finally completed the Gibraltar series by Michael McCollum. I enjoyed all three books and actually read them quickly.  Eleven years was just the interval between the first and last book of the series were published. Now that you don’t have to wait as long to read the last book, I highly recommend this series.  The first book, called Gibraltar Earth tells of humanity’s first encounter with an extraterrestrial intelligence and of the chilling revelation that one species dominates all others in hundreds of thousands of worlds. Those who...

I found an  interesting article on how Magazines and Newspapers are responding to the iPad and Apple’s revenue sharing model on Ars Technica. Reading this article got me reconsider how I view what their position on the impact of the iPad should be. To me it always seemed obvious that publishers of magazines and newspapers should welcome and embrace a device which might help regain relevance to their properties, but it seems that they don’t agree. Read more on iPad Watcher… Bookmark...

In a live TV interview MCGRAW-HILL’s CEO confirmed that Apple will introduce an iPhoneOS based tablet device. He also mentioned that MCGRAW-HILL has been working with Apple for quite some time. UPDATE: I first saw this on Wired and noticed that it was also on MacRumors. In a couple of hours it was all over the net. I guess some people at Apple must be pretty upset by now. Bookmark...

Today I got an email notification of the release of a Zinio application for the iPhone.  For those of you that haven’t run across Zinio, it is a visually oriented digital reader software.  It was primarily focused on magazines but has been diversifying into books and textbooks.Zinio offers a very compelling reading experience with full colored digital magazines that look pretty much the same as they do on paper, including some nice age turning visual effects. While they do seem to offer more than one viewing mode, with a text only mode which seems designed to make it easy to...

Here we are, 2010!  Last year was a good year for eBooks.  Lots of new readers on the market, lots of new users.  While there was some consolidation on the storefront side, with Barnes & Noble picking up FictionWise, there was  myriad new readers announced, including a very interesting looking one from Barnes & Noble itself. (See my previous post on this…) Amazon took the Kindle to the world, with international shipping.  Sony introduced new models of its Sony Reader with more size, feature and pricing options. The new Pocket and Touch editions are speacially interesting as they add...

Barnes & Noble has just made its move to enter the eBook reader market with the introduction of its own device.  This device, called “Nook” is proof that there is plenty of chance for innovation in this field.  The Nook adds a small, full color, screen underneath the eInk screen which is used for displaying the content for reading. By using this separate screen Barnes & Noble elegantly worked around the most inconvenient aspect of the currently available crop of eBook readers: navigating through your content. The eInk screen used in just about every eBook reader out there...