Esquire's October edition, featuring the e-ink cover we, ahem, covered in July, has hit the newsstands. Blogger Ryan Joseph found one in Borders, snapped it up and posted a video so those of us unlucky enough to miss out on the 100,000 print run can enjoy the annoying ad-platform of the future.

Esquire's October edition, featuring the e-ink cover we, ahem, covered in July, has hit the newsstands. Blogger Ryan Joseph found one in Borders, snapped it up and posted a video so those of us unlucky enough to miss out on the 100,000 print run can enjoy the annoying ad-platform of the future.

Photo credit: John Pastor/Flickr

The rumblings in the ground are pointing to an imminent Kindle 2.0, a successor to Amazon's loved but flawed e-book reader. The current-model Kindle has effectively dropped in price to just $260 (although you'll to sign up for an Amazon Visa card to get the discount), and at over a year old, it is getting pretty old in gadget time.

But what should Amazon do to make it better? Cheaper? Check. Smaller? Hell yes. But we have a few other suggestions. Here are five things that Jeff Bezos should include if he wants the Kindle 2.0 to be the best e-book reader on the planet

Continue reading "Five Ways Amazon Can Improve the Kindle 2.0" »

Is the iPhone a good platform for reading comic books? Probably not, but that isn't stopping developers from having a crack at bringing the funnies to your pocket. The problem is that the iPhone's screen, while great for reading plain-text e-books, is just a little too small for comic book pages. Part of comics' impact is the full, two-page spread which allows for spacing and pacing of the story. But a full two pages is obviously too much for the iPhone's screen. You can zoom in to read the individual frames, but that's kind of a pain.

Continue reading "Comic Books on the iPhone? No Thanks" »

Here's a potential get-rich-quick scheme: If you see an extremely successful product, start a magazine about it. That's what Japan's been doing with Apple's iPhone, anyway.

The iPhone has given birth to at least four magazines (pictured on the right). It makes sense to devote an entire publication to the immensely popular handset: The iPhone has become a rather large subcategory (if we can even use that word anymore) among Apple's offerings, and Gadget Lab's well aware there's plenty to write about it.

But at least four magazines? Geez. And we've even got an iPhone mag coming to the United States called iPhone Life. At this rate, eventually someone could compile a bible about the Jesus phone.

iPhone magazines big in Japan [TUAW]

(Photo credit: magerleagues/Flickr)

Remember books? You know, before the internet was big and people read stuff on paper? Well, if you want to be a true gadget geek you have to go beyond reading blogs, says Inside Tech's Eric Dahl. And he's compiled a list of 50 books you must read if you wish to call yourself a geek.

Rather than barrage you with all 50 titles, I thought I'd pluck out a few that I think Gadget Lab readers would especially enjoy:

The Evolution of Useful Things, Henry Petroski
A fascinating read that explains the origins of everyday objects and why they're designed the way they are: Think zippers, forks and paper clips. Zippers are pretty freaking amazing when you think about it.

The Perfect Thing: How the iPod Shuffles Commerce, Culture, and Coolness, Steven Levy
The story behind how perhaps the trendiest gadget of all time came to be.

The Future of Ideas, Lawrence Lessig
I love this book. Lessig illustrates the dangers of losing "free space" in the internet world. Just imagine your blog getting sued because there's a picture of you holding an iPod. This is a definite must read for any internet/tech enthusiast. (And if you insist on boycotting paper, you can read Lessig's book online).

Hard Drive: Bill Gates and the Making of the Microsoft Empire, Jim Erickson
Just how did the Microsoft mastermind do it? This is the entire story.

Revolution in The Valley: The Insanely Great Story of How the Mac Was Made, Andy Hertzfeld
Similar to the book above -- but this isn't the biography of Steve Jobs. It's about the engineers who actually built the first Mac. You can't call yourself a Mac fan boy unless you've read this one.

The Long Tail, Chris Anderson

Wired magazine's very own editor in chief Chris Anderson wrote this book illustrating how being cool -- that is, selling niche books, movies, music and so on -- could make you just as rich as putting out the next big hit. That's right, folks: You don't need to make the next You Don't Mess With the Zohan to make it big. Collectively, the niche market is huge.

Dealers of Lightning: Xerox PARC and the Dawn of the Computer Age, Michael Hiltzik

Not many young'ins these days have heard of Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center, but this historical monument (still around today) gave birth to the mouse, the laser printer and Ethernet, among other great inventions -- before the big guys (cough, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs) stole them away. This book tells that story.

50 Books Every Geek Should Read [Inside Tech] (Thanks, Eric!)

(Photo credit: gadi/Flickr)
       

Regular readers may remember the Moleskine iPhone project (sample YouTube comment: "Wow, this video defines hipster douchebag"), in which we hollowed out the legendary notebook, popped an iPod Touch inside and used it to read e-books outside romantic street cafes.

Sadly, the fun ended with the iPhone 2.0 software update. Books, our free e-book reader application of choice, required a jailbroken 1.4.x iPhone.

Now, though, a free version of the Mac ebook reading software, Stanza, has found its way into the store, and it rocks. Here's a quick rundown of how it works, and just how to turn your iPhone into a mini-Kindle.

Continue reading "Free Software Turns the iPhone Into an E-Book Reader" »

The latest word on the street -- or screen, in this case -- is that Amazon plans to ship the second version of its digital book reader come October.

According to CrunchGear, an Amazon insider leaked information on two new upcoming models of Amazon's Kindle. The first model will be a minor upgrade to the original Kindle, which featured a 6-inch screen. The second model is the bigger deal, literally -- measuring 8 1/2 by 11 inches, like a sheet of letter-sized paper.

Considering the Kindle sold out on its launch date in November 2007, it would appear the device is popular, although Amazon has suspiciously remained tight-lipped about releasing sales numbers.

I just don't see the appeal in the Kindle. Like my father's new girlfriend, it's aesthetically displeasing, expensive and a hassle to take places. I find it tiring enough to read off a screen on my computer after some time, and the thought of reading a book off an even smaller, lower-resolution (800-by-600 pixel) screen than my laptop's makes me want to consider laser-eye surgery.

Continue reading "Rumor: Kindle 2.0 Arriving for the Holidays" »

We like this take on that age-old solution to reading in the dark, the book light. Instead of clamping a miniature Anglepoise to the top of the book, the Super Slim LED Page Light overlays the whole lot with a plastic lens and casts LED light sideways across the pages. The dimmable light means you shouldn't strain your eyes, and when you're not reading, the unit can be kept inside the book itself, like an oversized bookmark.

We guess it would also work with a Kindle or other e-book reader, just as long as the sideways-firing lights don't cause the reader's screen to flare out. Four AAA batteries will keep it going for up to 40 hours. But you know, with all this extra hardware, it might just be easier to take your laptop to bed. $25

Product page [Gadget4all via Coolest Gadgets]

The iPod Touch makes a great e-book reader, with a large, high-resolution screen and touch navigation. You'll need to jailbreak it first (find out how at the Wired How-To Wiki) and install either the free Books application or the $35 i2Reader (both of which are found in the Installer). Any text file can then be loaded up and you simply swipe through the pages. I2Reader also lets you bookmark pages to go back to later.

That's fine, but the little iPod gets uncomfortable to hold after a while, and it lacks the presence of a real book. Imagine seeing an attractive girl (or boy) sitting outside a pavement café, drinking an espresso, smoking a Gauloise and reading a tatty paperback. It's a romantic image which is shattered when you swap the book for a PDA. I decided to disguise my iPod as a book, and if that wasn't pretentious enough, I put it in a modded Moleskine, the notebook of choice for fops and dandies the world over. Follow along to see how it turned out.

Continue reading "How To Turn an iPhone into a Moleskine Book" »

Joel Johnson over at Boing Boing Gadgets has ably demonstrated one of the major problems with ebook readers. Above you see his Kindle as it emerged from his bag. The screen is broken, in much the same way as the screens of nearly every cellphone I have owned. The problem is, when your ebook reader breaks, you lose a lot more. Joel:

I had just gotten it really stuffed with eBooks, too

Books, while more bulky in, well, bulk, are substantially more durable. And being analog, when they break, they’re still readable. Try using your Kindle after you drop it in the bath. With a book, you have a slightly swollen wad of paper, but it’s still serviceable. And if you leave a book on the subway, you have only lost one $10 title, not a $400 gadget. Lucky for Joel, it was a review unit.

Continue reading "Why Ebooks Aren't Ready For The Mainstream" »

Joel Johnson over at Boing Boing Gadgets has ably demonstrated one of the major problems with ebook readers. Above you see his Kindle as it emerged from his bag. The screen is broken, in much the same way as the screens of nearly every cellphone I have owned. The problem is, when your ebook reader breaks, you lose a lot more. Joel:

I had just gotten it really stuffed with eBooks, too

Books, while more bulky in, well, bulk, are substantially more durable. And being analog, when they break, they’re still readable. Try using your Kindle after you drop it in the bath. With a book, you have a slightly swollen wad of paper, but it’s still serviceable. And if you leave a book on the subway, you have only lost one $10 title, not a $400 gadget. Lucky for Joel, it was a review unit.

Continue reading "Why Ebooks Aren't Ready For The Mainstream" »

Joel Johnson over at Boing Boing Gadgets has ably demonstrated one of the major problems with ebook readers. Above you see his Kindle as it emerged from his bag. The screen is broken, in much the same way as the screens of nearly every cellphone I have owned. The problem is, when your ebook reader breaks, you lose a lot more. Joel:

I had just gotten it really stuffed with eBooks, too

Books, while more bulky in, well, bulk, are substantially more durable. And being analog, when they break, they’re still readable. Try using your Kindle after you drop it in the bath. With a book, you have a slightly swollen wad of paper, but it’s still serviceable. And if you leave a book on the subway, you have only lost one $10 title, not a $400 gadget. Lucky for Joel, it was a review unit.

Continue reading "Why Ebooks Aren't Ready For The Mainstream" »

Joel Johnson over at Boing Boing Gadgets has ably demonstrated one of the major problems with ebook readers. Above you see his Kindle as it emerged from his bag. The screen is broken, in much the same way as the screens of nearly every cellphone I have owned. The problem is, when your ebook reader breaks, you lose a lot more. Joel:

I had just gotten it really stuffed with eBooks, too

Books, while more bulky in, well, bulk, are substantially more durable. And being analog, when they break, they’re still readable. Try using your Kindle after you drop it in the bath. With a book, you have a slightly swollen wad of paper, but it’s still serviceable. And if you leave a book on the subway, you have only lost one $10 title, not a $400 gadget. Lucky for Joel, it was a review unit.

Continue reading "Why Ebooks Aren't Ready For The Mainstream" »

Zune fans have a new reason to rejoice -- and no, it's not due to the untimely destruction of One Infinite Loop. Audible.com has unofficially announced it's bringing its library of audio books to the Microsoft-backed media player.

According to an email we received from Audible.com, the online audiobook store is rearing to go even though Redmond hasn't announced a launch date:

I understand that you have contacted us today in regards to whether or not the Microsoft Zune is compatible with our service. We have great news! After much anticipation, Audible and Microsoft have completed negotiations on making the Zune AudibleReady! While we do not have an exact date as to when the device will be officially AudibleReady, we expect to make the Zune compatible before years end. Our Device Center on our website will be updated upon the Zune becoming compatible, so please be sure to check there periodically.

Hmmm...think Microsoft is saving it for a special event? Possibly along with some other Zune-related goodies? Throw out your conspiracy theory below!

[Via Winsupersite]

Availability: In Stock. Ships from and sold by Amazon.com. Gift-wrap available.

Whether it was excessive demand or a mess-up at the factory which caused the Wii-like shortage, Jeff Bezos' ebook reader (and always-on internet appliance) is back.

It's still $400, it's still ugly, and it still won't make you look like a romantic intellectual when you read it whilst sipping espresso at a Paris pavement café. But it is the first step towards a cheap and useable ebook reader, unless Apple gets there first.

We particularly like Amazon's tagline for the Kindle: "Amazon's New Wireless Reading Device". Yes, Wireless reading device. A brand new product category. Thank God I won't have to plug my paperbacks in ever again.

Product page [Amazon]

Photo: DrStarbuck/Flickr

When he's not cracking the deadline whip in the newsroom or peppering his speech with  obscure British slang, (apparently "scarper" is cockney for "scram") Wired.com News Editor Leander Kahney also writes books. Pretty good ones, too. If you're a Appleophile then you almost undoubtedly sleep with a copy of Cult of Mac underneath your pillow.

In his latest literary endeavor, Inside Steve's Brain, Kahney hits the pavement, interviewing dozens of Apple insiders, employees and analysts in order to disseminate the highly unconventional yet highly successful thought processes of the turtlenecked one. Click on the above video to hear Kahney, in his own words, describe exactly why Steve's gray matter matters so much to Apple's success.

Although skewing a bit "inside baseball" at times, Inside Steve's Brain makes for a fun read. We're happy to give the book four out of five black turtlenecks on the Apple related product rating scale.

Jung-Hyun Lee's bookmark might not make opening a book any easier, but it does at least utilize a muscle group more developed in today's gamepad-bashing youngsters. The Abracadabra slides between the pages. Closing the book squishes air into the outer tab, and when squeezed between the finger and thumb, air is forced back in, open the pages a crack for easy grabbing.

This rather pointless device is a concept design, and will doubtless remain so forever, along with its pot-plant storage "tree".

Product page [Yanko]

Jung-Hyun Lee's bookmark might not make opening a book any easier, but it does at least utilize a muscle group more developed in today's gamepad-bashing youngsters. The Abracadabra slides between the pages. Closing the book squishes air into the outer tab, and when squeezed between the finger and thumb, air is forced back in, open the pages a crack for easy grabbing.

This rather pointless device is a concept design, and will doubtless remain so forever, along with its pot-plant storage "tree".

Product page [Yanko]

To paraphrase the product blurb, Art + Moleskine + Laser = Awesome. Joe Mansfield offers to take your black and white artwork and laser-engrave it onto the cover of the iconic notebook. You send in a pdf and, for just $5 (plus the $20+ cost of the Moleskine) you'll get back a personalized cahier. The etching comes out in a sepia tone, and grayscales are converted to a dot halftone.

I will, if I may, compare the Moleskine to Apple products: They're simple, perceived as expensive and have an almost fanatical fanbase. They're also a pleasure to use. And, also like Apple gear, when we post on them, we get a firestorm of anti-fanboy hatred in the comments. Go!

Product page [Engrave Your Notebook via Make]

To paraphrase the product blurb, Art + Moleskine + Laser = Awesome. Joe Mansfield offers to take your black and white artwork and laser-engrave it onto the cover of the iconic notebook. You send in a pdf and, for just $5 (plus the $20+ cost of the Moleskine) you'll get back a personalized cahier. The etching comes out in a sepia tone, and grayscales are converted to a dot halftone.

I will, if I may, compare the Moleskine to Apple products: They're simple, perceived as expensive and have an almost fanatical fanbase. They're also a pleasure to use. And, also like Apple gear, when we post on them, we get a firestorm of anti-fanboy hatred in the comments. Go!

Product page [Engrave Your Notebook via Make]

Brendan Vaughan's collection of real-life tales of ingenuity, What Would MacGyver Do?, recently republished by Penguin, has a great premise: It's a collection of true stories featuring the kind of situational hacking (bombs defused with paperclips, sheds converted into aircraft) that the TV show MacGyver made famous in the 1980s. The resulting book does make for some fun reading, if only to guffaw at the haplessness of people locking themselves out of their cars, forgetting to set the parking brakes, ripping their underwear in the heat of passion, or planning parties but forgetting to get the food. Sadly, most of the "MacGyverisms" are little more than standard-fare workarounds to ordinary situations. The young lady with the ripped bikini? She saves her day by tying the ripped ends together. The man whose muffler was dragging along the Henry Hudson Parkway stands around dithering until some guys come along with an acetylene torch. They're well-told stories, but the level of ingenuity falls far short of that displayed in a typical issue of Make magazine, or for that matter any issue of Martha Stewart Living. In the end, the cleverest hack of all is the author's: He got a bunch of people to submit these stories to his web site, compiled the results, and published a book -- all with minimal effort on his part. Now that's a MacGyverism!

WIRED Fun, readable stories. Homemade air conditioner project is clever, and has enough detail you could actually build one of your own. Has "MacGyver" in the title.

TIRED Not that much ingenuity displayed in all but a few of the stories -- Angus MacGyver would be embarrassed to have his name attached to a story about a new father calming down his baby by dressing in drag.

$11, whatwouldmacgyverdo.com

Amazon's Jeff Bezos has said that the company can't keep up with demand for its ebook reader, the Kindle. At Amazon's fourth quarter earnings call, Bezos detailed a Wii-like success for the ugly white box:

Kindle is, in terms of demand, is outpacing our expectations [...] We’re working very hard to increase the number of units that we can build and supply per week.

This comes alongside the news that Amazon wants to buy the audiobook company Audible, for a planned $300 million. This sudden alignment of book services starts to make the Kindle look like the iPod of books, and finally shows us just why the Kindle has a built in MP3 player.

Earnings call transcript [Seeking Alpha via Ars]

Hacker Igor Skochinsky has reversed engineered the DRM of the Kindle to allow Mobipocket books to be read on Amazon'e eBook device. It works by actually changing the DRM of the files to be compatible with the Kindle.

Skochinsky uses a couple of Python scripts to do the work. One will generate the a PID code based on your Kindle's serial number, which can then be used at sites such as Fictionwise to buy books that will then be accepted by the Kindle. The other converts mobi books you might already own to Amazon's AZW format.

Both monkey with the digital rights management and add Amazon specific info to the DRM part of the file, tricking the Kindle into thinking you bought the book at Amazon. Nice work, although we can't help thinking that Amazon should have allowed this all along.

Mobipocket books on Kindle [Reversing Everything via Engadget]

We used to look to spy-tech with gadget-lust. Even the real stuff had a James Bond exoticism. Now, though, it just seems lame – pitifully trailing behind the consumer market and always overpriced.

Exhibit A: The Book Camera. A pedestrian setup consisting of a book, a camera and an LCD screen, all of which can probably be found on your desk right now (the latter two in the same box). The price? £650 ($1300).

Continue reading "Spy Tech: Camera in a Book" »

If any of you still thinks that tiny mobile devices will never replace a "proper" computer because "I can't type on it", think again. The ultimate test for endurance keyboard entry is probably the novel, and fully half of the best selling fiction in Japan over the past six months has been written on a cellphone.

Continue reading "Fifty Percent of Japanese Bestsellers Typed On a Cellphone" »

Overworking your book-scanning crew much, Google?

Google Books Adds Hand Scans [TechCrunch]

I find Books to Go especially appealing because I'm looking for a new apartment right now. The smart looking, stackable shelves will clamp your books in place, and the wheels make moving easy (the clamp handles also mean you can negotiate stairs with two boxes at a time).

Designed in the UK by Rose Cobb, these are "coming soon", but probably not soon enough. In the meantime, I'll stick with the tried and true "grocery box and skateboard" method.

Product page [Design by Rose via Yanko and Treehugger]

The UPS guy just dropped off the galley proof of Fake Steve Jobs upcoming book, "Option$", a novelized spoof about the SEC enquiry into the stock option backdating scandal at Apple.

FSJ is in fact Forbes senior editor Daniel Lyons, who was outed a month back as the author of "The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs". If you read Fake Steve's blog, you know what to expect: A first person portrait of the Real Steve Jobs which paints him as a self satisfied, hippy control freak with an ego bigger than an iPod Classic hard drive. In short, exactly what we believe to be the truth.

First thoughts? Hilarious. I started reading with my morning coffee and got so carried away I started blogging an hour late. Full review when I finish it. The book is available on November 1st (and yes, that's a pre-launch cover image, grabbed from Amazon).

Product page [Amazon]

OK, I decided to blog this one mainly so I could use "whither" in a headline--almost makes me feel like a real journalist. But the New York Times does offer some tantalizing nuggets from the perpetually fledgling e-book market.

These includes deets on the expensive ($400 to $500) reader Amazon is set to release next month. Early users of the Kindle say it's quite limited as a Web browser, thanks to a screen that can't display color or animation. And it uses a proprietary format that means early e-book adopters will have to repurchase a lot of content from Amazon.

More glad tidings from the money-grubbing frontier: Google allegedly plans to require payment for full access to certain digital texts in its database.

Envisioning the Next Chapter for Electronic Books {NY Times]

Mac Fan Peter Merholz picked up a mint copy of the original manual for the Mac, printed back in 1984. The scans are over on Flickr and on Peter's own blog. It's fascinating stuff. First off, Apple's sense of design was in place way before Jonny Ive rescued the company from the Sculley Years. Just check out those full-bleed, full-color pages, and the custom designed font, Apple Garamond. Very Paul Rand.

And while the manual clearly shows the target market of hairdressers (see photo, above), the best parts are historical. Imagine trying to explain a mouse to somebody who had never seen one, or that new-fangled wonder, scrolling.

Take a look. A look at the future, 23 years ago.

Thoughts on (and pics of) the original Macintosh User Manual [Peterme]
Flickr page [Peterme]

An electronic textbook publisher has decided to include a free scratch-and-sniff sticker with all e-book purchases after a survey of college students revealed that the smell was the quality they most treasured in dead-tree textbooks. CafeScribe advises students to place the sticker, imbued with the musty smell of old textbooks, on their laptop or desktop PC monitor, so they can enjoy the olfactory delights of old-fashioned publishing.

Electronic books with musty book smell launched [Reuters]

One thing often overlooked amidst all the iPhone buzz is that screen. No, we don't mean those dead strips. We're talking about the crazy-sharp 160ppi resolution which puts it firmly in ebook territory. Whether publisher HarperCollins realizes this, or whether the company is just cashing in on the iHype we don't know, but as of now you can browse, download and read ebooks on the iPhone with the new Browse Inside service.

The first 10 pages are free, and then you start paying. Being an iPhone-less European, I can't test the interface, but HarperCollins claims that

Browse Inside digitally replicates the experience of browsing the pages of a book prior to purchasing.

Continue reading "Ebooks and Text Adventures Come to the iPhone" »

Assuming you have the book collection and creepy old house to get away with it, these Possessed Books might be an economical ($25) way to freak our your friends. Looking like a standard set of Victorian-era staples, the set contains a motion detector to spot passers-by, and slides Silas Marner toward them as if moved by a ghostly hand. Appropriate spooky sounds are emitted.

What actually happens, however, is that a loud servo whirs as the book clunks in and out, accompanied by a badly-cropped 8khz sample fizzling like potassium in a bucket.

Product Page [Things You Never Knew Existed via Nerd Approved and UberGizmo]

Print-on-demand, the technology that lets you print and bind a paperback book in a matter of minutes with nary a press in sight, hasn't exactly lived up to its promise of revolutionising publishing. In fact, the only thing it's been good for is streamlining the operations of vanity presses that make most of their money from their own authors. The Espresso Book Printer, however, brings cheap book reproduction to the masses. How cheap? Does free of charge sound O.K.?

Continue reading "Book Vending Machines To Kill Bookstores?" »

For those rare times you actually manage to get a few straight (read: non-nerdy) friends around to your house, you can still wow them with the beauty of vintage gadgetry.

Core Memory, written by John Alderman with gorgeous photographs by Mark Richards, details 35 computers from the Silicon Valley's Computer History Museum. It's a glossy picture book at heart, and many of the photographs detail the delicate hand built insides of the machines. Head over to Mark Richards' gallery page to check them out, or see Robert Scoble's interview with him (video).

Gallery [Mark Richards]
Video interview [The Scobleizer]

Nefarious persons with a lot of money are among gadget manufacturers' most reliable customers. International supervillains prefer spacecraft, in-mountain residences, private islands, cloned minions, that sort of thing—there exist numerous independent contractors catering to their specialized tastes. For the everyday working criminal mastermind, however, Brad Graham and Mathy McGowan's book "101 Spy Gadgets for the Evil Genius" offers an indispensible guide to modern technology.

Most of the projects in the volume, issued by McGraw-Hill/TAB Electronics, cost $30 or less, and none require electrical engineering wizardry to complete. Among the staples are night vision equipment, wiring oneself for undetected recording, constructing hidden camera installations, recording phone conversations, photoshopping photo evidence, and how to install keyloggers or secret remote desktop viewing software.

A sequel, More Electronic Gadgets for the Evil Genius, is also available. The two together can be had for $33 at Amazon.

The Original and the Sequel [Amazon via Gearlog]

The BBC's Jonathan Duffy feels nervous about our propensity to buy gagdets that don't really do much of anything. "Has our lust for gadgets overshadowed an appreciation of the technologies that really make a difference?" he asks, challenging our shallow neophilia.

He comes to these thoughts in a review of David Edgerton's The Shock of the Old: Technology in Global History Since 1900, published by Profile Books, which takes a deeper look at things we've made in the last century or so that made a difference, from corrugated iron building materials to ubiquitous, cheap Ikea bookcases (The Billy, pictured, has sold 28m units.) It amounts to both a eulogization of new technology and a swipe at the fetish-cult of gizmos.

Having not read the book, I can't offer an opinion of it. But if the dude hates cell phones and the companies that sell them, I'm on board.

Future Imperfect [BBC]

Reading in bed is one of life's simple delights, but most book lights cast only a finger-nail's width of illumination. True to its name, the Full Page Illuminator is an optical-grade lens that reflects a battery-powered LED light evenly across the whole page.Four AAA batteries give you 40 hours of continuous use. The set is available for $69.95 and comes with lights for both hardback and paperback books.

Product Page [via New Launches]

The Sony Reader mimicks the look and feel of an analog book. Ten thousand titles are currently available. (photo by Sean Captain)