The Daily SLog

An editorial from Christian Science Monitor
Kindle e-reader: A Trojan horse for free thought By Emily Walshe

“Web 2.0 and its culture of collaboration supposedly unleashed a sharing society. But we can share only what we own. And as more and more content gets digitized, commercialized, and monopolized, our cultural integrity is threatened. The free and balanced flow of information that gives shape to democratic society is jeopardized.

For now, though, Kindle is on fire in the marketplace. Who could resist reading “what you want, when you want it?” Access to more than 240,000 books is just seconds away. And its “revolutionary electronic-paper display … looks and reads like real paper.”

But it comes with restrictions: You can’t resell or share your books – because you don’t own them. You can download only from Amazon’s store, making it difficult to read anything that is not routed through Amazon first. You’re not buying a book; you’re buying access to a book. No, it’s not like borrowing a book from a library, because there is no public investment. It’s like taking an interest-only mortgage out on intellectual property.”
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The Flepia

And this from Wired’s Gadget lab:
Fujitsu’s Flepia, the color e-book last seen in testing at an upscale Tokyo restaurant, is now available to buy. Don’t get too excited though — even if you’re in Japan, where the Flepia is on sale, it will cost you a whopping ¥99,750, or just over $1000.

You get a lot for your money, though. The reader has a an 8″ screen which displays 260,000 colors, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi (b and g), a mini USB port and, most important of all, a touch screen (although it comes with a stylus so we expect that it is a resistive touch screen, not capacitive like the iPhone.)

This is completed by a soft, on-screen keyboard (just like the Kindle should have) and a battery life of 40 hours (continuos use — Fujitsu says 2400 page turns). Books are stored on an SD card and can be bought from the online bookstore Papyless.

Curiously, the Flepia seems to be a kind of tablet/e-book hybrid. Along with the book reading software, the device comes loaded with Windows CE 5, meaning support for e-mail, spreadsheets, web browsing and the like. If you view this as a low powered, long life computer instead of a color e-book reader, it starts to look less expensive. The Flepia will start shipping on April 20th.

It looks like the age of the e-book is finally upon us, the dream of every science fiction writer ever. Next up — flying cars…”