The Radio Shackification of the public library

In his latest Monday Note column1 Frédéric Filloux writes how publishers are needing to think more like software producers – specifically the turn-on-a-dime maker-of-apps variety. This low-margin, high-volume business that thrives or dies on the niftiness of ideas and the refinement of execution offers the best immediate model for book publishers currently thrashing in the e-book swell.

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From the archive

Enter the Iliad -- a wireless e-paper reader on the horizon

Since writing about the promise of electronic paper last spring, I’ve been waiting for a first-generation wireless e-paper reader to hit the market. Seems that will happen in April, although the “Iliad”—an e-reader with an eight-inch grayscale display and the capacity to download from the Internet—is being targeted for business-to-business applications, not yet to consumers.