A new form of ebook Digital Rights Management in development shows just how far the book industry is willing to go to stop piracy.

It’s called SiDiM, and it’s being developed by Darmstadt Technical University in Germany, with backing from the German government and ebook industry. For each individual copy of an ebook, SiDiM applies subtle changes to the text itself, along with other invisible markings.

As TorrentFreak explains, SiDiM might change the word “unsympathetic” to “not sympathetic.” This DRM could also alter punctuation and add extra line breaks to the text.

By changing the actual text of an ebook, SiDiM would create unique copies that could be traced to the original owner. In theory, users would be aware of this antipiracy method, and would be discouraged from widely distributing ebooks over the Internet.

To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

A pair of South Carolina lawmakers has introduced legislation that would pave the way for a pilot program involving electronic license plates that could be altered remotely by the state's DMV.

The “e-tags” would make it easy for drivers to switch plate numbers as a car changes hands, or they could be used to display messages to the public such as “SUSPENDED,” “UNINSURED,” or “STOLEN.” The e-tags, which are accessed via cellular network, could—in theory—also be used to track a car’s whereabouts.

The proposed e-tags, manufactured by SC-based Compliance Innovations use low-power electronic paper technology similar to that available in the Kindle e-reader. The e-plates could remain completely inert for up to 10 years without any charge and would only require energy if they were to change their display, which the plate would draw from the car’s kinetic movements or solar power.

DMV is watching

Compliance Innovations

Each plate could be altered remotely if a car changes owners, a vehicle is reported stolen, or a driver’s license is suspended. On the plus side, that would mean fewer trips to the DMV and could act a deterrent to would-be thieves (whose cellular hacking skills are not up to snuff). It has even been suggested that the plates could be used to issue region-wide Amber Alerts.

To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Penguin has settled with U.S. states in an e-book price-fixing lawsuit, leaving only Apple now in the fray.

Four other publishers accused of price-fixing with Apple settled earlier with the 33 states and territories and the U.S. Department of Justice. Penguin had earlier settled in December with the DOJ in a case that is currently scheduled to go to trial in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York on June 3.

Penguin said in a statement on Wednesday that it had reached an agreement with the US state attorneys general and private class plaintiffs to pay $75 million in consumer damages plus costs and fees to resolve all antitrust claims relating to e-book pricing. It also committed to the states to abide by the same injunctive relief as previously agreed in its settlement with the DOJ.

Apple and the five publishers were accused of working together to raise prices of e-books, in retaliation for competitor Amazon.com pricing most e-books at $9.99 beginning in late 2007. The five publishers are Hachette Book Group, Macmillan, Penguin Group, HarperCollins Publishers and Simon & Schuster.

To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Online fan fiction (or "fanfic") has long been a bizarre literary sideshow where crazy people go to explore completely impractical scenarios and insane sexual fantasies involving established characters from all the branches of the pop culture tree. All the branches. However, this darkened surreal corner of the Internet may soon find itself dragged out into the light of legitimacy. Amazon has announced that it is jumping into the officially licensed fan fiction business with its new Kindle Worlds publishing platform.

Amazon has partnered with Warner Brothers Television Group to offer aspiring fanfic-ers the chance to create original works based on the popular book-cum-TV series Gossip Girl, Pretty Little Liars, and The Vampire Diaries and promises that additional “licensed worlds” will follow.

Accepted works can be as short as 5000 words and will be published for the Kindle platform with royalties being shared amongst the rights-holders and the fiction authors (fanfic authors will receive 35% of net sales for works of at least 10,000 words, and 20% for works between 5000 and 10,000 words). Aspiring authors will be able to upload and self-publish their own novels, novellas, and short stories directly through the Worlds site.

The 50 Shades phenomenon

For most of its existence, fanfic has occupied its own weird little corner of the Web and was, for the most part, allowed to wallow in its weirdness in peace. But then two years ago, something truly crazy happened. A sprawling piece of BDSM-soaked Twilight fic was scraped of all its copyright-infringing content and adapted into the mom-porn epic Fifty Shades of Grey. Against all good logic, the Fifty Shades series became a gigantic hit and would go on to sell more than 70 million copies in 37 countries.

To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

E-readers aren’t exactly easy to break, thanks to their non-glass E Ink screens and generally sturdy construction. But that doesn’t mean it’s a good idea to risk scratching your Kindle Paperwhite by throwing it into your purse or bag unprotected.

We took a look at a couple of e-reader cases for each of the popular e-readers on the market today—the new Amazon Kindle and Kindle Paperwhite, the Barnes & Noble Nook Touch and Touch with GlowLight, the Kobo Glo, and the Sony Reader PRS-T2—to see which cases are worth putting on your device and which ones are…well, not. For cases that claim to fit multiple devices, we tried ‘em to see how the case fit. We have edgy, practical, and fun all here—find the perfect case for your e-reader.

Amazon Kindle and Kindle Paperwhite

Verso Prologue
Designed for: Amazon Kindle and Kindle Paperwhite
Also fits: Sony, Kobo Glo
Price: $39.99, LightWedge

The Verso Prologue is an attractive, book-like cover for your Kindle and Kindle Paperwhite. This cover features a pretty fabric exterior, as well as a pocket on the inside of the front cover for documents and cards.

To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Is the 6-inch screen on your e-reader too big? Unwieldy, even? If so, perhaps you’re the market Kobo is trying to target with its new Kobo Mini, which is an e-reader so small and compact that it can fit in your pocket.

Of course, whether you need an e-reader that fits in your pocket is up for debate.

According to Kobo, the Kobo Mini is the world’s smallest and lightest full-featured e-reader. This $79 e-reader has a 5-inch E Ink-based touchscreen and measures just 4 inches wide by 5.2 inches long. In case you’re wondering, that makes it just slightly larger than most smartphones on the market today.

E-reader in miniature

To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Gone are the days of reading by flashlight: This has been the year of the light for e-readers, with three of the four major players in E Ink-based e-readers releasing models with built-in illumination. But while that's the biggest advancement of the past year, it's not the only one. Together with the continuing explosion in e-reading, it's no wonder e-readers are, once again, a hot item this gift-giving season.

If you've bought an e-reader before, that will quickly narrow down the question of which e-reader to buy, since you've already chosen a book ecosystem for your digital library. But if you're starting fresh, you need to decide which of the latest models best suits you. Read on for my picks, based on specific buying criteria.

Reading light and display

The good news here is that if you're already in the Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or Kobo book universe—and want to stay there—any of this year's models with a built-in light would be a solid choice. All three have an adjustable lightsource coming from side-mounted LED lights.

Amazon has the best implementation of the three, even if it does lack a physical hardware button for adjusting the light: The $119 Kindle Paperwhite has the most even lighting and the best contrast of the lot, and it has the highest-resolution display, too. The $119 Barnes & Noble Nook Simple Touch With Glowlight is also a strong choice; the 'n' button below the e-reader's screen doubles as a physical light control, and the light has a bit of a greenish, glowy quality to its illumination. Meanwhile, the $129 Kobo Glo has the brightest light of them all and a physical button at the top, but its display loses some contrast due to the bright light.

To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

The Kobo Glo e-reader is the third model in the past year to offer a built-in light. First came Barnes and Noble’s Nook Simple Touch with GlowLight in the spring, followed by Amazon's Kindle Paperwhite in the fall.

The Kobo Glo costs $129, which is $10 more expensive than its competitors–the Nook Simple Touch with GlowLight and the Kindle Paperwhite, each priced at $119. Kobo's approach to illumination is similar to the other two, with LED lights embedded in the edges of the display. Kobo gains an aesthetic edge, though, with its slim profile and a lightweight design that is arguably a more attractive e-reader than either the Nook or the Kindle.

The Glo measures 4.5 inches wide by 6.2 inches long, and is 0.39 inch thick—significantly thinner than the Simple Touch with GlowLight, which is 0.47 inch thick, and just a hair thicker than the Paperwhite, which is 0.36 inch thick. The Glo is also the lightest of the three e-readers, weighing just 0.41 pound. The Simple Touch with GlowLight weighs 0.43 pound, while the Paperwhite weighs 0.47 pound.Though it may not seem like much, that can make a huge difference when you’re holding a device in one hand for an extended period of time.

Like its competitors, the Glo has a simple design. A thin black bezel made of soft-touch, rubbery material surrounds the Glo’s 6-inch, high resolution (1024 by 768 pixels) touchscreen, and extends to the back of the device, where it’s scored in Kobo's distinctive diamond-quilt pattern.

To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

If you want to make time pass more slowly, just buy the wrong mobile device—especially one that comes tethered to a contract. Each day of those 24 months will feel like eternity.

A purchasing misstep like that will sow trouble and hassle throughout your entire mobile ecosystem. You won't be able to buy the apps you really want, you'll be barred from using the services you really need, and you'll feel like a complete doofus when you pull out that white elephant in a crowd and someone asks, with a raised eyebrow, "How's that workin' out for ya?"

We're here to help you avoid the stigma and potential chaos that can come with choosing the wrong mobile product. We've evaluated nearly every device and service on the market and have selected the cream of the crop for your consideration. If a mobile product isn't on this list, you probably don't want it. Trust us.

If you're wondering why the Nokia Lumia 920 didn't make our list, it's because at least one editor was required to have had in-depth experience with a product before recommending it. We didn't require a full review, but hands-on time at a press briefing didn't qualify. No one here had enough time with the Nokia Lumia 920 to meet that requirement before our print deadline.

To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Barnes & Noble isn't trying to do everything with the Nook HD. Instead, the company's 7-inch tablet focuses on doing what its Nooks have always done best: delivering the best reading experience you can get on any tablet today. By combining a high-resolution (243 pixels per inch) display with an attractive price and expandable storage, Barnes & Noble has positioned the Nook HD as a compelling tablet choice, especially if you plan to use it primarily for reading and Web surfing, though less so if you want to run the latest hot apps on it.

The Nook HD starts at $200 for the 8GB model, and the 16GB version retails for just $30 more. Though slightly pricier than the latest Amazon and Google tablet offerings, the 16GB Nook HD costs $100 less than Apple's iPad mini—a tablet that has a noticeably lower screen resolution. More important, unlike any of the other three tablets mentioned, the Nook HD has a MicroSD card slot, so you can easily add up to 64GB of storage if you need it. That feature gives the Nook a degree of flexibility that the others can't match.

All about the display

The Nook HD's display sets it apart from the rest of the 7-inch tablet pack: The stunning 1440-by-900-pixel display has the highest resolution of any 7-inch tablet, according to Barnes & Noble; by comparison, the resolution of the Google Nexus 7 tops out at 1280 by 800 pixels.

The Nook HD's display translates into a pixel density of 243 pixels per inch. That matches up well against the Nexus 7 and the Kindle Fire HD (at 216 ppi each) and the iPad mini (at 163 ppi). The Nook's higher pixel density makes a big difference: Text looked universally smoother and sharper on the Nook HD, even when using the same fonts as the Kindle Fire HD and the Nexus 7. For example, when I read Game of Thrones, the Nook HD showed less pixelation in text displayed in Georgia typeface than did the Kindle Fire HD using the same font.

To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Simple and straightforward: The fifth-generation Kindle is a sharpshooter that aims to provide an inexpensive e-reading experience, and little more. The Kindle retains the design, button navigation, and old-school software of its predecessor, which means the device hasn't kept pace with its more visual, easier to navigate competition. But it also means that Amazon can keep the price low; at $69, it's the cheapest e-reader you can buy.

The Kindle is Wi-Fi only, and has advertisement-supported and ad-free versions. The $69 “Special Offers” version has ads on the unlock and home screens, while the the price jumps to $89 for the ad-free version.

Simple design

The Kindle's 6-inch display has a 600 by 800 pixel resolution, which works out to 167 pixels per inch. Its text quality looks about the same as it did on last year's model, but the backplane is a brighter, lighter shade of gray than found on the fourth-generation Kindle; the difference is very clear in a side-by-side comparison. Both models have an E Ink Pearl display, but clearly Amazon has tweaked something in its software to improve the display's appearance. The Kindle still comes with 2GB of memory, which Amazon says can hold up to 1400 books.

Photo: Amazon

Physically, the Kindle feels comfortable in-hand, with a soft-touch paint texture on the back of the e-reader, and contoured edges. It measures 6.5 by 4.5 by 0.34 inches, and weighs just 0.37 pounds. That's noticeably narrower than the Barnes & Noble Nook Simple Touch.

To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Amazon’s Kindle Paperwhite is a significant upgrade to Amazon’s flagship Kindle e-reader. By including a light, a high-resolution display, and dramatically updated software, the $119 Kindle Paperwhite catches up to the competition in some ways and exceeds it in others. It’s the first e-reader with both a relatively high-resolution display and a built-in light; and in the Paperwhite, those two features make a compelling combination.

Leave a light on

Amazon

The big news about the Kindle Paperwhite is suggested by its name: It has a built-in light that, when adjusted to maximum brightness, makes the Kindle’s display look closer to white than to the tinted, newspaper gray typical of E Ink’s electrophoretic ink screens (including this one, when the light is off). The Paperwhite is also the first “traditional” Kindle to come with its own light; on previous models, you had to clip on a separate reading light or use a case with a light built into it if you wanted to read in the dark.

The Paperwhite uses four embedded LEDs to light its surface. The LEDs channel their light into a clear sheet of material that acts as a light guide, diffusing the light across the entire display. The approach is similar to the one Barnes & Noble uses with its Nook Simple Touch with Glowlight, but Amazon’s software implementation adjusts the hue of the lighting so that the page appears whiter as you advance the light level toward the high end of its 24 levels of brightness.

The Paperwhite’s light is brighter and more evenly distributed than the one on the Nook with Glowlight, and the LEDs are not as obvious as those on the Nook. I did notice some shadowing along the bottom of the display, which Amazon said was “by design at the bottom of the screen in the margin of the page where text is not present.”

To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

A year ago, I walked away from Amazon’s Kindle event thinking that the e-readers shown off there were merely mild, lazy, and ultimately disappointing refreshes of existing models. That wasn’t the case Thursday following the latest round of Kindle unveilings. I had a chance to delve into the new $119 Kindle Paperwhite and its $69 sibling, still simply called Kindle and was impressed by what I saw.

In contrast to last year’s tepid crop, this year’s Kindle models make E Ink-based e-readers exciting again. And they leave the competition behind on several metrics.

To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Concerned about Amazon.com’s low pricing of ebooks, publishers had taken measures as early as 2009 such as “windowing,” a practice of delaying ebook releases to benefit sales of hardcover editions, Apple said in a filing in an ebook price-fixing lawsuit.

The U.S. Department of Justice in an antitrust lawsuit in April last year alleged that Apple and five publishers had conspired to raise ebook prices.

The publishers had also pursued in 2009 an agency model to sell ebooks where the publisher would set the price or a price range for each ebook and the retailer, acting as an agent, would receive a commission on each ebook sale, and also discussed raising wholesale prices of ebooks, Apple said in the filing before the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.

Into this environment, Apple stepped in to negotiate with publishers to set up its own iBooks ebook store. It favored an agency model that gave it 30 percent commission, as the agency model had helped the company in its App Store, where the developer fixed the consumer price.

To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Amazon's Kindle e-readers and tablets could someday be brighter, cheaper, and more battery efficient, now that the company has acquired Liquavista—but the acquisition doesn't necessarily mean color e-ink screens are in our immediate future, as many have been quick to speculate.

Liquavista's technology uses a principal called “Electrowetting,” which applies voltage to move black liquids within the display. A video by IEEE Spectrum from January explains that the liquid acts as “curtain,” displaying red, green or blue light from a pixel as the curtain is raised. The result: A colored (if slightly washed-out looking) image.

It's more than just a pretty face, though. Liquavista claims that its technology offers a lower bill of materials than LCD displays, while fitting into manufacturers' existing infrastructure—no doubt a key interest to Amazon, which likes to peddle its wares at rock-bottom prices.

To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Sony will soon launch a flexible e-reader device that is less than 7mm thick and weighs 358 grams, targeted for use in university classrooms.

The company's grayscale "Digital Paper" device has a 13.3-inch touch capable screen, which it says is the size of an A4 document without margins. It has a Wi-Fi connection, 4GB of internal memory, and a microSD memory card slot.

Sony said the bare-bones device is meant to mimic real paper and so will have a feature set far smaller than existing tablets or e-readers. It can handle only the PDF format, although it supports file creation as well as adding highlights and notes to existing documents.

Jay Alabaster

The firm said it will market the device to universities. Sony quoted from a recent meeting of the Central Council for Education, a government agency under Japan's education ministry, that called for more participation by students during classroom lectures.

To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

If you’ve been waiting for a discount, it's time to buy: Barnes & Noble is slashing Nook tablet prices by up to 30 percent as part of a limited Mother’s Day promotion.

Barnes & Noble said the 30 percent off deal applies only through Mother’s Day on May 12. You can get for your mom (or yourself) a 7-inch Nook HD 8GB tablet for $149 instead of $199, or the 16GB model for $179. You can also get the 9-inch Nook HD+ 16GB for $179, down from $269; and the 32GB variant for $209. The offer covers purchases on Nook.com as well as Barnes & Noble retail outlets.

But Barnes & Noble won't necessarily undercut its rival Amazon, which is also offering Mother's Day discounts. Pricing for the 7-inch Kindle Fire, which sports a far lower resolution than the B&N tablet, starts at $159—$10 more than the discounted 8GB Nook HD. Amazon's Mother's Day deal is on the newer Kindle Fire HD, however, which starts at $199 for 16GB but will also cost $179 through May 12. The 8.9-inch Kindle Fire HD starts at $269, $60 more than the 9-inch Nook HD+.

The Nook HD promo also undercuts the Nexus 7 from Google by $50.

To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Amazon.com has updated its mobile app store to include support for its Chinese customers, in a sign that the U.S. company could be preparing to sell its Kindle e-readers and tablets in the country.

The update effectively launches a new version of Amazon's app store built in the Chinese language. The store comes in the form of an Android app, and the company has been promoting it since this past weekend.

The arrival of the new store comes just months after Amazon launched its Kindle e-book service in China last December. Both are key platforms for bringing content to the company's Kindle devices in the U.S. market. But in China, Amazon has yet to start selling its tablet and e-reader hardware, and its local offices have been mum on a future release date. The company on Monday did not immediately respond for comment.

Despite the absence of official sales, the Chinese market is showing some "pent-up demand" for Amazon's e-readers, said Mark Natkin, managing director of Beijing-based Marbridge Consulting. Research data from last year showed that Chinese consumers were increasingly buying the e-readers from overseas markets, he added.

To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Researchers demonstrated flexible, networked e-ink displays that behave like papers on a desk at a conference in Paris. The displays can be used separately or in tandem, opening up new possibilities for a paperless office.

Nick Barber

Called Paper Tab, the project presented at the Computer Human Interaction (CHI) conference includes three wired, flexible grayscale e-ink displays, similar to Amazon's original Kindle. The displays are not touch-screen devices, but can be bent as a form of input. For example, to respond to an email, users need to bend the top left corner of the display. They would then need to use a Bluetooth keyboard to compose the message.

Annesh P. Tarun, a Ph.D. student at the Human Media Lab at Queens University said that computers and tablets are limiting because "you're stuck with this portal through which you have to do all your interactions."

To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Kobo has Amazon in the crosshairs with its new Aura HD e-reader, which features a higher-resolution display than the Kindle Paperwhite—albeit at a higher price tag.

Kobo dubs the Aura HD a “premium” e-reader, with a 6.8-inch E Ink display sporting a 1440 by 1080 pixels resolution. That's good for a Kindle Paperwhite-topping 265 PPI pixel density. Amazon's e-reader rocks a slightly smaller 6-inch display with 1024 by 768 pixels resolution at 212 PPI, as you can see in the chart below.

Kobo also packed a 1GHz processor in the Aura HD, which is a notch faster than the 800MHz chips found in the Kindle Paperwhite or the Nook Simple Touch. The Aura HD has twice the RAM found in the Kindle and four times the amount in the Nook. Kobo claims these extra specs give it an edge over competing e-readers, making it 25 percent faster processing page turns.

All three readers feature their own version of backlighting technology, and claim battery life of up to eight weeks, though your mileage may vary depending on your usage pattern.

To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Amazon has quietly dropped the price of its 32GB Kindle Fire HD tablet, from $249 to $229.

A note on Amazon's Website refers to the “New Lower Price” for the 7-inch Kindle Fire HD, suggesting that the price drop is permanent. The Digital Reader first spotted the lower price tag.

For now, only the 32GB model is cheaper. The 16GB model still costs $199. Both models include advertisements or “Special Offers” on the lock screen, which can be removed for an extra $15. A wall charger is not included, but now costs $10 instead of $20.

This is the second price reduction for Amazon's Kindle Fire line in a month. In March, Amazon slashed prices for the 8.9-inch Kindle Fire HD by as much as $100. The larger tablet now starts at $269 with 16GB of storage, topping out at $399 with 32GB and 4G LTE connectivity.

To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

When you buy an ebook from Amazon, it's yours, right? Technically speaking, Amazon is merely licensing the book to you. And the company can, seemingly on a whim, close your account and delete all your books.

This isn't likely to happen, but it gives me pause. Indeed, it makes me want to back up the books I bought and paid for, just in case. What's more, if I ever decide I want to read those books using, say, another reader (be it an app or device), I'd like the option of converting them to another format.

Both options require the removal of Amazon's DRM -- the digital lock the company puts on its books to prevent unauthorized sharing.

I have no intention of sharing. I simply want to exercise my fair-use rights. Luckily, it's possible to remove Amazon's DRM (at your own risk, of course) using free book manager Calibre and a couple plug-ins.

To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

This is an updated, Firefox-oriented version of a post I wrote several months ago.

If you're a Firefox user and Kindle (or Kindle app) owner, today's your lucky day: You can now send Web pages directly to your mobile device.

Amazon has long offered the option of e-mailing documents to your Kindle, but this is only the second time Send to Kindle has branched out to a browser.

Just add the Send to Kindle extension to Firefox (it's also available for Chrome, with a Safari version coming soon), then navigate to any Web page you want to save. You can also select text on a page if you don't need the whole thing.

To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Amazon has long offered the option of e-mailing documents to your Kindle, but this is the first time Send to Kindle has branched out to a browser.

Just add the Send to Kindle extension to Chrome, then navigate to any Web page you want to save. (You can also select text on a page if you don't need the whole thing.)

When you click the Send to Kindle icon at the end of your address bar (it's represented by a little 'K'), you'll see two main options: Send to Kindle and Preview & Send. (If you've selected text, you'll also see Send Selected Text.) All pretty self-explanatory, no?

To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

In this guide I'll explain how to do it. First, however, some credit where credit is due: People originally showcased this method on TinyApps.org, demonstrating the procedure on a Mac. After working with those folks, I was easily able to apply it to Windows 7 as well. Setting your Kindle DX up as a second monitor is a great trick, but it also can be useful in situations where screen glare on your regular monitor is hurting your eyes.

Ingredients

To get started, you need a Kindle DX, its USB cable, and a PC. You also need a few software components:

• Kindle-jailbreak-0.10.N.zip, from the MobileRead Forums
• Kindle-usbnetwork-0.37.N.zip, from the same MobileRead thread
• Kindle VNC Viewer
• TightVNC, a VNC server
• PuTTY or another Telnet client

Jailbreak Your Kindle DX

Obviously you're about to do something the Kindle DX wasn't meant to do out of the box. To make it smart enough for this trick, you have to jailbreak it. Jailbreaking is a pretty painless procedure. Start by connecting the Kindle DX to your computer and waiting for Windows to mount it as a USB storage device (this should happen automatically after a moment). Next, from Kindle-jailbreak-0.10.N.zip, extract the file called update_jailbreak_0.10.N_dxg_install.bin. Place this file in the root of your Kindle (not in the documents folder).

To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Editor’s Note: If you’re planning to replace your old iPad with a shiny, new third-generation iPad, you don’t necessarily have to sell your old tablet or give it away. This is the latest in a series of articles in which we look at ways to give your old iPad a new purpose. In this installment, we focus on converting your old iPad into a dedicated e-reader.

Turning an iPad into a one-trick e-reading pony may seem counter-intuitive. After all, your iPad can take on lots of tasks from surfing the Web to marshaling an army of angry birds. Why limit yourself to just one task, even if that task is as pleasurable as sitting down with a good book?

Because, try as you might, you simply can’t ignore the other tantalizing distractions your iPad has to offer, and stripping those out will help you lose yourself in a good read. Because you’ve upgraded to a newer model, and you’re not ready to recycle that old iPad just yet. And—if you happen to use an original iPad—because your device’s future is about to get a lot more limited. iOS 6 will introduce a lot of new features when it arrives this fall—and your original iPad won’t be able to handle any of them, as the forthcoming iOS update won’t run on your first-generation tablet.

To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Step 1: Download and install DoubleTwist for PC. Although a free DoubleTwist media-player app is available for Android, you need only the desktop version to set up sync.

Step 2: Launch DoubleTwist, and it will scan your PC for media. You can import music, photos, and videos that the program does not automatically find, as well as playlists from iTunes and Windows Media Player, by exploring the Library menu.

Step 3: Connect your Android phone to your PC via USB, and then click the status bar and set your phone to USB Mass Storage or Disk Drive mode. You’ll see your phone under Devices in DoubleTwist.

To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Step 1: Download Calibre.

Step 2: Install the program and launch it. In the Welcome Wizard, choose a location for your ebook library, as well as the model of your Kindle. The Setup Wizard will ask you about email delivery of your ebooks; for details and fees, check out Amazon’s FAQ. We’ll explore the free, USB-based method in this article.

To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Credit for this specific Kindle Fire root method goes to Android Forums user "death2all110." In order to perform it, you'll need the Android SDK and a special root app called SuperOneClick. Don't worry, though--we'll show you how to do it from scratch.

Step 1: Turn on your Kindle Fire and tap the top bar, near the battery and Wi-Fi icons; press More... from the drop-down menu, then Device, and tap Allow Installation of Applications to On.

Step 2: Download the Android SDK from the Android Developer site. Get the version with an installer app (installer_r15-windows.exe).

To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

No, literally, read on. I'm talking about e-books, which you can borrow from friends and family members to read on your Barnes & Noble Nook or Amazon Kindle--but only for two weeks. If that's not enough time to finish your e-copy of, say, "The Help," you're pretty much out of luck; you'll have to see if you can borrow it again from someone else (any purchased e-book can be loaned only once) or buy it outright.

Or maybe not. I've discovered a way to keep a borrowed e-book indefinitely--or at least until you finish reading it.

The back story: I was halfway through Jonathan Franzen's "Freedom" when my e-book loan (by way of eBookFling) reached the two-week mark. I'd received e-mail notification that this was imminent, so I knew exactly when time was about to be up.

To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here