iBooks

Blogshelf rules blog reading on iPad

Remember Early Edition, the iPad app that presents your RSS feeds in an attractive newspaper-style format? Well, I've shelved it for now while I indulge my fascination with Blogshelf, a blog and RSS reader that has a dazzling iBooks-style presentation.

Designed for "casual users," Blogshelf ($4.99) offers roughly the same experience as browsing the magazine shelves at the library. It comes with about 20 popular blogs--Autoblog, Cinematical, Serious Eats, and so on--already configured, but you can line your "shelves" with preselected blogs from 18 categories.

It also has a search option to help you … Read more

Easily save Web pages, documents in iTunes for use with iOS devices

Have you ever wanted to be able to save a Web site or document you wanted to read later to your iPhone or iPad? Follow these simple steps and take any offline reading you need to get done with you on your iOS device.… Read more

Easily save Web sites, documents in iTunes for use with iBooks on iOS 4

Have you ever wanted to be able to save a Web site or document you wanted to read later to your iPhone or iPad? Follow these simple steps and take any offline reading you need to get done with you on your iOS device.

This hint requires a Mac using the latest version of iTunes and an iOS 4-compatible device with iBooks 1.1 installed. Once you've completed each step, you will be able to save Web sites, documents, or any other data that any Mac OS X application allows to be printed to PDF directly into iTunes for … Read more

B&N adds $149 Wi-Fi-only Nook, cuts Nook 3G to $199

We've been waiting to see which company--Amazon or Barnes & Noble--would blink first when it came to price cuts for its e-readers, and now we get the answer.

Barnes & Noble not only introduced on Monday a new Wi-Fi-only Nook for $149, but also cut the price of the original Wi-Fi and 3G-enabled Nook from $259 to $199. The new model will be available later this week and can be preordered now.

Barnes & Noble is also upgrading the software for its Nook e-readers to version 1.4 and offering "complimentary" access to all AT&T … Read more

How to load EPUBs into iBooks

Apple's iBooks app includes a storefront of thousands of titles, many of which are free, public domain books. But if you really have a thing for free books, online repositories, such as Project Gutenberg and Google Books offer a vast selection of e-book titles that users can download to their computers.

These same files are also compatible with Apple's iBooks app, but it isn't exactly obvious how to load them onto your device.

The following CNET How To walks you though the process of downloading an online EPUB book file, loading it into iTunes, giving it cover … Read more

Texas AG questions e-book publishers

Two major publishing houses have been questioned about electronic book pricing by the Texas Attorney General's Office, according to two reports Wednesday.

Hachette Book Group and HarperCollins both told The Wall Street Journal that they had been contacted by the Texas AG's office, but did not elaborate on the subject of the inquiry. Earlier, book industry publication Publishers Marketplace reported that Apple was the target of the state's questioning.

Hachette and HarperCollins are two of the six major book publishers who publish digital books on Apple's iBooks platform.

Apple is relatively new to e-books, but it … Read more

Analyst says Nook selling better than Kindle

The Barnes & Noble Nook e-reader shipped more than Amazon's Kindle in March, DigiTimes Research claims in a new study.

According to DigiTimes, it consulted "suppliers" of the e-readers to determine how many units shipped. Based on that information, the researchers found that the Nook "accounted for 53 percent of e-book readers shipped to U.S. vendors last month." The company didn't provide data on how much of the market the Kindle took, but based on the fact that the Nook accounted for more than half of all shipments in March, the researchers concluded … Read more

How to find free e-books for your iPad

There are a lot of advantages to the iPad as an e-reader, chief among them its capability to be a true multiformat product supporting Kindle, ePubs, PDFs, and others.

One little difficulty remains: finding ways to get free books.

Sure, Apple and others don't exactly want you to stock up on free literature if they can help it, especially in the case of books that aren't public domain. Still, we have to try, don't we? Here are the best (legal) ways not to pay.

The iBooks Store does have over 30,000 free books, mostly from Project … Read more

iPad trick: Copy and paste from iBooks

Many people are hoping the iPad can replace their traditional laptop for many productivity applications. One such group is students. If you need to copy text from one of your eBooks on your iPad, you may be disappointed to find out that the DRM management in iBooks does not allow this directly. Use this tip to copy and paste content from your downloaded eBooks.… Read more