Video: Neil Gaman Explains How Piracy Helps New Readers Discover His Work, and Thus Helps His Overall Sales in the Long-Run

A word from our sponsor: Video trailer featuring music performed by Pete Seeger for New Street's reissue of David Arkin's BLACK AND WHITE

Amazon’s New Kindle Commercial Jabs At iPad Again

SlashGear: "The Kindle commercial also accentuates the fact that their device can run up to a month on one battery charge and comes at you with a relatively affordable price point of $139. These advantages plus their overall feel-good message of 'The Book Lives On' should appeal to the true book enthusiasts. And for those book lovers considering an iPad instead, Amazon warns you again in this commercial of the imminent glare."

Nook Color Commercial

Barnes & Noble has released a new television ad for the Nook Color.

2 New Amazon Kindle Ads for Holidaze

Check them out:

Last Gasp - GOODNIGHT MOON (WITH ZOMBIES)

Enjoy this brief video and feel free to pass along. Happy Halloween from your pals at New Street. Play safe, children.

Goodnight Moon (with Zombies)

Happy (early) Halloween from New Street Communications, LLC. Please feel free to forward.

"Dracula" App Coming from PadWorx Digital - Their First Item Up

PadWorx releases their first app this Halloween. The video demo is intriguing.

David Pogue/Kindle - The Video!

Here we go. Very funny.

Nook for iPhone Video

Here's a useful demo showing B&N's new Nook for iPhone app. This was done by Dianna Dilworth of eBookNewser.

GooReader - New Reading App for GoogleBooks Released Today

Here is Google's somewhat boring promotional video demonstrating the interface.

Lonely Planet Interactve "Discover" Guidebooks for the iPad

The books include direct links to relevant web content (hotel sites, restaurant websites, etc.), the ability to search in Google or Wikipedia, etc. Currently available: Great Britain, Ireland, Spain, Italy and France. More on the way.

Video Introduction to NOMAD

Check this video.

Sharp Will Launch XMDF E-book Reader Later This Year

PCWorld:

Japan's Sharp plans to enter the increasingly competitive e-book reader market later this year with a device that can read a new e-publishing file format of its own, it said Tuesday.

The company will launch an e-book reader in Japan before the end of the year and is also working towards a launch outside of Japan. The device, which has not yet been detailed by the company, is likely to hit the U.S. after Japan and Sharp said it is already in launch talks with Verizon Wireless. ...

Sharp's e-book readers will read files in a new version of XMDF (ever-eXtending Mobile Document Format), a format developed by Sharp and used in some of its previous devices.

The new version adds support for multimedia data and will allow audio and video to be embedded into e-book pages.

The original version of XMDF was accepted into the international standard for e-publishing (IEC62448), although its use remains largely confined to Japan. ...

Sharp said it has yet to decide if its reader will support other formats in addition to XMDF. ...

And Now, iBooks Audio and Video Support

From Mac Observer:

Along with iTunes 9.2.1, Apple released iBooks 1.1.1 for the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch late on Monday. The update for Apple’s ebook reader app added support for ebooks that include audio and video content.

Version 1.1.1 also added the ability to double-tap images to zoom in, improved performance when reading PDF documents, added the ability to look up English word definitions in books that don’t include a specified language, and improved overall stability and performance.

Kindle iPad App Gets Audio and Video, Plus New Amazon Emphasis on Reader Software Over Hardware?

The italics are mine. This report by Paul Lamkin for Pocket-lint:

Amazon has released an update to its Kindle apps for iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad that allows for the embedding of audio and video features within its eBook titles.

Now, not only is this a rather nifty little feature, it also raises two very significant points. Firstly, that the Kindle app can surely now claim to be the best eBook reader available in the App Store, even trumping Apple's very own iBooks.

And secondly it shows that Amazon considers the Kindle to be a significant brand, rather than just a hardware product. After all, the Kindle eBook readers themselves are not capable of these multimedia features (or even color for that matter) and so it demonstrates that Amazon may well be prepared to let its hardware take a back seat as its software makes inroads into the app market.

The first books that take advantage of the new functionality are Rick Steves' London and Together We Cannot Fail by Terry Golway. ...

Also note this from MobilitySite. Once again, italics are mine:

Adding video/audio to ebooks certainly steals a march on iBooks. Of course, such tech has been the basis for Vooks for nearly a year now. The ability to open ebooks with video or audio INSIDE a reader and not as a separate app is new however, and has it’s advantages and disadvantages. I am fascinated that Amazon is targeting this ONLY at Apple products. I wonder if they will be updating their PC or Blackberry software to also display Kindle Editions, and if it will be included in their upcoming Android software? Personally, I have a feeling they may keep it focused at Apple, at least for the short term.