THE MASSIVE EBOOK NEWS ROUNDUP.

Whatever you think of eBooks, the fact that the technology heralds the biggest change in publishing in many years can not be denied. Here, written in best anchor man style, is the Archive's look at pretty much all that is happening at the moment.

* eBooks are based on the use of eInks technology. eInks can display white or black pixel at very high resolution and can retain its color even without active power supply. It is probably the biggest revolution in publishing after the printing press and the Internet. Just as the printing press was the catalyst for a scientific revolution and the Internet paved the way for a business revolution, now eBooks will pave the way for large-scale change in education and knowledge delivery. FULL STORY

* Amazon decline to reveal how many Kindles they have sold - Crickets chirp in response to that headline. And until an answer is provided, as far as we're concerned, we're not falling for carefully worded press releases devoid of hard information. As far as we're concerned, Amazon's Kindle has no clothes.

As Phil Wahba reports for Reuters, "Online retailer Amazon.com Inc. is testing Wall Street's patience by repeatedly touting the success of its Kindle electronic reader without providing specific sales figures."

"In one press release after another in recent months, Amazon has talked up the Kindle's best-seller status across all product categories," Wahba reports. "On the day after Christmas, the retailer said the Kindle was the most-purchased gift in its history and sales of its electronic books surpassed physical book sales on the holiday itself. Previously, Amazon said the device had its best monthly sales ever in December, with only half of the month gone by at that point." FULL STORY


*Google are desperate to dominate the eBook market - pring Design, the developers of the Alex Reader, a two-screen digital reader featuring both b&w E-Ink and full-color LCD screens, has reached an agreement with Google to provide access to more than a million public domain digital books online or through download. The newly developed Alex Reader runs on the Google-developed Android OS and offers full web browsing functionality through the color screen and the Android Web browser.

The Alex Reader represents an effort to offer the best of both screen technologies and functionality—an E-Ink screen for straight text reading like the Kindle or Nook readers with a backlit high-res color screen now added for simultaneous web browsing much like an iPhone or netbook computer. E-ink devices are notoriously bad for web browsing and the Alex Reader is the first of a new generation of dedicated e-readers that will be on display at the Consumer Electronics Show this week that will also offer dual screen technology to allow readers the ability to read and browse the web with ease. The Alex Reader has already made something of a splash when it was unveiled in October FULL STORY