OPLS blog

There is much speculation in the blogosphere that Amazon are just about to launch a second version of their e-book reader, Kindle (something we blogged about just over a year ago).

The guys over at The Boy Genius Report claim to have the first pictures, although they do look a little prototype-ish.

It’s a welcome announcement. Not least because these things need to get a lot better before they become more popular with the wider public. The wireless connectivity is a major advantage over its rival, the Sony Reader, but, as with the Sony, the current Kindle needs to meet the more social aspects of book reading, such as note/annotation sharing and clippings features.  Perhaps Kindle 2 will go some way to addressing these needs on Feb 9.

In an interesting postscript to my previous entry, The Million Book Project, an international venture led by Carnegie Mellon University in the United States, Zhejiang University in China, the Indian Institute of Science in India and the Library at Alexandria in Egypt, has completed the digitization of more than 1.5 million books, which are now available online.

Though Google, Microsoft, the Internet Archive and recently Amazon have all launched major book digitisation projects, the Million Book Project represents the world’s largest, university-based digital library of freely accessible books. At least half of its books are out of copyright, or were digitised with the permission of the copyright holders, so the complete texts are, or eventually will be, available free.

It’s another great initiative and one to continue watching.