Good morning, all! I'm working on a longer piece for next week, so I have for you this week a link to an interview -- audio and text -- on ereaders and the publishing industry that I found really interesting.

There are text highlights from the interview with Ken Auletta on ebooks, ereaders, and publishers, based on a recent column of his from the New Yorker magazine here and the audio is here.

The piece is from Terry Gross's interview program Fresh Air on WBUR, one of the NPR member stations in Boston. I've recently managed to set up a kind of Mickey Mouse radio using computer speakers and my MP3 player, so I'm able to listen to NPR more regularly again.

What I find most interesting about these "salvation of the publishing industry" stories in general -- and this one is no exception! -- is the idea that the publishing industry is doomed (unless it can be saved by ebooks in some fashion) because "people don't read anymore." They don't? Really? I take the T in Boston almost every day and there's never less than 2 and often as many as 12-15 people reading in the car I'm in. I walk by people in the street reading Kindles, magazines, books, the free Metro newspaper. People stand in line waiting for the Boston Public Library, the Brookline Public Library, or the Borders down on Boylston Street (the most recent addition to the chain in Boston) to open (and they're not all waiting to go inside and fall asleep in the reading room or use the bathroom). I go down to used bookstores like Brattle Books near Boston Common and their $5-$3-$1 carts of books outside the store are always crowded. Reading is moribund? Honestly?

A few weeks ago, I saw this article on Eye-Tracking Tablets and the Promise of Text 2.0 on Wired.com.

The gist of the article is talking about the possibilites of what seems to me to be like meta-text: text on a tablet or an ereader which would, in some way, react to the reader. If your eye pauses on a word for too long, it might suggest definitions for the word, assuming that you were stuck for a meaning. It might condense the text to help you scan through and add information to a passage if background would seem to be helpful.

The author of the article, Eliot Van Buskirk, describes the possibilites of "Text 2.0": "This could present incalculable opportunities to reinvigorate the written word, and become a key differentiator from print — a positive one."

Van Buskirk also mentions the need to "breathe new life into the written word" which I don't particularly like as a statement. I think the written word is doing just fine; I'm not sure it needs "new life," but that's more a matter of nitpicking or personal opinion than anything else, and I've noticed such language comes as a pretty natural part of coverage of ereader/tablet news these days. It's interesting to ponder why this might be: do we have to prove that "old" text is no good in order to make room for the "new" stuff? If so, why? Is it impossible for the two to co-exist in some way? Maybe it is -- perhaps this is what the transition between scroll and bound book looked like and we just don't know it yet. I find that a little hard to believe, but climacterics are often difficult to see from the inside.

As far as "Text 2.0" goes, I have to admit that I can see more immediate possibilities for, perhaps not abuse, but certainly annoyance, than for utility. Who hasn't been annoyed by those pop-up or scrolling ads on websites or blogs that distract the eye and can be really hard to shut down? And I tried to picture what this sort of effect might look like as I was re-reading one of my favorite books last night in an attempt to soothe a bout of headache-induced insomnia. And all I could think of was: What on earth would this process do with a book with words like "Bookling," "Uggly," "Zamonian," and "Lindworm" scattered freely about?

But...on the other hand, as a devout lover of cross-references, I have to say there are some intriguing possibilites for inter-relations between texts -- to say nothing of the obvious ease of having a built-in dictionary if you're working with an academic or technical text. Even better if you can add a foreign language dictionary for relevant pieces. And presumably it would be the sort of thing you could turn on and off, or, like the better word-processing programs, teach, so it wouldn't be constantly trying to define words that were being defined by the text.

I'd love to see a mock-up for something like this; something that you could actually poke at and use for ten or fifteen minutes to get a sense of the possibilities in both directions.

So this week a good friend of mine sent me over a story from the New York Times about the ecological breakdown between producing/using an ereader and producing/using a straight-up old- fashioned book: How Green is my iPad?

It's short and not wildly interactive although it says it is (perhaps I missed something?), and pretty basic. It doesn't claim to catch every single tiny disparity or similarity between the two and, indeed, it can't because, as the article points out, some elements of ereader make-up are proprietary and no-one really knows what happens. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain and so forth.

And I was thinking about the environmental blowback from ereaders this week with the release of the iPad because there's a really big, really new Apple store near one of the routes I walk home on a regular basis and, what with one thing and another and following a couple of big-time Mac fans on Twitter, I heard all about the release of the iPad as I heard all about the release of the Kindle awhile back.

Now, I'm not a Mac fan and I really have no particular interest in an iPad. Touchscreen technology makes me vaguely twitchy -- how do you clean it? what if it smears? what happens if a bit stops working?

And I think this last question, tweaked a bit, is an interesting point: iPads are the latest gizmo. They're a gadget and, yes, some people are buying them out of serious interest and desire to use, having followed pre-release publicity, checked out the specs, read advance reviews, and decided this is the gizmo for them. Other people, perhaps with more disposal income, are buying them because they're the latest cool thing -- like the Palm, the iPod, or the Blackberry was in its time. And what's going to happen when they lose interest? Sure, there's some likelihood of resale or donation -- but what happens when these gizmos start being thrown away?

Having grown up in a town with a giant -- and I do use the word "giant" advisedly here -- landfill smack beside it, I can vouch for the fact that people aren't generally speaking the best about handling their trash. The "trash" section of the public access part of the landfill was about the size of a fairly large parking lot. The recyling section? About the size of a fairly large room. You get the idea.

So what's going to happen when this gadget -- containing its 33 pounds of minerals, sundry fossil fuels, and battery components -- loses its glamour or gets too old? What does happen when the touchscreen stops working?

Apologies for the blank space here last week, folks; the return of some intrusive health problems prevented me from getting a lot of work done when I normally would have been preparing posts. Sadly, this is still the situation this week -- plus or minus some other schedule changes -- but rather than leave this space empty for another week or throw together a too-hasty review or commentary, I decided to put together a links list instead. One of my favorite techniques for blogging without really having time to blog!

So here are some of my favorite places to get book and ebook related news -- so often they're the same place since book/publishing/writing/library folks are a pretty natural audience for ebook news of all kinds! -- and if I miss your favorite site or there's something you think should be on the list, please, drop it in the comments.

So, in no particular order...

• Bookninja.com. This blog does tend to focus more on "traditional" book news, but the ninjas cover pretty much everything one way or another including a (more or less) daily does of digital news which is often ebooks news. It's a Canadian site, too, so there are often critiques of things going on in the American market that can be -- well, lets say, slightly harder to find in the US.
• If:book is a project from the Institute for the Future of the Book which is pretty much exactly what it sounds like! It's a think-tank of folks who just really like pondering book/publishing/ebook-related issues. Their posts are often lengthy and quite meaty, but always worth setting aside time to read.
• MobyLives is a great source for all kinds of book/ebook news and another Canadian site.

Now, if you're into more library-related ebooks news, there are some great places to look for that, too:

• The DigitalKoans site is kind of a clearinghouse for all kinds of digital- related news and information, including lots on ebooks and epublishing. They are also a great resource to find stories about copyright and freedom of access, both good issues to be informed about re: ebooks, although you could spend your entire life keeping up to date!

And if you're looking for more indepth, scholarly takes on e-issues, I'd suggest hitting up one of these three places:

• Ariadne is a fantastic, Web-based library journal from the UK. The articles are usually highly readable and they've been including lots on new uses of technology, e-issues, digital copyright, and online collections lately.
• D-Lib Magazine, out of the US, is along the same lines; has lots of good stuff about creating digital collections, making sure people can find them, use of ebooks in library collections, and so forth.

And, finally, another hit from the UK:

• The JISC website. Their aim is to "inspires UK colleges and universities in the innovative use of digital technologies" and their website is a great way to lose -- oh, an hour or two? surfing between project reports, partner sites, and so on.

So I hope that gives you some new sites to check out on your Tuesday -- and if there's something I missed, let me know!