Amazon is not only tracking Kindle users highlighted passages, they are also advertising the fact. While this might make for an interesting study in what readers find important in a particular book, my big question is: Does this mean privacy should be compromised?

I first saw this story on Mediabistro, which gave a rather simplistic, non critical post of this new Amazon practice. I did a quick Google search and found another, more critical article from Bnet Amazon risks Kindle sales by tracking, reporting what readers highlight. This fact that Amazon is now tracking your ebook highlights begs other questions: What else are they tracking? What about annotated comments?

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Brad’s Reader is coming up on almost 3.5 years on the net, something I’m very proud of and I hope to continue blogging for many more years to come. That said, you will start seeing a slow shift on Brad’s Reader to reflect all the changes this blog has gone through in the last 3.5 years.

The changes won’t be anything drastic. I’ll still be posting regularly and most of the content will stay the same. I guess you can say I’m giving the Brad’s Reader brand a slight shift into a direction it has been headed in for a while now.

I always love to read author’s self-publishing success stories. They are not only very inspiring, but these stories chip away at the negative stigma of self-publishing. The route these authors take is a hard one, they don’t have the resources of a large publishing house and distributor behind them. Thus they often have to promote their work themselves using their own websites, Twitter, Facebook and other methods.

But one author has taken self-publishing to a whole new level. Christopher Herz decided to use the POD model with his book

After my grandmother passed away last December, my mom and her brother and sister have been going through her house to get her belongings sorted out. Among those items was a short story I wrote when I was 12, around the time I was in the 7th grade (about 1992). I sent it to my grandparents and they had apparently filed it away for all these years.

I don’t remember writing this specific short story, but I remember it being an assignment for my creative writing class. We had to read them in front of the class – which was probably the worst part. The only other memory I have of this story is was received pretty well by my classmates and my creative writing teacher.

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Note: Can’t decide on which ebook reader is right for you? Check out my post Ebook Reader Holiday Roundup that compares the major readers on the market. You might also want to read Nook Vs. Kindle: Sharing Ebooks with Others.

Barnes & Noble’s Nook ebook reader just got a face lift when firmware 1.3 became available for Nook owners to download. This is probably the biggest and most significant firmware upgrade for Nook to date. And it’s becoming even more obvious that the largest bookseller in the United States is serious about taking on the Kindle and the Sony family of ereaders.

Here are the new Nook 1.3 features:

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I finally got my hands on the new Apple iPad last weekend when I visited my local Apple Store. I will admit, the device is beautiful, albeit a bit heavy.

Portable gaming is brought to a whole new level – I demoed my favorite iPhone game “Flight Control.” The virtual keyboard that pops up when you need to type is easy to use and is almost like a real keyboard. For my thoughts about iBooks and ebook reading on the iPad, visit my previous post 5 Minutes with the iPad.

After trying out the iPad for myself, I now want one. Of course, my wallet keeps my inner geek in check. I can dream, can’t I?

As always, have a happy and safe weekend!

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Last weekend I headed to the Apple Store at my local mall for a few minutes of hands-on time with the new iPad. I’ll be honest, I’m very impressed. If I didn’t want one before, I do now. The device is sleek and fun to play with. My only general complaint is that the iPad is way too heavy. Holding it up in your hands for any length of time would be very uncomfortable.

Of course, I most looked forward to testing out iBooks, Apples new ebook app for the iPad. I opened up iBooks and opened a random book. The text is crystal clear on a white background and the page turns are smooth. When you swipe your finger to turn the page, you see the page turn over like on a real book. Pretty nifty!

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I just finished reading Final Passage by Timothy Frost on my iPhone. I downloaded his novel from the Barnes & Noble ebookstore as a free purchase. Frost’s novel is made available to B&N.com via Smashwords (aff link). The novel’s synopsis looked really interesting, so I gave it a shot. And I must say, I’m glad I did.

The premise of Final Passage is the main character, Martin Lancaster, is trying to figure out what really happened to his father – who was killed at sea while sailing. During his investigation, Martin is unable to find his father’s logbook, a piece of evidence that would shed more light on the elder Lancaster’s untimely death.

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A while back ago I decided I was going to de-Google my life due to privacy concerns. So I switched my email to Yahoo!, installed NetNewsWire on my Mac for my RSS reader and I began using variety of search engines such as Bing, Cuil and yes, even Google. Also, instead of Google Docs, I’ve been using Zoho.

I’m still using Yahoo! Mail and the various search engines, but I’m dumping NetNewsWire and going back to Google Reader. NetNewsWire just didn’t do it for me like Google Reader does. I also figured that I’ll spread myself around so all my eggs aren’t in one basket.

That’s the excitement in my neck of the woods. As always, have a happy and safe weekend!

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My local bookstore held a book signing for 3 authors last weekend. It drew a sizeable crowd and there’s no doubt a lot of books were sold to customers anxiously seeking an autograph from their favorite author/s.

I’ll confess, I’m a literary autograph hound myself. I have a small collection of autographed books (a collection I hope to expand). There is something about having an author sign his/her own work that makes owning that book like a trophy – as hokey as that sounds.

But with ebooks rapidly growing in popularity, what’s going to happen to author signings? After all, I wouldn’t want an author to sign my Sony Pocket Edition. As popular as ebooks have become, and as their popularity will continue to rise, I still think there will be a spot for print books in the literary marketplace.

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