reading

I've been an e-book fan for as long as I can remember. Ever since I found myself stuck on a slow-moving mountain train with nothing but my PalmPilot and an e-book, I've been hooked on digital reading.

Flash-forward some 15 years and e-books are everywhere, thanks in no small part to the Amazon Kindle -- a dedicated e-reader with a special "e-ink" screen that I still consider a marvel of modern technology. (Know why Kindles and other e-ink devices have such phenomenal battery life? Because every pixel on the screen is either "on" or &… Read more

Stanza is a reader for books, available in apps for most devices. We downloaded Stanza from iTunes, and it installed quickly. The app is free.

Stanza lets you read books on your iDevice using a simple, elegant interface. Notably, compared with other reader apps, Stanza supports a wide range of file formats from PDF to EPUB, including those with DRM and without. In fact, we tested Stanza with almost a hundred different books over the space of a couple of months of commuting, and it opened every file we threw at it from different sources. When launched, Stanza shows a … Read more

A quick note to my fellow Michiganders: The Cheapskate will be appearing tomorrow, Dec. 5, at the Ypsilanti Public Library, at 7 p.m. I'll be there to share the secrets of saving money on all things tech, naturally. Hope you can make it!

So, hey, remember Black Friday, when one of the big doorbuster deals at Target was a Nook Simple Touch e-reader for 50 bucks? Well, it's back, and you don't have to go anywhere near a door -- or a store, for that matter.

While supplies last, Walmart has the refurbished Barnes & Noble Nook Simple Touch e-reader for $49.99 shipped, … Read more

Winmail Reader is a useful and simple tool for anyone who sends or receives messages from the older Microsoft Outlook 97 and 2000 applications (winmail.dat). With Winmail Reader, the user can read, convert, and save file attachments that come from Outlook, Outlook Express, and Microsoft Exchange applications as well as Thunderbird and Lotus Notes e-mail clients. It is a freeware application that works on the later versions of the Windows operating system including XP, Vista, and Windows 7.

The layout of Winmail Reader will be familiar to any Windows user, and there aren't many options, so most people … Read more

If you like reading, bundles, science fiction, fantasy, and/or supporting charity, today's your lucky day.

The folks at Humble Bundle, who regularly serve up indie games on the cheap, have created the Humble eBook Bundle, a collection of six sci-fi/fantasy e-books for whatever price you want to pay.

That means you can literally drop a penny to get half a dozen DRM-free novels. But you're not that cheap, right? Here's why you should give serious consideration to paying more:

Writers need to eat. I've often railed against e-book prices, but certainly a buck per … Read more

I love books. I also love bundles. Typically, the latter consist of things like indie games and productivity software and give you some pretty serious bang for the buck.

If only some clever developer would combine these two loves of mine.

Done! The StoryBundle Big Bang Bundle lets you name your own price for five "indie" e-books. And if you pay at least $7, you'll get two bonus books.

This is StoryBundle's first offering, and hopefully it won't be the last. As with any number of game bundles I've covered before, this one lets … Read more

New e-reading converts might be surprised to find out that despite the fact that e-books can be read on computers, there's no real way to print out a page for reference. In the olden days, you could just put a paperback facedown on a copier, but with e-books, it's a little trickier.

Just in time for school bells and syllabi, here are some go-to ways for printing out pages from an e-book.

Remember, though, that policies for the many book publishers vary, so review those policies and move forward at your own risk. Distributing copyrighted material without authorization … Read more

Mozilla took a big step toward the coming conflict between native apps and Web apps as it introduced Web app support to Firefox 16, which moved to the the developer's Aurora channel last Friday.

The Web app support in Firefox 16 Aurora (download for Windows, for Mac, for Linux, and for Android) means that when the Mozilla Marketplace opens to the public -- likely to be sometime before the end of 2012 -- people will be able to run Web-based apps through any iteration of Firefox. This is part of Mozilla's "Kilimanjaro" project, syncing up the … Read more

Sadness and hope often hold hands, but the latter can never decide whether she can make the former happy.

This story is either sad or strangely hopeful. Either way, it's also missing a couple of facts.

For this is the story of David Johnson, who believes that Jay-Z reads his emails.

In a moving telling to BuzzFeed, Johnson says he has sent at least 262 e-mails to Jay-Z and that he believes Jay-Z is reading them.

At least, he thinks he's sending them to Jay-Z.

Johnson, who once campaigned mightily to get a chance in the NBA -- … Read more