CleanTech's report on the environmental impact of the Kindle

A new report on the lifecycle assessement of the environmental impact of the Kindle vs paper...

"Only time will tell if electronic book readers are to become a new standard in the future. But the Cleantech Group takes an in-depth look at the environmental impact of the devices in its recent lifecycle analysis.

"The new study finds that e-readers could have a major impact on improving the sustainability and environmental impact on the publishing industry, one of the world’s most polluting sectors. In 2008, the U.S. book and newspaper industries combined resulted in the harvesting of 125 million trees, not to mention wastewater that was produced or its massive carbon footprint."

Continue reading a synopsis of the study...

More on the Kindle at Arizona State

Will everyone get on the same page? Can they even find the same page? Some info that might be relevant to an LCA study here.

This Could be the Year of e-Textbooks (Chronicle of Higher Education, 9/9/09).

Dianne

Sony's Kindle rival

Sony's rival to the Kindle -- different models with varying prices, uses AT&T's wireless network...

Sony has committed to an open e-book standard, meaning its Readers can show copy-protected books from a variety of stores, and the books can be moved to and read on a variety of devices, including cell phones.

Sony also announced Tuesday that the Readers will be able to load e-books "loaned" from local libraries. A library card will provide access to free books that expire after 21 days.

The library connection "would seem to be something Amazon would never embrace, so that could be a key differentiator," said Richard Doherty, director of research firm The Envisioneering Group.

Read the full story here: http://tech.yahoo.com/news/ap/20090825/ap_on_hi_te/us_tec_sony_e_books

Kindle and accessibility

This article/posting describes some of the issues around the Kindle 2 (the newest one) and accessibility. There are zoomtext features and text-to-voice, but the buttons for navigation might be a problem, it's not clear (to me) how the annotation works, and (the killer), it's up to the publisher to make the content accessible! Also, at Arizona State, a lawsuit! Still...

http://asyourworldchanges.wordpress.com/2009/07/06/amazon-kindle-arizona-state-accessibility-what-a-mess/

Dianne

Princeton University will use Kindle e-reader to use less paper

by Mark Mueller/The Star Ledger

Saturday May 09, 2009, 7:19 AM

PRINCETON -- Princeton University has a problem with paper. It uses far too much of it. Last year alone, campus printers spit out 15 million pages. Amazon.com, the huge online retailer, has a splashy new version of its Kindle electronic reader, one that's twice as big as its predecessor and that allows users to make notations and highlight words or passages on its digital pages. Read More

Princeton Kindle Pilot Website

UC San Diego First Public University to Provide Its Own iPhone Application

UC San Diego First Public University to Provide Its Own iPhone Application

A top-10 educational download for iPhone this week

June 12, 2009

By Rex Graham

UCSD map information via the new UCSD iPhone application.

The University of California, San Diego this week became the first public university in the nation to offer an iPhone application that provides mobile access to the latest information about its courses, faculty, athletics and even videos from the university’s YouTube channel.

The free application will be most helpful to students, who will be able to touch the screen of an iPhone or iPod Touch to access a wide variety of information about UC San Diego, including current and next-quarter course listings, an interactive campus map that pinpoints the location of each course’s classroom, and the ability to telephone, email or send a text message to instructors teaching any course of interest.

“It’s going to provide so much information in such a sleek interface that it’s going to add a whole new dimension to students’ day-to-day experiences on campus,” said Elazar C. Harel, assistant vice chancellor of administrative computing and telecommunications at UC San Diego. “By the end of the year, many of the students will also be able to use the application on a wider variety of handheld devices and use those devices to listen to audio podcasts of previous lectures while they’re going to that day’s class.”

Information about this application and download instructions can be found at http://iphone.ucsd.edu. By the end of 2009, a Blackberry equipped with multi-touch capabilities will operate the same application.

UCSD video information via the new UCSD iPhone application.

The new application was developed for UC San Diego in only two months by TerriblyClever Design, a Palo Alto, Calif.-based startup company formed by two Stanford University undergraduate students. Harel said the TerriblyClever team was able to make a variety of improvements to an iPhone application that had been developed previously for Stanford and Duke University.

“Students are excited about the new application and their emails and Facebook and Twitter messages have resulted in more than 2,100 downloads of the application the first two days it was available,” said Emily Deere, executive director of the Administrative Computing and Telecommunications Applications Group at UC San Diego. “We were caught off guard when our application shot up to one of the top-10 educational iPhone downloads of the week.” Read More