For your weekend reading pleasure, here are the most popular eBook headlines of the week, including a Kindle Fire sale, the best apps of the week and a Siri-al killer video (embedded above)

Click here to sign up for eBookNewser’s daily email newsletter, getting all our publishing stories, book deal news, videos, podcasts, interviews, and writing advice in one place.

1. Siri-al Killer
2. Kindle Fire on Sale at Walmart
3. PUBSLUSH Is Running A Writing Competition
4. How to Convert EPub Books for use on Kindle
5. Siri: The Holiday Horror Movie
6. Will Amazon Launch Brick-And-Mortar Stores?
7. Best Apps of the Week
8. Publishers Don’t Think Tablets Are Ideal For Reading
9. How To Convert PDFs to ePub or Kindle Files
10. Author’s Guild on Amazon & Antitrust Laws

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

This rumor is surprising, and not just because the launch of the Japanese Kindle Store was last reported to be delayed until 2013. No, it’s the mention of the Kindle Touch that surprises me. Amazon now has 5 local Kindle Stores (UK, Germany, France, Italy, and Spain). Amazon launched the 3 most recent ones with the K4, not the Kindle Touch. While they are now selling the Kindle Touch all over the world, it has not been localized for any ebookstore, while the K4 has.

The Nikkei is also claiming that Amazon will launch the Kindle Touch 3G in Japan, not the Wifi model. If true, this would make a truly unique launch. The KT 3G has not been released outside of the US.

I don’t know about you, but the more I look at this the less I believe it. What do you think?

Reuters

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

1. eBooks don’t feel or smell as good as print books. Do you really read books for how they smell? eBooks have the same great stories as their print counterparts and you can carry around a lot more with you than you can print books.

2. eBooks are expensive. This is not true. eBooks are usually  cheaper than their hardcover counterparts. Plus there are millions of free eBooks out there in the public domain. And while eReaders used to be fairly pricey, these days you can get an eReader new for less than $100 and they are even cheaper if you get one second hand on eBay. continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

As we become more connected, reading becomes more of a communal experience. But should it be? In an op-ed piece in The New York Times this week about the down side to the Internet, author Evgeny Morozov questions the Mark Zuckerberg‘s recent statement on Charlie Rose‘s show, “Do you want to go to the movies by yourself or do you want to go to the movies with your friends? You want to go with your friends.”

Pointing out the lowest common denominator factor when choosing films and art as a group, Morozov responds: “Besides, isn’t it obvious that consuming great art alone is qualitatively different from consuming it socially? And why this fear of solitude in the first place?”

What do you think?

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

The New York Times is reporting that Google is at work on a new home entertainment device that will deliver content to consumers.

This news would mean that Google would be competing with Apple and Amazon in both the device and the home entertainment space, trying to create its own ecosystem.

Here is more from the NY Times about what the device will look like: “While Google has talked openly about its designs on consumers’ living rooms, news that the device was becoming a reality surfaced last week in an application the search giant filed with the Federal Communications Commission. In the application, Google said it would begin testing a device it labeled simply an ‘entertainment device.’ The device will have Bluetooth and Wi-Fi and, as Google noted in the application, it will ‘connect to other home electronics equipment.’”

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Kindle and Kobo aren’t the only names in the UK eBook market. Earlier this week the London based bookseller Foyles released a pair of new reading apps for iOS and Android.

The apps were developed by txtr, and they’re integrated with Foyles eBookstore, where readers can choose from over 200,000 eBooks, including leading titles from major publishers. The Android app has an eBookstore built-in, and the iOS app allows readers to download previously purchased titles. Both apps also allow readers to side load Epub eBooks that hve been downloaded from elsewhere.

The apps are available in iTunes and the Android Market. There’s no word on whether Foyles plans to release an eReader, though.

via

Foyles

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Emma

The novel is a classic. Here is an excerpt from the book: “She was so busy in admiring those soft blue eyes, in talking and listening, and forming all these schemes in the in-betweens, that the evening flew away at a very unusual rate; and the supper-table, which always closed such parties, and for which she had been used to sit and watch the due time, was all set out and ready, and moved forwards to the fire, before she was aware.”

Project Gutenberg has the free download.

For more free eBooks, check out our Free eBook of the Day archive.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

In addition to now being listed in the Nook App Store and the Amazon Appstore, the updated app also got a number of bug fixes as well as a new viewing option. Bloggers can now use the app to view the regular blog Dashboard. This is intended to be seen on  desktop browser, not  mobile device, but it is still useful even in cramped conditions.

The standard Dashboard offers info that the app does not. For example, the app won’t tell you which posts just got which comment. This of course makes it hard to continue a conversation in the comments of  blog post, so I’m glad that I can now access the Dashboard.

The app is available in the Amazon Appstore and Nook Store.

WordPress

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Daily Steals has a great deal today. They’re carrying the Nook Touch, Barnes & Noble 6″ eReader, for only $69.

It’s a refurbished model, but it comes with the same warranty and service of the new ones. This truly is  good deal, and it beats the best price of the Kindle by $10.

It’s surprising how prices continue to drop, isn’t it? We’re only  few months away from the Nook Touch hitting the $99 price point, and now it’s selling for $69. At this rate, we could well see the Nook or Kindle reach $50 by April.

Daily Steals

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

As part of our research for the Publishing App Expo from last year, we have been spotlighting the top grossing book apps every week–helping our readers discover and analyze successful content.

Below, we’ve listed the top ten paid Android Books & Reference apps of the week. We’ve linked to the online pages for the individual apps so you can explore the content. continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

In response to the growing number of services that aim to help app developers manipulate  iTunes in order to get higher rankings, Apple is fighting back. In a blog post Apple warned app developers not to get involved in using services that “guarantee top placement in App Store charts.”

Apple explains further on its developer blog: “Even if you are not personally engaged in manipulating App Store chart rankings or user reviews, employing services that do so on your behalf may result in the loss of your Apple Developer Program membership.” continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Here’s a 30 second video that shows almost every Apple gadget ever made. It was made by a BoingBoing contributor who isn’t actually an Apple fanboy.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

The USAF put a new contract up for bid last week. They’re looking to buy between 63 and 18,000 “iPad 2, Brand Name or Equal devices”. for the flight crews of the C-5 Galaxy and C-17 Globemaster, 2 cargo aircraft that are used to move the majority of military freight. The crews will use the tablets pretty much the same way that everyone else does. They’re going to replace flight charts and technical manuals.

iPads in the cockpit is quite the common news story now, but this one has a historical note that most lack. The US military has long been interested in reducing the amount of paper that soldiers need to do their job. This in fact goes back to at least the 1960s. The Dynabook, which I told you about earlier this week, was the result of a research project that was funded in part by the US military. They wanted a device that could replace the vast volumes of paper with a few pounds of electronics. Today’s news about the 18 thousand iPads is pretty close to the original goal from way back when, but it wasn’t achievable until recently.

via

image by Global X

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

When Amazon last released an update (when they added PDF support), the app was 10MB in size. That’s actually quite large, because it replaced an app that was only 5MB. While this size difference might not matter to most people, I have heard a couple complaints from users.

This update also adds a rather fun feature. The Android app now supports page numbers. Amazon added page numbers to select Kindle eBooks last year, much to the delight of anyone who is trying to sync a paper copy with the related Kindle eBook.

Android Market

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Past Kindle commercials have promoted it on price, weight, and the number of titles you can carry. Amazon even bashed the iPad once or twice. But today Amazon outdid themselves. They managed to criticize the iPad both on sunlight readability (because the K4 can be read in the sun) and on price. You can get 2 KFs and a K4 for less than the price of an iPad, obviously.

But what’s more interesting is that even though the Kindle Fire has an LCD screen similar to the iPad, Amazon still managed to bash the iPad because you cannot read it in the sun. That was particularly clever of Amazon; I didn’t think they would be able to pull it off.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.