Reading Rainbow host LeVar Burton has raised funds for a follow-up to his beloved public television show, a series of smartphone and tablet enhanced eBooks for kids. His new company is called RRKidz.

The new website includes Burton’s trademark slogan from the show: “Coming Soon … but you don’t have to take my word for it.” Burton summarized the show with a twitter hashtag: “Reading Rainbow for today’s connected kids.”

Here’s more from FishbowlLA: “Fifteen months after indicating to New York Times columnist David Pogue at a Macworld event that he was raising money for a start-up, actor LeVar Burton is fully focused on the twain of education and enhanced children’s e-books. He tells Venture Beat that his company RRKidz has got $3 million in seed funding and is compiling a library of 300 iPad and Smartphone titles, with roughly 50 of those to be voiced by Burton himself. The actor is partnered on the project with Buffalo’s WNED-TV, rights-holder to the 1983-2006 PBS series Reading Rainbow.”

Apple only let a small, influential crew of tech writers actually review the iPad before the April 3rd launch day. GalleyCat Reviews has collected a few early reviews of the iPad reading experience. You can use this critical cheat sheet when some literary person in your life asks, “will the iPad save publishing?”

Here’s NY Times journalist David Pogue on the iPad bookstore: “The new iBooks e-reader app is filled with endearing grace notes. For example, when you turn a page, the animated page edge actually follows your finger’s position and speed as it curls, just like a paper page. Font, size and brightness controls appear when you tap. Tap a word to get a dictionary definition, bookmark your spot or look it up on Google or Wikipedia.”

Author Cory Doctorow bashed an iPad comic book application: “I can’t even count how many times I’ve gone spelunking in the used comic-bins at a great and musty store to find back issues that I’d missed, or sample new titles on the cheap … So what does Marvel do to ‘enhance’ its comics? They take away the right to give, sell or loan your comics. What an improvement. Way to take the joyous, marvellous sharing and bonding experience of comic reading and turn it into a passive, lonely undertaking that isolates, rather than unites.”

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According to FishbowlLA, Twitter superstar Ashton Kutcher recently used the microblogging site to find a joke for an upcoming movie. What does this mean for writers?

Today on the Morning Media Menu AgencySpy co-editor Kiran Aditham discussed this new trend in Twitter writing–outsourcing snippets of writing to your followers. Earlier this year, New York Times technology columnist David Pogue used his hundreds of thousands of Twitter followers to write a new book.

Click here to listen to the literary episode, which also discusses the new digital editorial post at HarperCollins. Aditham defended writers: “It’s pretty interesting that Kutcher is taking user-generated content to a different level. At the same time, the screenwriter must be kicking himself saying, ‘Was it that bad that he needs to solicit jokes from his fans?’ In one sense it’s compromising actual screenwriters.”

Amazon.com, Inc. saw the #AmazonFail thread revived this weekend after they remotely deleted unauthorized editions of “1984” and “Animal Farm” that customers had purchased on their Kindle Readers.

According to tech journalist David Pogue, the company has refunded the Kindle users and “would not automatically remove purchased copies of Kindle books if a similar situation arose in the future.” Nevertheless, the incident generated fierce debate about how much control we will give to digital publishers: at the Digitalist, at BoingBoing, and at mediabistro.com’s Morning Media Menu.

Here’s more from Pogue’s article: “As one of my readers noted, it’s like Barnes & Noble sneaking into our homes in the middle of the night, taking some books that we’ve been reading off our nightstands, and leaving us a check on the coffee table.”

As NY Times columnist David Pogue prepares to write a book with the help of his Twitter followers, cartoonist Garry Trudeau bashed journalists who spend too much time on Twitter.

Recently, the cartoonist ran a series of imaginary Tweets produced by his fictional Fox News correspondent, Roland Hedley. In a WebNewser interview, he saved his most scathing criticism for journalists on Twitter.

Check it out: “the most baffling are the reporters who solicit their followers for questions before interviews. Please. You’re supposed to be professionals. Do pilots and surgeons ask for suggestions? If you can’t think of a few good questions, you and your producer are in the wrong business. It’s not about getting fresh, out-of-the-bubble perspectives, as they would argue: most questions sent in are obvious or inane. It’s really about flattering the followers, populist pandering.”

(Roland Hedley/Doonesbury copyright 2009 G.B. Trudeau)

New York Times technology columnist David Pogue is using his 200,000 Twitter followers to write a new book.

Over the last few weeks, the columnist has posed a series of questions to his readers over Twitter–asking for quick puns, humorous photo captions, and parental advice. Impressed by the results, he decided to keep asking questions until he had enough answers to fill a new book.

Here’s more from the post: “‘The World According to Twitter’ will be a charming, irresistible, extremely hilarious little book, a book that couldn’t be written in any other way. If I publish one of your tweets, I’ll send you a free copy of the book, inscribed to you personally. I’ll also credit your response in the book, using your Twitter name.” (Via Rachel Sklar)