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In today's Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ) there is a elaborated report on the questionable procurement of a 42 million CHF contract with Microsoft (publication in the Schweizerischen Handelsblatt SHAB).

All you really need to know about the dangers of digital commodification you learned in kindergarten.\n\nThink back. Remember swapping your baloney sandwich for Jell-o pudding? Now, imagine handing over your sandwich and getting just a spoon.\n\nThat's one trade you'd never make again.\n\nYet that's just what millions of Americans are doing every day when they read "books" on Kindle, Amazon's e-reading device. In our rush to adopt new technologies, we have too readily surrendered ownership in favor of its twisted sister, access.

The author of the software in question, titled Kindlepid.py, is listed as Igor Skochinsky, a hardware hacker who performed a remarkable analysis of the Kindle and described in December 2007 how he was able to gain access to the device. It's unclear why Amazon waited so long to respond with a legal threat, and why the company targeted MobileRead.com: Skochinsky's original blog post about Kindlepid.py is dated December 2007, and the copy of the Kindlepid.py software hosted at the Googlepages.com Web-page posting site is still available for download at http://skochinsky.googlepages.com/azw-0.2.zip

Serves readers, pays writers: so far, so good. But there's another thing about Kindle 2 - its heavily marketed text-to-speech function. Kindle 2 can read books aloud. And Kindle 2 is not paying anyone for audio rights.

Serves readers, pays writers: so far, so good. But there's another thing about Kindle 2 - its heavily marketed text-to-speech function. Kindle 2 can read books aloud. And Kindle 2 is not paying anyone for audio rights.

Items Implemented * All links are keyboard accessible. * Simple, consistent layout and navigation. * Works with or without JavaScript. * Large default text size and high color contrast. * Looks great in high or low resolution. * Forms are marked up for optimal accessibility. * Code is semantic, light, and adheres to best practices in Web Standards.

We preserve the best of the old - books by leading experts that are rigorously reviewed and developed to the highest standards. Then we flip it all on its head. Our books are free online. ...

Thanks to Miguel Guhlin for posting about this.

"...This is a BBC situation comedy from the 1980s, written by Anthony Jay and Jonathan Lynn. The comedy derives from the characters and situation, the situation being the public and private life of a British politician....."

"Wikipedia-Kritiker Felix von Leitner über Zensurzwänge, Kontrollmechanismen und Chancen des Online-Lexikons"

Listening to the examples demonstrates that nobody non-blind and non-masochistic would use the Kindle 2 text-to-speech feature. And as blind people can't use the Kindle 2, what is the point of that feature - and of the Authors' Guild ruckus about it?

February 25, 2009. Text-to-speech (TTS) programs have been in use for a number of years, and they're improving. As Roy Blount says in an op-ed in today's New York Times, Kindle 2's TTS isn't Jim Dale reading "Harry Potter," but it's listenable. There's no need to take our word for it; have a listen to the sample below.