It's a sign of the digital age. America's libraries, in an attempt to keep with the times and draw back readers, have greatly expanded its selection of digital titles, from e-books, to movies, to music, that can be downloaded by library patrons for use on their gadgets.

Better still, all of the media they're putting up is free, so long as you've got a library card. More after the jump!

Those who prefer to do their reading on the go with their iPhones can try this simple - yet virtually problem-free - application. Check out the textReader, an application that lets you quickly load and read large text files without having to encounter any problems loading them. Installation instructions and changelog in the full article.

Over at the World of Warcraft forum, questions about the legality of levelling guides were recently raised. If you could remember, Blizzard has a past experience with that already. Now, are they really authorized? Head over the full article for the answer from Blizzard's Slorkuz.

Online retailer Amazon is set to enter the e-book market with its e-book reader, the Kindle, set to be launched this Monday. This e-book reader will let readers browse their favorite digitized books, and - of course - buy new e-books from Amazon. com. More details in the full article!

Certainly, the DS is no e-book machine. However, they have successfully released short novels for the DS. Is this new book revolution going to change the e-book industry? Combining games with novels might just be the DS ploy to get more kids reading. And what other book could stir the heart of a young boy than that of Iriya no Sora, UFO no Natsu.

The ero-ge features of the heroines might just sway any boy to grab this DS novel off the shelf. If only he knew that this was merely a typical coming of age story, then he might be half-disappointed. The second of DS Electronic Library Series, Iriya no Sora, UFO no Natsu is the story a young boy named Naoyuki Asaba who encounters something weird while he was at a swimming practice in school. A silver blob drops in their pool and from it comes a lovely girl named Iriya Kana. This is the story of how Asaba first met Iriya. What came next is a coming of age tale as this alien discovers life on earth, as well as her blossoming emotions for the protagonist.

More about Iriya no Sora, UFO no Natsu after the jump!

Imagine reading about Marxist theories and McDonaldization and have the text cut off by a Big Mac ad. Does this look like an effective educational instrument to you?

With college students' increasing dependence on electronic sources for their academic needs, the traditional textbook seems to be getting pushed towards the exit. Aside from college textbooks being heavier than your laptop, well, these bound wisdom-holders don't exactly come in cheap (textbooks business earns $4 billion annually). However, techy students cannot rely on E-books alone as their references for papers and homework... for now at least.

J. Bruce Hildebrand, executive director for higher education at the Association of American Publishers, gives us further proof of the textbook industry's slow exit, saying that publishers report that sales of a new textbook stop coming in almost completely a year after its release because students buy used copies when they're already available. Switching from textbooks to E-books cannot be done overnight, as budget adjustments would have to be considered as well as the transfer of the publishers' classic texts into E-books.

This gave Freeload Press of St.Paul an idea: why not give free e-textbooks - but with ads inserted in the pages?! This way, they still get to sell their stuff but for a lesser cost, thanks to the sponsors, who also have no qualms about this because in-class advertising reaches seven million students. However, no decent academic educator would really want to author such a book, imagine having the juice of your intelligence juxtaposed with that of Chuck E.Cheese's.

Freeload Press claimed that 100 universities will be using its free textbooks, but the actual number is only 38. The success of this ad-inserted textbooks seems very dubious, and as Randall Stross of NY Times writes, "the juxtaposition of 'Solution to Demonstration Problem' on one page and an ad for a double bacon cheeseburger and fries on the next (the example is not hypothetical)" seems like a very bad recipe for educating our youth.

Prime View International (PVI) is gearing up for big business as it prepares to send out its shipments of electronic paper to its clients.

Electronic paper, otherwise known as e-paper or e-ink, is a kind of display that mimics the properties of paper while retaining the utility of conventional electronic displays such as flat panel displays and other monitors. Unlike other electronic displays, e-paper's main feature is its ability to act like real paper, lacking the need for a backlight to see the pixels on the screen. E-paper is also flexible to some degree, allowing for more uses than conventional displays.

PVI will be shipping their e-paper to different clients for electronic labelling and book publishing applications. Most notable of these is Sony, which will be publishing e-books using PVI's e-paper technology. PVI also rescheduled the release of these said items as a result of the rescheduling of a product launch of one of its clients.

Keep checking on QJ for more updates on e-paper and any upcoming e-book releases when we get them.

The G6Flash 3 Generation 4-in-1 Multi Media Flash Card is said to be the most innovative and powerful device for GBA and NDS. Unlike other flash cards, G6Flash 3 is not limited to playing games but supports movies, music, images, and E-Books. It also functions as a USB disk (Standard FAT Format) for saving and transferring any files and materials from DS or GBA to PC and vice versa.

If you have a G6 Flash 3 card, you might be interested to know that the G6 Loader v4.2B has been released. The changelog for this version includes:

• Added GBA cheat code function
  
• Added "Software + Hardware" game save patch function
  
• New G6 menu interface
• GBA Game Cheat document file can be attached to the G6 and can be viewed it anytime while playing games
• Supports FAT16/FAT32 format and long file name make sure it is in FAT16 format for updating G6.)

Download: [G6 Loader English v4.2B]

Aeolusc from PSPChina has made another update on his eReader for the PSP. The name of the application is already a give away. It is an eBook reader program for your PSP. It offers support for reading simple text files, as well as HTML files. It also has the ability to display images and play MP3s. So while you're reading, you can enjoy your favorite tunes as well.

If you're worried that it's written in Chinese, Kyle M. swears that it is rather easy to navigate. Just remember to use the circle button to make a selection instead of the X button. It can display English text files perfectly by the way.

You can also download additional fonts in varying sizes so you can choose which one is the most suitable for you. The translation is rather crude but here's what it says - More than 16 dot matrix fonts not included in the above download compressed packets, a separate provision requires people to download codecs, the two documents added fonts.zip and then menu option will be more than the corresponding size of the font choice.

Changelog:

• Support WMA broadcast (not support fast into fast retreat, broadcast, accounting for more resources to a certain extent, affect the operation, using)
• Support website, "which will not pre> labels" in the text allows removed pre>
• Amendment to delete the prohibition, the document directing the operation menu
• Code optimization

Download: [eReader 16bit v1.4]
                  [eReader 32bit v1.4]
                  [eReader v1.4 Fonts]

I am a big fan of books. Most of my books either have notes on the side of it, highlights on parts that I thought were beautifully written or with folds on the side to keep track of where I am in the book. I would say that I belong to the old school department when it comes to books. It took me a while to get into the whole e-books thing.

But I think designer Timothy Yeoh is the answer to all my bibliophile prayers, with his brainchild called Turnover. It recreates the experience of turning pages even with it having only two pages. Touch the on button for a few seconds to bring up the menu and then select the book that you want to read. You can use the scroll wheel to go to your desired page and touchscreen capability lets you bend the corner to toggle bookmarks on or off, with a bookmark symbol on the page for easy reference when scrolling through.

“Turnover is two pages with infinite possibilities – you can lose yourself in any number of worlds,” says Yeoh.