Pavarotti dies -- Amazon has an E-book reader and Google rattles the cage

The event of the week was the death of Pavarotti. Opera recently joined the Exact Editions service and the free trial issue has just one mention of the great Luciano. (If you look at the page --note that the saved search highlights the search term). Perhaps it is appropriate that this is a page on which there is a great picture of the newest operatic mega-star Netrebko.

This sad and moving news should not obscure the earth-shaking announcements about books through the web coming from Amazon: the Kindle as a new eBook reader (more of a well-placed leak in the NYT than an announcement); and from Google a personalisable MyLibrary service. Along with the MyLibrary service (which feels a bit like a knock-off of the excellent LibraryThing), Google simultaneously announces a clipping widget -- which allows a blogger to quote a passage by clipping a portion of a page from a JPEG image of that page. It is kind of Eoin Purcell to point out that this is very much like the Exact Editions clipper.

Speaking of kindness -- is the Amazon a 'Kindle' as in kindly? Or a 'Kindle' as in kindling? I bet it is the latter -- but if we start kindling Joyce or Shakespeare, does not that give one an odd connotation of burning books? Not to worry, it will not catch on -- it is an eBook reader and loyal readers of this blog know that we consider this a misconceived category.