Opinion: Amazon's Kindle won't make E-Books popular but how hard can it be?

Jon_smal.gifJonathan Weinberg writes…

I don’t read as much as I used to, one look at the amount of books in my house is enough evidence to tell that story. Not that I don’t have many, oh no, I’ve got shelves full of novels and non-fiction. It’s just most of them are bought on a whim, and then a few pages in swapped for something else or put down to play the Xbox 360 or check out the telly.

Children too aren’t reading as much as they should. In fact, David Cameron, the Tory leader, is about to announce plans to try and get every
youngster up to speed with their reading by the age of six. It’s a massive failure in any education system when kids can’t pick out enough words to enjoy a story without it being spoken to them…

Vote in the web 2.0 Houses of Parliament Hall of Shame election

Once you’ve read the previous feature about which of the three main political parties in the UK are the most web 2.0 savvy, cast the only vote that matters this year, in our web 2.0 Houses of Parliament Hall of Shame election.

If we’re not being called to vote in a snap Autumn general election, this is the next best thing. Give your two pence worth and tell us, who has made the least amount of effort online, and who should be given a place in our web 2.0 Houses of Parliament Hall of Shame.

Who is the most web 2.0 savvy out of David Cameron, Gordon Brown and Ming Campbell?

UK-political-parties.jpgAshley Norris writes…

Sadly Gordon Brown has done the sensible thing/bottled out at the last minute (delete as appropriate) and put the general election on hold. Which personally I find a little disinegenious given that the Tech Digest team spent most of last week checking out the political parties’ online offerings so we could announce who we thought would win the web 2.0 election.

Well we can’t be bothered to hang on to this piece until May 2009 or whenever he pulls his finger out, so here is Tech Digest’s guide to how the UK polical hacks are using the web to combat the widespead political apathy which seems to have taken root in the UK.

None of the sites are anything near as whizzy or imaginative as Barack Obama’s online calling card, but there is some decent stuff out there including evidence that – get this – the Tories may have a sense of humour.

So do all these sites mean anything to anyone who is not a resident of Hackville? We got Tech Digest’s politically agnostic Deputy Editor Katherine Hannaford to find out.

Katherine Hannaford writes…

So the UK’s Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, announced on the weekend he wouldn’t be calling a general election this week. But it wasn’t because of David Cameron’s unscripted speech at the Tory party conference or the fact that he wants us to properly digest yesterday’s public spending review. It was because his minions couldn’t unearth a sex-tape showing an opposing MP in a compromising position in time. Ok, that was wishful thinking, admittedly.

Nope, the reason why ol’ Gord bottled it was because he hasn’t got his Facebook profile in order, he is still agonising about the poor viewing figures on his YouTube account and he hasn’t yet worked out what Digg is. Last I heard, he thought it was a gardening forum.

If only eh? Anyhow, instead of having a real general election in the UK, we here at Tech Digest are going to have a web 2.0 election – deciding which of the three main political parties have made the best web 2.0 efforts thus far. Read on below for the initiatives made by the Conservatives, Liberal Democrats and the Labour Party, and we’ll give you a chance afterwards to elect a party to the Political web 2.0 Houses of Parliament….

Top 10 Web 2.0 strategies for the UK general election

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Assuming Gordon Brown has the stomach for a fight, we could have a general election next month here in the UK. Normally, this would be cause for advertising agencies to lick their lips at the prospect of lucrative billboard and TV ads for the various parties.

But we’re living in a Web 2.0 world now. Just look at the US for proof, where campaigning is well underway for next year’s presidential election. The various candidates have their own blogs, they’re using YouTube, they’re holding debates using MySpace… It’s a thoroughly modern way of campaigning.

Top 5 gadgets for David Cameron and the Conservative Party

It’s the Tory party’s political conference this week in Blackpool, and yes, you’re right – politics has no place on Tech Digest. But while the MPs are by the seaside, we thought it’d be a good time to check out a few gadgets for Dave Cameron and his mates.

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Lexon Roswell calculator

Now, any good Chancellor of the Exchequer has to be up on his numbers. And if George Osbourne wants to sit behind the door of No11 Downing Street then this might be worthy of his first purchase. As long as it’s not put on his state expenses!