If publishing company Penguin’s impressive iPad demos weren’t enough to convince you, this extremely clever video (originally made for internal purposes) will show you that at least one part of the publishing industry has its head squarely on its shoulders. More

In addition to the orientation-lock button, yesterday’s pre-order commencement delivered another surprise nugget: the iPad will read all EPUB books out loud. If you remember the shitstorm that surrounded Kindle’s text-to-voice feature, you’ll know that this is a bold move. More

“We use the epub format: It is the most popular open book format in the world.” That’s how Steve Jobs announced the iPad. And wow, that sounds like all the ebooks you own will just work on anything. Um, no. More

After years of fighting, Amazon’s infamous 1-Click patent has been (re)confirmed. In other words, if a site wants to deploy a single-click checkout system for registered customers, it’s gotta license the tech from Amazon. Oh, patents! More

There’s no denying that the Mini 5 is real , but up until now, we’ve had to provide all of our own promotional material . At long last, it seems as if the suits in Round Rock are finally getting around to crafting the first advertisements for the upcoming slate, and while we knew about the 5-inch WVGA (800 x 480) touchscreen, 5 megapixel camera with autofocus and flash, capacitive touch front buttons, front-facing VGA camera (for video chatting) and the 30-pin docking connector, we weren’t aware of Dell’s plans to reveal a slew of vivacious color options. If this here flyer proves legitimate, we could eventually see the Mini 5 available in an array of premium finishes and hues (thanks, Design Studio !), and we’re hoping for a few different spec builds as well. So, are you opting for the pink, or are you crossing your fingers in hopes that Dell allows you to print that embarrassing shot of you and Mr. T on the rear of one?

Though they could’ve fooled me, Barnes & Noble apparently isn’t content to let ebooks and digital mags be a two-horse race between Amazon and Apple. They just made a big hire in Jonathan Shar, from Time, who’s going to be running their “Digital Newsstand and Emerging Content, Barnes & Noble.com” division. Though that division name tells me they’re already kind of fucked. [ MediaMemo ]

Though they could’ve fooled me, Barnes & Noble apparently isn’t content to let ebooks and digital mags be a two-horse race between Amazon and Apple. They just made a big hire in Jonathan Shar, from Time, who’s going to be running their “Digital Newsstand and Emerging Content, Barnes & Noble.com” division. Though that division name tells me they’re already kind of fucked. [ MediaMemo ]

Amazon MP3 Store has a promotion called Daily Deal, where they prominently highlight an album that’ll rake in sales for cheap—in exchange, labels have been giving them a one-day exclusive before the street date. Surprise, iTunes got pissed . For example, Amazon sold Mariah Carey’s “Memoirs of an Imperfect Angel” for $6 and Vampire Weekend’s “Contra” for $4, both a day before the street date in a Daily Deal promo. So, after telling labels it wasn’t the wisest move to give Amazon any kind of exclusive window over iTunes, iTunes has apparently been pulling marketing support for music featured in Amazon’s Daily Deals. Acording to Billboard, record labels Capitol and Jive backed out of Amazon Daily Deal promos they were considering for artists like Ke$ha, and Hollywood Records turned down Amazon’s offer entirely to do a Daily Deal on Nick Jonas’ new album, as result

TiVo may have invented time-shifting, but the past few years haven’t been kind to this company unsure how to cut a profit. Then, someone inside TiVo HQ must have realized, oh right, INNOVATION! That’s the ticket! What You Need to Know • The TiVo Premiere (320GB, $300) and Premiere XL (1TB, THX certified, $500) are the new Series 4 TiVos • They have completely new widescreen HD software built on Flash • This software will not come to Series 3 models (or earlier) • The Premiere is less a DVR than a completely integrated video machine • Available in early April Why I’m Excited The TiVo Premiere is the smallest TiVo yet, a thin and diminutive box that holds only one CableCard and still lacks Wi-Fi (a $90 802.11n adapter will be available this May, plus you can pick up a $30 TiVo powerline adapter). It hides a multicore processor inside that drives a new, HD UI that previews your program at all times. That’s right—no more going into Now Playing only to lose the stream of your show. Despite the redesign, you’ll find the experience is remarkably familiar. The basic fonts and menus are unchanged, with a few key differences

The silicon inside 90 percent of ereaders out there is made by Freescale, and their new chip, the i.MX508 —based on a ARM Cortex A8 ( sorta like the iPad !)—will make them cheaper, and page turns 4x faster. The chip’s a custom SoC that integrates the functions from multiple chips into one—specifically, the E-Ink hardware display controller—along with that Cortex A8, which gives the readers enough juice to turn pages in half a second, versus the two seconds that’s typical now. As the first chip expressly designed for ereaders, it also strips out unnecessary features, so the net result for the ereader is that it’s $30 cheaper a unit. Freescale wagers that with the cost savings, it could drive ereaders to under $150 by the end of the year.