Manga Xanadu

With Mother’s Day this Sunday, retailers are pushing tablets, and especially e-readers as gifts for dear old mom. There are ads for the Amazon Kindle, which can be found in Staples, Target and Best Buy, the Barnes and Noble Nook Color, which are at Barnes and Noble and Best Buy, as well as tablets from Apple, Dell, Motorola and Samsung. But you don’t see anything for the Sony e-Reader.

Anime Boston/Wondercon Roundups Two comics/manga related cons occurred this last weekend.  On the West Coast was Wondercon, the smaller, younger brother of SDCC, located in San Francisco.  While more comics based, it seems Hollywood is taking every opportunity to jump on the popculture bandwagon.  Manga related, Viz Media had a booth, as did CMX, Last Gasp, and EigoManga.  Deb Aoki of Manga.About.com has an overview of the con as well as links to other coverage.  Over on the East Coast, Anime Boston took place.  While mostly an anime con, many manga bloggers attended and even held panels.  Vertical, Inc. had a panel, and Ed Chavez, marketing director for Vertical as well as creator of Mangacast hosted a panel of manga bloggers.  The big news from the Vertical panel was the license of a title from a mangaka once published by Viz Media.  Calling it “Manga Series R” the clue is that the “R” refers to either the mangaka’s name or manga’s title.  I voting (hoping) its Leiji/Reiji Matsumoto.  Brigid Alverson has a full rundown of the Vertical panel at Robot 6, and you can hear the audio from the Manga Mania panel by scrolling down to the Ninja Consultant’s like…

Having a wireless connection on an e-reader has been touted as the make-or-break deal for devices coming out.  Amazon’s Kindle, which started it all, has been favored because of the ease of purchasing books from Amazon and downloading to the device.  But, what are you really giving up for that privilege?  A lot of your privacy it seems.  As reported on BoingBoing, the EFF, the Electronic Frontiers Foundation, took a look at e-reader terms of service  for some of the most popular devices, and has made a chart showing who wants what, and what you’re giving up for that digital books online. Google seems to be the worst of the privacy invaders, requiring users to have a google account so they can be tracked though Web History, and requires “opt-ing in” for sharing personal information with Google.  Amazon the next one down, doesn’t sell you books as much as it licenses them to you.  And they give themselves a lot of room for keeping track of users use of the Kindle, including their interaction with the device and service as well as conent. Devices such as the Sony e-Reader, which doesn’t connect wirelessly (yet), has no such use agreements, leaving…