Kindle 2 is here

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is going for a hardsell. He appeared on Comedy Central’s Daily Show with John Stewart. to promote the Kindle 2, unveiled to eagerly awaiting audiences. And despite the hosts' less than charitable comments on the price and user-friendliness of the gadget, explained its positives.
While many salivated over this week's arrival of "the iPod of the book world," supporters of open e-book standards are not sure that Kindle’s format is not only bad for readers but, in the long run, possibly for Amazon too. “Either Amazon will succeed in locking people in, at which point it will become a kind of mash-up of the worst elements of the Recording Industry Association of America, Microsoft and the mafia, or they’ll fail,” said Cory Doctorow, open source advocate, science-fiction author and co-editor of the blog Boing Boing.
David Pogue of The New York Times’ ran through a long list of Kindle 2 pros and cons, lauding its screen and battery life and shooting down the notion that it will replace good ol’ paper and glue. He offers as good an explanation as any for the reason books are here to stay: “Nothing ever replaces anything.”
Steven levy of the Wired said, "Overall, Kindle 2 addresses the key problems with the original, boosts performance and points to some interesting directions. Now we're a little bit further down the road toward e-book Nirvana."

Q&A sales likely to jump

Vikas Swarup, author of the book on which Slumdog Millionaire is based, is also likely to be rubbing his hands together in glee. For not only has the film won eight Oscars, it has ensured that the Swarup's book will on sale across the world.

Swarup's Q&A, the tale of how an 18-year-old boy from the slums manages to win one billion rupees on a television game show, was ticking along at a perfectly average rate before Boyle filmed it for the big screen as Slumdog Millionaire, selling some 35,000 copies since publication three years ago, according to book sales monitor Nielsen BookScan.

Vikas Swarup is currently the Indian deputy high commissioner in South Africa. Swarup's debut novel was a bestseller and has been translated into 40 languages.

Swarup is on record saying that while the film "differs from my novel in some significant ways, but manages to preserve the soul of my novel."

Oscar winning writer makes cases for equal rights for gays

Thw winner for the best original screenplay for Milk, writer Dustin Lance Black made an impassioned plea for equal rights for gay and lesbian Americans. Black praised the protagonist of the rights film, Harvey Milk, - played by Sean Penn (who won best actor for the role) - who was the first openly gay man to be elected to public office in California.

"No matter what everyone tells you, God does love you ... very soon, I promise you, you will have equal rights federally across this great nation of ours," he said.

Black described Milk's story as "life saving" and told of his own childhood growing up in a conservative Mormon home before moving to California. "I heard the story of Harvey Milk and it gave me hope ... to live my life, it gave me the hope to one day I could live my life openly as who I am and that maybe even I could fall in love and one day get married," he said.

Rushdie no fan of Slumdog

Salman Rushdie is the latest to join a chorus of figures who have problems with Danny Boyle's Oscar winning film, Slumdog Millionaire. He told an Atlanta audience that it "piles impossibility on impossibility."

Rushdie made his remarks during a speech to more than 1,000 people at Atlanta's Emory University on Sunday ahead of the Oscar ceremony. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution says author was unhappy about several scenes of this Bombay-based film, including one in which characters wind up at the Taj Mahal — 1,000 miles from the previous scene. Rushdie is from Bombay and has explored the city in detail in his novels.

“Again, the problem with this adaptation begins with the work being adapted,” he said. The author criticized other Oscar winners adapted from books, including The Reader and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Rushdie attacked “bad social adaptations,” when people cave in to fear and censor themselves or others. He urged people and society to honour essential truths.

“Wishing to create better understanding between peoples, they can seek to prevent the expression of opinions,” he said. “Seeking to calm the violent hotheads in their midst, societies can try to appease them, and so give the violent hotheads the notion that their violence and hotheadedness is effective.”

Slumdog Millionaire won eight Oscars on Sunday, including best picture.