cread | read & see

While visiting a remote village in the central mountainous region of Bali that could only be reached by foot and hair-raising motorbike ride, the presence of two things surprised me. In a place where there was no running water, sewerage, electricity or proper roads, we visited a substantial Christian church built of concrete and tiles on the side of a mountain. And among the baskets of chillies and other crops being prepared for market, young people were fiddling with their mobile phones. This picture - of the phone use at least - is repeated across the developing world where cheaper, basic phones such as per-paid Samsungs, Nokias and Blackberries are prolific and now a new book reading app has been developed to bring free books to these millions of 'feature phones'. Worldreader Mobile, operating on the  biNu platform, has just moved out of the beta phase and already 10 per cent of biNu's 5 million users have accessed the app - about 107,000 in India, 60,800 in Nig

Saturday morning is a great time to start the day slowly by picking up that new book you've been trying to get to for a couple of days, or perhaps, to read about books, to see what's worth buying at Berkelouw, sampling at Shearer's, grabbing at Gleebooks, reading from Readings, deciding on at Dymocks or collecting on Kindle or Kobo. >> The Australian reports this morning that its free E-book experiment using the Kobo reader or app has exceeded all expectations with readers downloading 26,000 copies of six title in the past week. "The promotion continues today with the opportunity to collect Geraldine Brooks's novel March . Monday's title, Lazarus Rising , by John Howard, was a bestseller in both hardback and paperback editions. "The Australian's chief opinion editor, Nick Cater, said that given the success of the project, the newspaper would be considering further offers." For those without a digital pass to The Australian , read t