Share your favourite ebooks with a friend
ValoBox is a London-based startup by two young entrepreneurs, Anna Lewis and Oliver Brooks, who previously launched the online literature community CompletelyNovel. It provides an alternative to the closed shop-device system of Kindle, Nook and Kobo by operating on the open web, so you can read the books on any internet-connected device (which is currently no problem at home, but might be on the tube or a plane). As the company gets off the ground, it will be possible to save the books offline too, with plans to add full downloads as soon as negotiations with publishers' digital rights departments permit. This stuff is hard, but attempts to break the corporate hegemony on ebooks deserve all the help they can get.
For Christmas, ValoBox and Constable & Robinson have launched giftanebook.com, which allows you to purchase an ebook and then give a friend access to it. Not only is that something you can't do on Amazon, it might pave the way towards some genuine alternatives, for the benefit of readers, publishers, workers and the Treasury alike.
http://valobox.com/