News – 1) OverDrive reports tremendous growth in borrowing of e-books at public libraries and schools during 2011.  2) Apple makes a bold move into the e-textbooks market. John Gruber and others ponder the fine print of the End User License Agreement, which contains language restricting what you can do with an iBook that you create using Apple’s free iBook Author tool. 3) Amazon releases firmware updates for the Kindle Fire and Kindle Touch. 4) Via Business Insider, a surprising new survey breaks down what we’re using our Kindle Fires for.

Tech Tips – From Jim Cheshire’s excellent new book, My Kindle Fire, we’ll learn a handy way to save steps when punctuating with the virtual keyboard of the Fire. (Click here for my interview with Jim in September, 2008, for TKC 10.)

Interview (Starts at 18:00) – Catherine MacDonald, founder of BookLending.com, spoke with me from Nova Scotia on January 16th about the impressive growth her site has experienced in its first year of operation. Click here for my interview with her a year ago, from the island nation of Malta.

Content – In Topazon’s latest list of the top-ranked products on all of Amazon, there is only one book, The Lost Dogs: Michael Vick’s Dogs and Their Tale of Rescue and Redemption by Jim Gorant.  Via Pastor Mark Pierce of Church Requel, I learned of an impressive Kindle Fire App by YouVersion that offers lots of ways to encounter The Bible. Click here for a sample of Pastor Mark’s sermon notes, using YouVersion, and here for his podcast.

The Next G+ Video TKC Hangout: Wednesday, January 25, at 1 p.m. Mountain Time.

Next Week’s Guest: Eric Loss, making a stop for repairs in Chile during his solo circumnavigation of the world.