A couple of weeks back, I covered how A-list fantasy author Neil Gaiman was running a poll on his website. Visitors were asked to vote which of his books would best suit a newcomer to his work, with his publisher, HarperCollins, promising to make the winning novel free online.

Gaiman's American Gods was duly elected the winner, but HarperCollins has not made it free to download, save or print. Rather, you've got to wait for the text to stutter - sorry, stream - onscreen, not-quite one page at a time in a "beta" player called Browse Inside. I defy anyone to read more than three pages. Give it a go here. The best you can say is that it's a properly formatted document file, not one of the wonky, crooked scans that constitute Amazon.com's book previews.

No Matter
What else am I grumpy about this morning? I've just finished Iain M Banks' Matter, and I was disappointed. It seemed dashed off. Leave that sort of writing to me. More discussion about Mr Banks in my original Gaiman post here.

Free Shorty Street
TVNZ continues its move from its mind-numbing $2 and $4 points system to free, ad-supported downloads. From tonight, each episode of Shortland Street will be availabe as a free-download "catch-up" the following day on tvnzondemand.