In yet another tell-tale indication of Google’s determination to dominate every square inch of the digital world, the Internet search giant is rumored to be working on Propeller, Google’s answer to Flipboard.

Google launching its very own social and news reader could prove hugely successful, say those who claim to know of Google’s aspirations to challenge Flipboard.

According to the Wall Street Journal’s All Things Digital, social media and tech guru Robert Scoble says Google is, indeed, working on the hush-hush project.

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Simon & Schuster has reached out to make a deal with one of the biggest eBook success stories in history.

John Locke, the bestselling self-published author of the Donovan Creed novels – has been offered a deal by traditional publishing house Simon & Schuster.

Writing eBooks only to be discovered by a major international publisher is the dream of many self-published authors. And this latest news proves that the big publishers are, indeed, interested in people whose work performs well in the digital realm.

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A new class-action lawsuit alleges that Apple has “conspired” with publishers HarperCollins, Hachette Book Group, Macmillan, Penguin and Simon & Schuster to wrongfully fix and escalate e-book prices.

Likening Apple’s actions to a plot intended “to boost profits and force e-book rival Amazon.com to abandon its pro-consumer discount pricing,” the lawsuit assuses Apple of unfair business practices.

Filed this week in a California district court by law firm Hagens Berman on behalf of plaintiffs Anthony Petru and Marcus Mathis, the suit blames Apple and its publishing cohorts for having “colluded… to illegally fix prices.”

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A major mobile venture is taking shape in Asia this week as Japan’s largest mobile operator, NTT DoCoMo, is partnering with Chinese search giant Baidu on a new program that will target mobile content at the swelling Chinese subscriber market.

According to a report from Reuters, Baidu will absorb an 80% stake in the venture, which will officially launch next month.

Meanwhile, NTT DoCoMo will control the remaining 20% – not to mention invest $24.7 million.

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Although few require concrete evidence to confirm what most already sense to be patently obvious, eMarketer has published their latest findings and projections, which show that digital newspaper revenues will grow 8.6% to $3.3 billion in 2011.

If eMarketer’s projections manifest, the outcome will reflect a sobering reality for traditional print newspapers, the revenues of which will drop another 6% to $21.4 billion this year.

In addition to the mounting evidence that digital newspapers are accelerating in popularity to an entirely new degree, old-school print newspapers and magazines are continuing to endure limited growth if not an outright earnings washout.

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Adobe and Medialets announced this morning that the former is integrating the latter’s rich media mobile ad serving platform into its digital publishing suite.

Announced at the Digital Innovator’s Summit, Adobe will integrate Medialet’s mobile advertising SDK into Adobe’s Content Viewer software in the Enterprise Edition of Adobe Digital Publishing Suite, enabling publishers to efficiently manage and deliver high value, targeted brand advertising inventory in digital publications on tablet devices.  Adobe saw this as the last piece of the puzzle in creating a complete advertising workflow to help publishers monetize digital publications.

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Google has announced a re-tooled search algorithm that unabashedly takes aim at reducing the poor-quality materials born of content farms that have begun heavily populating Google search results.

Writing on the Official Google Blog, search engineers Amit Singhal and Matt Cutts say the update will effect a substantial 11.8% of all Google search results. The move, they admit, “is designed to reduce rankings for low-quality sites—sites which are low-value add for users, copy content from other websites or sites that are just not very useful.”

“At the same time, it will provide better rankings for high-quality sites—sites with original content and information such as research, in-depth reports, thoughtful analysis and so on.”

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