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Mar
27
Kevin at Brighthand previews the foldable screen Readius from Polymer Vision.
The screen itself has a soft texture, and bends quite easily at the pivot points.
It was very easy to read, although a few problems exist. At each bend point, the screen retains the folded shape with pronounced ripples in the texture of the display. While it doesn’t distort the picture being shown, it does pick up reflections much more than a perfectly flat surface would.
As to whether the Readius will be positioned as a cell phone or as an e-book reader, he predicts that Polymer Vision will market the Readius “as a compact Amazon Kindle competitor, using its internal cell radio for downloading content.”
Mar
27
This Blogger Likes the Sony Reader
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From Just Another Mobile Monday, we get a report that the Sony Reader is “awesome.”
During my recent vacation my “new” (read- “permanently borrowed from my mother-in-law who wasn’t using the one I bought her last year“) Sony PRS-500 Portable Reader was awesome.
I had thought about getting the Amazon Kindle but it is quite pricey and I am more than a bit concerned about the ergonomics of it since many users report issues with the “Page Forward” button being too easy to unintentionally press. Oh yeah, and you can’t get the thing right now anyway.
Reading on the Sony Reader is a joy. It is easy to use and within a short while you don’t even notice the brief “page flash” that is typical of current epaper technology.
Mar
27
Digital Books: What Exactly Are You Buying?
Filed Under Kindle, Reader, e-Book, eReader | Leave a Comment
At Gizmodo we found a fascinating discussion of whether consumers who purchase e-books for devices such as the Amazon Kindle and the Sony Reader are actually buying a book, or a limited license to the e-books:
If you buy a regular old book, CD or DVD, you can turn around and loan it to a friend, or sell it again. The right to pass it along is called the “first sale” doctrine. Digital books, music and movies are a different story though. Four students at Columbia Law School’s Science and Technology Law Review looked at the particular issue of reselling and copying e-books downloaded to Amazon’s Kindle or the Sony Reader, and came up with answers to a fundamental question: Are you buying a crippled license to intellectual property when you download, or are you buying an honest-to-God book?
In the fine print that you “agree” to, Amazon and Sony say you just get a license to the e-books—you’re not paying to own ‘em, in spite of the use of the term “buy.” Digital retailers say that the first sale doctrine—which would let you hawk your old Harry Potter hardcovers on eBay—no longer applies.
Mar
27
Review: The Kindle’s Good, But Not All Content Works Well on This Device
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At Ontic Oren, the blogger describes reviews the Amazon Kindle after two months of using this device. The verdict? A good product, although with some ergonomics issues. The blogger also has some things to say about the written content that’s available for, and that works well on, the Kindle:
Content is king, or so 18,900,000 people say. Amazon has decent coverage, borderline acceptable. I am constantly finding books that aren’t available however. I’d say around 50% of the books that I’ve wanted to read have not been available, and some are not exactly long tail. If you are into some more obscure content, forget it. I was curious to get some philosophy books, with NO luck. The collection is fairly similar to my library. That’s not fair - my local library has more books.
The other aspect of content is appropriateness for format. Obvisouly, this isn’t the device to read coffee table photography books. Unexpectedly, I’d also argue that it isn’t the device to read reference material on. The Kindle is ideal for linear content, such as fiction or some non-fiction. However, I often find when I read more challenging material, 10 pages after reading something, I suddenly realize I need to re-read a paragraph. Usually it’s a 10 second flip flip, found the section, read and think, then back to where I was. Not with the Kindle. Here, you’ve got to find the passage, which can take a while as you press, flash, wait, scan over and over. Then you need to get back to where you were. ick. This cuts out all reference, programming, and intellectual content for me. Sure, you can search, but I need the serendipitous random search, not the computer driven kind.
Blogs and periodicals fall into the same problem. I like to skim, and dive. Kindle doesn’t work for that. Stick to linear works.
Mar
26
Has the Kindle Boosted e-Book Sales?
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WebProNews notes that e-Book sales are up, and wonders whether the sales increase can be attributed to the Amazon Kindle:
Amazon remains mum on the issue; there’s no telling if we’ll ever find out how many Kindles the company’s moving. There has been a documented rise in eBook sales, however, and it doesn’t seem unreasonable to connect A and B.
Admittedly, bigger jumps have occurred before; the International Digital Publishing Forum’s figures show a huge increase between the third and fourth quarters of 2006, for example. Still, Richard McRoskey notes, “In January, y/y revenue from e-book sales jumped 24 percent for U.S. publishers.”
Mar
26
Where Are the Books (for the Ectaco jetBook)?
Filed Under News, Uncategorized, eReader | Leave a Comment
Over at Digital Trends they’ve asked an interesting question about Ectaco jetBook Reader: Where are the books for this device?
What’s missing here—besides technical information on what sort of document formats the jetBook supports—is the most obvious thing: books. We’re assuming the jetBook can handle the ASCII content in (say) the texts available via Project Gutenberg, but what about Word documents and PDFs? What about audio books, and the various DRM-protected formats used to distribute them? When Amazon launched its Kindle reader, it had distribution deals in place with major publishers to bring (ahem) top-shelf content to the Kindle immediately. Ectaco doesn’t seem to have any sort of distribution deals to bring content to the jetBook, noting only that “thousands of books can be downloaded for free.”
Mar
26
Another Ereader Enters the Market: Ectaco jetBook
Filed Under Kindle, News, Reader, eReader, jetBook | Leave a Comment
From DVICE comes word of another Ereader to compete with the Amazon Kindle and the Sony Reader: the Ectaco jetBook.
If the Sony Reader and Amazon Kindle ebook readers just aren’t doing it for you, now there’s a third choice, the Ectaco jetBook that rolled out today. While this $349.95 reader’s 5-inch screen is smaller than the Sony Reader or Kindle (both with 6-inch screens), its 7.5-ounce weight makes it easier to carry around than both the 9-oz Sony Reader and even heftier 10.3-oz Kindle.
Mar
26
A New Magazine in Kindle Format
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The content available for Amazon Kindle continues to grow, as evidenced by the announcement from Sam Zell’s Tribune Media Services that it is launching a Kindle-based political magazine, with several other Kindle-based magazines in the works for launch in the months ahead.
Mediabistro.com reports:
Sam Zell’s Tribune Media Services is launching a new, Kindle-based online political magazine in collaboration with Amazon. The new mag is called Opinionated: Voices and Viewpoints on America and the World and launch date was Monday, March 24.
Content for the mag is culled from Tribune Media Service syndicated columnists including Arianna Huffington, Jesse Jackson, Jonah Goldberg, Henry Kissinger, Cal Thomas and Carl Hiaasen. Cost is $.49 per issue and $1.49 for a monthly subscription.
Mar
18
Does the future look good for the Readius?
Filed Under News, Readius, e-Book, eReader | Leave a Comment
Erica Ogg at News.com finds the Readius by Polymer Vision to be a tantalizing concept:
[Karl] McGoldrick is the CEO of Netherlands-based Polymer Vision, the only company that right now is working on making e-books in a form that’s actually close to traditional books–ones that are mobile, bendable, and, above all, readable.
But the device, called Readius, is not just an e-book reader–it receives e-mail, text messages, and RSS feeds, makes phone calls, and keeps calendar and contact information–in addition to downloading books and newspapers wirelessly.
* * *
Polymer Vision’s vision, which it came up with three years ago (as a business spun out from Philips Research), is finally coming to fruition. The Readius is the size of most small mobile phones, but has a 5-inch screen that folds up to close.
It uses E-ink, the same technology used in the Sony Reader and Amazon.com’s Kindle, but Polymer Vision worked with E-Ink to come up with a thinner version of the technology so it would roll better. In addition, the Readius uses organic semiconductors in the layer underneath the E-ink that process transistors at very low temperatures so there’s no need for glass backing to keep the heat away, like an LCD panel. Also, the organic semiconductor layer is malleable, which allows it to bend when folded, and not break.
Right now, the device is on track for release sometime this summer, though no price has been determined yet.
Mar
18
E-Books and Higher Education
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The EDUCAUSE Review has an excellent article on the future of e-books and their use in higher education:
Higher education is expected to be at the forefront of the wave of e-book adoption over the next two years. Some experts predict that 2007–2009 will be transition years for the higher education e-book market, with large growth expected in both digital textbooks and digital library collections.10 Recent large investments in e-book collections by institutions like Stanford University may “send a strong signal to the academic library community that e-books have entered the mainstream of book acquisition for major university libraries.”11 College stores have also gotten on board with e-book sales, with nearly 20% of the industry now offering e-books to students, up from a relative handful of stores just two years ago.12 Initiatives such as the Digital Marketplace at California State University and OhioLink in the State of Ohio are placing substantive bets on a more widespread adoption of e-books in the campus environment within the next few years as a way to potentially help reduce the cost of education for students. Publishers and campuses alike are exploring the use of e-books and other forms of digital content. Such explorations in the educational markets, coupled with other developments discussed below, may signal a tipping point in e-book usage on college campuses from occasional oddity to a mainstream technology in less than five years.
Mar
18
How About the iPod as an eReading Device?
Filed Under Kindle, e-Book, eReader, ipod | Leave a Comment
Over at Electric Alphabet, an article discusses the e-book reader possibilities lying ahead for the Apple iPod:
Currently, the iPod Touch doesn’t stack up next to the Kindle in terms of screen size, but it does bring a host of features that make new versions easily adaptable. Its multitouch screen gives it a natural advantage over the Kindle in terms of manipulating documents, not just reading them. While it has wireless internet, the addition of Bluetooth (which the iPhone has but Touch currently does not) would make the use of wireless keyboards a cinch too.