One of the major points the iPad, nook, and other e-book readers have on the Kindle is their touchability. Sure, you don’t need it to read books, but it’s nice if you like interacting with things.
Well, Amazon seems to have figured this out, and has purchased a touchscreen company called Touchco (Touchco, really?) that owns a nice, transparent, resistive touchscreen tech that could easily be implemented into a Kindle — even a color one.
Apparently all is not well in e-book land. In an unusual move, publisher Macmillan took out an ad in the Publishers Marketplace magazine protesting the tactics being used by Amazon regarding pricing. The issue is Macmillan is trying to raise prices to $15.00 and up, and Amazon is trying to lock the prices at $9.99 and up per title.
Apple spent a good deal of time today selling the world on the iPad’s ebook skills. It has a nice 9.7-inch screen, 10 hour battery life, and ebook store. But how does it stack up against the current reigning ebook king, the Kindle? It’s time to call in a massive chart.
Time to bust out that wallet and preorder that new Leica! The M9 is now available for pre-order, and it’s pretty impressive. 18 megapixel, using a custom designed sensor from Kodak, the M9 is a digital viewfinder camera, and part of Leica’s new line.
Like them or not, e-books are here to stay. Personally, I don’t like them — but that’s mainly because e-book readers have been ugly, clumsy, and limited in function and selection. The tidal wave of readers we saw at CES, however, suggests that even die-hard curmudgeons like myself may soon be among the faithful. What this means, of course, is that e-books, while a real business already, are going to be looking at serious growth over the next two years. And since that necessarily will impact negatively the sales of real ink-on-paper books, retailers are looking for a way to ride the e-book wave.
Amazon has just released its “Best of 2009″ lists, showing the top-selling devices, books, DVDs, and such from this, the final year of the aughts. And although 2009 has not brought us hovercycles or Lunar colonies, it has brought us love-stricken vampires and a great number of replacements for paper-based book products, both of which sold extremely well.
Do you like drawing conclusions from lists? Then buddy, this one’s for you.
A hacker, Labba, and his buddies have cracked the Kindle’s ebook DRM, essentially allowing folks to extract the text of Amazon’s AZW files into a PDF for viewing on any reader. The hackers have reverse engineered the ebook code and very close to a formal, software-based solution.
Hoping to snag a Kindle DX as a last minute Christmas gift? Sorry, pal, you’re out of luck. The large-screen Kindle now has an estimated shipping date of 4 to 6 weeks according to its Amazon product page. It looks like ebook readers are the hot item this year, eh?
You know that Christmas is next week, right? That means you only have eight days left to finish your shopping. If you planned on using Amazon though, today is the last full day that the retailer will guarantee its free super saver shipping will get your product to you by December 25. So go, my friend, go order your girlfriend a cubic zirconia earring set. She’ll love it.
Oops! As I’m sure you all know, famous rapper Lil Wayne has a new album in the works. It was supposed to come out next week, but was pushed back for whatever reason. No big deal, albums get pushed back all the time. (See: Detox. We’ll have flying cars by the time that comes out.) Anyhow, apparently Amazon didn’t get the memo since it sent out copies of the album to about 500 people who pre-ordered it. And as if you had to ask: yes, the album has already been pirated. I guarantee you can find it on Canal Street (to say nothing of “the Internet”) by the end of the day today.
Huzzah! PC users can finally include their computers within the each of Amazon’s syncing capabilities with the Kindle for PC app. The just released beta finally gives PC users a viable ebook reading option on a program that doesn’t look like it was designed for Windows 95. Although the majority of users will probably be those that already own a Kindle and just want to turn a few pages while at work, still relying on a Kindle for most of the reading. The app is pretty darn powerful in of itself, but there are some notable drawbacks and limitations.
Thank the gaming gods for retail competition. You know the Xbox 360 Walmart is running today, right? Yeah, Amazon is going to match it.
Books, books, books! The American Booksellers Association, a trade group that represents small bookstores (not Barnes and Noble and the other big guys), has asked the Department of Justice to investigate whether or not Amazon, Wal-Mart, and Target have “[devalued] the very concept of the book” with their ongoing price war. Well, they’re actually asking for an investigation into their selling practices. That is, because Amazon wants to outsell Wal-Mart, and Wal-Mart wants to outsell Amazon, they both sell the latest book (think Stephen King, Dan Brown, etc.) for some really low price, like $10. When you consider that the average hardcover “should” cost something like $20-$30, just based on the wildly outdated economics of book-selling, then you understand why the ABA is so upset.
Wow. Amazon.com is now offering same day shipping – same day shipping — in seven major cities across the U.S. with more on the way in the near future. If you live in New York City, Philadelphia, Boston, Washington D.C., Baltimore, Las Vegas, or Seattle then you’re already in one of the same day delivery zones.
This just in: the Kindle 2 is falling from $299 to $259 and they will be selling an international version with built-in AT&T SIM card for $279 on October 19. Quoth the suits:
“Kindle has revolutionized the way we purchase and read books, by making it mobile, easy and intuitive,” said Randall Stephenson, chairman and chief executive officer of AT&T. “We are excited to work with Amazon to help readers access books even faster and from significantly more places than ever before, including more than 100 countries and territories around the world through AT&T’s global wireless coverage.”
Bezos may have apologized, but the stink of Amazon’s unprecedented act of cyberburglary is still strong enough that people aren’t likely to forget any time soon.
It’s a good thing, then, that Amazon has struck while the iron is still slightly hot by announcing the terms under which they will consider themselves justified in making your book an unbook.
The Kindle DX might be a good e-book, but the consensus among students at Princeton is that it is a very poor replacement for real books. Very poor, sir.
It’s not secret that students make a holy mess of their books, annotating, dog-earing, doodling in the margins — and none of that is easy (if it’s even possible) on the Kindle, or any other e-book at the moment. Sure, if all you need to do is read plain-text book, it’s handy. But what about diagrams? Full-color illustrations? Scratch-and-sniff patches?
The Kindle is, in its current form, “a poor excuse of an academic tool,” according to Aaron Horvath, Princeton class of 2010. (I think our Ivy League correspondent meant a poor excuse for an academic tool)
Amazon has been known to offer cell phones at cut-rate prices. Just the other day, all AT&T phones except for ones that start with the letter “i” were a penny on Amazon. But today, you can save $50 off the retail price and snag a Palm Pre for only one bill. Read More
What’s the one area of technology that I’m still relatively keen on? That’s right: e-books, but that’s because I like the idea of having several books on my person at all times in a device that fits inside my trousers. (The latest: The Wages of Destruction by Adam Tooze. Not an e-book, by the way, since I’m not made of money.) Devin, on the other hand, who also reads his share of books, is not as big a fan of the tech. We’re like The Odd Couple! Anyway, I bring this up because it looks like Dan Brown’s latest novel, The Lost Symbol, is the first book on record that is selling better on the Amazon Kindle than its hardcover counterpart. (Blah, blah, the death of books…)
