I liked the Ice Storm. It was a good book and movie. I also like Rick Moody. Clearly the Moodster was expecting too much of Amazon when he cracked open his Kindle and immediately expected his device to contain the wisdom of the ages including content by Grace Paley and Stanley Elkin. Sure, the Kindle doesn’t have a lot of old-timey writers in there but there is still enough content to choke a horse.
IPad accessories are popping up everywhere. Proof? ScotteVest is now advertising its 22-pocket Travel Vest for Men as the first clothing line with a pocket for the iPad. Maybe that explains where Colbert was holding his during the Grammys. He seemed to pull it out of nowhere. That’s what ScotteVests are known for after all — gadget concealment.
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.
The US e-reader market is about to get one more player when Dulin’s Books brings its Boox 60 reader to the States in the middle of January. But even though it packs a lot of tech into its shell like W-Fi, Wacom technology, and a Webkit browser, chances are it won’t ever make it mainstream thanks to the Kindle, Nook, and Reader.
Looks like 2010 is turning out to be the year of the e-book reader. I’m not sure at what point these are going to stop being news, but here we go again. Insdream is launching the SX601 which seems to borrow some significant design ideas from another rather popular e-book reader. The Insdream does use a different type of screen from the source material (can you say Kindle), but looks pretty much the same otherwise.
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.
Did you catch The Big Bang Theory last night? If so, then you probably noticed the Kindle awkwardly propped up in front of the telephone. I mean, it was only shown on screen about 17,000 times last night. We get it writers and advertisers, the characters on the show are nerds and probably have gadgets, but no one stores a Kindle upright in front of a telephone. I keep mine in my toaster.
Amazon is mighty proud of its Kindle. So much so that the retailer outed a press release proclaiming that the Kindle is the best selling device on Amazon.com and even pre-Cyber Monday, November was its best selling month so far. Nook what?
Amazon announced some major changes to their Kindle e-book reader today. Specifically, it stated that they’ve worked out a way to increase battery life by 85%. That means that the new firmware update will allow you to leave your Kindle on (with the wifi active) for about 7 days before you need to recharge. Additionally, the Kindle will now support Adobe’s PDF format natively. Previously, you had to convert PDFs in order to view them on the Kindle.
Despite the fact that the Kindle has been suggested as an almost perfect alternative to traditional textbooks, some schools have been reluctant to embrace it. This is due to a design issue that makes accessing the audiobook function somewhat difficult for the blind.
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.
It’s not fun being the coolest kid in town as Barnes & Noble just found out. Its hot dual-screen Nook ebook reader was supposed to ship on November 30th, but that’s not going to happen. Sorry. The good news is that buyers should still get it before Christmas though.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but wasn’t the Amazon Kindle the first device to launch with built-in wireless (that is, cellular data) access? You know, you pay for the device, and then you don’t have to pay monthly wireless access because it’s already included in the cost of the device? It’s pretty neat, I think I can say without too much grief, and is a model that’s been copied by other e-book readers. Now it looks like Nintendo is considering such a model for future versions of the Nintendo DS (and not necessarily the XL, mind you). Exciting!
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.
Amazon has just made their new Kindle for PC available for pre-order online, a move that turns almost any PC in the entire world into a fully-fledged ereader. The software comes on the heels of all of the big Win7 announcements today evens up the playing fields when it comes to PC-based ereaders.
Amazon has long had the Kindle but Barnes & Noble launched a PC ereader long before Amazon, putting them at a disadvantage. B&N also has versions of their reader for OS X, BlackBerry smartphones, and the iPhone/Touch.
The Nook, Barnes & Noble’s new ereader, has upped the ante. With a small, 3.5-inch LCD screen in the lower quadrant, the Nook adds touch capabilities that the Kindle definitely does not have.
So who will win the ereader race? While no one in particular has to “win” the race, it’s abundantly clear that Amazon has a head start. B&N was late with their readers, starting with a Kindle-like IREX and ending up with an odd duck that uses e-ink for text display but also adds a bit of UI richness with the color LCD. The specs promise an interesting experience and it’s especially nice to hear that the device will last for 10 days with wireless off, a bit longer than any of the Kindle family.
Just saying… [
