Archive for September 30th, 2010
eReader & Tablet News – 9/30/2010 no comments
Infinity Publishing announced today that it has struck a deal with Sony to sell its books through Sony’s Reader Store. Infinity specializes in self-published authors and on demand publishing.
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Amazon is giving away five free Wi-Fi Kindle 3 ereaders. To enter, you just need to visit Amazon’s Kindle page on Facebook and become a fan by clicking on the “Like” button. US residents 18 years of age or older are eligible. The contest runs from September 27 through October 18, 2010.
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This Saturday, October 2, will be the 60th anniversary of Peanuts by Charles M. Schulz. As part of the celebrations a social media game will be hosted. One of the prizes is an iPad:
Also this month, PEANUTS fans are celebrating the 60th anniversary of their favorite comic strip via the "Countdown to the Great Pumpkin" (www.greatpumpkincountdown.com) game. This online social media game invites Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Foursquare and YouTube users to join the Anniversary fun by completing a series of daily PEANUTS-themed "to-dos" from early September through Halloween. Players earn points for each task completed—such as sharing a PEANUTS quote with their friends or followers, or changing their profile picture to that of a PEANUTS character—and the winner will take home a special PEANUTS-loaded iPad and have a shot at an extra $25,000. Weekly winners receive prizes throughout the contest and members of the Schulz family—including Charles Schulz’s son Craig, daughter Jill, and widow, Jeannie—are playing along, offering their own PEANUTS memories and suggesting some of the daily to-dos.
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Will we be seeing ereaders and other devices with word definitions powered by Dictionary.com?
Today Dictionary.com (www.dictionary.com), the leading online and mobile dictionary, announced the launch of its API Developer Center (developer.dictionary.com), a user-friendly distribution channel for its easy to integrate open API. The Center demonstrates Dictionary.com’s commitment to shaping the evolution of online, mobile and connected devices by providing ‘information in the moment,’ enabling developers to integrate its content and features into not only digital learning and entertainment platforms, but an endless range of applications across all platforms. Additionally, the Center will offer developers opportunities for heightened visibility via a visual gallery highlighting creative uses of the API.
"People want access to word definitions in context, without navigating away from what they are doing – Dictionary.com’s vision with the API Developer Center is to make this the standard online and mobile experience," said Shravan Goli, President, Dictionary.com. "Now literally every developer of any application that utilizes words can integrate Dictionary.com’s content and features so that their users can effortlessly experience word discovery."
Use of the API will be free for non-commercial use, and Dictionary.com will offer its content and features for commercial use on a revenue-share and fee-based basis.
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Tokyo-based Seirindo Co., Ltd. will be making its manga magazines available as an iPad app. The Garo manga is available now, with Cycle Boys and Tale of Charcoal Burner coming in October. The description of these in the iTunes store is in Japanese, though the info on the app says it is English language – I didn’t buy one ($2.99) so I’m not sure.
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The GoodReader PDF handling app got a major upgrade today. Some of the new features:
- all annotations that you create or edit in GoodReader – notes, highlights, markups, and drawings – are saved in a PDF file, so you will be able to see them later on a computer or in another copy of GoodReader on your colleague’s device
- all notes, highlights, markups, and drawings created outside GoodReader, and properly stored in a PDF file, can be viewed or edited in GoodReader
- types of annotations that you can create and edit in GoodReader: comments ("sticky notes") with 7 different icons, text highlights, freehand drawings, lines, arrows, rectangles, ovals, text underlines, text deletion marks (strikeouts), text insertion marks, text replacement marks. You can freely adjust color of all of the above.
- other types of annotations that you can view in GoodReader: text boxes with callouts, polygons and polylines, squiggly underlines, cloudy shapes, rubber stamps, file attachments. All annotations that can be viewed, can also be deleted. In addition, some of them can be edited in a limited fashion (color, placement, scale).
- you can now extract files from PDF file attachments
GoodReader is $0.99 at iTunes.
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Barclays Capital analyst Douglas Anmuth is predicting that Amazon will sell 5 million Kindles this year and 11.5 million in 2012. Some of the factors contributing to high unit sales include lower pricing and availability at multiple outlets. Anmuth also thinks that Kindles are not in direct competition with tablets anymore, “A bifurcated market has clearly developed between more expensive, multi-function tablets and cheaper, dedicated eReaders.”
You can read more at ZDNet.
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Mary Lou Jepsen writes in the Pixel Qi blog that a 10-inch Pixel Qi screen that connects and is powered by a USB cable is being developed by Display Solutions AG. You could use this as a secondary screen that can be read in sunlight. It would also be possible to power the display with batteries and use a wireless USB connection. Below is a short video of the screen in sunlight.
These should be in production by the end of this year or the beginning of 2011.
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Onkyo has launched three new Windows 7 – based tablets. Two will have 10.1-inch multitouch screens while the third will have a 11.6-inch display. All come with a 32GB SSD, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. Battery life doesn’t look that good (at least when compared to the iPad’s 10 hours) — ranging from 3.8 hours to 6 hours depending on the model.
Prices range from ¥49,800 ($597 USD) to ¥69,800 ($836). Onkyo expects to begin shipping in mid-October.
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Free Kindle Books – 9/30/2010 no comments
We are ending the month with a bunch of freebies in the Kindle Store:
The 7th Victim by Alan Jacobson (3 1/2 stars/25 reviews) Thriller.
25 Language Phrasebook: German, French, Spanish, Catalan, Portuguese, Italian, Greek, Danish, Dutch, Swedish, Norwegian, Finnish, Czech, Polish, Hungarian, … Chinese, Indonesian, Malay, and Thai. by MobileReference (4 stars/10 reviews).
The New World by Patrick Ness (not yet rated) Prequel to the Chaos Walking Trilogy,
Enchanting the Lady by Kathryne Kennedy (4 1/2 stars/32 reviews) Fantasy.
First Things First by Brenda Warner (4 1/2 stars/21 reviews) Family.
Velocity by Alan Jacobson (5 stars/1 review) Crime fiction.
Ransom X (Legacy Series) by I. B. Holder (4 1/2 stars/9 reviews) Crime fiction. NOTE: At the moment this title is showing up in the free list even though it is priced at $1.00. It may be free soon — check before you hit the buy button.
According To Jane by Marilyn Brant (4 stars/60 reviews) Romance.
Elvis and The Dearly Departed by Peggy Webb (4 stars/9 reviews) Mystery.
Raising Jake by Charlie Carillo (4 1/2 stars/80 reviews) Contemporary.
Get a Life, Not a Job: Are Multiple Career Acts Right for You? by Paula Caligiuri (not yet rated) Career.
For more freebies see my Free Kindle Books page or the UK Kindle Store Free Books page. To see what new ebooks are coming out this month, see the New eBook Releases page, which I have updated with new ebooks being released in October.
