Archive for the ‘Ectaco Jetbook’ Category
Ectaco and Hanvon to launch ereader for the educational market no comments
Around the first of the year Ectaco announced that it would be launching the K-12, an ereader aimed at the educational market. That is the last I’d heard of this project until Ectaco sent out this press release today:
Ectaco Inc., the world’s leader in portable language learning and the manufacturer of the jetBook eBook Reader announced today that it has teamed up with Hanvon, a leading global eBook Reader manufacturer and character recognition technology provider to create the first ever eBook Reader oriented towards education and implementation into standard classroom usage for teachers and students worldwide. These two brand new Educational eBook Readers will be showcased at the 2011 Book Expo of America in New York.
The first educational device is the jetBook K-12 for the US market features one-of-a-kind interactive technology to aid students in honing their skills in all subjects. The jetBook K-12 has specific programs students need like Speaking Oxford English Dictionaries, Speaking Oxford English-Spanish (or one of the soon available 38 languages) Dictionaries, the most comprehensive electronic SAT preparation course with endless lessons, Speed Reading courses to aid students in learning to read faster, English-Spanish (or one of 12 available language pairs) Text Translation System that can translate any text in full, English, Spanish and other language grammar courses, Interactive Phonetic Language Teacher® program to teach virtually any language step by step, Linguistic crosswords, Graphing, Scientific and Accounting Calculators, Math, Physics, Chemistry, Biology and Earth Science reference books, interactive course of US History and Facts, interactive Periodic Table of Elements, Text and Voice Note storage, Audiobooks Player and much more.
The second educational eBook Reader, named jetBook Color, will be implemented to schools across the US, China and Eastern Europe for the 2011-2012 school year. It will utilize the newest 9.8 inch Color E-Ink screen with an easy to use interface directed toward students and teachers. It will feature most of the programs from the jetBook K-12 with extra components based on each regions educational system.
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Tablet & ereader news – 1/9/2011 no comments
Trying to catch up on some of the happenings I have not had a chance to write about while I was at CES.
Kobo was not present at CES other than being featured on some of the hardware, but they have timed a couple of press releases to coincide with the show.
Kobo says that it now has access to more than 20 million consumers through forging relationships with over a dozen partners such as tablet and ereader manufacturers and mobile operators.
“In 2011, Kobo will emerge as the leading eReading service thanks to the adoption of tablets like the iPad, Samsung Galaxy Tab and RIM Playbook. We estimate that Kobo will be preloaded on over 20 million devices this year,” said Michael Serbinis, CEO of Kobo. “As the only pure-play service in the space, our strategy has always been to make eReading available on any device, and our open-platform eReading applications and eBook store have proven to be popular among tablet OEMs looking to offer eReading to their customers.”
Kobo also announced access to more than 175,000 PDF’s geared toward education at prices that are lower than textbooks. The PDF files can be viewed on Kobo eReaders, the Kobo Desktop Application and via Adobe Digital Editions software.
Topics included in the collection include medical texts and dictionaries, economics and business manuals, technical manuals and academic and scientific texts. The titles come from over 2,000 participating publishers, including Prentice-Hall, McGraw-Hill, Blackwell, Palgrave, The World Bank, Springer, Financial Times Press, Routledge and a number of university presses. For more information see the Kobo website.
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Copia had a big booth at CES and banners everywhere accompanied by a couple of announcements. Copia says that it has released its social reading app for Windows 7 devices, added support for IE9 at its website and released an Android app. Motorola featured the Copia app on its Droid X smartphone at CES. Looks like Copia has given up on marketing any devices of its own.
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Ectaco has announced a new ereader – the jetBook K-12. The new ereader will be aimed at the educational market and will come pre-loaded with books from the 50 State Reading Lists and a host of other features aimed at students:
The key features of the jetBook K-12, aside of being an eBook reader with built-in books from 50 State Reading Lists and a variety of editing, storing, memorization and text processing features are extended to Speaking Oxford English Dictionaries, Speaking Oxford English-Spanish (or one of the soon available 38 languages) Dictionaries, the most comprehensive electronic SAT and ACT preparation course with endless lessons, Speed Reading courses to aid students in learning to read faster, English-Spanish (or one of 12 available language pairs) Text Translation System that can translate any text in full, English, Spanish and other language grammar courses, Interactive Phonetic Language Teacher® program to teach virtually any language step by step, Linguistic crosswords, Graphing, Scientific and Accounting Calculators, Math, Physics, Chemistry, Biology and Earth Science reference books, interactive course of US History and Facts, interactive Periodic Table of Elements, Text and Voice Note storage, Audiobooks Player and much more. The jetBook K-12 is equipped with speech recognition and a voice feedback system to help disabled students navigate freely through each section.
The K-12 ereader will sport a 5-inch reflective TFT display. The release of the K-12 is said to be “upcoming.” I didn’t see this new ereader at the Ectaco booth at CES, nor can I find any pictures of it. In a handout I was given at the booth there is the following picture of a “jetBook Oxford+” which lists all of the features above and comes with a scanning pen.
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Hanvon has also unveiled a new 9.7-inch ereader – the Hanvon WISEreader E920. Besides features such as TTS, PDF annotations and instant Chinese-English translating, the E920 e-ink display has a resolution of 200 dpi. This is higher and should provide a crisper view of graphics than the Kindle DX which has a resolution of 150 dpi. According to E Ink Holdings the resolution of the Pearl e-ink display is capable of exceeding 200 dpi. The picture below is from Hanvon.
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eReader & Tablet News – 10/20/2010 2 comments
Verizon has announced that it will be selling the Samsung Galaxy Tab for $599.99 starting November 11.
Popular mobile applications, including V CAST Music and V CAST Song ID, VZ Navigator®, Slacker Radio, Kindle for Android, BLOCKBUSTER On Demand® presented by V CAST Video, and the exclusive golf game, “Let’s Golf,” will be available on the Samsung Galaxy Tab. In addition to text, picture and video messaging, the Samsung Galaxy Tab will also feature V CAST Apps, Verizon Wireless’ mobile storefront offering hundreds of applications for businesses and consumers at launch.
Verizon Wireless customers can add a monthly access plan beginning at $20 a month for 1 GB on their Samsung Galaxy Tab. For additional features and specifications on the Samsung Galaxy Tab, visit www.verizonwireless.com/galaxytab.
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Ectaco has had the jetBook mini ereader available for pre-order on its website for a while. Today the company announced that the mini is now ready to ship. The mini is priced at $99.95 from Ectaco and includes free shipping to the US and Canada. The mini is already available from Amazon as well. I would expect some discounting pretty soon.
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There is more news from Barnes & Noble. The bookseller is having a “very special event” next Tuesday, October 26 at its Union Square store to which it has invited reporters. If I were a gambler I’d be putting my money on this being the NOOK 2 announcement.
B&N also announced today that it has partnered with Blackboard, Inc. to enable college students to access and use interactive etextbooks and other digital content from the B&N catalog within the Blackboard Learn platform.
With the integration, students can access and purchase content from Barnes & Noble’s vast catalog of over 1 million titles, including e-books, e-textbooks, relevant study aids, test prep guides, periodicals, and hundreds of thousands of trade and professional titles, directly within the online course environment.
This integration easily connects faculty and students to NOOKstudy, the free e-reader and study application from Barnes & Noble, enabling them to navigate through digital content and assignments to make their studying efforts more efficient and effective. It streamlines the ability of faculty to assign e-textbooks and digital course content that students can access and purchase. In addition, faculty can assign specific readings within assigned materials pointing to the exact location where they are available in the NOOKstudy environment. Students can go straight from Blackboard Learn to the assignment and begin reading and studying.
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Amazon has put another Kindle 3 software update out as a public beta. Version 3.0.3 is just described as including general performance improvements. If you want to download and install the beta you can do so from the Kindle software update page.
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Starbucks today officially launches its previously announced Starbucks Digital Network (SDN) in partnership with Yahoo! in US company-operated stores. SDN will feature selected news, entertainment and lifestyle content in addition to local content over Starbucks’ free in store Wi-Fi connection.
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jetBook Mini Up for Pre-order 1 comment
The jetBook Mini ereader from Ectaco is now available to pre-order. The new ereader is priced at $99.99 and will ship on October 1, 2010.
The Mini uses 4 disposable AAA batteries,
which are said to last up to 90 hours of continuous reading. Some of the specs of the Mini:
- 5-inch non-backlit TFT screen
- Weighs 5.8 ounces
- The screen orientation can be changed to read from all four angles
- Adjustable line spacing, font sizes and line breaks
- Built-in clock and date
- Multi-language interface support: English, French, Italian, Portuguese, German, Spanish, Polish and Russian
- support for LIT, MOBI, ePub, HTML, PRC, PDB, PDF via conversion (using Calibre) to TXT and FB2
- SD card slot; up to 2GB
- USB connection
- Available in black or a bright yellow color
No mention of whether the Mini works with Adobe Digital Editions, but both the jetBook and jetBook Lite do. We also now have a video in English.
(via Best eReaders)
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jetBook Mini Video no comments
Ectaco has uploaded a video to YouTube of the jetBook Mini at the Moscow Book Fair. Unless you speak Russian the audio is not going to do much for you, but at least we can see what the Mini looks like. The Mini also put in a very brief appearance in another video from last week of the Sony PRS-350.
At first glance the jetBook Mini reminds one of the PocketBook 360. Obvious from the battery compartment bulge is the fact that, like the jetBook Lite, the Mini uses disposable batteries.
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JetBook Lite $90 no comments
Newegg’slatest sale newsletter has the JetBook Lite ereader on sale for $89.99 with free shipping. You will need to use the promo code EMCYVZS24 at checkout. Sometimes these promo codes are tied to the account of the person receiving the newsletter, so the code may not work for anyone but me – in this case I see no mention of that restriction. The coupon expires on 7/21/2010.
The latest firmware update for both the JetBook and JetBook Lite supports Adobe Digital Editions, so you can read DRMed ebooks on Ectaco’s ereaders now.
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JetBook and JetBook Lite Get Adobe Digital Editions no comments
Ectaco has announced that the JetBook and JetBook Lite are now compatible with Adobe Digital Editions. This will make a lot of additional content from sources such as Kobo, Barnes & Noble and other online sellers available to Ectaco’s ereaders.
The JetBooks also get support for four new languages: Arabic, Farsi, Vietnamese and Hebrew.
The Jetbook Lite is now selling for $120 at Newegg.comwhile the Jetbook is selling for $150.
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Borders to Carry Aluratek eReader no comments
Borders has been hinting that its ereader lineup will include more devices than the Kobo ereader and the Sony devices it has been offering. Today it was
announced that the Aluratek Libre eBook Reader Pro will also be sold through Borders.
The Libre is based on the same hardware as the Ectaco jetBook and features a non-backlit 5-inch LCD screen. The Borders desktop app is bundled with the ereader, which also comes with 100 free classic ebooks.
The Libre will be sold for $119.99 and pre-orders are being accepted now. Shipping is expected to begin in early July. Dedicated ereading sections called “Area-e” will be rolled out in Borders stores in August and the Libre ereader will be available in these as well.
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JetBook Lite $115 at Newegg no comments
This is a new low. Neweggis selling the JetBook Lite for $115 with free shipping. Not sure how long the sale will last; some of the deals in the circular I received are good until Feb. 25.
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Ectaco JetBook-Lite on Sale at Newegg no comments
Newegg is selling the Ectaco JetBook-Lite ereader for $117.00. This is a very brief sale that will last for a few hours only or until sold out.
The JetBook-Lite features a 5” non-backlit LCD screen and supports ePub, Mobi, PRC, RTF, txt, pdf, fb2 formats.
£149.00
£109
