Archive for the ‘australia’ tag
Google ebooks now available in Australia no comments
Yesterday the Google eBookstore launched an Australian branch. Local brick and mortar bookstores that will also be offering the Google eBooks via their websites include Booktopia and Dymocks.
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Borders news no comments
Borders has been granted an extension until October to file its reorganization plan. In part this is reported to be because the ailing company is in talks with potential purchasers. One of these potential suitors is the Gores Group, a private-equity firm that specializes in buying up distressed companies. According to the Wall Street Journal, Gores is interested in purchasing around half of the remaining Borders locations and would keep them open.
Meanwhile, Gizmodo is reporting that Borders Australia has sent out emails to customers announcing the closure of all of its retail stores in that country. The Borders.com.au website is still up and bears a banner proclaiming “It’s Business as Usual,” so the company’s online presence may survive.
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Laser EB101 Color LCD eReader Hints at Ability to Read Kindle Books no comments
Laser is an Australian consumer electronics company 
based in New South Wales. They are offering a color LCD ereader dubbed the Laser EB101. There is not much special here except for some of the ad copy on the site that seems to suggest that the EB101 will work with ebooks from Amazon. I bet that’s news to Amazon!
The Laser is described as working with all formats including DRMed content “which is legitamately (sic) purchased from on line stores such as Amazon.” The site then goes on to add “if you’re considering an E-Book reader, you should check the licensing and compatibility with DRM fies (sic). The EB101 is fully licensed and fully compatible meaning more books, more videos, more music, more pictures and more use.”
Some buyers who don’t know better could purchase this ereader thinking they could then use it to read ebooks from the Kindle Store. Not good. Hopefully Laser will rewrite the description as this seems a bit deceptive – hopefully unintentionally so.
As for the ereader itself, it comes in either black or white, has a 5-inch LCD screen, 2GB internal memory, SD card slot and plays music and videos. The battery life is said to be up to six hours.
(via Gizmodo)
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Kogan eReader 1 comment
This is a new ereader for the Australian market.
The Kogan ebook reader sports a 6-inch e-ink screen and is Linux based. Some of the other features:
- e-ink display: 800 x 600 resolution; 16 grayscales
- Ram: 64 MB DDR2
- Battery life: 10,000 page turns
- Internal memory: 2GB
- SDHC card slot (up to 32 GB)
- eBook formats: PDF, CHM, EPUB, TXT, HTM, HTML, RTF, PDB, DJVU, DJV, IW44, IW4, FB2, OEB, PRC, MOBI, TCR, OPF; Adobe Digital Editions
- Language support: English, Italian, French, Russian, Dutch and German
- 5 font sizes
- Comes pre-loaded with over 1,500 classic books – including Australian titles
A leather cover, earphones and USB cable/charger are included, as is a one-year warranty (looks like the warranty on the items Kogan sells is only good in Australia).
The Kogan ereader is expected to ship towards the end of next month at a price of $189 AUD (about $165 USD) with free shipping. Kogan is taking pre-orders now.
This looks like a rebranded ereader made by China-based Acuce Co. (model number CL-EBK007), if I’m not mistaken. Edit: Oops! Acuce is a distributer, this ereader is from Gajah International.
Kogan Technologies is an online only consumer electronics retailer based in Melbourne. The company was founded by Ruslan Kogan in 2003 while he was still in university, which appears to be a bit of an interesting story.
via itwire
