Archive for the ‘ebook readers’ tag
Barnes and Noble Gift Cards Will be Usable for eBook Purchases 2 comments
I have speculated before that after the holidays there may well be a number of nook ereader owners that are disgruntled with the Barnes and Noble ebook store, leading to some backlash if B&N doesn’t fix some of the problems. There is already some evidence of this in the B & N forums, and the nook is not even out yet.
Barnes and Noble apparently found yet another way to antagonize their customers – gift cards are not usable for purchasing ebooks at this time. This means that if you gift a nook ereader and wish to add a gift card for the purpose of stocking it with reading material it won’t work for that. There are some reports that B&N salesclerks are not aware of this and are cheerily suggesting gift cards to go along with your nook ereader gift.
Barnes and Noble has heard the complaints, and has announced that beginning in mid-December gift cards and online gift certificates will be allowed for the purchase of ebooks either online or through the nook ereader and on other devices using B&N’s eReader software.
That’s one problem solved; now if they can do something about their ebook pricing and the inferior selection of non-public domain titles offered in their ebook store.
Barnes and Noble also announced that their ebook store will be available in Canada around the first of December. At the present time the nook ereader is not available in Canada, but if you do have a nook in Canada you will be able to sync it with your B&N eBook library on your computer or access their ebook store via Wi-Fi. Canada is still a glaring omission in the Kindle ereader’s international coverage, though Amazon is working on this.
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Barnes & Noble eBook Store no comments
This week Barnes and Noble launched its new ebook store which is said to contain 700,000 titles. This number includes approximately 500,000 free public domain titles available through Google Books. Next year Plastic Logic’s ebook reader will hit the market and Barnes & Noble will be supporting it with their ebookstore.
By using Barnes & Noble’s reader software the ebooks are currently readable on Mac and Windows computers, iPhones and iPod Touches and several PDA phones.
There is a thoughtful article about Barnes & Noble’s new ebook service in the Washington Post, where it gets a mixed review; and some also interesting follow-up thoughts at TeleRead concerning DRM.
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It’s an Orwellian World 1 comment
This week Kindle owners were shocked to learn that certain titles by George Orwell had been disappeared from their Kindles, and their accounts refunded the amounts paid for the titles. What apparently happened is that Amazon got a hold of unauthorized additions of some of Orwell’s titles and when the mistake was discovered, Amazon’s system automatically removed the ebooks from purchaser’s Kindles via the wireless connection. It’s kind of fitting that Amazon should choose a title such as 1984 to introduce us to the dark side of the Wispernet.
Because of the outrage this incident has caused, Amazon has said that in the future it will not just automatically remove purchased books from Kindles if a similar situation arises.
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Mobile is reporting that Amazon is close to finalizing a launch date for the Kindle in the UK, presumably in time for Christmas. Agreements with book publishers have already been finalized, and negotiations with a mobile operator and with newspaper and magazine publishers are in progress, according to the article.
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FreeHand Systems, a global leader in digital sheet music publishing, has announced that its Novato Music Press catalog of over 20,000 classical, traditional and American music titles is now available for the Kindle.
“This is a wonderful boon to musicians who want instant access to a vast library of in-demand sheet music,” said Kim Lorz, CEO of FreeHand Systems, Inc. “In addition to the convenient and comprehensive content selection that we offer, musicians never have to fumble through paper scores or worry about forgetting a piece of music. Everything is wirelessly downloaded and stored in the Kindle and is available for easy recall.”
This is the first time such a comprehensive collection of sheet music has been made available on an ebook reader. FreeHand Systems’ goal is to make all of their more than 130,000 titles available for the Kindle.
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A Busy Week for eBook Readers 1 comment
This has been one busy week for ebooks and related news. Perhaps most welcome was the announcement by Amazon that it was lowering the price of the Kindle 2
In other news, Amazon was reported as having patents for a method of including advertising on an ebook reader device. This would, if implemented, have some pretty obvious pros and cons: for one thing, advertising could subsidize the price of readers and/or ebooks. On the other hand, if not implemented correctly, it could be very annoying. I would at least hope that a choice would be offered to consumers: cheaper products with ads, or pay more for ad-free. You can read more about this at www.mediapost.com and www.geek.com.
A new ebook reader was introduced in the UK. The Elonex eBook 600EB is made by Elonex for Borders. It comes preloaded with 100 classic ebooks and sudoku. There is an SD card slot, and the device comes with a one year guarantee. This reader seems to be pretty basic but functional and its main competition will probably be the Sony ereaders, as the Kindle is not available in Europe.
Speaking of the Sony ereaders; if you have one of these and your computer is a Mac, you will be happy to hear that Sony has apparently announced upcoming official Mac support for the Sony eBook Store. You can read more here. Read the rest of this entry »
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Amazon Reduces Kindle 2 Price no comments
Just a quick note; Amazon has announced that it is reducing the price for the Kindle 2
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Kindle and Kindle Books Outside of USA no comments
Currently Amazon’s Kindle 2 and Kindle DX are only sold by Amazon in the US. While it is possible to have someone in the US buy a Kindle for you and ship it to your overseas location, or you can buy one on eBay, you then have the problem of not being able to access the Kindle book store unless you have a credit card issued by an American bank with a US billing address. If you are an American, or have a credit card billed in the US, then you can download books while overseas to your PC and then to your Kindle.
If the Kindle 2 or Kindle DX is the ebook reader you are set on, there is a workaround that some are using to purchase books from Amazon, even though they are living in other countries. This involves buying Amazon gift cards and using those to pay for your ebooks. You can find out how to do this here: http://www.nerdgirl.com/2009/03/20/amazon-kindle-outside-the-us/
At some point Amazon will presumably make the Kindle Family available worldwide, but it will need to be rebuilt to have wireless access via the systems in place outside the US. Also Amazon will no doubt have to negotiate with publishers as different publishers usually have the rights to publish a particular book in different geographical areas.
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eBook Readers and Textbooks no comments
One major path to wider implementation and use of ebook readers will be their use for reading textbooks, but are the current devices up to the task?
In May of this year, When Jeff Bezos introduced the Kindle DX, one of his focuses was on textbooks; which this new, larger addition to the Kindle family should be better suited for than it’s smaller sibling, the Kindle 2. Definitely the screen shots of the Kindle DX displaying diagrams are looking good. “We’re going to get students with smaller backpacks, less load”, he said. He also announced five colleges and universities that will be trying out the Kindle DX in the upcoming fall session: Arizona State, Case Western Reserve, Princeton, Reed College, and University of Virginia.
Mr. Bezos also announced that Amazon has reached agreements with three of the leading textbook publishers: Pearson, Cengage Learning and Wiley.
Some pilot programs at universities have met mixed results. In several cases, students requested print textbooks after becoming frustrated with the digital textbook. Most of the problems seem to arise from navigational problems. Results so far would seem to indicate that additional features are needed on the devices before the use of ebook readers for reading textbooks can really take off. Advanced search functions, annotations (including shared annotations), and reliable multiple bookmarking functionality for example. And wouldn’t it be great to have easy access to Wikipedia! Another problem is mismatched pagination between users of printed and e versions of books. And finally, of course, color would be much better for those anatomical drawings! Looks like we’ve still got a ways to go. Certainly the Kindle DX is currently best of breed when it comes to digital textbooks; it does include many of the features necessary. It will be interesting to see how well the device is accepted by the students in the trials this fall.
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Fujitsu’s FLEPia; Worlds first color ebook reader no comments
Fujitsu’s FLEPia, the world’s first color ebook reader has recently gone on sale in Japan. FLEPia uses Fujitsu’s flexible color electronic paper which works by slowly rewriting the next page over the previous one.
The feature set is impressive, and it better be for the $1000 + price tag. FLEPia currently comes in both A4 and A5 versions, weighing 320g and 480g, and sporting 8” and 12” screens respectively. Both models are 12 millimeters thick. The unit can display up to 260,000 colors, is equipped with Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and a touch screen which has a resolution of 1024 x 768. An SD card (up to 4 GB) is used to store books purchased from the online bookstore Papyless. The keyboard is on-screen. FLEPia consumes power only on redraw, not for the display of a continuous image and Fujitsu claims battery life of 40 hours, though wi-fi will no doubt shorten that. The FLEPia is a little bigger and heavier than the Kindle 2, and the screen takes up to 8 seconds to refresh at 260,000 colors, so you better not be in a hurry. Even at lower color settings screen refresh rates are slow.
FLEPia comes with a trio of body color choices: white pearl, pink pearl and silver. The unit also comes with a stylus. There is no word yet when or if it will be available outside of Japan. The ebook formats it now uses are primarily used in Japan.
The FLEPia has other capabilities in addition to reading books: it comes with Windows CE 5. This means support for e-mail, internet and document handling. These capabilities potentially raise the FLEPia to a level somewhere between Amazon’s Kindle 2 and more powerful computing devices such as laptops.
E-ink, used in Amazon’s Kindle and Sony’s readers, will probably not be available in color until the end of 2010 at the earliest; more likely 2011. iRex, maker of the iLiad ereaders, has also promised a color model by 2011, and in addition claims that their device’s display will be three times brighter than existing color displays.
Probably the greatest significance of the Flepia is that it is a first step towards the next generation of color ebook readers, and provides incentive for other manufacturers to ready their color devices.
