Archive for the ‘ereaders’ tag
New ereaders for the Indian market 1 comment
Singapore-based Vestal Enterprises today announced some rather ambitious plans to launch a new line of six different ereaders for the Indian market. Five of the new “LeAF” (again with the StudlyCaps) ereaders will have e-ink displays and one is an Android device with an LCD display.
Four of the e-ink ereaders have 6-inch screens and one comes with a 9-inch display. Other features like touchscreen or lack thereof vary by model. The new ereaders will support 18 Indian languages.
Detailed pricing information has not yet been announced, but is said to start at Rs 8,999 ($200 USD). Vestal plans to sell its ereaders at major bookstores as well as online.
I will be somewhat surprised if Vestal actually launches all of these ereaders. Companies that have promised to launch a whole line of multiple ereader models have not exactly had a great track record. Remember Copia?
In fact, ebooks appear to be enjoying less success in India than in other parts of the world. A recent article in the Times of India blames this on a “lack of cheap ereaders and technological awareness” among the Indian people. I imagine having so many languages and dialects to deal with might have an impact as well.
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Hanvon ereader first to use color e-ink display no comments
Back in August E Ink Holdings chairman Scott Liu 
spilled the beans on an upcoming ereader from Hanvon that would utilize E Ink’s long-promised color electrophoretic display. The New York Times reported yesterday that the new color ereader will be announced tomorrow by Hanvon at the FPD International 2010 trade show in Tokyo.
Hanvon’s new color ereader will have a 9.68-inch screen and will be priced from $440. It is expected to be available from March, 2011 in China.
The first gen color displays from E Ink will only be capable of showing simple animation — not video playback. The colors are also said to be rather muted. Bringing color to E Ink’s displays involves adding color filters to a monochrome display, which cuts down on contrast. The new Pearl e-ink display was developed to help solve this problem.
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Kindle 3 Impressions 1 comment
I’ve been using the newest generation 6-inch Kindle ereader — known to everyone except Amazon as the Kindle 3 — for about a week and a half now. I have to say that I’m quite impressed. As you know by now, the Kindle 3 is faster, smaller, lighter and comes with a display that has much better contrast.
Kindle 3 — Faster, Smaller and Lighter
The Kindle 3 is faster, both faster than the Kindle 2
and faster than much of the competition. The speed bump is apparent both with page turns and when navigating the menus and your library. Compared to the Kindle 3, just moving the cursor around the screen and selecting text to lookup, highlight, etc. is just plain clunky on many other ereaders.
The smaller size comes from newer electronics as well as a bezel and button redesign by Amazon. The page buttons are smaller than the Kindle 2, and Amazon has elected to ditch the row of number keys from the keyboard. You now access the number keys by tapping the symbol key and then using the 5-way controller to select the number you want. While this is more time consuming, usually we don’t have to enter a lot of numbers, so I think the trade-off is a good choice.
The keys of the keyboard are also now slightly closer together than those on the Kindle 2, so it may be more difficult to use for those with larger fingers. My hands are pretty large though, and I adapted to it pretty quick. My biggest complaint with the new keyboard is that it seems hard to read the keycaps in lower light conditions. While the screen of the Kindle 3 has improved contrast, the labeling of the keyboard keys on the graphite model needs more.
The page turning buttons are narrower (and silent – compared to the small click of the Kindle 2 buttons), and until you get used to them you will probably make a few unintentional page turns, but again, it is just a matter of getting used to the new layout.
In the above picture the Kindle 3 is on the left.
The 5-way controller has been changed, and I like the new style better as I find that it feels better and less distractive than the old model. The 5-way, along with the Menu and Back buttons are now integrated in the keyboard.
A few other button positions have changed from the Kindle 2: the power button is now on the bottom, the Home button has been moved from above the right page turn to the keyboard, and you now have two back page turning buttons — one on each side.
Smaller size means lighter, and to further lighten the Kindle Amazon has jettisoned the metal back panel of the Kindle 2 for an all plastic design. The Kindle 3 still feels well constructed even though it is all plastic now.
So how does all of the new lightness and smallness feel in your hands? For me the Kindle 3 is very comfortable to hold and use one-handed in either hand. Because of its light weight it is very easy to hold for long periods of time. Kindle 3 does an even better job of disappearing and letting you become immersed in your reading than the prior models.
Other Kindle 3 Improvements
Like the Kindle DX2, the Kindle 3 ereader also makes use of the new Pearl display from E Ink Holdings. This screen brings a big improvement — contrast is improved by 50 percent.
The background of the new Pearl display has less gray. Blacks are blacker 
and everything looks crisper. The text seems to jump out of the screen. The new display is also easier to read in lower light conditions. When viewing pictures it seems as though there are more shades between white and black.
In addition to the improved contrast of the display, Amazon has optimized the text with their proprietary technology. Text is much clearer than on the Kindle 2. There are also now three different fonts to choose from: regular or condensed Caecilia and a sans serif font. Personally I prefer the regular font, but the other two are there if you want them. You can also now adjust the line spacing. I like this as I prefer the lines with less spacing than the Kindle 2 came with.
Battery life has been pretty much doubled over the Kindle 2. So far mine seems to be living up to Amazon’s claim of one month between charges with wireless off.
You still cannot increase the memory of the Kindle 3, but the internal memory has been doubled so that you should be able to store around 3,500 ebooks in this ereader.
I made do with the Wi-Fi only Kindle 3 as I have a wireless network at home and my mobile phone can generate a Wi-Fi hotspot. I also feel no great need to help support AT&T’s Reign of Disappointment & Disconnection. I’ve had no problems with either connecting to or with staying connected to my Wi-Fi network.
The Kindle 3 now uses a WebKit-based Internet browser. Browsing the web on the Kindle 3 is still not the ideal way to do so (as is true with all e-ink displays), and Amazon still classifies it as “experimental,” but I do find it better than on the Kindle 2.
There is now an “Article Mode” that is much better for reading text on a website. This new feature removes some graphics and reformats the text to fit nicely on the Kindle 3’s screen and eliminates the need for panning around and zooming. If you want to see any missing graphics while in the Article Mode just hit the back button to go back to the normal web page view.
In the picture above the left pane shows an article at the NYT in regular browser mode. You can see the pan and zoom box in the left central part of the page. The right pane shows the same article in Article Mode.
There are more improvements, such as better PDF handling, better Text-to-Speech (TTS), Voice Guide — TTS enabled menus, and support for new characters (Cyrillic, Japanese, Korean and Chinese), but I’ll cover those in separate posts later.
One thing that I especially admire about the way in which Amazon has built the Kindle ereading platform is that it can be as simple or as complex as you want or need it to be. You can happily start using your new Kindle 3 straight out of the box with little attention paid to the user manual. Well, OK, you can do this with most ereaders — using one is not rocket science after all. Just figure out the power button and page-turning buttons and you are pretty much good to go.
Where the Kindle ereaders differ is in offering more intricacy that scales to your wants and needs. You don’t need to learn all of the tweaks, tricks, shortcuts and “hidden features” of your Kindle to use it, but they are there waiting under the hood if you want them.
What other ebook readers out there have spawned an aftermarket in how-to-use-your-new-ereader books? There are a number of such books for the Kindles, and not because you need to read one to understand how to use Amazon’s ereaders, but because the Kindle platform is so rich and has such depth.
I like this scalability, and to my mind it is technology well done.
With the most features for immersive reading, access to the most ebooks, the lowest price of the major models and backed by Amazon’s great customer service, I think the Kindle 3 is hands down the best ereader choice out there at the moment. At $139 for the Wi-Fi and $189 for the Wi-Fi + 3G (£109 & £149 UK) nothing else comes close in my opinion.
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Where not to Kindle no comments
A bus driver in Portland, Oregon is currently enjoying his 15 minutes of fame thanks to being filmed reading his Kindle while driving.
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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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The Curious Case of the Kindle 3 Microphone; Wi-Fi Only vs Wi-Fi + 3G no comments
Ever since the revelation that the Kindle 3 ereader has a built-in microphone there has been speculation as to what it might mean. One bandied-about theory has been that the Kindle 3 might turn into a mobile phone.
The microphone is described on page 29 of the Kindle 3 User Guide as being “not currently enabled but is provided for future use.”
To my mind there is no way the Kindle 3 will work as a substitute for a dedicated cell phone. Not many people will be trading in their cell phones to get cellular service on their ebook reader. Not only are ereaders much less portable than mobile phones due to their size, they are much less durable. The feature set is also much different.
The microphone is on the bottom edge – not the ideal position if it was intended for telephony, but it could work. And if God had intended the Kindle 3 to be used as a phone surely he would have included a numerical keypad.
The only way I see the Kindle 3 being used as a cell phone is if Google Voice or maybe Skype could be integrated to use the Wi-Fi connection. Using Wi-Fi would mean that Amazon would not be paying for your call time. Being able to use Google Voice on the Kindle 3 might be an interesting feature – you could temporarily transfer your calls to your Kindle if you wanted to go read on the patio and did not want to carry your phone with you. . . . OK, I’m reaching here.
There are much more plausible uses for the microphone:
- Voice recording and note taking: This is a very obvious and useful application of the microphone – especially if voice notes could be linked to annotations and bookmarks.
- Voice controlled menus and navigation: This would be big for those with vision impairments. The NFB has already commended Amazon for the improved accessibility of the Kindle 3. Being able to make menu choices and navigate by using voice only would be a killer accessibility feature.
- Future apps: The microphone gives app developers a bit more hardware to play with. We might see the microphone put to some interesting uses when the Kindle App Store launches.
We shall see.
Wi-Fi Only vs Wi-Fi + 3G
With both the Barnes & Noble NOOK and the Kindle 3 ereaders we now get to choose between Wi-Fi only and Wi-Fi + 3G connectivity. At first glance the Wi-Fi + 3G makes more sense – 3G will cost you $50 more initially to buy the hardware, but after that the 3G connection is free and adds convenience when you are out and about or if you don’t have a Wi-Fi network at home.
In some cases the Wi-Fi only option may be enough for you:
- If you will primarily use your ereader at home and you have a Wi-Fi network there, or, if you have ready access to a Wi-Fi network when you are on the road.
- If you have one of the newer mobile phones that can generate a Wi-Fi hotspot and you are already paying for this feature for your other devices.
- If either of the above apply and you don’t get a good AT&T signal anyway. Believe it or not, there are actually people that don’t get a good AT&T signal
.
In general I try to get as many features as I can afford when buying a new device. I’d rather have features that I don’t use than find out later on that I’m missing a needed feature that was on a slightly higher priced model that I did not spring for. However, in the case of ereaders, 3G may not be needed by some users who have easy access to Wi-Fi connections.
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Kindle 3 Announced 2 comments
Apparently the 6-inch Kindle being out of stock 
for the last few days was in preparation for the introduction of a new Kindle, which Amazon has just announced. The new version is a “21 percent smaller and 15 percent lighter design, with 50 percent better contrast, 20 percent faster page turns, up to one month of battery life, double the storage, and more–only $189, and still with free 3G wireless.” Wi-Fi is also built in, and there will additionally be a Wi-Fi only Kindle for a lower price of $139, which is $10 lower than the price of the Wi-Fi only nook ereader.
The smaller size is achieved by slimming down the bezel and rearranging the buttons. The page turning buttons are thinner as well.
As expected, the new 6-inch Kindle will make use of the new Pearl e-ink display, just like the new DX graphite. As for the faster speed, it apparently does not come from the faster processors we’ve been hearing about over the last six months or so, but sounds more like it is the result of fine tuning and optimization:
Kindle’s all-new, high-contrast electronic ink display is further optimized with Amazon’s proprietary waveform and font technology to make pages turn faster and fonts sharper. Waveform is a series of electronic pulses that move black and white electronic ink particles to achieve a final gray level for an image or text. Amazon tuned the new Kindle’s waveform and controller mechanism to make page turning 20 percent faster. In addition, this waveform tuning combined with new hand-built, custom fonts and font-hinting make words and letters more crisp, clear, and natural-looking. Font hints are instructions, written as code, that control points on a font character’s line and improve legibility at small font sizes where few pixels are available. Hinting is a mix of aesthetic judgments and complicated technical strategies. Amazon designed its proprietary font-hinting to optimize specifically for the special characteristics of electronic ink.
Some other feature upgrades:
- More built-in storage: new model will store up to 3,500 books.
- Quieter page turning buttons. The older model makes a small clicking sound when you flip pages.
- New Web browser: The new Kindle uses a WebKit-based browser, which is faster and easier to navigate. The new browser also has an “article mode” feature, which condenses Web pages into the main textual content for easier reading.
- Better Accessibility: New Text-to-Speech (TTS) enabled menus enable navigation of menus without having to read menu options. All menu options, content listings on the home screen and item descriptions are TTS enabled.
The new Kindle 3G + Wi-Fi comes in both graphite or white, while the Wi-Fi only model is available in graphite only. I do like the graphite color better than the white myself – it adds to the perceived contrast. The Wi-Fi only model also weighs slightly less – 8.5 ounces vs 8.7 ounces for the Kindle 3G + Wi-Fi (and 10.2 ounces for the older model).
The new lighted leather cover for 
the Kindle 3 sounds kind of neato. It has a built-in retractable light that draws power from the Kindle’s battery via gold plated conductive hinges that also hold the Kindle 3 securely in the cover. The new lighted cover
Well, there is nothing really groundbreaking with this release, but the improvements are somewhat more substantive than the Kindle DX graphite’s improvements over its previous model. I really wish we could have gotten more durable plastic-based displays but, after the iPad’s release, pricing has become the primary focus. I’m hoping that the color Kindles, when they arrive, will have flexible screens.
The newest members of the Kindle family of ereaders will be shipping on August 27, 2010. Amazon is taking pre-orders
UPDATE: Amazon has put up a copy of the Kindle 3 User Guide – I’ve posted a link to it on my User Guides and Manuals page.
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Amazon Gets Exclusive eBooks from Author F. Paul Wilson; New Christopher Moore no comments
Amazon announced this morning that they have added another author to the list of those who have made their ebooks available exclusively in the Kindle Store for reading on the Kindle ereader and the various Kindle for (insert your device here) apps.
This time it is sci-fi and horror writer F. Paul Wilson, who will be adding the five books in his LaNague Federation series. The five books are:
- An Enemy of the State
- Wheels Within Wheels
- The Tery
- Dydeetown World
- Healer
Wilson has won the Stoker, Inkpot, Porgie and Prometheus awards and has written over 40 books.
Bite Me: A Love Story – New Christopher Moore Today
If you are a fan of Christopher Moore and his sick sense of humor then you probably are already aware that his newest book Bite Me goes on sale today. This is the third book of his campy vampire series. Bite Me is available for $9.99 in Kindle edition, 
or from the Sony Reader Store.
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Cooking With the Kindle no comments
The Kindle Store now has over 450,000 titles. Amazon seems to be adding somewhere around 10,000 titles per month. And as Amazon points out in their press release today there are also 1.8 million public domain titles available online for free for the Kindle (and other) ereaders.
Today Amazon announced the addition of several popular cookbooks. From the press release:
"Customers tell us they love to cook from recipes on their Kindles," said Russ Grandinetti, Vice President, Kindle Content. "Kindle for iPhone or Kindle for BlackBerry is a great way to keep ingredients lists with you when you go to the grocery store, and then pick up right at that recipe on your Kindle when you’re ready to cook. In the kitchen, Kindle doesn’t have pages that may close while you’re trying to reference a recipe. We hope that our customers who cook will take advantage of some of these great Kindle books."
The Kindle Store has thousands of great books for cooks. Some of the new and most popular books include:
- "How to Cook Everything, Completely Revised 10th Anniversary Edition: 2,000 Simple Recipes for Great Food" by Mark Bittman, published by Wiley
- "Rose’s Heavenly Cakes" by Rose Levy Berenbaum, published by Wiley
- "Kneadlessly Simple: Fabulous, Fuss-Free, No Knead Breads" by Nancy Baggett, published by Wiley
- "So Easy: Luscious, Healthy Recipes for Every Meal of the Week" by Ellie Krieger, published by Wiley
- "The Best Recipes in the World" by Mark Bittman, published by Broadway
- "Julia’s Kitchen Wisdom: Essential Techniques and Recipes From a Lifetime of Cooking" by Julia Child, published by Knopf
Indeed, a search for cookbooks in the Kindle Store
The kitchen is one place that I can really see an ereader stand for your Kindle coming in handy. The M-Edge FlexStand 
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Kindle App For Android Coming? 1 comment
Engadget has posted some leaked internal Dell flyers showing the Android-based Dell Mini 5 and listing some of its features:
- Kindle “book reader” applications
- Amazon MP3
- Amazon Video Streams
- Amazon Store
This could mean that Kindle for Android is coming soon. Amazon has not announced anything, but with the number of Android-based devices coming to market it seems obvious that Amazon will want to make an Android reading app to go along with Kindle for PC, Kindle for Blackberry and the soon to come Kindle for Mac.
There is a Kindle blurb on the Dell flyer that claims over 300,000 books available in the Kindle store. That would have been correct about 4-5 months ago if memory serves; now there are over 420,000 books. So I’m guessing that the leaked docs are probably from about that time?
(Via jkOnTheRun)
