Well, well, well. There is now a Kindle reader application for the Mac. This has trailed its brethren on other platforms by a long mile. Even the iPhone app has been available for some time now. Well better late than never.
Use one of your home’s largest gadget, your TV, to enhance one of the most low-tech activities we all do: read. The Wireless Page to TV Magnifier is a mouse-sized gizmo that scans your books or magazines and sends the image wirelessly to your TV in real time, magnifying it up to 25x it’s actual size.
The scanner is a 655×488 pixel scanner, and there’s a wireless base that plugs into your television via an RCA video cable. This would be a great gift for a lot of people, who enjoy reading but it’s too much of a strain on their eyes.
Buy now!
Price: $149.99
(Please note prices are subject to change and the listed price is correct to the best of our knowledge at the time of posting)
In a move that seems obviously like an effort to emulate the success that Netflix and Amazon has had with their digital entertainment download services, Best Buy is throwing their hat into the ring as well.
No start date yet, but the service called Blue Sky Video will give its customers one free movie download every month. Well, that’s a good way to lure new customers over!
One of the up and coming services that gets you even more entertainment on your cell phone is mspot. mspot started out as a music, ringtone and streaming radio company but has recently branched out into movies too.
So if you’re interested in watching movies on your phone, then you can get an mspot movie club subscription starting at $10/month for 20 credits which works out to up to 4 movies.
mspot works on a variety of cell phones that run on AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon.
MvixUSA has updated their flagship media center product, the Ultio, to now include DVR (digital video recording) capabilities. The Ultio Pro plays back Blu-ray quality 1080p hi-def video, photos, and music on your high-def TV via HDMI and stores it all on its internal hard drive which you can get as large as 2TB.
And now, the Pro can record video on the fly from your cable/satellite TV, your camcorder or from DVDs, instead of acting just as a repository. The Ultio Pro is a virtual Swiss Army knife of video, image and audio formats including: mp4, avi, iso, asf, wmv, flv, mkv, rm, ts, mpg, vob, mp3, wma, aac, ogg, flac, jpg, bmp and gif. To see the full list, download the Formats PDF from MvixUSA.
And of course, the Ultio Pro plays back media from your network and the Internet, including from your computer and from services liks Netflix, Hulu, YouTube and more.
Buy now!
Price: $169 without hard drive; $384 with 2TB drive. (You can buy the barebones version and insert whatever sized drive you’d like.)
(Please note prices are subject to change and the listed price is correct to the best of our knowledge at the time of posting)
This was too colorful, interactive and cool looking not to feature – the Novation Launchpad built together with Ableton is a 64-button grid that you use to create and control music. The buttons can be set to do anything really – play notes, trigger sequences and much more.
Launchpad comes with Ableton Live 8, but can be used to control other music software as well. You’ve got to take a look at the video to see what we’re talking about here: Read the rest of this entry »
Western Digital is still in the media player game, and their latest model improves upon the last one. The WD TV Live plays back HD video, music & photos whether they’re on your computer, your USB drives, or the Net on your TV.
It still comes in an ugly little black box with what looks like an elf’s remote. One nice feature is that you can connect as many USB drives as you want to it for practically unlimited storage.
WD TV Live can connect to the Net to play back YouTube videos, Flickr photos and stream music from Pandora and Live365.com.
Like the Netgear EVA2000, this is a pretty inexpensive media player, and would be a decent introduction to the media streamer gadget.
Buy now!
More info from the manufacturer
Price: $119.99
(Please note prices are subject to change and the listed price is correct to the best of our knowledge at the time of posting)
While we were inundated with hardware eReaders at CES, Blio took an intermediate step and made a (free) software eReader than can run on laptops, netbooks, desktops, tablets and even iPhones and iPods.
Designed in part by inventor Ray Kurzweil, the Blio is a free piece of software that you can download for your Windows machine, and that opens up and displays eBooks in full-color with options such as 3D page turning, text only mode for smaller displays, read aloud (text-to-speech), and note annotation. The Blio reader also supports audio, video and interactive media when embedded eBooks.
Blio will also be accompanied by the Blio Bookstore allowing you to add titles to your own virtual personal library that is accessible regardless of where you are or what device you’re on. The Blio Bookstore boasts over 1.2 million titles which they claim is more than any other eBookstore.
Blio reminds me a great deal of Zinio’s excellent software reader for their electronic magazines.
Our Take
I think they’re onto something here, as well as multi-screen eReader manufacturers like Spring Design (Alex) and enTourage (eDGe), because want fewer devices, not more. Of course, peoples’ needs differ, so in my case when I travel I’m never without my laptop, so I would much rather my laptop be able to read eBooks. Blio fits the bill here.
On the other hand, my laptop is still a tad bit heavy and warm to hold open in bed, but I’m always wanting to surf the Web, but doing so in grayscale isn’t as satisfying which is why I feel those dual-screen readers are appealing and have potential. In the end, it does boil down to your own personal preferences, and you may still elect to walk around with both a laptop/netbook and a thin eReader.
Two more vendors join what promises to become a crowded field this year – Plastic Logic and Skiff.
Plastic Logic who had previously announced their QUE proReader, premiered it at CES and says it’s aimed at business professionals. The QUE has a shatterproof 8.5″x11″ plastic touchscreen display, is 0.33″ thick and weighs 1lb.
It displays PDF, Word, Excel and Powerpoint docs and can check e-mail from Outlook. It connects to the Net via WiFi and 3G. With 2 models starting at $649, Plastic Logic faces a tough battle with the likes of the Kindle, Nook and others.
Spring Design jumps into the e-book market with its Alex which is another dual-screen reader. It is yet another product running on Google’s Android OS, and features mobile browsing via WiFi and via 3G, EVDO/CDMA and GSM.
The top screen is a 6″ monochrome e-paper (e-Ink) screen while the smaller lower screen is a 3.5″ color LCD. Also included is an SD card slot, earphones and speakers.
One notable and useful feature is the ability to conserve battery life by displaying content on the EPD screen that was originally captured while surfing on the LCD screen with a simple toggle.
Update: Alex now has a release date of Feb 22, 2010 and a price of $399. [press release]
