In a bit of news that’s worth keeping an eye on, netbook maker, Asus, has thrown their hat into the e-reader ring. It’s not out yet (perhaps by year’s end) and there are scant details except that the price point is going to be low (~$165) and that it will supposedly compete with the Amazon Kindle and Sony products on features.
Now we’re moving along. Google is doing their part to get the industry on board with EPUB, an electronic format for books. That means that all of those public domain books hosted on Google Books are now downloadable in that format on any device that supports it. That includes Sony’s line of eReaders.
C’mon Amazon – get your Kindle up to speed already.
Sony steps up the the e-Book reader wars as they announce a new addition to their line-up. The Reader Daily Edition (yes, cumbersome name) has an integrated 3G wireless conn (with free AT&T service to the Sony bookstore), a 7″ touch screen that operates in both landscape and portrait modes and has 16 shades of gray.
What’s also notable about this announcement is that you can now virtually borrow books from your library (assuming they offer electronic lending).
Hopefully available in time for Christmas, it will retail for $399. Watch out Amazon & Kindle. Sony is nipping at your heels. We’re still hoping for more embracing of common standards though.
In their ongoing quest to stay competitive with Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble acquired e-book retailer Fictionwise a few months ago and is now offering e-book downloads and a free reader that works on PCs, Macs, iPhones and Blackberrys.
Barnes & Noble also struck a deal to offer the 500,000 public domain books that Google scanned and has available on Google Books. Just one problem – I can’t seem to find any ‘free’ e-books on BN.com’s e-book section. Perhaps I didn’t look hard enough. But then again, I shouldn’t need to. This should be used as a loss leader. Oh well, I’ll just peruse Google Books if I want to read a free classic.
And what about a e-reader? BN is working with manufacturer Plastic Logic that is releasing a device in 2010 for which BN will launch a e-bookstore to provide content for that device. Of course, e-books from BN.com don’t work on Sony’s device or Amazon’s Kindle.
*sigh* Competition is great and all, but why oh why don’t companies just save themselves and consumers the money and trouble and start out with standards?
First up in the ‘what the … ?!’ category from the ever-inventive Japaneses were the Fuwarinka Candy, which changes your body odor by eating a piece of candy or chewing a piece of gum. Apple had their WWDC conference and rolled out new MacBooks and a new iPhone.
Internet traffic could reach 2/3 of a Zettabyte by 2013 and speaking of the Net, you better grab your Facebook username before it gets snapped up by someone else.
More gadgets: The Lacie d2 Network File Server can store tons of photos and videos on your home network. Amazon released its latest Kindle, the DX, while Microsoft is close to beta testings its new free anti-virus software.
Wrapping things up, we compared some wireless 802.11 USB adapters so you could retro-fit that old laptop or desktop cheapily and easily.
Amazon’s latest Kindle model, the Kindle DX, ships today for a flat price of $489. The biggest differences between the DX and the Kindle 2 are the larger 9.7″ diagonal screen, a native PDF reader, and the larger 3.3GB storage (roughly 3500 books).
Another new feature is auto-rotate which is pretty nice for formats like newspapers or pages with landscape diagrams, although it is a bit slow to transition from one to the other. The 9.7-inch screen is a 1200×824 pixel resolution at 150dpi. The DX weighs just over 1lb (19 oz total).
While the price tag may seem high, remember that you get free lifetime wireless access on the 3G Sprint network, so no searching for a WiFi hotspot.
Buy now!
Price: $489.00
(Please note prices are subject to change and the listed price is correct to the best of our knowledge at the time of posting)
Amazon.com now owns Lexcycle, maker of iPhone e-book app Stanza. Stanza, which is free, allows users to read more than 100,000 books and newspapers that mostly formatted in open standard format ePub.
Hopefully, Amazon does not change its free status, but instead builds on it and potentially integrates it into Kindle.
We started off the week by reporting that Amazon’s Kindle Store has surpassed over 260,000 books with an exponential growth rate – at least that’s not a reason not to own one.
We took a look at the available VHS to DVD converters and other analog to digital converters (both hardware and software solutions).
We featured a bunch of Google-related news. The latest offering from Gmail Labs is a tiny addition but welcome one – insert images directly into email. Next are the many uses of Google Latitude and last is the news that Google and universal were partnering up on a music video website called Vevo.
Rounding up, we pleasantly discovered that Facebook is
not only attracting younger members. Rock Band fan? Nowhere to put your instruments? Then take a look at the ‘Rock Box’ Rock Band storage box.
Only back in Sept, we reported that the Kindle Storehad over 170,000 e-books. Now they’ve tacked on almost 100,000 more books.
BTW, the Kindle 2 is in stock.
Sony announced today that they have, with Google’s contribution, added over half a million (500,000) free public domain books to their library for their eReaders. This collection consist of books whose copyright has expired, so most of these titles will have been published prior to 1932.
This brings the total number of titles in the Sony eBook Store to over 600,000 easily surpassing the 250,000 titles that the Kindle Store has.
While many see this as Google teaming up with Sony to compete with Amazon in the eReader field, I think Google probably saw this as an easy decision, choosing to go with the vendor that supported the e-book standard, EPUB. Kindle does not natively support EPUB, although it has a conversion tool that ships with the reader.
