Pearl’s E-Ink Next-Gen Tech Displays Contrast 50 Times Greater

The real “winner” of the e-book wars is E Ink, the Mass.-based (it was spun off from a project at MIT) company that develops the technology behind the screens of all the top readers, including the Kindle and nook. If you’re holding a Kindle or a nook, congrats, you’re holding the same core technology: E Ink’s display. The company has announced that its next-generation display, named Pearl, will be available in “Q2.” Pretty sure the second quarter of the year ended yesterday, so I’m going to go ahead and assume that the next new version of the Kindle, nook, etc. will use the new display. My bad: the new Kindle DX has the Pearl display. That’s even better news, yes.

So what’s new with Pearl? E Ink says it has a contrast ratio that’s 50 times greater than the current display, named Vizplex (seen here, Photoshopped for no particular reason other than that it looks neat). Combine that with a whiter display and you’ve got yourself a highly readable display—text “pops,” so to speak. Considering how readable the current E Ink display is (quite readable, that is), this is most welcomed news indeed.

The new display is also more environmentally friendly than the previous display—never mind the sense of cutting down tree after tree to make paper.

Amazon has a knack for releasing new Kindles in the fall, so I wouldn’t at all be surprised to see Pearl make its debut with a new Kindle in the coming months. (Presumably others readers, whenever they’re updated, will make use of Pearl as well.)

Source

Kindle For Android Is Available Now

Apparently the app will come pre loaded on the Samsung Galaxy Android phone in addition to the Dell Streak.

For those with Android devices you can download it from the Android market.

Acer LumiRead eBook Reader Announced

Who would have thought that even a company like Acer would take the plunge into the world of ebook readers? Well, that has happened with the Acer LumiRead, the latest device from Acer that touts to offer users an excellent reading experience as it seamlessly integrates in the Acer clear.fi solution. Since the Acer LumiRead is also DLNA compliant, it can access Acer clear.fi and share contents like eBooks and audio-books as well. Being light and extremely slim in profile, the Acer LumiRead is perfect for those who want to catch up on their reading when traveling, regardless of whether you’re indoors or outdoors, reading on the e-Ink display is a snap. Just in case you have already finished all of your downloaded tomes, you can also hook up via a Wi-Fi or 3G connectin to download the latest bestseller as well.

Currently, Acer has already signed agreements with Barnes & Noble, where they already offer over a million titles in its eBooks store. As for those living in Germany, an agreement has been signed with Libri.de, Germany’s leading Internet book retailer offering over 4 million titles. Folks in China can liaise with Founder, while others living in France and Italy will have to wait a short while more as other agreements are more or less being formalized as you read this. What does the LumiRead offer? For starters, it comes with a 6? e-Ink display that is glare-free, making it suitable to be read even under bright sunlight. Measuring a few mm thin, you can be sure that toting this around is a joy.

2GB of flash memory ought to be able to hold around 1,500 books, but you can easily expand that amount by throwing in a microSD memory card. The inclusion of an innovative ISBN scanner lets you scan ISBN codes, allowing you to create your own wish-list and search on supported online libraries and book stores. Acer also introduced a QWERTY keyboard onto the LumiRead, making it easier to browse the web while finding and sharing information on books. With an auto-layout, you are easily able to adjusts the content to offer the best reading experience according to the format automatically. No word on pricing or availability as at press time, but we hope that more details will roll out soon.

Press Release

Source

Comics As ‘Top-Level’ Category For New iPad

The new bookstore for the iPad (see “Is iPad a Gamechanger?”) will include comics and graphic novels as one of 20 “top-level” categories, according to the blog on AppSlice, a new tool for browsing and finding apps. Manga will be included as a sub-category within the comics and graphic novel category, along with others. The 20 top-level categories will include around 150 sub-categories over-all.

This represents a significant improvement in the merchandising of digital comics as compared to the current sales through Apple’s app store, which will make comics easier to find for readers using the new device.

Source

Kindle For iPhone Now Available In 60+ Countries

You’re probably wondering what took Amazon so long. After all, the Kindle PC Reader and the international Kindle both came out in October. But it’s not Amazon’s fault. The problem is with Apple, and how Apple allows apps to be made and distributed for the iPhone. With most any other OS (Windows, Linux, Maemo, Symbian, Android, Windows Mobile, DOS*), the reader software would be available everywhere you could download the day it’s released. Not so with Apple.

The funny part about this announcement is that the app has been accessible since forever. All you needed to do to get it was set up an App Store account with a US address.

Kindle DRM Is Getting Even More Frustrating

Amazon needs to work on its Kindle DRM policy, because the following story is ridiculous.

Basically, the way Kindle and the Kindle iPhone app are set up today, users have no idea how many times they can download a book, nor can they easily know how many devices can be used to read said book.

Making the situation even more confusing is the fact that the DRM information actually varies by publisher, and to find out how many times they will allow you to download a book you have to visit the legalese. Sometimes the info isn’t there, either. The worst part is this was all confirmed by an Amazon tech support person:

“How I find out (sic) how many times I can download any given book?” I asked. He replied, “I don’t think you can. That’s entirely up to the publisher and I don’t think we always know.”

I pressed - “You mean when you go to buy the book it doesn’t say ‘this book can be downloaded this number of times’ even though that limitation is there?” To which he replied, “No, I’m very sorry it doesn’t.”

As the author notes, this isn’t so bad if you’re buying a beach book or something you’ll read once and be done with it. Where it does get shitty is with reference books, which the author would like to read today, on his iPhone 3GS, and perhaps in a year, on the theoretical iPhone 4G, powered by unicorn tears. With certain books, you could be limited in such a way that your reading material does not follow your gadget’s natural upgrade cycle.

At the very least Amazon should update its policy so this info is out in the open and easily accessible. The best case scenario would be to allow consumers to actually, you know, literally own the books they’ve just bought. [Gear Diary]

Source

E-Book Sales Continue To Climb

Amazon Kindle DX Coming This Summer for $489

Hot on the heels of the Kindle 2, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos unveiled an extra-large e-reader today, dubbed the Kindle DX. The 18.4-ounce device is intended to give users a reading experience closer to paper, with a 9.7-inch screen that measures 8.5 x 11 inches — 2.5 times the size of Kindle 2’s display.

This latest e-reader has a new trick — its screen can auto-rotate, so when you turn the Kindle DX on its side, an accelerometer will flip your page 90 degrees. It can now directly handle PDF files, with no need to convert them into Amazon’s proprietary format. Also new is the ability to control the line length, making the margins wider or thinner with just a few clicks. Capacity has been jacked to 4GB, though there’s still no slot for a flash-memory card. Like the Kindle 2, the DX has 3G wireless connectivity for getting content wherever you are, and the E Ink screen consumes no power except when flipping pages.

At the same time, Amazon just made a deal with three major textbook publishers to provide content for the Kindle DX: Pearson, Cengage, and Wiley. Also, five universities have agreed to pilot the DX in the fall, including Princeton, Pace and Case Western Reserve. On the newspaper front, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Boston Globe plan to partner with Amazon to sell the Kindle DX at a reduced price in exchange for a subscription contract.

Shipping sometime this summer, the Kindle DX is available for pre-order today for $489.

Source

Amazon To Charge Per MB To Send Personal Documents OTA To Your Kindle

It’s still free of charge if you transfer the documents over via USB, and sending them to “name”@free.kindle.com will return converted files to your email address gratis. If you’re trying to be frugal, we might suggest combining all those pending transfers into one fat PDF and sending it off sometime this weekend.

Source

The Lord Of The Rings Now Available On Kindle Through Amazon

Amazon now has available The Lord of the Rings (Trilogy) for the kindle.  Published on April 19, 2009 by Harper Collins e-books, this digital download contains the original trilogy written by J.R.R. Tolkien.

The original series was first published in 1954 and has since been reprinted in many languages and has seen millions of copies in print form.

It has now been translated into digital form for the Kindle and is available for the Kindle through Amazon.com.

The Lord of the Rings (Trilogy)

Next Page »