Hasta La Gadget!

Reading isn’t just about the text that you’re reading, it’s an intimately personal experience in every sense of the word — the way the book feels, the crease of the pages, the wear on the cover, it’s all totally unique to your copy at the time that you’re reading it. Put simply, it’s an experience no one else will ever have. Between three models, dozens of accessories, and countless e-books, no two Kindles are alike, either — but Engadget has partnered with Amazon and the DIY experts over at Adafruit Industries to hook up five extraordinarily lucky readers with truly unique reading devices. These guys are the laser etching experts — see one of the Kindles they’ve done here!

Here’s the deal: we’re asking you to think of a design that would look great on the Kindle’s brushed metal back — something that means a lot to you, something that’ll make passers-by drool with envy when you casually hold up your new toy while reading The Economist from the comfort of your train, plane, or bus seat. Draft up that design (seriously, make sure it’s awesome, because you’ll be facing some stiff competition) and send it to us. We’ll post some of our favorites as finalists and hand the reigns over to you — our dear readers — to select five winners who will each have their designs laser-etched into reality on the backs of their very own Kindles!

The rules:

• Send your design to us by emailing it to contests [at] engadget [dawt] com with the subject “I want my custom Kindle!” (no quotes). Submissions must be in EPS or AI format, must be in black and white only, and must be composed strictly of vector graphics with all fonts converted to curves. We can scale your design as necessary, but keep in mind that you’ll be dealing with an etchable area roughly five inches by seven inches. You can find a (very large) image of the back of the Kindle 2 here for your reference.
• You may only enter this specific giveaway once. If you enter this giveaway more than once you’ll be automatically disqualified, etc. (Yes, we have robots that thoroughly check to ensure fairness.)
• Contest is open to anyone in the 50 States, 18 or older! Sorry, we don’t make this rule (we hate excluding anyone), so be mad at our lawyers and contest laws if you have to be mad.
• Five (5) winners will each receive one (1) Amazon Kindle 6″ Wireless Reading Device customized by Adafruit Industries. Approximate retail value is $299.00.
• If you are chosen, you will be notified by email. Winners must respond within three days of the end of the contest. If you do not respond within that period, another winner will be chosen.
• Design entries can be submitted until Friday, July 24th, at 11:59PM ET. Good luck!
• Full rules can be found here.

Filed under: Announcements, Handhelds

Design your own Kindle (and win it) with Engadget, Amazon, and Adafruit Industries! originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 14 Jul 2009 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Amazon already sent a pretty clear signal that it has grander plans for Kindle than just its own devices when it launched its iPhone app earlier this year, but Jeff Bezos has now made those intentions clearer than ever, and dropped a few hints of things to come. Speaking at a Wired-sponsored conference yesterday, Bezos all but confirmed that Amazon sees Kindle books and Kindle readers as two separate businesses, and he even went so far as to say that “we are going to give the device team competition” by making Kindle books available on “mobile devices and other computing devices, although he obviously didn’t specify other e-book readers. Interestingly, Bezos also confirmed that Amazon had considered selling the Kindle with a monthly subscription plan to lower the cost, or require a minimum number of books purchased, but said that he preferred the simplicity of providing one flat up-front cost, which he says has helped account for the Kindle’s success.

Filed under: Handhelds

Bezos suggests Kindle books will appear on more devices, compete with Kindle readers originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 16 Jun 2009 13:22:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Just as soon as we finally get our hands on a new unit to test out, the boys over at Rapir Repair are racing to rip one apart. And that’s just what they’ve done here with the Amazon Kindle DX. Inside it’s got the requisite boards, wires, tape and cat hairs (just kidding), plus an E727NV WN2 wireless card, memory, CPU and Epson E-ink panel controller. It’s actually pretty sparse and clean inside of there — we’d expect nothing less! Hit the read link for the full, glorious disassembling (though there is one more shot after the break).

Continue reading Amazon Kindle DX gets torn apart, examined

Filed under: Displays

Amazon Kindle DX gets torn apart, examined originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 11 Jun 2009 19:49:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The much-touted and extremely controversial story of the text-to-speech function of Amazon’s Kindle 2 could fill a very large e-book. The tale continues to get longer still, as at least one major publisher — Random House — has thrown the dreaded “kill switch” on about 40 of its titles, including authors such as Toni Morrison, and, ironically, Stephen King (who you will remember was part of the Kindle 2’s launch). Random House disabled the function without much fanfare, or an official announcement, but you can be sure this isn’t the final chapter.

Filed under: Handhelds

Random House now disabling text-to-speech function of Kindle e-books originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 14 May 2009 21:46:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Color e-ink displays are starting to become less of a curiosity and more of a reality, but if the rumor from DigiTimes proves true it’s going to be another year or so before we start seeing them en masse. PVI, makers of displays for the Kindle and Sony Reader, has apparently indicated that its attempts at creating a color display have been more or less unsatisfactory and it’s going to take until 2010 at least to get its hues sorted out. That’s the bad news. There is some good news, though, indicating that Sony’s working on its own 8.5 x 11-inch reader utilizing the same screen as the Kindle DX. Since the last rumors about that display was pretty-much on the mark, we wouldn’t be surprised if this one proved true as well — and we can’t wait to see what Sony charges for it.

[Via SlashGear]

Filed under: Displays

PVI’s color e-ink delayed until 2010, big-screen Sony Reader coming? originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 08 May 2009 09:17:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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