Hasta La Gadget!

With raging success, you can always count on one thing: copycats and rivals. Okay, so maybe that’s two, but you catch the drift here. Not long after Amazon launched its Kindle 2 to much fanfare, Hearst confessed that it was looking to produce a competitor with a screen that was about the size of a standard sheet of paper. In a presumed effort to keep up with the Joneses, The Wall Street Journal is now reporting that Amazon is looking to develop yet another Kindle (something we’ve definitely heard before) with “a larger screen,” which would obviously help it appeal to newspaper companies looking to easily transition their content to a large form factor e-reader. Not surprisingly, Amazon refused to comment on the “speculation,” but the report did note that there was at least some chance that the newfangled device would debut before the 2009 holiday season.

[Thanks, bo3of]

Filed under: Displays, Handhelds

Is Amazon developing a larger screen Kindle? originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 10 Apr 2009 19:58:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Apparently News Corp. chairman and multi-billionaire Rupert Murdoch likes the Kindle. He likes it so much that while he’s not trying to buy the company, he is instead trying to buy any competition that could undermine it and perhaps ultimately send it into financial ruin. Okay, so he’s probably not trying to take down Amazon, but he does want in on the e-reader action, looking to invest in someone, anyone, who might be the next e-book contender. It makes perfect sense, what with print newspapers failing left and right and magazines not faring any better, but just which company might be the lucky recipient of Murdoch’s favor and finances? We’re guessing he has no shortage of willing recipients.

Filed under: Handhelds

Rupert Murdoch wants in on the e-book action originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 03 Apr 2009 08:56:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It didn’t quite make it out in January, but Foxit’s eSlick is still about the cheapest way to get an e-reader in front of your retinas. Granted, only the earliest of pre-orderers are seeing their units ship, and if you try to jump in now, you’ll be greeted with a note to not expect it for another fortnight or so. In fact, all three hues (black, grey and white) are currently sold out, with new batches expected to be ready by April 10th or so. Thankfully, the kind folks over at GearDiary have hosted up a few photos and have promised impressions in the not too distant future, so head on over if you’re anxious to see just how far this thing is from being a Kindle.

Filed under: Displays, Handhelds

Foxit’s eSlick e-reader ships out, gets photographed originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 30 Mar 2009 06:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It’s finally coming true; all those e-ink readers we expected would flood the market after the Kindle’s initial release were apparently just waiting for its successor before jumping into the fray. Joining recent announcements from iriver, Neolux, and Plastic Logic is Brother, with the SV-100B. The company is calling it a “Document Viewer,” featuring a 9.7-inch, 1200 x 825 display — larger and stocking twice the pixels of the Kindle 2. However, it’s not meant to be a Kindle-killer, instead aimed at business users who will pair this over Bluetooth with PCs or mobile devices to keep its microSD card filled with content, content that must be run through a converter app prior to display. No MSRP was announced, but given its focus on the corporate clientele it will surely be priced accordingly when it ships early this June.

Update: Will commented to let us know this will apparently retail for ¥140,000, or just shy of $1,500. So, yeah, not really aiming for the consumer market here.

[Via Engadget Japanese]

Filed under: Displays, Handhelds

Brother’s SV-100B Bluetooth “Document Viewer” looks like an e-book reader to us originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 12 Mar 2009 08:11:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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While affirming its stance on the legality of Kindle 2‘s text-to-speech feature — and in fact stating it’ll actually get more customers interested in buying audiobooks — Amazon‘s announced that it’ll now let the books’ rights holders decide on a title-by-title basis whether or not they’ll let TTS be enabled. No word on when the update’ll be fed to the devices, but we bet somewhere right now, Paul Aiken‘s cracking a tiny smile. Full release after the break.

Continue reading Amazon sorta capitulates, will let publishers decide text-to-speech availability

Filed under: Handhelds

Amazon sorta capitulates, will let publishers decide text-to-speech availability originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 27 Feb 2009 19:48:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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