Hasta La Gadget!

Bridgestone’s already showed off some fairly impressive e-paper displays, and gone into mass production with displays for inventory tags and whatnot, but it now looks like the company is now set to make its biggest push into the market yet. According to Tech-On, Bridgestone will be announcing details of its plans in July or August, but it appears that the announcement will concern e-paper displays for e-book readers, at least one of which will be A4 in size. That particular screen was making the rounds of exhibitions back in April, and makes use of the company’s proprietary “electron powder and granular material” which, among other things, lets the screen rewrite in just 0.8 seconds. Of course, there’s no word on any actual devices using the e-paper just yet, but we’re hoping that’ll be among the details announced in the next month or so.

Filed under: Displays

Bridgestone set to make major push into e-paper business originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 01 Jul 2009 17:09:00 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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There’s a certain something missing from the e-book, and it’s not just the paper. We tried to add some of the romance back when we disguised the iPod Touch as a Moleskine notebook, but it just didn’t work. The folks at Smell of Books, though, think they have the answer: a spray-can loaded with, that’s right, the smell of books. A quick spritz from the aerosol can and your Kindle, Sony Reader or iPhone will be transformed into a romantic bundle of musty smelling stories.

There’s even a choice of flavors: The default option is New Book Smell, which gives your electronics the tang of a freshly pressed paperback. When thumbing through the classics, you might prefer Classic Musty Scent:

When was the last time an e-book made you sneeze? Probably never. It’s a scientifically proven fact that e-books lack the necessary “character” to trigger a strong physical reaction. Our Classic Musty Scent solves that problem.

Also available are Eau You Have Cats (”It’s just like borrowing a book from grandma’s house), Crunchy Bacon Scent (”a low calorie, low cholesterol alternative for your breakfast reading enjoyment”) and the Scent of Sensibility (”It’s like living in a Jane Austen novel”). Oddly, these are all priced differently, ranging from $5 to $10, although we have a suspicion that this is all a spoof. A link on the product pages takes you to the parent site, Durosport Electronics, where you’ll find some rather odd products, and this news item on legal action from the Author’s Guild against Smell of Books:

While the Authors Guild supports efforts to improve the digital reading experience, we believe this product represents a significant threat to the development of aroma rights, and as such, will adversely impact the rights of our members.

It is important to note that in the digital era, books, and the smell of books, have been decoupled. In the future we expect authors to participate in the development of custom aromas for their books. These olfactory rights constitute a derivative right to be licensed separately. The preservation of these rights is essential as authors explore new markets and distribution channels.

Allowing unauthorized third parties to provide the “scent” for a book substantially changes the underlying work to a degree that infringes upon the author’s copyright, not to mention artistic vision.

Wonderful.

Product page [Small of Books via Neatorama]

Smell of Books™ Under Attack By Authors Guild [DuroSport]

While you might say Amazon’s Kindle is lucky to have a single CDMA / EV-DO radio built-in, IAC would likely venture to disagree. Over at Computex, said firm was showcasing its Prodigy e-reader, which just so happens to pack every major wireless radio we can think of. EV-DO Rev. A? Check. WCDMA / HSPA? Check. WiMAX? Oh, definitely. 802.11b/g WiFi? For sure, dudes. And the fun doesn’t stop there — it’s packing a 6-inch 800 x 600 e-paper touchscreen, 256MB of NAND Flash memory, 128MB of DDR memory, 2GB of NAND storage and a Marvell PXA310 processor. If all goes well, this little bugger will ship in Q4 over in Taiwan, but it’ll be a cold day in Hades before it arrives on US soil. Video’s after the break.

Continue reading IAC Prodigy e-reader does EV-DO, HSPA, WiMAX and WiFi

Filed under: Displays, Handhelds

IAC Prodigy e-reader does EV-DO, HSPA, WiMAX and WiFi originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 04 Jun 2009 20:56:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We’ve always heard that most things come in packs of three, so just as soon as some other dodgy source affirms that Hulk Hogan will actually be replacing Steve Jobs in August, we’ll be set. Shortly after seeing a 32GB iPhone placeholder over at T-Mobile Austria, we’re now staring at a comically brief report from Digitimes that pegs Wintek as the “panel module supplier for Apple’s upcoming e-book form factor netbook product.” If you’ll recall, Wintek was already independently confirmed as said panel supplier for said product back in March, but obviously Apple has remained tight-lipped on the whole netbook / tablet / e-reader thing. That said, we do find it interesting that this report clarifies that whatever’s purportedly cooking in some dark, highly guarded lab in Cupertino looks more like a tablet with a netbook-sized display rather than a conventional netbook. Whatever the case, we wouldn’t expect it at WWDC, but any Tuesday morning after that is fair game.

Filed under: Handhelds, Tablet PCs

Wintek pegged as panel supplier for rumored Apple tablet originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 22 May 2009 06:23:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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