Hasta La Gadget!

Details are not totally clear at this point, but Bookeen recently teased its newest e-book reader offering — the Cybook Opus — during a presentation. At 200 DPI, the teensy 5.3-ouncer will have one of the higher resolutions we’ve seen on a reader, and it will supposedly be controllable by just one hand. We hear that It’ll also have 1GB of onboard storage, and boast PDF support, but that’s all we know spec-wise for now. There’s no word on pricing or availability for this miniscule paper-slayer, but we’ll let you know as soon as we do. [Warning: read link is a PDF]

[Via Electronista]

Filed under: Handhelds

Bookeen outs pocket-sized Cybook Opus e-book reader originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 18 May 2009 18:59:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Slowly but surely, those oh-so-juicy details are leaking out about Endless Ideas’ upcoming duo of e-readers. We’ve now learned that the BeBook mini will boast the same specifications as the original BeBook, save for the much more compact 5-inch display; if all goes well, it should be available for purchase this summer for €199 ($270). Moving on to the BeBook 2, we’ve learned that it will include both WiFi and 3G access right out of the box, and the company is currently working with mobile operators in Germany and France in hopes of providing Kindle-like data access for on-the-go book downloads. Unfortunately, it looks like the asking price of that one will hover in the €350 ($476) to €400 ($544) range, but you can check out a Dutch interview with the new announcements just past the break.

[Via Slashgear]

Continue reading BeBook mini and BeBook 2 priced, 3G added to the latter

Filed under: Displays, Handhelds

BeBook mini and BeBook 2 priced, 3G added to the latter originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 14 May 2009 10:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The Demy turns out to be a rather neat little cook’s helper. Think of it as a touchscreen, color Kindle for the kitchen, an e-recipe book. At first glance, it seems a little pointless, but a look at the specs shows that some thought has gone into the design, specifically the way it will be used by the cook.

The Demy is, of course, slightly ruggedized for the kitchen — splash resistant and wipe clean. It also has a rather smart implementation of iPhone=style auro-rotate. The wedge=shaped reader sits almost flat but if you spin it and sit it upright on the fat end of the wedge, the screen flips 180º. It’s a nice way to save counter-space.

As the Demy is designed for the kitchen, it has a few useful extras. There’s a timer, accessible like everything else by the row of icons along the bottom, and also a conversion function so you can change old fashioned pounds into shiny, new-fangled kilos.

The Demy takes another aspect of the iPod, too. You manage your recipes on your computer and then sync them via USB. Instead of an iTunes-like application, though, it works with the Key Ingredient website, which until now I hadn’t heard of. The site lets you add your owen recipes and browse plenty of others.

In all, the Demy looks like a smart addition to the kitchen, with one problem. It’s $300, rather a lot when you could pick up a netbook for the same price.

Product page [Demy]

In case you didn’t think Rupert Murdoch was serious about e-book readers before, The Daily Beast has it from its sources that the News Corp mogul has assembled a global team, with members hailing form London, New York, and Sydney, to find some way to better monetize / charge for online content. Unsurprisingly, that leads to hardware and possibly creating a more “user-friendly way” to deliver content that’ll incentivize consumers to pay — Kindle does it, Hearst wants to do it, so why not the world’s biggest media conglomerate? As for the mythical device itself, let’s recap what we’ve heard so far, from the man himself: a bigger screen than Amazon’s now-antiquated models, a four-color pallette, and”you can get everything there.” Now how about putting a name to the manufacturer, hm?

[Via Electronista]

Filed under: Handhelds

Report: Rupert Murdoch forms global team, looks into hardware for content revenue stream originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 06 May 2009 21:56:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Go ahead and grab the salt shaker, ’cause this one’s nowhere near carved in stone… or is it? A breaking report from The New York Times has it that Amazon will introduce a larger version of its Kindle e-reader “as early as this week,” one that’s tailored for “displaying newspapers, magazines and perhaps textbooks.” If you’ll recall, magazine publisher Hearst made its intentions public to produce such a device earlier this year, noting that a larger panel would be more conducive to traditional print media layouts, and thus, additional revenue from ads. The article also notes that Plastic Logic will “start making digital newspaper readers by the end of the year.”

Coincidentally (or not), the Wall Street Journal also published a report this evening that dug deeper into the aforementioned Hearst deal. As the story goes, a number of big-shots in the publishing industry are banding together to set their own subscription rates (rather than go through a middleman such as Amazon), and this writeup asserts that Plastic Logic’s reader won’t actually roll out until “early next year” (as we’d heard previously). If you’re seriously able to handle yet another twist in this madness, WSJ also points out that “people familiar with the matter” have stated that Apple is “readying a device that may make it easier to read digital books and periodicals,” but it’s hard to say if this is simply regurgitation of unfounded rumors already going around or something entirely more legitimate.

All in all, it’s clear that flagging print publications are desperate for a device that caters to its layout and allows them to regulate rates — only time will tell if there’s room for two, three or possibly more of these so-called “big-screen e-readers” in the world, but this week definitely just got a whole lot more interesting.

Update: Press event invite just received, it’s on for Wednesday!

Read – New York Times report
Read – Wall Street Journal report

Filed under: Displays, Handhelds

NYT: Big-screen Kindle coming from Amazon “as early as this week” originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 03 May 2009 23:05:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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