Kobo eReader is Kobo’s $149 E Ink play for Borders, we thumb through its virtual pages

We’ve seen so many e-book readers of late that it’s difficult to get excited about another, but Kobo’s angle here might just make the Kobo eReader worth a look. Kobo’s game is ecosystem, and in fact it doesn’t plan on making a big splash in the actual e-reader market, since it’s primarily about building branded software and delivering branded e-book stores for others, including manufacturers (like Plastic Logic), and booksellers (like Borders). Still, the 6-inch E Ink reader is fine hardware in its own right, with quality plastics throughout, a nice patterned rubber back, and a big friendly d-pad for paging through books. The device is actually laid out to mitigate accidental button presses — even the menu buttons labelled on the front are actually located on the side of the device. As far as software and capabilities, the device is utterly barebones, but at least it keeps its aesthetics throughout, and everything seems responsive and intuitive. There’s no 3G onboard (you sync your e-pub titles with a desktop app over USB), no specific word on storage (our guess is in the 1GB to 4GB range), and there don’t seem to be any other activities available to reading books. Hopefully you’re into that sort of thing, and Kobo at least pre-loaded 100 public domain titles to get you started. The unit will be sold at Borders this summer for $149, preceded by Indigo Books & Music in Canada in May.

Meanwhile, Kobo isn’t neglecting its devices strategy. It already has BlackBerry, iPhone, Android, Mac, and PC (and some others we’re likely forgetting), but it’s also showing an iPad app that looks all ready to go. There aren’t many details about it, but like all things Kobo it looks pretty single purpose and slick — check out the screenshots below.

Editor’s note: due to the horrible lighting conditions at the CTIA event we were attending, we had to photograph the device under the warm lights of a meat-cutting station, hence the incongruous backdrop of these hands-on photos.

Kobo eReader is Kobo’s $149 E Ink play for Borders, we thumb through its virtual pages originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 24 Mar 2010 13:26:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Sony drops Pocket Reader price to $169… are e-readers about to get super cheap?

The Wall Street Journal noted this morning that Sony’s rather quietly dropped the price of its Pocket Reader about $30 to $169. Now, it’s actually what amounts to a sale — the price cut lasts only through April 4th — but that date, just two days after the iPad is made available, could give us a little insight into the timing of the drop. The Wall Street Journal also posits that this could be the first in a series of price war moves in the single purpose e-reader market which are now facing competition from multi-purpose devices such as the aforementioned iPad and the recently announced Kindle app for tablets.

Sony drops Pocket Reader price to $169… are e-readers about to get super cheap? originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 23 Mar 2010 16:20:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Microsoft Courier existence confirmed on the company’s JobsBlog?

Well this is something. According to Peter Kafka at All Things D, as well as a few tipsters, Microsoft has all but confirmed the existence (and likely actual launch) of the Courier tablet. In a post on the site by Thomas Kohnstamm (or The JobsBloggers, hard to say) touting Microsoft innovation, this passage was originally posted:

Do you already know everything about Project Natal and the Cloud? Is Blaise Aguera y Arcas’ jaw-dropping TED talk on augmented-reality Bing Maps and Photosynth last month’s news? Then check out some of the online chatter surrounding new releases of Window Phone 7 series handsets, Internet Explorer 9 and the upcoming Courier digital journal.”

That last bit — you know, about the Courier — was linked to our recent post which revealed a handful of images, video, and possible factoids on the device. Though that bit of the writeup has been canned, you can see that the post was tagged “courier,” and the original text is still hanging around RSS (as seen above). So, does this mean Microsoft is getting close to actually giving us some meat on this thing? We can’t know for sure if the info above is 100 percent solid… but it’s certainly telling that this device is on the lips of Microsoft employees who also happen to work on PR campaigns for the company — and they moved quickly to get it offline. What do you guys think?

[Thanks, Ian]

Microsoft Courier existence confirmed on the company’s JobsBlog? originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 23 Mar 2010 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink All Things D  |  sourceMicrosoft JobsBlog  | Email this | Comments

Samsung to announce Galaxy S smartphone, content initiatives this week

We’ve just received a veritable cornucopia of information around Samsung’s supposed announcements out at CTIA this week — and seeing how this is the biggest wireless show the US has to offer, you might imagine that the reveals are fairly US-focused while still hanging onto some global relevance. Here’s what we know:

  • The company’s so-called “Smart Life” philosophy for smartphone design and differentiation — something we’ve heard referred to as S Life in the past, including here at CTIA — will be formally introduced. It won’t so much be a product or a smartphone platform (as far as we can tell) so much as an overarching strategy.
  • A 1GHz applications processor will be announced as the “new standard” in Sammy’s premium smartphone segment for 2010; in all likelihood, this is the Cortex A8-based core announced in the middle of last year.
  • A huge content push will be announced (US market mercifully included) with full-length movies and shows that are “optimized” to take advantage of the company’s new Super AMOLED displays. You’ll also see some book and magazine deals get struck for straight-to-mobile delivery, but it sounds like we won’t get the straight dope on how it’ll all work (and who’s involved, exactly) this week.
  • Kicking off S Life from the hardware side will be the Galaxy S, Samsung’s big phone announcement for the week. As far as we can tell, it’ll be an Android device taking advantage of Super AMOLED and the company’s homegrown 1GHz core — and it’ll be available in the US this year.

That’s all we’ve got so far, but Sammy’s mobile prez J.K. Shin has a keynote tomorrow morning along with an event immediately afterward, so we expect to get this fleshed out in the next day or so. Stay tuned!

Samsung to announce Galaxy S smartphone, content initiatives this week originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 22 Mar 2010 18:16:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Spring Design Alex review

We realize that the e-reader market is about as crowded (not to mention overwhelming) as a Walmart on Black Friday, but ever since the dual-screen Spring Design Alex surfaced and we mistook it as the Barnes & Noble Nook, we’ve been incredibly intrigued by it. Though its 6-inch E-Ink display and 3.5-inch Android LCD form factor may seem like a riff on the Nook, the Alex has quite a few more tricks up its sleeve, including a full Android browser and the ability to extend what appears on the LCD to the E-Ink screen. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to all the unorthodox extras baked into the $399 Alex. Still, games and gimmicks only get you so far, and you’re probably wondering if it has what it takes to pull up next to the majors like the Kindle or Nook and knock them from the top. We’ve got that answer and lots more details on what it’s like to use two screens rather than one just after the break in our full review. Join us, won’t you?

Continue reading Spring Design Alex review

Spring Design Alex review originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 22 Mar 2010 11:37:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Amazon Shows Off Kindle for iPad

kindle-ipad

Amazon has announced Kindle Apps for Tablet Computers (including Kindle for iPad), a rather polished e-reader application that both makes the Kindle itself look rather old-fashioned and explains why last week’s Mac version was so unfinished: The Amazon developers have clearly been spending all their time on this instead.

The app offers all the usual Kindle features: Whispersync to keep your bookmarks and notes in sync between devices and the ability to load up any books you have previously bought. It also adds a lot of visual polish, from the obligatory page-turn animation (you can switch it off) to a fetching, full-color grid view of your library. You can adjust “paper” color, and change screen brightness from within the app.

Most interesting, though, is the way you buy books, which circumvents Apple’s 30 percent cut of in-app purchases. When you buy books, you are sent to the Kindle store in a web browser to make your purchase (Amazon doesn’t say whether the screenshot comes from an in-app browser page, or Mobile Safari itself, but it makes no difference).

We also see a page on display which has a full-color photo. This will be ideal for cookbooks bought from Amazon, but it also sends Amazon’s own grayscale-only hardware to the back of the line. Still, the effort Amazon seems to have put in show that it is clearly focused on selling books, not the hardware the books are read on. That the app is almost certain to make it into the App store shows that the reverse is true with Apple: It wants the iPad to be the go-to media device, whatever that media may be.

Kindle Apps for Tablet Computers [Amazon]

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PVI’s color E-Ink displays are a perfect match for Kindles

You know who makes the E-Ink displays on the Kindle? PVI. The Taiwanese company is also the EPD provider for several other tier-1 eReader device makers including Sony. So take a good look at that color E-Ink prototype display currently sitting in a PVI booth at a Shenzhen tradeshow ’cause that’s what you’ll see packed in color eReaders near the end of the year and into 2011. PVI is showing off both 6- and 9.7-inch color prototypes set to hit the manufacturing lines in Q4 (and sampling now), just right for the Kindle 2 and Kindle DX should Amazon choose to keep things simple and just swap out the display (and a minimum of componentry) within its existing device lineup. It’s worth noting that the extra layer of color filtering glass will impact battery life a bit, but certainly not enough to lose its edge on LCDs. And while PVI was demonstrating a color animation running on its new displays, they can’t do video worth a damn due to the slow frame refresh. And don’t expect to see the color EPDs sporting a contrast or color vibrancy anywhere close to what you’ll get from a traditional LCD either. Regardless, people seem smitten by the USA Today’s use of color so we’re sure these color E-Ink displays will find their niche as well.

PVI’s color E-Ink displays are a perfect match for Kindles originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 19 Mar 2010 04:57:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink E-Ink-Info  |  sourcePCWorld  | Email this | Comments

Marvell pitches $99 Moby Tablet as textbook alternative

When chipmaker Marvell told us its technology would power $99 smartphones, we took the company at its word. We weren’t expecting a sub-$100, 10-inch tablet PC, however — and we definitely weren’t expecting Marvell itself to build it. Marketed at students looking to lighten their textbook load, the Marvell Moby will be an “always-on, high performance multimedia tablet” capable of full Flash support and 1080p HD playback — thanks to those nifty Armada 600 series processors — and supporting WiFi, Bluetooth, FM radio, GPS and both Android and Windows Mobile platforms for maximum flexibility. No release date has yet been announced; like the OLPC, Marvell will introduce the Moby in pilot programs at participating at-risk schools. While it’s far too early to say if the Moby will be the universal educational e-reader Marvell hopes (that depends on software), it’s certainly an intriguing device for the price, and we’ll admit we’re a touch jealous of those kids who’ll first get to try one.

Marvell pitches $99 Moby Tablet as textbook alternative originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 19 Mar 2010 02:20:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink ARMdevices.net  |  sourceMarvell, Technologizer  | Email this | Comments

First Look: Kindle for Mac

kindleformac

Amazon has at last released Kindle for Mac, which means you can now read your Kindle books on most any device. It joins the iPhone, PC Blackberry and, of course, the Kindle itself.

Like the PC version, Kindle for Mac is a bare-bones reader. You turn pages with either the scroll-wheel of your mouse or the arrow keys, and it stays in sync with any other device authorized for the same account. You can view notes and bookmarks made on other devices, but you can’t create new ones (a limitation shared with the PC version).

It’s pretty bad. If you want to zoom the text, for example, the standard Mac shortcuts are Cmd + and Cmd -. They don’t work. Instead you have to open a special panel, which can leave a blank “cut-out” in the text after it has been closed.

It is a beta, but you only know that if you open up the “about” box. We guess it’s nice to have a way to read on a computer, and even better to have a local archive of your books, but I can’t help feeling that a company the size of Amazon could do better than this. Especially as it bought the quite excellent Stanza almost a year ago, which has a great Mac app, along with the iPhone version.

Amazon might be happy selling books, and not care about the devices they are read on. But if you carry on like this, Amazon, people will be pushed to buy their readers, and books, elsewhere.

Kindle for Mac [Amazon]

Press release [Business Wire]

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Tokyo Flash E-Ink Watch

flashwatch

It’s a concept design, but as most of Tokyo Flash’s production watches are even wilder, this e-ink timepiece will probably make it almost intact into stores and onto wrists. The stainless steel bracelet covers a panel of the same e-ink “paper” found in the Kindle and other e-readers, with cut-outs to reveal several odd-shaped sections. The paper of course offers the same low-power consumption and high-readability of any e-ink display.

The watch will have a Bluetooth radio to communicate with your cellphone. It will vibrate to give “message, mail and call notifications” and these notifications will also be cryptically encoded into unreadable runes at the top of the display.

There’s no price, no launch date, and not even a picture of a prototype outside of these CAD mockups. We have a feeling that an e-ink watch would look awesome, though, and it looks like Tokyo Flash is breaking with long tradition and actually showing the time in normal numbers. Unbelievable.

E-Clock [Tokyo Flash blog via the Giz]