Hasta La Gadget!

There’s nothing, nothing, we love more than talkative CEOs. And though this may not be a case of some brash smack-talking, we still appreciate Mary Lou Jepsen giving us a fresh update on the development of those delectable Pixel Qi displays. As you already know, CES provided us with our first opportunity to see one in person (in the shape of the Notion Ink Adam) and we were left highly impressed with the versatility and responsiveness of the hybrid display. Since then, Mary Lou and company have recruited a few more partners and, while production of the 10-inch units is ramping up as expected, new form factors are also being contemplated. She still won’t tell us any names, but we’re excited by the possibility of (relatively) pocketable Pixel Qi devices — how does a Dell Mini 5 with a 40-hour battery life sound?

Pixel Qi has ‘several more’ partners since CES, is working on new form factors originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 26 Feb 2010 03:29:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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In a conference call with investors yesterday, Steve Riggio described the Nook as a great success and the company’s best selling product. The former is predictable, but the latter is kinda weird. You typically wait to have more than one own-brand product in order to describe anything as “best-selling,” but we’ll give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he’s comparing the Nook against books published under the B&N name. It’s still disappointing that, much like Amazon, Barnes and Noble refuses to issue actual sales figures. The closest we get to that is Steve’s boast that the Nook’s release has fueled a 67 percent increase in online ebook sales — an effect that would have been even greater if the company had more stock of the device to sell. In the long term, he sees the Nook as a stimulant of traffic and sales, both in its retail and online stores, and a central component of his company’s strategy. As to the iPad? Steve skirted that question by noting that B&N ebooks are also available on PC, Mac, iPhone and BlackBerry devices. Which is good to know.

Barnes and Noble CEO describes Nook as ‘single best-selling product,’ critical to success originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 24 Feb 2010 09:16:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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You’ll be forgiven for just glazing over during CES and ignoring all those ebook readers that were raining down, but Liquavista‘s attempt at marrying the endurance of e-paper with the desirability of color is well worth another look. The company has now furnished its LiquavistaColor dev kit with a QWERTY keyboard and also recruited Texas Instruments into the fold, whose OMAP system-on-a-chip is doing the grunt work under the hood. The video after the break indicates that touchscreen interaction is also planned, but the most impressive thing has to be the total lack of any redrawing pauses, which may be the considered the biggest drawback to the many E Ink devices out there. For the more conventional monochromatic crowd, we’ve also grabbed video of the LiquavistaBright, which replicates the rapid refresh skills, but omits the keyboard and OMAP in favor of a more compact form factor and Freescale iMX5x hardware. Slide past the break to see it all.

Continue reading Liquavista demos its color e-paper display with a new QWERTY-equipped dev kit (video)

Liquavista demos its color e-paper display with a new QWERTY-equipped dev kit (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 22 Feb 2010 04:03:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Amazon is today adding BlackBerrys to its stable of Kindle-compatible devices and also taking the opportunity to remind us that it’s working hard on Mac and iPad versions of its software. The app is a freebie download for Americans (sadly it’s not international just yet) and should offer the same functionality as its PC and iPhone brethren — namely automatic syncing via Whispersync and what Amazon hopes will be a seamless reading experience from one device to the next. There’s also an in-app book store, as well as the ability to create bookmarks and view annotations from other portable Kindle readers. Go download it at the Amazon link if you care, or move right along if you don’t.

Kindle for BlackBerry e-reader app now available originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 18 Feb 2010 03:22:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Love your Kindle? How about your Sony Reader? Good then lean in close because your electrophoretic display (EPD) maker wants to have a word. Prime View International (PVI) chairman Scott Liu says that his company (the owners of E Ink) will be introducing a wide variety of new e-reader displays this year including color, flexible, and touchscreen EPDs. PVI also says that response times have been improved enough to allow for animation support on products in 2010. Of course, flip books provide animation as well but we wouldn’t want to use one for any considerable amount of time — but let’s wait and see what they have before coming to a conclusion.

Interestingly enough, PVI says that it’s developing pressure touch sensors that sit behind the display rather than using conventional touch-panels that can obscure the display’s brightness. Funny, that sounds a lot like the Touchco technology just purchased by Amazon two days ago. Kindle 3, we’re waiting… unfortunately for Amazon, the rest of the industry isn’t.

Kindle display maker PVI promises touchscreens, color and flexibility in 2010 models originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 05 Feb 2010 05:58:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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