Hasta La Gadget!

Advance copies of the hotly anticipated Steve Jobs biography are already in some hands—meaning personal details we never knew about the man are exposed for the first time. Fights with Obama over food, diamond rings, and DNA sequencing. More »

Amazon has pushed out a new update for the Kindle 3, now operating under the alias of the Kindle Keyboard. This gives the well-buttoned e-reader access to some of the cloud features found on its freshly unboxed younger brother, and includes the ability to view any archived documents, notes and highlights you’ve added to that intangible pile of books and articles. You’ll need to tether the Kindle to your PC, point your browser towards Amazon, and download the file corresponding to the right region and model. Excitable annotators can grab the upgrade now at the source link below.

Kindle 3 gets software upgrade, ready to soar into the cloud originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 16 Oct 2011 08:31:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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What’s more ‘exclusive’? An expensive, glossy photo book, or an iPad app? Photo credit Steve Rosenbaum

Almost ten years after the World Trade Center disaster, a book documenting the history of the building in photos and video will be published. And it will be iPad-only.

The creator, Steve Rosenbaum, has assembled 400 photographs plus several hours of video, and will be skipping paper altogether. His reasoning is both smart and startling. When asked why he would limit sales of his book by publishing only on a device that costs minimum $500, he said

The iPad is the single fastest selling consumer device in the history of consumer electronics. There are 30 million now on the market. What’s more limited? A beautiful glossy photo book that sits in Barnes & Noble, or something that’s free and on a device that lots of people have?

When you look at it like that, it seems stupid to publish on paper any more, right? Imagine how these things will go when the iPad finally gets a retina display.

The app will be free from its launch on September 1st until September 12th. After that it will cost $10 — still much less than a glossy photo book.

9/11 Memorial App to Be iPad-Exclusive [New York Observer]

See Also:

• New iTunes Rules Complicate iPad Magazine Opportunities …
• Wired Magazine's iPad Edition Goes Live
• iPad Fuels Magazine Disruption

If we take a can of Spam and call it “Engadget’s precooked pork meat product,” you’ll still know it’s the same mystery meat you ate for lunch, right? Under the idea of “private label rights,” authors can do just that: sell their works to others who can rebrand and resell them. This week, Amazon cracked down on duplicate ebooks in its Kindle Store, pulling titles because they “diminish the experience for customers.” One copycat who got the smack down called it a “kick in the pants” when his 22 titles got yanked. He did, however, admit he had the swift one coming. Aping authors can expect more book banning Kung Fu as Amazon continues to rid itself of “undifferentiated or barely differentiated versions of e-books.” Hi-yah!

Amazon axes copied content, duplicate Kindle Store ebooks get the boot originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 13 Aug 2011 16:09:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Thinking about getting an e-reader before you head back to school this fall? Barnes & Noble surely hopes so, and to sweeten the deal it’s offering 12 free classics along with study guides and apps if you register your freshly unboxed Nook before October 31st. That’s right folks, over $100 worth of e-books can be yours with the purchase of the new Nook, the Nook Color or even the first edition Nook. While it must be said that most of the available titles are out of copyright and so are already available for free download elsewhere (we’re looking at you, Gutenberg.org), you can at least select from a dozen Spark Notes of time-consuming reads such as War and Peace. So if you’re looking to take a break from all that Organic Chemistry mumbo jumbo, you can catch up on A Tale of Two Cities in your spare time.

Barnes & Noble offers back to school Nook deal, adds more to your reading list originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 09 Aug 2011 05:18:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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