Hasta La Gadget!

E Ink more or less has a lock on the e-reader market, as competitor after competitor sees delays or simply disappears altogether. Today we have an update from another would-be foe, and there’s some real potential here. It’s electrofluidic e-paper from Gamma Dynamics and the University of Cincinnati, which we first heard about last April. The tech is similar to that in E Ink but, instead of simple microcapsules having both black and white ink plus a clear oil, the Gamma Dynamics pixels have a colored fluid in a pixel that’s split by a reflective sheet. Using voltage applied to these pixels the ink can be forced up above or pulled down below the reflective separator, forming an image in a video-capable 20ms and delivering a near paper-matching 70 percent reflectivity. There’s a picture below showing how the tech works and, thanks to confirmation that it can be produced in an LCD manufacturing facility, it’s looking closer to production than ever. How close is that? Oh, about three years, meaning E Ink still has that market cornered — for now.

Continue reading Gamma Dynamics high-contrast, high-speed electrofluidic e-paper gets closer to reality

Gamma Dynamics high-contrast, high-speed electrofluidic e-paper gets closer to reality originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 08 Oct 2010 07:24:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Sharp’s 5.5-inch and 10.8-inch Galapagos are something to covet. Sharp’s got the Android-powered e-reading tablets heavily on display here at CEATEC, meaning of course we jumped at the chance to try it ourselves. The interface is a bit sluggish, as is pinch-to-zoom on the browser. That said, pages (like our darling Engadget) displayed in full and were crisp, as were the supplied magazine examples (Newsweek, GQ — all in Japanese, naturally). Flash 10 is supported, although we didn’t get a chance to try it. The missing trackball on the 10.8-inch model wasn’t much of a concern, as it was all but redundant on the 5.5-incher. Looks promising now, but with its US launch not expected until sometime in 2011, no telling what the competition might look like by then. More pictures in the gallery below!

Continue reading Sharp Galapagos e-reading tablets hands-on (video)

Sharp Galapagos e-reading tablets hands-on (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 05 Oct 2010 00:11:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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When we reported that the Mirasol low-power color displays were pushed back to early 2011, that wasn’t technically correct — Qualcomm just informed us that the company’s cranking out panels even as we speak, and will ship them to OEMs this fall. So what’s actually going to happen in Q1 2011? The formal release of Mirasol devices, of course. Representatives told us that the 5.7-inch, 220ppi XGA color display will appear in multiple products with multiple partners next year, and that they “will be in devices that are converged and look a lot more like a tablet PC than an e-reader.” Following that, they said, the company will turn its attention to developing Mirasol for smartphones. We couldn’t get Qualcomm to comment on a rumored $2b Mirasol plant, unfortunately, and there’s no word on that color Kindle, but we imagine all will be revealed at or shortly after CES next year.

Mirasol displays slated for ‘converged devices’ in Q1 2011, followed by low-power smartphones originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 04 Oct 2010 14:39:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Updated at 5:30 p.m. Eastern to add comment from K-NFB.

This week, K-NFB, an e-reading company founded by Ray Kurzweil and the National Federation for the Blind, launched its much-anticipated Blio reading app and e-book store. Blio was immediately and widely panned by publishers, developers and readers.

“Many of the failures are fundamentally at odds with the one thing that Kurzweil was touting above all else: accessibility,” wrote Laura Dawson, a digital reading industry consultant, formerly of BarnesAndNoble.com. K-NFB initially promised to make e-books more accessible to blind readers; yet Windows, currently its only enhanced books platform, has known text-to-speech conversion issues.

K-NFB and Kurzweil responded by saying the software had been released before a fully-accessible version was ready, and that they plan to release an improved version next week.

“People understandably have very high expectations,” Kurzweil said in an interview with Wired.com Thursday. “We believe Blio is very usable and has many features other book formats don’t. And there are many features that we want to add.”

In addition to bug fixes and other tweaks, an accessibility release scheduled for October 25 will work with Freedom Scientific’s JAWS, screen reader software for Windows specifically tailored for blind users. The 1.0 version released Tuesday relied on Windows’ built-in text-to-speech capabilities.

K-NFB spokesperson Peter Chapman acknowledged the problems with Blio’s text-to-speech in an interview with Publishers Weekly, but blamed the platform, not the books: “the TTS software on most Windows machines isn’t very good.” Yet many Windows XP users were unable to even install Blio’s software. (This has since been resolved.)

K-NFB also confirmed that an iOS 4 version for iPhone and iPod Touch is currently in private beta, and that an iPad version will shortly follow the iPhone, probably sometime after November’s release of iOS 4.2. Android and Mac OS X versions are also in development.

Users weren’t the only ones frustrated with Blio. Hadrien Gardeur, founder and CEO of free e-books site FeedBooks, complained on Twitter that Blio was offering downloads from FeedBooks’ catalog without permission: “Hey Blio, next time that you add our OPDS [Open Publishing Distribution System] catalog to a commercial product, send us an e-mail first.”

In a follow-up e-mail, Gardeur noted that FeedBooks only allows other systems to include their catalog under the following conditions:

• full support for the EPUB standard (Blio converts EPUB into its own format and can’t support EPUB with other companies’ DRM)
• support the entire OPDS catalog (Blio only includes some of FeedBooks’ feeds)
• Add other OPDS catalogs to its library (Blio can’t do that)
• allow payment for commercial content through open standards (Blio doesn’t)

For these reasons, Gardeur asked Blio not to include FeedBooks’ content in its initial launch; according to Gardeur, K-NFB went ahead and included part of Feedbooks’ OPDS catalog anyways. Since FeedBooks has a planned system update forthcoming, it will most likely break Blio’s access to the catalog.

Kurzweil stated Thursday that K-NFB was continuing to work with Feedbooks and other free book providers; he credited the dispute over Blio’s use of their feeds to a miscommunication.

Finally, as we noted earlier this week, Toshiba launched its own branded version of the Blio application, store and e-book catalog called Toshiba Book Place. Toshiba is offering 6,000 titles at launch; Blio 11,000. This puts Blio at a distinct disadvantage against the 700,000 e-books, blogs, magazines, and newspapers for sale from Amazon and Barnes & Noble’s library of over 1,000,000 e-books.

It’s not precisely clear why there’s a gap in the number of books offered by Toshiba and Blio. But the brand and store fragmentation is another confusing component of a deeply confusing product launch. It’s especially troubling for those who have been hoping for serious innovation in making e-readers accessible to users of all abilities.

Image via Blio.com

See Also:

• UPDATE: Toshiba, Blio Jump In With Enhanced E-Books For Laptops …
• Singularity Proponent Ray Kurzweil Reinvents the Book, Again …
• 5 Things That Will Make E-Readers Better in 2010
• Apple's Tablet E-Book App Rips off Indie Dev's Creation
• Amazon's Kindle 2 Pits Authors Versus the Blind
• Apple's iPad Will Read Books Out Loud, Support Free E-Books …
• Copyright Owners Fight Plan to Release E-Books for the Blind …

When we reviewed the $150 Kobo e-reader this summer we liked the value it offered, but didn’t particularly appreciate the poor performance nor the missing wireless connectivity. Now it’s back, a new version offering fixes to those two issues (the system works!) and selling for $10 cheaper to boot. The new Kobo Wireless eReader adds WiFi into the mix, enabling on-device book downloads whenever you’re in range of a suitably accommodating hotspot. There’s also a new processor to speed things up, but at this point we don’t know by how much. That question will be answered on November 1 when the thing starts shipping in your choice of three colors (black, silver, and lovely lavender), but as it’s currently up for pre-order now at Borders you’d better hurry and make with the clicking if you want yours by the holidays.

Continue reading New Kobo eReader gets wireless connection, faster processor, pretty colors

New Kobo eReader gets wireless connection, faster processor, pretty colors originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 29 Sep 2010 07:13:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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