Just because most of us bought iPads doesn’t mean that any of you should. There are plenty of devices, out now or coming soon, that can do some things as well—or better. Here’s a roundup of the best: More »
Prime View International — the company responsible for pumping e-ink screens into Amazon’s Kindles — has recently shown off some color and video screens at a trade show in Shenzhen, China. The company has been showing off the displays in 6 and 9.7-inch varieties, one of which could fit perfectly into the 6-inch Kindle, of course. While there’s been no real indication that Amazon is interested in transitioning to color or video-boasting readers, but it’s not completely inconceivable considering the recent competition it’s facing. Hit the source link to check out a video featuring the color displays that were on show.
PVI shows off color and video e-paper in China — coming to a Kindle near you? originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 27 Mar 2010 17:40:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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The iPad is no Kindle-killer (although buying the almost $500 DX now seems a little silly). The Kindle, and any other e-reader, will continue to be great for just reading books, with the sunlight-friendly e-ink display and the long, long battery life making for a great single-purpose device. The real Kindle-killer will be a cheap e-reader, and it just arrived: the $150 Kobo eReader.
The bare-bones reader looks very similar to the Kindle, but it is just over half the price. You get access to a store, as you do with the Kindle, in this case the Kobo International Store with around 2 million titles. And you can read these books on other devices: iPhone, BlackBerry, Palm Pre and Android all have Kobo apps.
What the Kobo doesn’t have is a 3G connection. Instead you load up books via USB (EPUB or PDF) or over the reader’s Bluetooth connection with a compatible smartphone. The Kobo also has less storage than the Kindle — 1 GB instead of 2 GB — but you can add up to four more with an SD card (a handful of cards and you’d be set up for years).
What we really like about the eReader is the interface. The chapter lists are big and clear, the main “I’m Reading” page gives a newspaper front-page-like overview of the newspapers and books you’re currently reading, and you can even choose to display your books in an iPad-like bookshelf metaphor. When you power down, it shows the book’s cover instead of those awful Kindle screen-savers (although at least the Kindle doesn’t give away that you’re reading Dan Brown).
We do worry about those controls. The big blue D-pad on the front looks great, but all the buttons are tucked away on the left-hand side, on the edge, not the front panel. That could prove awkward. It could also be a smart decision to keep non-essential functions away from accidental presses.
You can also, somewhat oddly, add a book-cloth “skin” that will give the front of the device an old-fashioned look and feel (the back is quilted rubber). And to get you started, the eReader comes pre-loaded with 100 public-domain titles.
It looks like a huge threat to the Kindle, and Kobo seems to have trimmed just the right features to get to this low price. Only hands-on testing will tell if it’s as good as it seems, but right now we don’t see much reason to buy Amazon’s locked-down machine.
Kobo E-Reader [Kobo. Thanks, Meghan!]
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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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It must be getting close to April 3rd because the iPad news is hotting up. Today we get our first glimpse at Amazon’s free Kindle app for the iPad. We’ve also got a Barnes & Noble iPad app on the way, courtesy of a report in the New York Times, that has been completely redesigned by a team of 14 developers working since January to allow for custom fonts in multiple colors and quick page turns with finger swipes. The Kindle app, meanwhile, features a redefined core screen and reading experience, slow page turns, and new ways to view your eBook library. One view, pictured above, presents your books as large icons against a silhouetted figure under a tree — the sun changes position in accordance to the time of day. Of course, the app also gives you access to the Kindle bookstore (assuming Apple approves) and saves your reading position so that you can pick up any Kindle app (or device) and continue reading right where you left off.
Fortunately, Amazon’s Kindle App will be targeting tablets beyond the iPad. We’re also hearing that Skiff is almost certainly headed to Apple’s tablet, and we suspect as many competitors as possible given the plethora of devices demonstrated to us at CES. So seriously, we ask you, in an age where content is king, are you really going to buy an eReader dedicated to a single store?
Update: The Barnes & Noble app, not the Kindle app, is being worked on by a team of 14 developers.
[Thanks, Jason D.]
Kindle for iPad and tablets makes the scene originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 22 Mar 2010 02:38:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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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.
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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With not so much as a hint of fanfare (and a very loose definition of “coming soon“), Amazon has quietly unleashed its Kindle app for Mac. The 22MB file is for Intel-based machines only, OS X 10.5 and above. Nothing too fancy, it does exactly what you’d expect in terms of functionality… and not much else. What else is there to say? Time’s a-wastin’, hit up the source link to download.
Kindle for Mac now finally available originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 18 Mar 2010 00:41:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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The iPad may be gripping the moneyed world in a fever of technolust, but the other e-reader, the Kindle, is still better at many things. Take Ghana, West Africa, for example. If you are a school in a small village with satellite internet and solar power, what device would be best for you? The power-sucking, data-heavy iPad, or the Kindle, a reader that can be read in sunlight, has free internet access and lasts for weeks on a single charge?
This is the idea behind the Worldreader project, which has just put 20 Kindles into a school of 11 to 14-year-olds. I know what you’re thinking: What’s wrong with paper books? Why do they need this expensive, fancy gadgetry? Because paper books take a long time to replace. These schools are on a 5-year book-renewal cycle right now. A Kindle, although pricy to start, essentially gives access to thousands of free, public domain books.
The first day in class in the village of Ayenyah Ghana was a success. For the trial, six books were loaded onto the Kindles, including a collection of short stories called Folktales from Ghana. The most popular title? Curious George. It seems that everyone loves a cheeky monkey.
Ayenyah Ghana actually has its own IT guy, named Richard. When the Worldreader team leaves the village, they plan to leave a few Kindles behind to make a lending library. This alone is a great idea: the book you want will never be already out on loan.
We’re impressed by the way the developing world is skipping over what is, to us, legacy tech. Landlines and now paper books are expensive, infrastructure-heavy dinosaurs. Cellular masts are easier to deploy than cables, and sending bits over those networks is cheaper and faster than shipping dead trees. The Worldreader organization plans to sell sell subsidized-readers instead of just giving them away. This seems sustainable, and will probably lead to some entrepreneur setting up their own, for-pay lending library.
Ghana: First day in the classroom [Worldreader Blog. Thanks, Zev!]
Photo credit: Worldreader.org
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