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It is a truth too rarely acknowledged, that a commuter in possession of a sophisticated electronic device, must be in want of a good book.
Hypertext bloggist Steve Johnson, paraphrasing Jane Austen
LATEST NEWS
March-April 2009
What's in a name - the FLEPia
The dream is almost here - but still flawed, and way too pricey. On 20 April 2009 (exactly two years after a prototype was first announced), the world's first e-paper colour e-book reader became available for general sale - but in Japan only, and at a cost of 99,970 yen. Which translates to over US $1,000. Note the term e-paper, not e Ink. That's because Fujitsu, the makers of the "FLEPia", have developed their own version of the "good as print" text and image display.
The new FLEPia device has an eight-inch touch screen, with a scroll key and buttons too. It can run for 40 hours continuously, which is great battery life. Screen refresh is an agonising 1.8 second wait though, and worse, sometimes much worse (8 seconds!), if display goes beyond a minimum 64 colours towards the full 260,000 shade potential; so obviously improvement is much to be desired there.
The FLEPia's weight is 385 grams (13.5 ounces), and the gizmo is a mere 12.5 mm (half an inch) thick. There's Bluetooth and WiFi for wireless downloads, plus USB 2.0. Oh and a virtual keyboard, and a 4 gigabyte SD card slot if you want some serious additional book storage. After all, colour and all the image potentiality that colour entails may require lot more memory than the greyscale texts and line drawings displayed on present e-paper type devices.
The OS is Windows CE 5.0, and a browser, e-mail and other applications such as Word - and in fact the full MS Office suite - will be available on the device, making it a Tablet PC, really, as well as an e-reader. In terms of book and image files, in addition to proprietary files the FLEPia will also display PDFs, plain text (TXT), Word docs and JPEGs, so far. You also get stereo speakers, and a headphone jack. Some 20,000 proprietary titles are available so far; they can be viewed with two forms of installed Japanese e-reader software, BunkoViewer (XMDF format, for smartphones) and "T-Time" (book format). Oh and yes, it will be on sale later outside Japan.
Comment: This is not yet the ultimate colour e-reader, but more likely the first of a series of rival models, one of which will be good enough to be the brave new device that leads us into the golden age of e-reading.
Pixelated
Oh yes, there's another new device just released in the UK. The Pixelar e-Reader - wait a minute, this isn't new! No indeed, it's a rebadged Hanlin VE folks. Still, the lovely thing about it is that's it's an open device, so you can read books or documents on it in just about any format you choose. Such as PDF, MOBI, DOC, EPUB, LIT, PRC, WOLF, HTML, TXT, PPT, CHM, FB2, and RSS feeds too, plus a large range of image files. Oh, and play music MP3s while you're at it.
This device has a 6-inch display screen and features (only) 4 greyscale (tsk!)e-paper display. It has 512 Mb of internal memory with a 1GB SD card also included, expandable to 4GB. It's definitely lightweight at only 220 grams. A bad point is that users can only add content via a USB connection or the card slot, so no wireless downloads are possible here. Screen refresh is slow, too. At £220 or so sterling, case extra, it's priced comparably with the Sony Reader in the UK market. That seems a bit on the high side considering the Sony's appeal, but if you're not after new books or commercial content but mainly interested in open source possibilities, the Pixelar could be your thing. Or at least, until an improved model comes along...
Amazon makes its plays as e-book struggle heats up
Kindle 2
Amidst economic gloom and doom elsewhere, Amazon.com is going great guns. The Internet book giant reported a massive boost in sales revenue for the last full year, up 29% to US$19.17 billion. Profit for 2008 rose 36% to US$645 million, with the 2009 first quarter figures looking good too. E-book news relevance? A booming business in "physical" sales puts the company in a strong position to pioneer and follow through with its digital book initiatives.
Some of these:
1. the Kindle e-bookstore added a further 45,000 titles in the last quarter of 2008, making 230,000 all told, and they haven't slacked since then.. Of those Amazon titles available in both print and Kindle form, 10 percent of sales are in the Kindle e-book format, according to Amazon head honcho Jeff Bezos. The Kindle device also supports the popular MobiPocket e-book format, long favoured by owners of numerous types of hand-helds. That's not surprising really, since Amazon now owns the MobiPocket e-store. Also new is Whispersync, a technology launched by Amazon in February to synchronize e-books among multiple devices.
2. On 4 March 2009 Amazon released "Kindle for iPhone", an e-book reader "app" for the Apple iPhone & iPod Touch*. This software is available at the unbeatable price of free from the iTunes App store. In a single stroke Amazon.com massively extended the reach of its Kindle e-book titles. Not just physically to two new devices, but also to a large and mainly youthful market segment so far fairly cool to the appeal of e-books. And especially, a youthful market segment unwilling so far to outlay $359 just for something to read them on. It was a bold step that answered some previous criticism of the Kindle direction.
However the new app is nowhere near as smooth to use as the Kindle device itself. To begin with, books have to be located through a web browser rather than the Kindle's direct access into Amazon's e-book store, and "Kindle for iPhone" has less functionality than rhe original in a significant number of areas.
Although Apple itself gained by enhanced versatility for its own devices, Amazon may well obtain additional Kindle device sales too from the new app, by stimulating youthful interest in the "Kindle" itself. Unsurprisingly, the app release encouraged rumours that Apple will yet produce its own, Kindle-competitive device in the form of a larger iPod Touch, reputedly with a 9in screen. If it doesn't, Apple may well be missing a major sales opportunity while Amazon proselytises by stealth.
*iPhone OS 2.1 or later required.
3. Release of the Kindle 2. Meanwhile Amazon's Kindle 2 model e-reader lived up to expectations. It's much slimmer (0.36 inches), feels lighter, and is considerably more attractive aesthetically than its geekish predecessor. At the technical level there are several worthwhile improvements, too. With 16 shade greyscale instead of the previous 4 shades the screen image is significantly better, while page-turn speed, a real gripe issue with the first Kindle, is now faster. No less than 2GB of onboard memory is a welcome enhancement compared with the previous 180MB. There's also a proper QWERTY keyboard below the screen. Amazon also claims the battery lasts 25 percent longer.
As predicted in our preview last October, screen display size is unchanged but a joystick replaces the scroll wheel, and the positioning of buttons is improved. Some owners have picked fault with absent features however, such as the lack of a backlight for reading in the dark, no touch screen, and deletion of the previous wireless-off switch. The price? US $359, but you'll need to buy a protective case for it as well (they start at around US$30). The price is an improvement on the previous $399, but may still be too much for many punters, especially in these cautious times.
* All-up though, this is now a device that many e-book enthusiasts are lusting after. What next? Given the Kindles's killer advantage of wireless connectivity, a future colour-capable model, plus access to any e-book format and any Web bookseller rather than just Amazon.com, are the only features needed now to make this a dream e-reader device. Oh, and world-wide availability (for both the Kindle and its Net connection) too, of course.
The critics
Back in January, Computerworld.com columnist Mike Elgan wrote that he believed Amazon may "screw up" its e-book potential however, by failing to open the Kindle e-store to other devices, and by keeping the price of the Kindle device high even in recessionary times. Elgan argued that a long-term strategy aimed to "defer major profits for later" would preserve the golden e-goose for the giant Web company, instead of slaying it. He suggests that Amazon should attempt to maximise the uptake of Kindles by slashing their device profits, "to get Kindles into as many hands as humanly possible so the maximum number of people are buying eBooks from Amazon."
This column does agree with Mike on that point - in fact we've always argued for dedicated e-reader devices no dearer than $99, and preferably available free when combined with a committed book purchase plan. If Amazon's core book business is, precisely, to sell book content, then it can surely be argued that pursuing other aims that may be at variance with that goal (e.g.. seeking maximal profits from selling a limited number of a physical reading device) may be self-defeating in the long-run.
* Meanwhile a small contretemps arose over a Kindle 2 feature allowing users to have their books read out loud to them, thanks to a text-to-speech feature. Well, perhaps not quite so small when you learn that back in 2007 sales of audiobooks surpassed one billion US dollars. Anyhow, the (US) Authors Guild felt that this ability might undermine the sale of audiobook versions of writers' works. Whether a synthesised, robotic voice could really compete with the "feel" and emotion of capable human reading seems wildly improbable (although there are male or female voice options, and a choice of speed too), but Amazon was forced to allow copyright holders to opt out of the feature for their titles.
* The boot was on the other foot when Amazon itself invoked the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DCMA) during March, & issued a legal notice to the major enthusiast's site MobileRead.com, which has hosted a link to Igor Skochinsky's Kindle-related download, Kindlepid.py. This surprised many, as apart from it being a year and a quarter since the download was first made available by Skochinsky, his software is not a means to load pirated books. Rather it allows a Kindle owner to read books legally purchased at other e-bookstores than the Kindle store. However, it is arguably reverse engineering prohibited under the Kindle's terms of use. Mobilread complied with the Amazon demand, although insisting that it did not believe the program violated the law.
Some Kindle owners using the Mobilread site then complained that the Amazon directive was "alienating", and made the device less desirable. From the legal point of view there's another angle. It seems from the circumstances of this action that the DCMA is much broader in its application than many believe it was intended to be (do legislators always properly read the laws they pass?). That's because the law seems to make circumvention of software in a reading device illegal even when used for purposes that do NOT involve the infringement of end material copyright. Arguably however, this case could be appealed to a a higher court as to whether or not this is a valid interpretation of a copyright law.
At a broader level all these issues, particularly the "more useful versus more secure" argument bedevilling such proprietary devices, are part of the creative tension inevitable as the struggle to define - and control - the future of the e-reader hots up. As companies struggle for market share they may, as these two incidents involving Amazon show, be both defendants and accusers in continuing struggles for commercial rights. It's not just companies but readers too who have rights and aspirations to gain or loose in the outcome.
GOOGLE Searches for its Answer
2. Google's counter-thrust to all this Amazon activity has been to make public domain titles from its own mobile Book Search service available for reading on the Apple iPhone, or indeed any phone running the new Google phone OS, Android. However the Net colossus has not so far entered the fray in respect of recent, commercial titles. Google extended its move by announcing on 20 March that those Google public domain titles would be available for the Sony Reader too, boosting Sony's e-book library collections to over 600,000 works.
3. The Sony/Google versus Amazon line-up heralded a real clash of the titans ahead. However an important difference is that in the book field Sony is a hardware company and Amazon more a content company, so the two may have different priorities at key points of contention. Sony's adoption of the .epub standard means it is leaning more towards an "open device" than Amazon is, including that books on the Sony Reader could be transferred to or from other devices. However it seems that just as Sony is talking of matching the Kindle's wireless connectivity at some stage, both companies will try to equalise on the other's "sweet points" of advantage.
Adobe Mobile
Meanwhile Adobe has announced that the Adobe Reader Mobile 9 SDK is now generally available for manufacturers of mobile devices. This is a software that allows reflowable PDF content. Which is to say, PDF format text that is able to adapt automatically to the screen size on any gizmo. It also supports the non-proprietary .epub digital book format. Reader Mobile 9 replaces Reader LE as the mobile equivalent to Adobe Digital Editions. Several companies manufacturing e Ink e-readers have announced plans to incorporate the Adobe development shortly (it's already available in the Sony Reader).
BeBookalula
A new model BeBook e-reader is expected in mid-2009. It will apparently support Wireless connectivity, with data from either a 3G phone connection, Wifi, or both, and accept RSS feeds, and .epub book files with DRM. The new BeBook will also feature touch screen navigation.
*Canadian company Shortcovers is another entrant into the rapidly-expanding field of e-reading apps for smartphones (Stanza, from Lexcycle, has been the most successful so far with reportedly more than 1.3 million users). This Canadian one will work on the iPhone, the BlackBerry, and Android OS phones, so far. Offered by Indigo Books & Music, Canada's largest book retailer, the company's links to publisher have enabled it to offer a significant front list of new and recent titles.
An innovation in Shortcovers is the ability to buy a single chapter at a time if desired, usually for 99 cents. Whole titles range from $10 up. Short stories, news, magazine articles and other goodies will soon be available too. App options include adjustable font size and standard or landscape mode; and there's automatic bookmarking on closure. A range of Web community features also add zing.
* Then there's Wattpad, another Canadian innovation which doubles as a user community for reading and sharing e-books. Wattpad makes user-generated and public domain e-books available for mobile/cell phones, and is now available for the iPhone/ iPod Touch, as a free download from the iTunes App Store.
E-books in the Punjab; a Pakistani e-first - or last gasp?
In the Pakistani province of Punjab, e-books for secondary students will soon be available free online. From the next academic session, digital textbooks will be accessible on the Web for Classes 8, 10 and 12, and for other classes later, in an initiative from the Punjab School Education Board.
That's presuming of course that the Taliban don't take over Pakistan first, and bring education in everything except ignorance and backwardness to an end. Here's hoping the mass of the people in Pakistan manage to stand up and defend their civilisation against intolerant, primitive thugs, so that Mohammed Ali Jinnah's dream of a proud Muslim nation of culture and learning, respected among nations, is not betrayed from within. Today Pakistan stands in the same position as Germany did in the early 1930s - in acute danger of collapsing into barbarism, so precipitating a situation that will likely end in national disaster. Let's hope this particular outcome is a better one.
China at least still keen on civilisation
Meanwhile China at least has been busy proving it is still committed to a library of more than one book. In fact, Chinese premier Wen Jiabao has donated no less than 200,000 electronic books to Cambridge University in the UK. The gift comprises Chinese books published since 1992 in the humanities, including classical and modern Chinese language and literature, history, geography, politics, economics, law, philosophy, religion, social sciences, military affairs, culture, education and art, and other subjects bearded hoodlums and uneducated boys waving AK-47s couldn't even spell.
The gift was made as part of the university's 800th anniversary celebrations, at which Premier Wen delivered the 2008-2009 Rede Lecture. As a result of the gift, Cambridge University now has one of the world's largest collections of Chinese monographs and "spectacular" electronic holdings in Chinese texts.
Barnes & Noble purchased e-bookseller Fictionwise early in March, ending the ten-year independence of the most popular of the "smaller fry" on the Web. For US$15.7 million the massive B&N chain obtained a company that after a single decade had already sold around 5 million e-books.
Fictionwise is itself only a year and a quarter out from a January 2008 acquisition of eReader.com, once the Palm e-bookstore (they bought it from the once-was Palm Motricity entity)*. The company also retails versions of the original, pioneering Rocketbook/Gemstar e-reader (on sale in the USA and Canada only). These are branded as the two eBookwise models, at a separate website.
Initially at least B&N will keep Fictionwise going as a separate subsidiary, with the company's founders, Pendergrast brothers Steve and Scott, continuing to run it. Ironically B&N itself began selling e-books in 2001, but gave up two years later due to low sales. The Fictionwise acquisition is seen as another step in major companies absorbing smaller but successful e-book operations, in preparation for a massive expansion of the overall e-book market.
* the Pro version of eReader the software is now also available for the RIM BlackBerry, free.
February 2009
The Foxit eSlick
From Foxit, a company that very decently gives away the nifty little Foxit PDF Reader for the widest range of operating systems, ta tarum, the eSlick. But what's new here? Precious little it would seem. The eSlick looks like your standard e Ink e-reader with a 600 x 800 six-inch greyscale display, and it closely resembles the Cybook Gen 3. The OS is embedded Linux, like the Cybook too. OK, it weighs only 180 grams (6.4 ounces), so sure it's a little thinner and lighter than the Kindle and the Sony Reader, but the Lithium battery conversely takes longer to recharge than the former, and also lacks Kindle's wireless connectivity. You load books through a USB port the old-fashioned way. It runs with a Samsung ARM 400MHz processor, so it has more grunt than the 200 MHz Cybook at any rate
You do get an MP3 player and earphones. Memory-wise there's 128 MB of internal RAM, and they give you a 2GB SD card as well, while SD cards as large as 4GB are supported if you need more memory still. The eSlick supports PDF, TXT, Doc, Powerpoint, HTML and, um, that's it? We looked at the specs and apparently so. Which is a HUGE worry. The rationale appears to be a focus on PDFs, as there's lots of PDF software included. For those who want to buy books in other formats, this is not your machine - so far, anyway.
A bright spot is that they'll ship to many countries world-wide. Get this, though. The initial "promotional" release price was $229.99 until the end of January 2009, which then rose to $US259.99 for February-March, after which the RRP will rise to $US299.99. What? This "strategy" will encourage consumers? Sounds more like a kiss of death to us. With the Kindle now at $359, only $50 more, and the Sony Reader base model at the same price as the eSlick will end up, c'mon guys. In an age of recession the company bean-counters at Foxit appear to need their heads read. The big (or only) deal here appeared to be a nice price advantage, but if they're going to whittle that away to nothing then - Carruthers, sell my Foxit shares immediately.
The eSlick comes in black, white
and grey. Which is either a colour range or some kind of statement.
www.foxitsoftware.com/ebook/
Kindle Flaring
Sold out over Christmas and still sold out in February, the Kindle must be doing
pretty well. Unless, that is, production is being deliberately held back because
of components lacks or to fan the market into excitement. The only reason such
base suspicions as the last arise, though, is because Amazon obstinately refuses
to release any sales figures for the device. Citigroup however estimates 2008
Kindle sales at 380,000, a more realistic figure than some sky-high estimates
(our own guess is 250,000-300,000). Sony meantime reports total sales of its
own e-reader since 2006 through 2008 at 300,000 units all told.
UK publisher Canongate is e-booking with a vengeance. Not only is the Edinburgh-based company going to digitise its entire 450 title back catalogue, with their new titles you'll now get extras, DVD movie-style, with the electronic text. For instance bad seed Nick Cave has written a novel The Death Of Bunny Munro, and you'll get a specially-composed song from the mostly musician as a freebie with Canongate's e-book version.
Says Canongate managing director Jamie Byng: "We're doing some really cool stuff that will turn some heads and break ground in the area of e-books. We are using the medium, not just replicating content." He added, "It would be foolish not to take seriously both the opportunities and the changes that are going on in publishing and the ways people are going to read books and digest content. It's sobering as a publisher when you look at how they screwed up in the music industry… You have your head in the sand if you are not recognising there are fundamental things going on."
Rise of the Phone Reader II
Gutenberg on the phone
The venerable Project Gutenberg,
justly renowned as the original home of free books, has also gone mod and connected
with all this phone-e business. They're currently launching "PG Mobile" for
those who like to read on the itty-bitty screen. PG Mobile is not a device however,
it's a piece of reader software that will allow phones to convert Gutenberg's
mostly plain text files into books viable on your crowd-disturber, with page
turning, bookmarking and landscape mode features handily available. For those
who need to know, PG Mobile is based on a Java file format (JAR) and was developed
by good guys QiOO Interactive. The good oil,
though, is that you should be able to download PG's books from your PC to any
smart mobile (cell) phone via one of four possible methods, Bluetooth, data
cable, infrared or serial connection. Or directly on WAP-enabled phones.
www.gutenberg.org/
*Oh, and did we tell you there's a Project Gutenberg search plug-in for the Firefox browser? If you're interested, get it here.
January 2009
The MiBook
This recent e-reader focuses on the multimedia potential of e-books. In fact, content made available so far consists entirely of instructional videos. The device comes from Photoco Inc, a bit of a clue to its intended direction. You get two free video books included, and more of the company's books are $US20 each.
Titles available to date are on such topics as cooking, gardening, DIY home projects, childcare, exercise and travel. The videos proceed in paused stages so that you're not constantly scrambling to freeze them, particularly useful in following recipes or construction instructions. For real relevance in cooking the MiBook will usefully sort recipes by main ingredient, cooking time, method and even nutritional value.
With a 7 inch LCD screen the device is not too tiny, and has colour too. There's also a display stand and remote control to make it practicable in the kitchen or workshop. The MiBook has a rechargeable battery (2 hour charge), or can be left mains connected via an AC adapter. The price is nice - officially $US120, but it's been seen for as little as $US75, so if you're thinking of buying one a value search is recommended.
You load MiBook content on SD memory
cards. As well as Photoco's own video books you can also add images, music files,
homemade videos or regular text e-books, so this is a genuine media player/e-reader
as well. The screen however won't win any prizes, and you surely would not want
to read War and Peace on it. Neither are there many frills, but as a
modest, starter e-reader for the acutely budget-conscious who are accepting
of limitations, this newcomer is unbeatable for value at present.
www.mibook.com/
Malaysian state gets the e-bug
While Australia's progressive new government is planning to issue Year Eight secondary students with a laptop each to, among other things, access digital texts in the classroom, a Malaysian state has actually beaten them to the punch. In Terengganu state January 2009 saw the beginning of a release of 25,000 broadband-enabled laptops to Year Five pupils. The programme is expected to be fully implemented by April, and students will then be able to quickly download electronic textbooks instead of lugging heavy physical books around.
*Meanwhile in the good ol' USA everything's up to date in Kansas City, ta dum. Or at least it is at Northwest Missouri State University, where come the (northern hemisphere) spring semester, most students will likewise have dumped their overweight physical textbooks in favour of the digital variety. About 4,000 students will instead use either a dedicated e-reader device or a laptop computer to access their texts.
Retiring (but clearly still up-to-the-moment) university president Dean L. Hubbard says he hopes the institution could be totally out of the printed textbook business in three years time. His university is already unique in renting texts to students rather than requiring them to buy them.
*Orange, the Hutchinson phone mob, have been trialling the iRex Iliad e-reader for a wireless & automatically updated daily newspaper service, delivered via their 3G network. These European trials have apparently "gone well". However device & particularly screen robustness is an issue for busy, on-the-go folk, and there may be changes there before an actual commercial venture is launched.
Nintending to Read II
A recent "game" release from Nintendo for the DS device is actually a collection of one hundred classic books called, accurately if unimaginatively, the 100 Classic Book Collection. Funnily enough the Dual Screen DS device has two areas suitable for text, a bit like - well an open book, really. As well you get digital book goodies such as stylus page advance (or just brush with your finger), variable font size, word search and electronic bookmarks.
Previously there were amateur fan
efforts that enabled reading on this kid's' gaming device, but now Nintendo
has made it official - the DS is an e-reader too. Which in our humble opinion
is great. The screen is not ideal for reading, but considering that many sharp-eyed
young adults are actually choosing to read on their mobile (=cell) phones these
days, it seems the young 'uns will read on anything that's like, basically,
cool man. There may be hope for the future of literature yet… Price for the
book set is £18 (eighteen pounds sterling) in its initial UK release.
www.nintendo.com/
Rise of the Phone Reader I
Reader "Apps" the buzzword as iPhone trickle starts to flood
It's starting to look as if the Apple e-reader device for the iPhone generation is, wait for it - the iPhone itself. Meanwhile, application developers are flat out producing mobile phone apps in the form of a slew of e-book reader software* to lock customers into varieties of DRM'ed books for their communication devices, Apple or otherwise. Many are available from the iTunes store, which these days is about a lot more than just music.
The most surprising thing is that so many publishers are responding with alacrity to do the necessary deals with the phone people, whereas before they were mostly reluctant toe-dippers in the e-book field. There seems to be some really weird thinking here. Apparently, that dedicated e-readers were long regarded by publishers as more of a threat than anything else, whereas phone obsessives are viewed as book pagans ripe for conversion to reading.
A factor there may be that print book sales are flat overall or actually in decline due to a negative generational shift. In plain language, affluent young people are reading fewer books than before. So until the e-book industry finally gets its sales model together, books on the phone may be seen as the only option for publishers who see themselves as otherwise missing out altogether with generation Y. Meanwhile the young kids of generation Z must be wondering where it will all end. But aha, they can get books on their Nintendos now!
* ScrollMotion out of New York is the latest. Each book is a separate app using their full-featured Iceberg reader, & they have youth appeal titles like Twilight and The Golden Compass. Lexcycle's Stanza is already well-established with over 500,000 users. Originally Stanza was mostly used for free classic books, but the latest version has been enhanced to support the more than 40,000 eReader titles, and there's now a dedicated Stanza eReader webstore at Fictionwise. There are other contenders too such as MPS Mobile's Global Reader. In addition e-reader applications are also reported in the works for Googlish Android OS phones and RIM's Blackberry device.
Fancy being ravaged by a Viking?
No? How would a medieval lord, A Wild West gunslinger/ginslinger or a sensitive
WWII air ace do then, instead of the usual bodice-tearing Regency bucks? You
can get all of them now from Harlequin, the famous women's romance publishers.
They've released a new range of racier short stories (one to fifteen thousand
words each) exclusively as e-books. Priced at $US2.99, they're set as indicated
in a broad range of historical eras and locations. Many formats are available,
including Adobe PDF, Microsoft Reader, Mobipocket, Palm, Kindle and Sony.
www.harlequinhistoricalundone.com/
*
News archive 1 2 3 4 early newsletters (2001-2004)
