Yesterday, perhaps hoping to stage a preemptive strike on Amazon, Barnes & Noble announced a new cooperative venture with self-publisher Lulu.com, which is supposed to make it easier for Lulu customers to get their books published as Nook e-books. However, given that B&N was already partnering with Lulu on self-publishing e-books, it is entirely unclear how it was harder before and how it will be easier now. And this bright bundle of glittering generalities does not seem to have helped in the end. Barnes & Noble’s stock was down by as much as 13% after Amazon’s Kindle announcement today,...

The Astak Mentor, a 6" E Ink e-reader is now shipping for 229$. It's got 512Mb of internal memory and an SD Card reader, weights 175 grams and supports TXT, ePUB, PDF and more text formats. Here's the Amazon link. Thanks to E-Reader-Info for the heads up....

A couple of weeks ago, Paul reported on self-e-publishing site Scribd’s plans to add direct mobile download capability. CNet reports that Scribd has now done so: Scribd-hosted documents can be sent to any of a dozen different e-book devices (including Kindle, Nook, iPhone, Palm, EZReader, and others) with two mouse clicks. The documents are sent as PDF files via e-mail or SMS message link. At present, only DRM-free titles are supported, but Scribd CEO Trip Adler has plans to expand to copy-protected versions in the future. Another part of Scribd’s mobile strategy is creating device-specific...

It's been about a year since I got my Sony 505, and although it's a great device, I have been itching for an upgrade. The Kindle has finally hit Canada, and it has features the Sony lacks---on-board dictionary (which I would not use when I read in English but would use often when I read in French), on-board Wikipedia and free book samples, a search feature and other goodies. I have been taking advantage of the facilities at a local community centre, and not being a huge music person, was getting bored with the same 100 or so...

John's Blog has a review of this Astak unit and finds it disappointing and "... a poor substitute for a paper weight." _____ NPRs Morning Edition has a story on ereaders which you can listen to here. _____ Amazon is publishing its best-selling items for 2009 and you can find their bestselling books listed here. You can sort by year, month and week. ----- ComputerWorld UK publishes an excerpt from a “Reflection Document” from the European Commission entitled “Creative Content in a European Digital Single Market: Challenges for the Future” ...

There is one last aspect of the Astak that I need to review before shipping it back in. That is one of the major ways it differs from the Sony, and one of the ways it is similar to the Kindle 2: text-to-speech read-aloud mode. Note that with the version of firmware with which the Astak shipped, only PDFs could be read aloud. However, a more recent firmware upgrade expanded speech-compatibility and now it works with ePub too. (And perhaps other formats; I did not check.) I connected the Astak to my computer and recorded a couple of minutes of the...

Ron Miller at Fierce Content Management has obtained a review unit of Astak’s EZReader Pocket Pro (the same one I’ve been reviewing in recent weeks) and used it to examine Google’s e-book offerings. It is not clear from the article whether he downloaded the PDF or EPUB versions of the books he chose to read. What he writes could be true for either one. (Certainly, from my own observations of the Astak’s performance, the PDF version would not look its best on that 5” screen.) I was immediately shocked by the quality. Those of...

Photo Note: My auto-focus digital camera had a little trouble getting good shots of the screen; no matter what I do, the shots tend to turn out slightly off-focus. The shots may look blurry, but suffice it to say that’s a problem with my camera—in person, the reader is quite as crisp and clear as printed text. I’ve had more time to play around with the Astak, and the bloom is off the rose. Yes, the e-ink screen is truly amazing, and far clearer than the touch-sensitive Sony reader’s. However, it has certain other problems. In Praise of Astak Before I start...

I have spent the last two weeks reading e-books on the Astak, and am ready to give my first impressions. The Screen First of all, the 800x600-resolution screen. I love the screen. Of course, it is probably the same screen that any non-touch-sensitive e-ink reader has, but compared to the Sony I tested before the difference is like night and day. The touch-sensitive Sony had a huge amount of glare—but on the Astak, the glare is not there. The words are ink-on-paper clear; if the background is greyer than normal book-quality paper, it is not much darker than the newsprint on which...

A couple of weeks ago I got an evaluation copy of an Astak 5” e-book reader. I’ve been reading books on it over the last week, when I haven’t been busy doing other things, and I’m just about ready to start writing my reviews. But first of all, here is the unboxing video I recorded the other day, in which I take it out of the box and take a first look at it. Enjoy. Technorati Tags: Astak,Unboxing,Pocket Pro,e-reader,e-book reader,e-ink...

Last night, Paul Biba startled me with an offer: he had received a review unit of Astak’s 5” Pocket PRO EZ Reader, but did not have the time to review it. Did I want to? Did I ever‽ This will make a great opportunity to compare this competing e-book reader to what I remember of the Sony. With that in mind, I am starting a new series of columns: Two weeks with an Astak 5”. I actually expect to have this reader longer than two weeks—Paul believed it was mine to keep, though I will try not to get too attached...

The five-inch Astak EZ Reader Pocket Pro is now shipping from New Egg. Price on the New Egg site is about $250, which just happens to be the same as for Bookeen’s five-inch model, the Opus, sold elsewhere. The Astak, more powerful than the same company’s previous five-inch models, comes with a 400Mhz CPU, 512M in memory and a screen with eight-gray scales. Related: Engadget, E-reader-info, ZDNet review, other TeleRead Astak mentions, and the infamous Astak site, which in places assaults you with garish, Las Vegas-style graphics, including especially obnoxious blinks. Stop it,...