Jakob Nielsen, the Web usability guru, is a hero of mine in many ways. Bow toward Fremont, California, or wherever he works these days, the next time a struggling e-newspaper iinflicts a horrid full-page ad on you with “Skip this” in tiny type. Those are hate crimes against readers: the stuff Nielsen preaches against. Kudos to him! Nielsen’s latest e-book-related study, however---comparing reading speeds for the iPad, the Kindle and paper publications---means little in the long term. He seems to imply as much when he says the results are “promising for the future of e-readers and tablet computers,” even though the paper...

From their press release: E Ink® Corporation, the leading developer and marketer of electronic paper display technology, today announced the Q2 release of its next generation display technology, Pearl. With Pearl, E Ink expands the capabilities of reflective displays, bringing electronic paper performance to the next level. With the whitest reflective displays in the industry, and a contrast ratio now approximately 50 percent greater than today’s products, text on Pearl “pops” from the page, enabling a reading experience most similar to reading text on printed paper. ... Images and text become crisp on the screen as the contrast between the background and...

Amazon finally seems to have noticed that its $489 Kindle DX is still overpriced compared to the iPad. It is coming out with a new model, with 50% improved contrast and a graphite rather than white body. The 9.7” e-ink display and 3G wireless remain otherwise the same, but the price is falling $110 to $379. The new Kindle DX will ship July 7th, but Amazon is taking pre-orders now. If you were considering buying one of those $350 DX refurbs we mentioned earlier, you might want to think again....

Amazon Kindle Review is reporting that the DX can be had for $249, but I just checked and its being listed at $350 (actually $349.99). Still a pretty good deal considering the list price. Here's the Amazon link....

Diversified market or not, there are those who think that Amazon is still the big e-book winner, now and for the foreseeable future. On AllThingsD’s “MediaMemo” blog a few days ago, Peter Kafka discussed a note from Citigroup analyst Mark Mahaney: Mahaney points out that Amazon, with its long-established relationships with publishers, still offers book buyers a wider selection of e-books than Apple does. And it sells its books for less. He cites figures from the report that show Amazon has more New York Times bestsellers and a lower average book price, and predicts...

MediaBistro’s eBookNewser and GalleyCat have been putting together a directory of good Twitter accounts to follow for e-book news. Gratifyingly, our very own Paul Biba tops their list. Thanks for the mention, MediaBistro! Engadget reports that Amazon and ASUS are teaming up to pre-install the Kindle Reader software on some of the netbooks and laptops ASUS sells through Amazon. Engadget speculates that the pre-installation might extend to ASUS’s forthcoming Eee Pad tablet, but expects to hear more about that at an upcoming industry event. Also found on Engadget, Amazon’s Kindle 2.5 software is now rolling...

Back in March, we covered the University of Virginia Darden School of Business’s experiments with trying out the Kindle DX to see how well it could replace textbooks. At the time, the preliminary results suggested that most students found it simply didn’t work. Now, with the trial almost over, Darden has posted a detailed article summing up the results. Surveyed at mid-term on how satisfied they were with the Kindle, the students concluded that the device was simply too slow and clunky at moving between pages to keep up in the fast-paced classroom environment—but almost all the 62...

Wired’s “Gadget Lab” blog has a report on colleges planning to hand out iPads to their student bodies. I’ve mentioned Seton Hill before, but this article also mentions George Fox University and Abilene Christian University. Abilene Christian has already had some success with a pilot program of issuing iPhones to all its students. George Fox was less successful with an iPod Touch program because students didn’t bring them to the classrooms, but the iPad is expected to change that. Bill Rankin, a professor of medieval studies at Abilene Christian, called the iPhone program...

InformationWeek has a look at the current frontrunners in the e-book device market, listing statistics and giving a rundown of the pros and cons of each device. Covered devices include the Amazon Kindle, Barnes & Noble Nook, Plastic Logic Que, Skiff Reader, Sony Reader, Spring Design Alex, and Apple iPad. The article goes into a fair amount of detail about each device’s strengths and weaknesses. It’s a great resource for people just considering getting into e-book devices....

Brilliant exegesis of Apple's iPad effect on the market for e-ink devices like the Kindle DX by Jason Perlow at his Tech Broiler blog at ZDNet, "iPad Killed Kindlenomics" A big eReadster e-OK!...

The Financial Times reports on the experience of University of Virginia students in the Darden School of Business, who were issued Kindle DXes as part of a pilot program to see whether they could successfully replace paper textbooks. (Note: The Financial Times has a paywall; if you cannot view the article, search “No substitute for a paper read” in Google News.) It turns out that for most students, the answer is “no”: although most agree they make great personal reading devices, almost 3/4 of the 63 students participating in the project said they would not recommend the device...

Terry White has an article in Adobe how-to magazine Layers looking at how to export documents from InDesign into EPUB format for use with Adobe Reader or other e-book devices. I don’t have nor have I used InDesign so I can’t really say how good the instructions are. However, the first half of the article talks about the rise of e-books and e-magazines, discussing the Kindle, the Kindle app for iPhone, and the Zinio e-magazine reader. White doesn’t really mention many of the other e-book options apart from these, but at least he does agree that the PDF...