The Gadgeteer has a review of an interesting-looking gizmo, the tyPad wireless Bluetooth keyboard case for the iPad. This $129.95 case combines a binder-style case and a Bluetooth keyboard, effectively turning the iPad into a laptop. (Although the review doesn’t mention Sena, the picture of this keyboard is identical to the Sena case/keyboard combo Paul mentioned at the end of August.) The review notes that the case is sturdy enough, and has a number of useful features, such as the ability to rotate the iPad 90 degrees to type in either a landscape or a portrait configuration. But...

Here’s a bit of an unusual tablet hack: someone’s figured out how to turn the Insignia Infocast Internet appliance into an 8” media tablet. The device, originally intended as a Chumby app viewer, has a number of apps already (such as Pandora or the NY Times podcast) but some users have ported a Webkit-based user-interface framework to it. The $170 device already had an 800 MHz processor, 2 GB onboard memory, and a touchscreen, plus wifi connectivity and two USB 2.0 ports, and runs Chumby Linux 2.6. “While it’s marketed as a device for...

Following up to my post about Augen devices last night, I just called the Kmart in Branson and spoke to them, and what they had in stock was the e-book reader, and one remaining unit of an Augen netbook different from the one Engadget found. Engadget’s find was an Android “smartbook” with a 400 MHz processor and 128 megabytes of RAM, but Branson has one clearanced unit of what appears to be this model listed for $75 (currently out of stock) on Geeks.com, or $67.99 + $9.99 shipping at NewEgg (apparently in stock), a Windows CE “smartbook” with...

TechCrunch reports that a Kindle app is coming to Android devices sometime this summer. It will require version 1.6 or later and an SD card, and will offer many of the same features as the other Kindle apps—instant download of books and free samples from Amazon as long as you have a working net connection, Whispersync to keep your reading place synchronized across multiple devices, and so on. Like other Kindle apps, it will not support newspapers, magazines, and blogs. However, unlike the Kindle apps for iPhone and iPad, it will allow purchasing books directly from Amazon without...

AllThingsD’s “BoomTown” section reports on a rather secretive startup called Kakai that is reportedly working on a Linux-based “Kindle for students”. Founder Osman Rashid is no stranger to the educational market, already having founded the Chegg on-line textbook rental company. Like the Entourage Edge, Kakai’s device is rumored to be a dual-screen foldable tablet, but another interesting piece of the puzzle comes from a (no-longer available) job posting for senior visual designer, as quoted by a VentureBeat article: Kakai is working on the leading edge of touch/gestural interfaces for connected and disconnected devices,...

While it was tempting to grace this post with a picture of blue-skinned aliens, I’m actually talking about a quite different Pandora than the one depicted in James Cameron’s Avatar (though the humans in that movie did use electronic tablets for data display, complete with a very nice user interface for syncing where the image was simply slid off of the desktop and onto a tablet a la Minority Report). After residing in Development Hell for some time, it appears the Pandora open-source Linux-powered hand-held game console is nearly ready to ship. The device will have a 4.3”...

CNet reports that a Millward Brown study shows that Amazon ranks as the most trusted and recommended brand in the United States. It’s not terribly surprising; When you have a company that operates smoothly enough that most people not directly affected by them are willing to overlook those times when it accidentally or intentionally delists books or removes them from user devices, it has to be doing something right. TechFlash reports that Microsoft and Amazon have signed a cross-patent-licensing agreement, where each company gains the rights to use the other’s patent portfolio. The deal indemnifies Amazon against a...

Too bad Amazon isn’t doing nonDRMed ePub to make it easier for books to be read across a number of platforms. But if you use a Linux desktop and are sufficiently adventuresome, yes, you can use the Wine Windows simulator to run Kindle for PC. Details at Lifehacker. Anyone care to tell how the tip there works out?...

The Practical Nomad, Edward Hasbrouck's blog, has an article about the new Kindle for Windows software and what it might mean for other formats. He's also offering a free book in a contest you might be interested in: ... Once content is displayed on screen by a Windows app, it’s available to any standard screen-capture utility. Now that Kindle for PC has been released, it’s only a matter of time — probably measured in weeks or at most a few months — before someone releases a “Kindle-ripping” app that “reads” a Kindle e-book using the Kindle for PC app, captures the...

OpenInkpot, a linux-based replacement for the proprietary software in e-book readers, will soon sport a spiffy graphical user interface and improved tabletlike architecture. Take a look at some preview documentation. The reading software includes FBReader, which can handle nonDRMed ePub, unencrypted Mobipocket HTML, TXT, and a bunch of other formats. Of special interest, to me, is that you can choose to boldface all the text---rather handy, given the less than stellar contrast of the current generation of E Ink displays. The text will stand out better against the not-quite-white backgrounds of the screens. This is...

From Slashdot comes word of a Kindle 2 that has been hacked to run Ubuntu Linux. (Here is a series of blog posts going into great detail about the hacking process.) However, this is not the sort of simple hack that ordinary consumers are likely to want to do—it took a skilled hacker several days of tinkering, and (like many hacks) was done as a fun experiment rather than for any serious purpose. Still, it is amusing to see that e-ink screen with a Linux terminal display running on it. Technorati Tags: Kindle 2,Linux,Ubuntu,Jaunty Jackalope,hacking...

Now here's an intriguing possibility. TechCrunch is designing their own touch-screen web tablet. Here's what they say: The idea is to get a new type of device into people...