Wow, Notion Ink is still around. After a promising buildup for its “Adam” Pixel Qi-display Android tablet, followed by lackluster reviews of the finished product, the company kind of faded into the background. Notion Ink is moving forward with plans for an Adam 2, powered by a TI OMAP processor rather than NVidia’s Tegra. The company feels it will be able to get more performance out of an Omap than it could a Tegra. On Notion Ink’s “Designing Adam 2” blog, Rohan Shravan promises: Unlike last time where we banked on Tegra without possibly...

CNet has an article about Google’s stripped-down Chromebook laptops, and their placement in schools. In a speech at the Florida Educational Technology Converence yesterday, Rajen Sheth, Google’s leader of Chromebook work for business and education, announced that hundreds of schools across 41 states have outfitted at least one classroom with Chromebooks. Three schools in Illinois, Iowa, and South Carolina will be outfitting all their students with the devices—over 27,000 in all. The schools appreciate the advantages the device offers of constant updates, cloud storage, and “invisibility” in terms of booting and use—teachers can focus on instruction rather than technical...

On iMediaConnection, analyst Rebecca Lieb of the Altimeter Group posts a thoughtful look at what the “decline of print” might mean for media. She points to some of the same reports that we have covered over the last few weeks, such as surveys showing that tablet owners are buying less physical media, and projections that on-line advertising spending will this year surpass that for print advertising for the first time. She also notes that a market is growing for “enhanced” books with multimedia features (though plain text versions of the classics will always be with us). ...

Another ruling from a European court on the Apple vs. Samsung lawsuits over the Galaxy Tab’s design has come in, and it doesn’t bode well for Apple. An appeals court in The Hague, Netherlands dismissed Apple’s patent-infringement attempt to get the Galaxy Tab banned from sale in the country, following up on Apple’s appeal after a lower court’s similar decision in August. The court made its decision based on at least two pieces of prior art for each of Apple’s claims, determining that Apple’s claims were therefore narrow enough that they had not been infringed. Next week, a German...

On CNet, Scott Stein writes about why a $79 Kindle has replaced his iPad as his e-book-reading device of choice. The reasons aren’t really new, and indeed have popped up any time anyone has ever compared e-ink devices to tablets for reading: eyestrain-reducing e-ink screens, less potential for distraction, longer battery life, and less potential for being stolen (and less of a loss if it is). It’s going to be interesting to see what happens as screen display technology gets better and lets tablets steal some of the screen-readability and battery life benefits of e-readers. Will dedicated e-readers...

We lately mentioned the popularity of Amazon’s Kindle owner lending library rogram, but iPads and Kindles have another popular lending option that is also exploding. OverDrive reported that traffic to its “virtual branch” websites more than doubled last year, seeing a 130% increase. While much of that increase can be attributed to e-readers, OverDrive also saw a 22% rise in traffic from smartphones and tablets. The increase in lending might be good news for libraries, but it is unclear whether publishers will find it so. If a lent e-book displaces a sale, as some publishers seem to believe, that...

Forbes reports that the Kindle Fire may be “more profitable than expected” despite being (allegedly) sold at a loss. A market research company polled 216 Kindle Fire owners and determined that the average Kindle Fire owner will purchase $136 in digital goods over the lifetime of the device, giving it a cumulative operating margin of over 20%. Of course, as Nate Hoffelder points out at eBookNewser, this is just an estimate. And for that matter, 216 Kindle Fire owners is a remarkably small sample size considering just how many of them Amazon is estimated to have sold. ...

A while ago, I wrote about the idea of using a MiFi to retrofit 3G mobile web access to wifi-capable devices (such as e-readers), and I also mentioned the TruConnect MiFi pay-as-you-go service that allows bite-sized prepaid-3G-wifi usage with no contract required. It has been a couple of weeks since I received my TruConnect MiFi for Christmas, and I’ve used it enough to get a decent idea of how well it works. I use the MiFi mostly with my iPod Touch and iPad, though I have had the chance to try it with my laptop as well. Fundamentally,...

Caveat emptor! The Wall Street Journal MarketWatch covers a warning from anti-counterfeiting security firm OpSec that unscrupulous Chinese manufacturers are gearing up to fool unwary consumers with too-good-to-be-true listings for “name brand” e-reader and tablet products that turn out to look and work nothing like the real things. OpSec advises customers to know what realistic prices are for the real product, research what it looks like so they can tell the difference, check to make sure the model number given is real, and make sure there’s a warranty before buying. Poor spelling and grammar in auction listings can be...

There are other 7” Android tablets out there than the Kindle, Nook, and Kobo. And as if to prove it, Geeks.com has put three of them on sale for under $100 today. The RPAD is $88.99 new, the Pandigital Novel is $98.99 refurbished (available in dark purple and red colors), and the Coby Kyros is $99.99 refurbished (“almost gone”). After that, the price jumps up to $249.99 for a couple of refurbished flavors of Galaxy Tab. Further research indicates that the RPAD is only $10 off what you could get it for on Amazon and has gotten two one-star...

Remember the claims of cold fusion that fizzled when scientists tried to reproduce the results? In that light, Fusion Garage’s name may have proven prophetic, because instead of shipping the promised new Grid 10 tablet, Slashgear reports that the company has just gone into liquidation. It turns out that there just weren’t enough pre-orders of the Grid 10 tablet to save the company, and it couldn’t secure additional funding—so instead of shipping the tablets (and sending a free one to everyone who bought the original Joo Joo) it went under, reportedly owing $40 million to creditors. (It was pretty clear when...

PaidContent reported a few days ago that the Associated Press has branched out into digital distribution by making content available through tablet-based reading apps Pulse and Flipboard. The AP is not providing the readers with all its content, but making available “a selection of international and national news and associated images.” This will include special coverage focusing on this year’s Presidential race, in both cases. Given the AP’s past parsimonious behavior, I find it a little funny that it’s taking so readily to social newsreading apps that will let their users share AP content with their friends and on...