Android tablets have nowhere near the market share that Adroid phones have captured.  Why is this?  Well, John Gruber, in Daring Fireball, speculates as to the reason: My hypothesis has long been that Android has very little traction in and of itself. What has traction is the traditional pattern where customers go to their existing carrier’s retail store to buy a new phone, listen to the recommendations of the sales staff, and buy one of the recommended phones. Tens — hundreds? — of millions of people have done this and walked out of the store with a new Android handset. (By...

From the Aldiko Blog (blockquotes omitted): One question that we often received from you guys is “ Can I separate the books in my library into “read” and “unread”?” The answer is “Yes”. You can actually use Tags or Collections feature in the Aldiko Book Reader app to do so. Below are the instructions: Go to the list view of your library and then tap on “Tags” or “Collections” (here we use Collections as example). Tap on the “+” button at the right corner of your device display to add a collection. You will then see a pop-up window, just give the collection a...

Remember that $35 tablet from India? Surprise surprise: it hasn’t been doing so well. ZDNet Asia reports that India’s Union Human Resource Development Ministry is looking into upgrading the specifications for the tablet, and also bumping the price to $50. It turns out that users were less than impressed by the $35 device, finding it too slow, its battery life too short, and its resistive touchscreen too hard to use. DataWind, the company that was manufacturing the device, had been supposed to make over a million units, but only 10,000 have been shipped since October. The company complains that...

The Verge reports that Barnes & Noble is placing a low-end version of its Nook Tablet in Wal-Mart, launching at 12:01 a.m. on Wednesday, February 22nd. The device will have only 8 GB of RAM, the same as the Kindle Fire, and is expected to launch at a lower price than the current 16GB model’s $249. (The most obvious price point is, of course, the Kindle Fire’s $199, but B&N and Wal-Mart could surprise us.) Of course, to call it an 8 GB model is something of a misnomer. Unlike the Kindle Fire, it will probably reserve all but...

From the press release: Paragon Software Group, the leading developer of multi-platform software applications for mobiles and computers, and Geometer Plus LLC, a developer of free open-source e-book reader application FBReader, announce that FBReader now supports the latest series of Slovoed multilingual ‘talking’ premium content dictionaries on Android devices to provide immediate translations and definitions of e-book text without the need to switch applications or access the Internet.  By installing FBReader, users of Slovoed dictionaries, available in more than 29 world languages, can enjoy the most comfortable in-app translation from any book or document in EPUB, OEB, FB2 (.zip), mobipocket (mobi), RTF or plain-text format. More...

Analysts’ predictions are often not worth the electrons they’re printed on, but CNET reports Pacific Crest analyst Chad Bartley has said in a research note to investors that Amazon could launch an iPad-sized 9-inch Kindle Fire by the middle of the year. Such a device could increase expected Kindle Fire sales from 12.7 million to 14.9 million units this year. He based this information on his contacts with Amazon component suppliers, which does not necessarily mean it will be accurate. This is only the latest in a number of reports that have suggested a 9-inch Fire could launch sometime this year,...

From an email I received this afternoon from Bluefire. Several months ago we released Bluefire Reader for Android. While the app is available in the Amazon App Store for Android, it’s not available in the Kindle Fire App Store. Amazon has blocked most third-party ebook apps. We think that’s a shame and wanted to make Bluefire Reader available for you to download to your Kindle Fire. The instructions below guide you through the steps for installing Bluefire Reader for Android on your Kindle Fire. Note that you should open this page in the browser...

A new iOS and Android app for all poetry lovers from the Columbia University Press. The Columbia Granger’s World of Poetry is a leading web and print resource for anyone with an interest in the world of poetry. The Granger’s World of Poetry app delivers the Granger’s Poem of the Day and Daily Trivia Question, for people who enjoy staying in touch with their poetic nature. The Granger’s Poem of the Day app is a product of Columbia University Press. Download the App (Free to Download and Use) Direct to Android Market Direct to iTunes App Store [Via INFOdocket]...

Changewave Research has just released a new report on the Kindle Fire. From the press release: Survey of New Kindle Fire Owners Since the mid-November launch of the Kindle Fire, consumer demand for the tablet has been nothing less than explosive. In the January survey 6% of respondents reported they own a Kindle Fire – double the percentage of a month ago. ChangeWave asked 254 new Kindle Fire owners a series of questions regarding their overall satisfaction and key likes and dislikes, to gauge their reaction to the new tablet device. Customer Satisfaction. When asked how satisfied they are...

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...

Check out Woot! This is a great price for a full-sized tablet - if you are willing to tackle webOS.  It's refurbished.  HP has announced that webOS will be made open source later this year, so this might be a good bet for the more technically inclined among us....

From Andrys Basten's A Kindle World Blog: Now we can add a 16 to 32 gig pocket-sized drive to the Kindle Fire -- and soon, Kingston Digital says, a 64GB drive (price not known yet).  The drive can be carried in your pocket. Android Mag's Pallavi had one of the several announcements of the availability of Kingston's WiDrive a few days ago, but the Kindle Fire app was not available in the Amazon AppStore.  It is now. I just downloaded it. Pallavi writes: ' It utilizes "Flash-based technology to store data from USB-compatible PCs." ...