Most of you met the newest addition to the TeleRead team, the reporter and author Juli Monroe, when we published her introductory post a couple days back. (If you missed it, click here to give it a look.) But last weekend, we republished an article of Juli's about E Ink readers that was originally written for one of our sister sites, GadgeTell. Juli's piece was essentially a defense of dedicated E Ink e-readers; she made it quite clear that she doesn't put much stock into the recent chatter that, due to the rise in popularity of tablet computers, E Ink e-readers...

By Juli Monroe I’ve been reading posts saying that “E-Ink is dead” for, well, years now. The general argument goes something like this: “People really want tablets. They don’t want a single-function device. E-ink is too slow to refresh and isn’t good for anything except reading books. And people don’t read anyway.” All of those things are true (well, except for that last one), but it misses the point. I’m active on Kindleboards, an online forum for Kindle lovers, and discussion, purchasing and love for the E Ink Kindles is alive and well. The Kindle Paperwhite was sold out through most of the holiday season,...

Did anyone else notice the fantastic Kindle Paperwhite infographic that ran in the New York Times' Business section on December 26? It appears to have been a dual effort on the part of tech reporter Brian X. Chen and graphics editor Frank O'Connell; the latter put together an equally gorgeous infographic about the Lytro camera back in February. We've reproduced a portion of the graphic for you below, but in order to access the "info" aspect of the feature, you'll need to click here to visit the Times' site. The piece essentially explains how the Paperwhite's "unique lighting system" works: "Rather than using a...

Over on the Popular Mechanics website, a fantastic roundup article appeared a few weeks back featuring 110 Predictions  For the Next 110 Years, organized by decade. This being Popular Mechanics, the majority of the entries are, of course, science- and tech-based. There are some interesting predictions regarding impossible-sounding futuristic apps the PM team suspects we may encounter at some point over the next decade or ten. But two of the entries are specifically e-reading themed, and we quite like the sound of them both. So we've reproduced them for you here. And by the way, if you have any e-reading or digital publishing predictions of your own...

One of the most common complaints about e-books is that you can’t do as much with them when the power goes out. Well, our former editor Paul Biba has been caught without power in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, and has found that, within limits, e-reading can work just fine without a steady source of electricity.  (Hat tip to Nate Hoffelder for pointing this post out to me in e-mail.) While he limited himself to paper book reading during the day, Paul found he could read from his Kindle PaperWhite after dark with the light on very easily. He reported reading...

The LCD vs e-ink eyestrain debates have been going on for some time, but one factor in the difference is the refresh rate. E-ink sits still like paper once it’s set. It doesn’t refresh until you turn the page. LCD, on the other hand, refreshes dozens of times per second, whether it’s on a TV, a monitor, or a tablet. But that could be about to change. Nikkei Electronics’s “Tech-On!” reports on a new LCD display panel technology under development that will reduce the necessary refresh rate from 60 per second to 1 per second or less when showing...

If you happen to have already read our last post, in which we referenced a Reuters article about the unfortunate decline in popularity of the e-reader, you might also be interested in checking out a few recent news items about the financial misfortunes of the Taiwan-based E Ink Holdings (formerly the E Ink Corporation). As we mentioned in that last post, E Ink's "monthly revenues dropped 91 percent in two months" at the end of 2011 (emphasis ours). This came after five years of near-constant growth for the company, which manufactures the displays of most Kindle and Nook e-readers. E Ink's massive revenue drop seems to have been largely caused by declining...

E-Reader-info has some information about the forthcoming hyper-cheap “Beagle” e-reader from txtr, which is scheduled to sell for €9.90 (or about USD $13.00). This could very well be the cheapest E Ink reader ever seen, though the reason becomes obvious when you realize that it’s technically only about half of an e-reader, and that it will also be subsidized by cell phone carriers the way that cell phones commonly are. The idea behind the device is that it serves as a viewing device for e-books that are actually rendered into images by an associated smartphone, and uploaded over Bluetooth. This lets...

The eBook Reader blog reports that, after first marking it down from $379 to $299, and not updating it for years, Amazon has quietly removed the Kindle DX from its Kindle family listings. It is now only available via third-party merchants, and there is no sign of any possible replacement. It didn’t seem to me that there ever really was that much of a market for the DX. It was too big to be easily pocketable the way the smaller readers are, and too monochrome to be desirable for displaying things like textbooks. The Kindle Fire HD will boast the same...

New Study Suggests eInk is Not Better for Your Eyes than LCD (The Digital Reader) Penguin Brings eBooks Back to Libraries with Distributor 3M (Paid Content) Judge Posner on Copyright: Restrictive Fair Use a Risk to Creativity (Michael Geist) Hands On Review of the Kobo Glo eReader (Good E-Reader) Kindle Daily Deal: Breakdown by Katherine Amt Hanna (&) Sheep in a Jeep by Nancy E. Shaw * * * ...

As someone looking to join the e-reader world, I feel cautious about which device to choose. What with the new lines of Amazon and Kobo e-readers that just launched, and the fact that new tablets are coming out quicker than most people can keep track of them, there almost seems to be too many options. There are backlit and front-lit devices to think about; there are E Ink screens and LCD screens; there are touch-screens and page-turning tabs and ads and perks ... the task feels daunting. Thankfully, I recently stumbled upon a Tech News Daily article that helps consumers choose which...

Those of you who don't happen to be productivity obsessives may have missed this one, but last night, Lifehacker posted a really simple trick that'll give your tablet or smartphone screen an appearance similar to that of an E-Ink screen ... sort of. Here's how it works: I use a matte screen protector and using an app like Cool Reader (since I'm on Android). I change the background to a moderate to light grey and the font to a dark grey about 25% -30% lighter than black. Turn down the screen brightness to about 75% outside and 45% in doors. Then change the font by adding fonts to...