TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home

By Chris Meadows

Our sister blog Gadgetell reported yesterday on some new Sony Reader devices Engadget turned up in a slideshow presentation. The 5” Pocket Edition and 6” Touch Edition will reportedly introduce new clear touchscreen technology (no more glare like on the Sony PRS-700 Reader I reviewed!), 2 gigabytes of internal storage, a faster page turn, and increased battery life offering “up to 10,000 page turns on a single charge”.

There is no information on price (though Sony famously said it was going to compete on quality instead of trying to match the roller-coaster drops in other readers’ prices), or on the rumored addition of 3G to Sony Reader models.

Are these new readers going to be enough to bring Sony back into the game? They’ve largely dropped off the radar in the current flurry of bookstore e-book reader launches. Without a big-name bookstore partnership of its own, Sony is at a serious marketing disadvantage.

By Chris Meadows

We reported in May on rumors of a possible Blackberry tablet device flying around. Lately, those rumors seem to have solidified. Our sister blog Gadgetell reports that Research In Motion, makers of the Blackberry, has acquired the domain name “blackpad.com” from the previous owner, who had owned it since 2002.

CNet ties together some other reports, including a post from Bloomberg in which anonymous sources claim the device is going to be Blackberry’s crack at killing the iPad, having similar specs and pricing to the wifi-only version, and will launch by November.

The tablet will be called the Blackpad, according to Bloomberg. Its touch screen will measure 9.7 inches, similar to the iPad, and the price will be "in line" with Apple’s tablet, the cheapest model starting at $499.

It will rely on wi-fi and Bluetooth to connect to the Internet, rather than 3G, and might well be meant more as a companion device to the Blackberry for people who already own one than as a true standalone.

Either way, Gadgetell notes that RIM and AT&T are planning some kind of special event in New York on Tuesday, August 3rd, and it might well be a natural place and time for such a tablet to be announced.

The Blackberry has had a number of e-book reading apps, including the Mobipocket reader that the iPhone ecosystem still lacks, but has not generally had the multimedia-friendly reputation of the iPhone. Can it turn this around with a Blackberry tablet? Will the tablet, unlike the iPad, run Flash?

Perhaps we’ll get some of the answers on Tuesday.

By Chris Meadows

On our sister blog Gadgetell, Sue Walsh wonders when e-readers will hit $99, (inspired by a PC World article also so wondering). But more importantly, she also has some angry words for the publishers who fomented the agency price model, which raised prices from Kindle’s originally-promised $9.99 per e-book to $12.99 or more.

That leads me to wonder, what good are falling e-reader prices when the publishers are determined to jack up the price of ebooks? I will never understand why they hate ebooks so much. Everyone I know who has an e-reader says they actually read MORE books since getting it. Sales of Kindle books outdid sales of hardcovers on Amazon. Overall sales of ebooks have skyrocketed while sales of traditional books have shown much less growth. Yet publishers are still doing everything they can to crush e-books.

But on the bright side, Walsh notes, this is also leading to opportunities for independent and self-publishing authors, as they are able to draw attention by pricing their own e-books considerably below the $12.99 level. Their books gain exposure from listings on Amazon that they could never have hoped for alone.

The publishing industry is going through considerable change and turbulence, what with the pricing hassles on one side, and agents deciding to publish e-book backlists directly through Amazon on another. Things look pretty rough right now. Hopefully, over time, the market will settle down, publishers will find an equilibrium price point for their books that pleases themselves and consumers alike. We’ll just have to wait and see.

By Chris Meadows

Our sister blog Gadgetell reports that Books-a-Million and Sony are beating yesterday’s $109 Kindle refurb with a $99 refurbished Sony Reader 505-LC. Of course, as Gadgetell writer Robert Nelson notes, paying $10 more to get Amazon’s brand value and always-on 3G is not a bad deal at all.

By Chris Meadows

TechCrunch reports that the 3G iPad will be shipping as of May 7th. This is the model that costs $130 more than the equivalent wifi-only version and includes the no-contract-required ability to buy 3G access from AT&T on a monthly basis. That will certainly be good for downloading e-book when wifi is not available.

Meanwhile, our sister site Gadgetell reports that Sprint has come up with a clever way to make a “4G iPad”—an iPad case with a built-in pocket for Sprint’s “Overdrive” mobile wifi access point. Like the MiFi I’ve discussed as a way to “retrofit 3G” to wifi-only e-book devices, the Overdrive can supply 3G/4G wireless Internet access to up to 5 devices at a time.

And finally, I’ve held off on bringing this story up until it was clearer that the device in question was genuine, but all indications are now that it is. Gizmodo got ahold of a 4G iPhone prototype that someone apparently “lost” in a bar in Redwood City, California, and disassembled it to take pictures.

Totally stealing Steve Jobs’s thunder, they report that the next generation of iPhone is set to roll with a larger battery, higher-resolution screen, improved rear camera plus new front-facing video camera, iPad-style micro-SIM, and other improvements. The device ran OS 4.0, but was remotely disabled shortly after Gizmodo’s sources “found” it.

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By Chris Meadows

A few days ago, BoingBoing noticed something quite interesting in the iBooks store. In looking up the classic book Moby Dick, or, The Whale by Herman Melville, they noticed the description said that one of the true stories that inspired the book was “the killing of an albino s***m [sic] whale" known as Mocha Dick”.

Since I don’t have access to iBooks yet, I can’t look it up for myself and see if that bowdlerization is still intact. But regardless of whether it is or not…why on earth would they censor “sperm,” which is not commonly regarded as a dirty word, but not “dick,” that often is? (And one of the BoingBoing commenters noted that another uncensored word in the description, “rooted,” is a dirty word in Australia.)

TechCrunch posted a couple of articles over the last month detailing possible alternatives to the iPad. Back in March they listed seven, then a few days ago they listed seven more. This is an interesting, comprehensive look at other tablets and e-book readers currently or soon to be available. Some pretty neat gadgets in there. The convertible Viliv S10 Blade and the Lenovo IdeaPad U1 look particularly intriguing.

Our fellow NAPCO-owned blog GadgeTell has noticed Amazon is using a new Kindle advertising technique. “Easy to read even in bright sunlight,” their ad says. Gee, I wonder what brought that on?

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