Technologizer

Kindle for PC: A Rough Draft at Best

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

[UPDATE: I tried again, and Kindle for PC is now downloading all my books swiftly and reliably. Not sure why it wasn't before...] I’ve been playing with Amazon.com’s new Kindle for PC application over the past 24 hours, and while the idea of having access to my Kindle books on my PC remains mighty appealing, the [...]

Kindle for PC Now Available

Tuesday, November 10, 2009

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[UPDATE: I tried again, and Kindle for PC is now downloading all my books swiftly and reliably. Not sure why it wasn't before...] Last month, one of the few new pieces of news at the Windows 7 rollout was the fact that Amazon was releasing a piece of Windows software for reading Kindle e-books. The software [...]

The E-Reader Explosion: A Cheat Sheet

Monday, October 26, 2009

39 Comments

By almost any imaginable definition, last week was the newsiest ever in the still-new world of e-book readers. We witnessed the unveiling of Barnes & Noble’s ambitious Nook. We got more details about Plastic Logic’s long-awaited device. We learned of an underdog known as the Spring Design Alex. We were informed that Amazon was killing [...]

Kindle Coming to PCs

Thursday, October 22, 2009

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Today’s Windows 7 launch mostly involved stuff we already knew about, but there was a “just one more thing”: Amazon is going to release a Kindle e-book reading application for Windows. It runs on XP, Vista, and Windows 7, and takes advantage of the new touch features in Win 7 to allow gestures for actions [...]

One World, One Kindle

Thursday, October 22, 2009

3 Comments

That was fast! Two weeks ago, Amazon.com introduced a Kindle e-book reader with AT&T 3G wireless and the ability to download books in a hundred countries. It priced it at $279 and knocked the cost for the U.S.-only version down to $259. It seemed odd to keep the old version around at such a modest [...]

The Barnes & Noble E-Reader Revealed?

Wednesday, October 14, 2009

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Gizmodo has posted what it says are photos and details of the e-book reader that Barnes & Noble is reportedly getting ready to release. The most interesting tidbit: It supposedly has a 6-inch monochrome e-ink screen that’s very much like the one on Amazon’s Kindle–but also a smaller color multi-touch LCD beneath that one, which [...]

Kindle Gets Cheaper, Travels Internationally

Tuesday, October 6, 2009

8 Comments

Haven’t bought a Kindle 2 yet? Good. Amazon.com, which knocked the price of its e-book reader down by $60 only last July, has cut it by another forty bucks. You can now buy one for $259–and while that may not be a magic price point, it’s a lot more tempting than the $400 that the [...]

Magazines: Still Ripe for Digital Reimagining

Wednesday, September 30, 2009

2 Comments

We don’t even know for sure whether Apple will ever release a tablet–although there’s lots of compelling evidence that it will–and already there’s a lively debate about whether the company is interested in using said tablet to do to printed reading materials what iTunes has done for music. Until recently, the smart money seemed to be [...]

Hey Amazon and Sony! It’s Time for a Price Drop.

Thursday, September 3, 2009

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While the Amazon Kindle and to some extent the Sony Reader have ignited the e-book industry, analysts say that the market will not be able to grow much further without a serious price drop. Forrester Research studied the problem, and found the “magic price” where consumers would start considering a purchase was around $150. It gets [...]

Do You Want Your Books in Digital Form…or on Dead Trees?

Thursday, August 27, 2009

6 Comments

The news about devices for reading books just doesn’t stop these days, from the good (Sony’s Reader is going wireless and is supporting the ePub format) to the bizarre and troubling (Amazon yanking back books people have already bought). So today’s T-Poll takes your temperature on the whole notion of electronic readers. Are you an owner, [...]

Sony’s E-Reader Finally Goes Wireless

Tuesday, August 25, 2009

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Until now, discussions of the e-book rivalry between Amazon’s Kindle and Sony’s Reader have had to point out that Sony’s gadget lacked the wireless connectivity that was probably the Kindle’s best feature. No longer: At a press event at the New York Public Library, Sony announced the Reader Daily Edition, its first e-reader that lets [...]

Sony Shrinks the Size and Cost of E-Books

Tuesday, August 4, 2009

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If Sony is a bit nonplussed over all the attention for Amazon’.coms Kindle, it’s understandable. The Japanese consumer-electronics behemoth beat Amazon to market with e-book readers that share much of the Kindle’s appeal and technology, and their current touchscreen model arguably has a better interface than the Kindle 2. (Of course, the Kindle benefits hugely [...]

Nicholson Baker vs. the Kindle

Monday, July 27, 2009

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Novelist Nicholson Baker is an unapologetic friend of paper–and his book Double Fold* is an important expose of the mass dumping of bound newspaper volumes by libraries in favor of vastly inferior microform copies. So you gotta think that when The New York arranged for him to write about Amazon.com’s Kindle, it knew that it [...]

Jeff Bezos: Amazon’s 1984 Actions Were “Stupid”

Thursday, July 23, 2009

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Amazon’s decision to remotely delete pirated copies of George Orwell’s 1984 and Animal Farm from customers’ Kindle e-readers and refund their money was stupid, thoughtless, and self-inflicted. That’s not an irate blogger talking–it’s Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos, who indulged in some serious self-flagellation at the company’s forums, as reported by TechCrunch’s MG Siegler. Bezos’s mea culpa [...]

Orwell on the Kindle: It’s Orwellian!

Friday, July 17, 2009

20 Comments

[IMPORTANT UPDATE: The Web is rife with examples of people assuming something unlikely-sounding is true because they read it somewhere. I usually go to pains to avoid doing so--which is why my posts tend to be rife with words like "reportedly" and "allegedly"-- but in this post I screwed up. As BetaNews reports--rightly taking me [...]

A Cheap(er) Kindle

Wednesday, July 8, 2009

13 Comments

Engadget has noticed that Amazon’s Kindle 2 is now a better buy: The company has shaved $60 off the price of it’s e-reader, which is now $299: The first Kindle shipped in November of 2007 and cost $400; Amazon has been bringing the price down, but only gradually. (It’s the e-books you download from Amazon–many of [...]