Technologizer » E-books

Kindle Arrives on the Mac

Harry McCracken — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 11:10:47 +0000

Amazon has released its Kindle for Mac software, letting OS users get at all those e-books in Kindle format. It should be a boon to anyone who has a Kindle, has bought books for it, and wants to read ‘em on a Mac–but I’m on the road sans Mac at the moment, so it’ll be a few days until I can try it for myself. If you snag it, let us know what you think.

TUAW says it’s “no-frills,” which is a description I’d apply to all the Amazon and Barnes & Noble e-reader apps I’ve tried for every PC and mobile platform. I’d like to see a company with access to as many books as these two release reader apps that are truly slick and full-featured. Maybe Apple? (You gotta think that it’ll make tomes from its iPad iBooks Store available on Macs and PCs eventually.)

At the moment, my main phone is a Droid, so I also await a Kindle reader the Android…something I also suspect is in the works.

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Kindle App on iPad: No In-App Book Buying

Harry McCracken — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 20:31:08 +0000

More evidence that competition doesn’t exactly flourish on the iPhone and, soon, the iPad–at least if the company you’re attempting to compete with is Apple….

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Nintendo DSi XL Will Be an E-Reader, Too

Jared Newman — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 01:29:15 +0000

Nintendo’s DSi XL will double as an e-reader soon after it launches next month, though it won’t have anything close to the book selection of Amazon’s Kindle or Barnes & Noble’s Nook.

The DSi XL, a chunkier, larger-screened version of Nintendo’s wildly popular gaming device, goes on sale in the United States on March 28 for $190. The “100 Classic Books” collection, which includes classic public domain works from William Shakespeare, Mark Twain and others, will be available in June, Bloomberg reports.

Sound familiar? That’s because Nintendo already released the books-on-a-cartridge to the United Kingdom in December 2008. I’m not sure why it took so long for the collection to come stateside, but reading the books on the DSi XL, with its 4.2-inch screens, sounds more pleasurable compared to the original DS and DSi, which had 3-inch and 3.25-inch screens respectively. And despite the growing competition among e-readers, Nintendo’s device could be the most book-like, with two displays that you can hold up side-by-side.

Nintendo’s sales and marketing vice president Cammie Dunaway told Bloomberg that the company’s not trying to get a piece of the e-reader market. Let’s face it, without a cloud book store or the promise of weeks-long battery life, the DSi’s not equipped to do so anyway.

But I do think publishers would be wise to start bundling books onto DSi cartridges. Imagine the entire Harry Potter series on one cartridge — what a great gift that aunts and uncles who clueless about video games can give to their niece or nephew who has a DSi. As Dunaway said, “It’s just one more way to enjoy your device.” It shouldn’t start and end with the public domain.

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Scribd Goes Mobile

Harry McCracken — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 17:19:20 +0000

Scribd–the site that lets anyone publish, share, and embed documents of all sorts–is making its way from the browser onto phones and e-readers. The company is launching a feature today that lets you transmit Scribd documents you’re reading online to portable devices with a few clicks. It’s handy and very, very simple.

The options you see when you’re reading a Scribd document in your broswer now include a Mobile button:

Click on it, and you get a far-flung device list–including not only biggies like the Kindle and iPhone but also upstarts such as the enTourage eDGe e-reader. Depending on the device, you can use a text message and/or e-mail to send a link to the Scribd document:

And here’s the Scribd document on my iPhone (where it’s a PDF I downloaded via a text-message link):

This feature works particularly well for short documents you only plan to read once. The Scribd folks say they plant to build full-blown e-reading applications for a bunch of platforms, starting with iPhone and Android, and release them in the coming months. They’re also developing an API which will let developers of other apps and gadgets build Scribd compatibility right in.

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Skiff, an Interesting New E-Reader. But Do We Need Another One?

Harry McCracken — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 07:42:52 +0000

Among the gazillion products making their debut this week at the Consumer Electronics Show: Skiff, the first reader from a new spinoff of publishing behemoth Hearst. The Skiff has the largest (11.5″) and highest-resolution (1200 by 1600) screen of any e-reader to date; it uses a new “metal foil” technology from LG instead of glass, making the gizmo sturdy and thin; and it emphasizes magazines and newspapers more than most e-readers, as you might expect of a reader that emerged from Hearst. (Kindle and Nook both offer magazines and books, but in a drab, text-oriented format that looks more like a 1986 CompuServe screen than a real periodical or a Web page.)

Whatever Skiff is, it’s definitely not an unimaginative Kindle wannabe, and I’m looking forward to seeing it at the show in a few days. But I’m not unreservedly excited about the profusion of new e-reading devices that are arriving. We have a sufficient supply of hardware–at least hardware that utilizes monochrome e-ink displays. And e-reading is going to be a hundred times more exciting once the industry agrees on some standards that make these devices as compatible with an array of content as Web browsers have been from day one.

Skiff apparently plans to license its platform to other devices too, and that’s smart–but it’s still a proprietary format that won’t work with every major e-reader. To mention CompuServe yet again, we’re still stuck in the equivalent of the era when CompuServe, AOL, GEnie, and others duked it out by building their own proprietary technologies and licensing exclusive content. You think it’s a coincidence that the online world only really took off when the Web knocked down those walls?

Here’s the e-reader development I most want to see: An e- format that’s largely based on existing HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and other Web technologies, with a dash of something along the lines of Google Gears to make it possible to peruse publications when you’re not online, plus some sort of mechanism for enabling paid content. Something, in other words, not wildly different from the Web as we know it, except in a form that provides more of the visual elegance and browsability of print. Seems simple enough to me…

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Sony Readers Getting Subscriptions

Harry McCracken — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 18:26:34 +0000

Sony’s Reader e-readers have a decent selection of books, but–unlike the Kindle and Nook–they haven’t done newspapers or magazines. (There’s an RSS reader feature, but as far as I can tell, it’s been busted for months.) But Sony just struck a deal to bring News Corp. content, including the Wall Street Journal, MarketWatch, and the New York Post, to its e-readers. I hope more’s on the way–especially now that the company’s launching the Reader Daily Edition, which can snag periodical content wirelessly as it’s available.

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Kindle Goes International

Harry McCracken — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 12:05:50 +0000

Amazon, which started selling the Kindle internationally back in October without fully localizing it, is now distributing the Kindle iPhone app in sixty countries. Good news for folks around the world who are interested in reading bestsellers and other recent, still-in-copyright tomes on their iPhones. (I have a Kindle but do most of my Kindling on my iPhone these days–reading a few pages at a time when I’m in line at the grocery store or otherwise confronted with a sliver of free time I can devote to a book.)

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Kindle for PC: A Rough Draft at Best

Harry McCracken — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 17:10:09 +0000

[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 software as it stands in beta form is a bare-bones disappointment.

I mentioned yesterday that the Windows app was refusing to let me download books I’d already purchased. As of this morning it’s still choking about a third of the time. But I’ve been able to get access to part of my library.

And here’s a book in the process of being read:

Kindle for PC does indeed let you read Kindle books; it also syncs your location from other places you’ve been reading (such as your Kindle or iPhone) and shows you highlights and notes you’ve made on a Kindle.

The thing is, a Windows PC is the most powerful device to gain access to Kindle content so far, and this beta version of Kindle for PC does very little to make use of all that power. You can’t search. You can’t highlight or make new notes. You can’t buy books within the software–it sends you over to Amazon.com in your browser.

Windows PCs have tons of pixels and millions of colors, but the books I’ve read so far don’t make much use of them to make pictures look better. Here’s a page from a book that was originally in color: The tiny spot illustration still is, but the photos are now in black and white, and you can’t zoom ‘em.

All in all, it’s a considerably more rudimentary e-reading experience than what you get with Barnes & Noble’s PC software, which does highlighting and notes, lets you search, and has a two-page display mode. Come to think of it, Kindle for the PC is nearly identical in features to the iPhone app. But the end result feels more spartan–for one thing, wouldn’t you be more likely to want to take copious notes on a laptop with a comfy keyboard than on an iPhone?

The Kindle software has a “Future Improvements” link that takes you to a page where Amazon says it’s considering implementing search, highlighting, notes, and better image handling. I hope it does. Actually, I wonder why it didn’t wait to release this app until it had some or all of those items. (Maybe it wanted to get something out before Barnes & Noble’s Nook e-reader shows up later this month.)

One thing I’m still not clear on about Amazon’s attitude towards the Kindle: Does it see the iPhone, Windows, and coming-soon Mac versions as full-blown versions of Kindle, or as conveniences for folks who own a Kindle e-reader and do most of their reading on it? I’d love to think that the software versions might not only catch up with the hardware, but surpass it…

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The E-Reader Explosion: A Cheat Sheet

Harry McCracken — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 07:14:17 +0000

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 the original Kindle 2 and lowering the price of the model with international roaming, and saw a demo of an upcoming Amazon Kindle reader application for Windows (a Mac version is also in the works). In short, the era in which it was logical to use “Kindle” as shorthand for “book-reading gizmo” is over.

It seems like a good time, then, to put some basic facts and figures about a bunch of major and/or new e-reader competitors in one place. After the jump, a quick Technologizer Cheat Sheet.

Amazon Kindle With U.S. and International Wireless

In three words: Pioneering…getting stale?

Price: $259

Availability: Now

Books, etc: 360,000 books; newspapers, magazines, and blogs.

Screen(s): 6″ E-Ink; 16 shades of gray; 600 by 800 pixels

Dimensions and weight: 8″ by 5.3″ by .36″; 10.2 oz.

Battery life: Up to four days with wireless turned on; up to two weeks with it turned off

Input: Physical keyboard, buttons

Connectivity: AT&T 3G (international roaming available), USB

Battery life: Four days with wireless on; up to two weeks with wireless off

Memory: 2GB (1.4GB available)

Expansion: None

ePub e-book standard supported: No

PDF and DOC supported: Yes, through conversion

Dictionary: Yes

Annotation: Yes

Random other features: Reads books out loud unless disabled by publisher; rudimentary audio player and Web browser; Wikipedia

Readers for other devices: iPhone/iPod Touch, Windows and Mac in works

Previous Technologizer coverage: Here

Amazon Kindle DX

In three words: Kindle, only bigger.

Price: $489

Availability: Now

Books, etc: 360,000 books; newspapers, magazines, and blogs.

Screen(s): 9.7″ E-Ink; 16 shades of gray; 1200 by 824 pixels

Dimensions and weight: 10.4″ by 7.2″ by .38″; 18.9 oz.

Battery life: Up to four days with wireless turned on; up to two weeks with it turned off

Input: Physical keyboard, buttons

Connectivity: Sprint 3G, USB

Memory: 4GB (3.3GB available)

Expansion: None

ePub e-book standard supported: No

PDF and DOC supported: Yes

Dictionary: Yes

Annotation: Yes

Random other features: Reads books out loud unless disabled by publisher; rudimentary audio player and Web browser; Wikipedia

Readers for other devices: iPhone/iPod Touch, Windows and Mac in works

Previous Technologizer coverage: Here

Barnes & Noble Nook

In three words: Looks quite promising.

Price: $259

Availability: Late November

Books, etc: A million books, including 500,000 free titles; newspapers and magazines

Screen(s): 6″ E-Ink with 16 shades of gray and 3.5″ color touchscreen

Dimensions and weight: 7.7″ by 4.9″ by .5; 11.2 oz.

Battery life: Up to ten days with wireless turned off

Input: Touchscreen, physical buttons, onscreen keyboard

Connectivity: AT&T 3G (no word yet on international roaming as far as I know), Wi-Fi, USB

Memory: 2GB

Expansion: microSD slot

ePub e-book standard supported: Yes

PDF and DOC supported: Yes for PDF; no for DOC

Dictionary: Yes

Annotation: Yes

Random other features: Books can be loaned to other users of Nook and B&N’s reader software for PCs, Macs, iPhones, and BlackBerries; plays MP3s

Readers for other devices: Windows, Mac, iPhone, BlackBerry

Previous Technologizer coverage: Here

iRex DR800SG

In three words: An interesting underdog.

Price: Both $399 and $449 have been reported

Availability: Late October (although while I was writing this, Best Buy removed it from its site)

Books, etc.: Via Barnes & Noble, a million books, including 500,000 free titles; newspapers and magazines; also has content from Newspapers Direct and LibreDigital

Screen(s): 8.1″ E-Ink

Dimensions and weight: 7.6″ by 5.9″ by .4; 14.9 oz.

Battery life: Not sure

Input: Stylus, physical buttons

Connectivity: Verizon 3G, USB

Memory: 2GB (via included microSD card)

Expansion: microSD slot

ePub e-book standard supported: Yes

PDF and DOC supported: Yes for PDF; DOC not mentioned

Dictionary: Yes

Annotation: Via future firmware update

Random other features: None that I know of

Readers for other devices: None that I know of

Previous Technologizer coverage: Here

Plastic Logic Que

In three words: Ship it already!

Price: TBA

Availability: Next year

Books, etc: Via Barnes & Noble, a million books, including 500,000 free titles; newspapers and magazines.

Screen(s): 10.7″ E-Ink

Dimensions and weight: .3″ thick; weighs “less than many periodicals”

Battery life: “days”

Input: Touchscreen

Connectivity: AT&T 3G, Wi-Fi, USB

Memory: Unspecified

Expansion: Unspecified

ePub e-book standard supported: Yes

PDF and DOC supported: Yes

Dictionary: Unknown

Annotation: Yes

Random other features: Shatterproof plastic screen

Readers for other devices: Unknown

Previous Technologizer coverage: Here

Sony Reader Daily Edition

In three words: Looks okay; pricey.

Price: Announced in August at $399 (but with the Kindle having undergone two price cuts since then and the Nook coming in at $259, you gotta wonder whether Sony will cut the price)

Availability: December

Books, etc.: “Thousands” of titles from Sony E-Book Store; a million free books from Google

Screen: 7″ E-Ink; 800 by 600; 16 shades of gray

Dimensions and weight: Unspecified as far as I know

Battery life: Up to two weeks with wireless shut off

Input: Physical buttons

Connectivity: AT&T 3G, USB

Memory: 2GB

Expansion: Memory Stick Pro and SD slots

ePub e-book format supported: Yes

PDF and DOC supported: Yes (conversion of DOC requires Word installed on PC)

Dictionary: Yes

Annotation: Yes

Random other features: MP3 and AAC music playback

Reader software for other devices: Windows, Mac

Previous Technologizer coverage: Here

Sony Reader Pocket Edition

In three words: Smaller and cheaper.

Price: $199.99

Availability: Now

Books, etc.: “Thousands” of titles from Sony E-Book Store; a million free books from Google

Screen: 5″ E-Ink; 800 by 600; 8 shades of gray

Dimensions and weight: 6.25″ by 4.25″ by .4″; 7.76 oz.

Battery life: 2 weeks

Input: Physical buttons

Connectivity: USB

Memory: 512MB; 440MB available

Expansion: None

ePub e-book format supported: Yes

PDF and DOC supported: Yes (conversion of DOC requires Word installed on PC)

Dictionary: No

Annotation: No

Random other features: None that I know of

Reader software for other devices: Windows, Mac

Previous Technologizer coverage: Here

Sony Reader Touch Edition

In three words: Really needs wireless.

Price: $299.99

Availability: Now

Books, etc.: “Thousands” of titles from Sony E-Book Store; a million free books from Google

Screen: 6″ E-Ink; 800 by 600; 8 shades of gray

Dimensions and weight: 6.9″ by 4.8″ by .4″; 10.1 oz.

Battery life: 2 weeks

Input: Touch

Connectivity: USB

Memory: 512MB; 380MB available

Expansion: Memory Stick Pro and SD slots

ePub e-book format supported: Yes

Dictionary: Yes

Annotation: Yes

PDF and DOC supported: Yes (conversion of DOC requires Word installed on PC)

Reader software for other devices: Windows, Mac

Random other features: MP3 and AAC audio playback

Previous Technologizer coverage: Here

Spring Design Alex

In three words: More info, please!

Price: TBA

Availability: Unclear

Books, etc: Still signing up content providers, apparently

Screen(s): 6″ E-Ink and 3.5″ color touchscreen

Battery life: Unspecified

Connectivity: Unclear, but mention of 3G, EVDO, and Wi-Fi

Memory: Unspecified

Expansion: SD slot

ePub e-book format supported: Unspecified

Dictionary: Unspecified

Annotation: Yes, apparently

PDF and DOC supported: Unspecified

Reader software for other devices: Unknown

Random other features: Multimedia capabilities of some sort

Previous Technologizer coverage: Here

I could go on–the TIME slideshow has some more contenders, all of which are obscure, unreleased, and/or unavailable in the U.S.–but that’s all for now. Any of these particularly tickle your fancy? Looks like the Nook will definitely shake things up, and the Que is potentially significant…

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The Barnes & Noble E-Reader Revealed?

Harry McCracken — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 14:52:24 +0000

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 is home to features like the keyboard and much of the book-shopping interface. It’s an interesting idea which would sidestep some of e-ink’s limitations (besides lacking color, it refreshes slowly).

The device is also said to be cheaper than the Kindle; to offer books published by Barnes & Noble itself at low prices; and to provide access to Google Books’ wealth of out-of-print tomes.

I’m still waiting for someone to release an e-book device that simply gives up on e-ink’s principal virtue–amazing, weeks-long battery life–in favor of all the benefits of color. If such a device were able to eke out ten hours on a charge, I might prefer it to an e-ink-equipped gizmo, even if it forced me to do far more babysitting of the battery.

Of course, a color device without enough battery life to read an entire book might really be a tablet computer, not an e-reader. One way or another, I suspect we’ll get the opportunity to watch “traditional” e-readers and tablets duke it out during 2010…

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