02:02 PM by pilotbob in E-Book General | News and Commentary

Dedicated to the development of green innovation, AU Optronics Corp. ("AUO" or the "Company") (TAIEX: 2409; NYSE: AUO) today announced a series of innovative e-paper technology applications, including the world's largest* 20-inch e-paper module and AUO's first 6-inch flexible e-paper. With its aggressive technology development, AUO plans to offer flexible e-paper samples in 2010 in order to provide a power-efficient and convenient green lifestyle to the consumer market. The relevant e-paper technologies will be showcased in FPD International 2009, held in Yokohama Japan, from Oct. 28-30.

See the full press release:
http://auo.com/auoDEV/pressroom.php?...wsId=727&ls=en

10:15 PM by pilotbob in E-Book General | News and Commentary

Wall Street Journal is scooping B&N's Tuesday announcement.

The 'Nook' color eBook reader will soon be available.

Check out the WSJ article via Engadget:
http://www.engadget.com/2009/10/19/b...-for-259-says/

Discussion is here:
http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=59811

07:45 PM by pilotbob in E-Book General | News and Commentary

A dual screen reader based on Android OS...

Spring Design today announced Alex™, the first e-book based on Google Android featuring full browser capabilities and patented dual screen interaction technology, the Duet Navigator™.

Alex is the first Google Android-based e-book device to provide full Internet browsing over Wi-Fi or mobile networks such as 3G, EVDO/CDMA and GSM. With its dual-screen, multi-access capability, it provides the entire Web universe as a handy reference library, prompting users to delve into its vast information base to complement, clarify or enhance what they are reading. Alex is the first truly mobile wireless e-book device that gives users their own personalized library on the go, whenever and wherever they need it.

via Engadget:
http://www.engadget.com/2009/10/19/s...ased-e-reader/

Read the press release from Spring Design here:
http://www.springdesign.com/resource/jsp/

Join the discussion here:
http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=59761

07:39 PM by jankovicgood in E-Book General | News and Commentary

https://www.entourageedge.com/

http://www.engadget.com/2009/10/19/e...ated/#comments

The site just launched with pre-orders being accepted to the tune of $490, or $530 if you're wanting any color other than midnight blue, and will ship out February 2010.

02:11 PM by Nate the great in E-Book General | News and Commentary

I'm in an unfortunate position with this review. My device died a few days ago, so I'm going to have to work from memory and the notes I posted before. I've already contacted Onyx on this issue, and they believe they know the cause. They'll be sending me instructions on how to fix it.

General Impressions

The Boox is a tablet about the same height and weight as an original Kindle. On the upper left edge is a slot for the stylus. On the left edge is a switch to enable the Wifi. On the bottom edge is the volume buttons, power switch, USB, headphones, and SD card slot.

On the front of the Boox is the 6” touchscreen and below that is a circular button panel. At first glance it looks like there are 5 buttons: Next, Previous, Menu, Back, and OK (recessed in the center). The silver ring (which at first glance looks decorative) is actually a direction pad (up, down, left, right). I wish it was more obvious, but I'm glad it's there because it can be used to navigate the menus. This means you don't have to use the stylus and the Wacom screen won't be drawing power, which should extend the battery life.

I like the position of the buttons. Because of the balance of the device, I found I could comfortably hold it in one hand and keep my thumb next to the Next button. I also like the recessed OK button. It made the direction pad really easy to use. When I used it I had remarkably few mistaken button presses.

Navigation

First and foremost, it supports folders and it has several display options. You can show thumbnails, a list, or or details (title, last read, rating, etc). The thumbnail view isn't as good as it could be; the cover of a book isn't shown. You can sort the contents by name, file type, size, rating, and last read. You can also reverse a sort by switching from ascending to descending order.

One subtle detail that I liked was the tabs along the top of the screen while I'm navigating in the folders. The tabs show the parent folders of the current folder, and they are selectable.

Menu

It looks like somebody put some real thought into the menu design. In general, the menu has 4 or 5 icons on the left, and 4 along the bottom. The rest of the menu changes depending on which of the icons you select. Also, the icons on the left vary based on book type. For example, you can't sketch in Epub, so that option isn't shown. I found the names of the menu options to be self explanatory: annotations, font, font family*, encoding*, layout**, zooming**, and tools. The icons on the bottom of the menu are consistent across book type: rotate screen, turn screen refresh on/off, play music, and close book.

* only in FBReader
**only in PDFs and images

Wifi

I couldn't establish a connection with any of the networks I usually use. At this point it's not a big loss because the Boox doesn't have a full browser. You're limited to Google, Wikipedia, and Onyx. I would bet it's possible to search for a site in Google and navigate to it. I'm disappointed, though, because I was hoping to be able to download ebooks from the device.

General Ebook

Highlighting, bookmarks, and links work in all formats. There is an external menu for bookmarks and annotations. However, the search and dictionary functions never worked for me. I find this particularly puzzling because these features worked in the review over on MobRead. Also, and this is the biggie, the back button doesn't work at all. (It should act similar to the back button of a web browser.) I've already told Onyx, and the back button should be fixed in a coming firmware update.

Epub

The Boox supports Adobe DRMed Epub. I'm at something of a loss on how to describe the Epub abilities (other than it had 5 font sizes). Back when each device read a different format I could discuss in what way one is better than another. There were valid apples to oranges comparisons I could make. Now, Adobe DE is running on so many devices that it would be like comparing Red Delicious to Red Delicious. At the very least, I can say that its ability to display Epub is as good as the Cybook Opus.

FBReader

I like how Onyx added FBReader, but they haven't added all the features yet. Right now, the only options I have are the font size, bold, italics, and font choice. It doesn't have options like line and paragraph spacing, margins, and indentation. For the most part, I don't care. FBReader is quite usable in its current state.

PDFs

It's quite good, and in some ways it's better than Sony Touch Edition. But (and this is not a point against the Boox), it's still a 6” screen. A standard 8.5x11 PDF won't work very well on it.

The Boox shows 5 font levels (Onyx is going to change the menu labels). What it actually has is a zoom mode and a reflow mode. The zoom mode is impressive. Besides the expected zoom options (page size, fit to height, fit to width, and the fractional zoom from 75% to 400%), I can also use the stylus to select part of the image to zoom in on. While in the zoom mode I can also sketch on the PDF with the same options the image viewer.

The Boox can reflow a PDF at 4 different font sizes. It's very good, so good that I dug out some of my more complicated PDFs and gave it a stress test. The PDFs I used were technical papers with graphs, equations, and multiple columns. The text displayed fine, but the graphs and equations were dropped. I'm not entirely convinced that this is the fault of the Boox. When I tried to copy parts of the PDF on my PC, I was unable to select the graphs and equations. They do not appear to be in the PDF as text or as separate images. Rather, they appear to be part of a page image.

Internal links work, and it accepts the external TOC that you sometimes see with PDFs.

As I use the PDF viewer more I finally understood what I thought was a bug was in fact a design decision. User defined settings (font size, screen flash, etc) are not set on the device level. They're set for each ebook. Given the diverse range of formats (PDF, Epub, Mobipocket) this was the right choice. Even setting it by format would be bad because PDFs alone vary too much.

Images

When I had a chance, I compared the image abilities of the Opus and the Boox. I picked the Opus over my original Kindle because I had thought the Opus had 8 level gray scale. I'm wrong; it's actually four. The Boox has 8 level, so the fact that the images look better on it was a foregone conclusion. But it's worth noting that the Boox is noticeably faster at refreshing the screen. You would think that it's at a disadvantage it has more gray scale levels, and yet it's faster.

The Boox has surprisingly good sketching ability. I can draw on an image in 5 line thicknesses in black and _white_. I can also erase a sketch by simply touching part of it with the stylus while in the eraser mode. The lag between moving the stylus and the image changing looks to be that of a screen refresh. It doesn't refresh the image after the sketch is done; instead it changes a few pixels at a time as I draw. Very nice. The changes to an image are stored in a separate (.sketch) file.

I have to say that I'm impressed by the general quality of the image viewer. I think it's good enough that I can use it as a notepad. The only feature it needs is the ability to export a new image.

Pros
It has Adobe Epub, reflowable PDFs, (nearly complete) FBReader, and a good image viewer. I didn't get a chance to test the MP3 player. The touch screen is Wacom, which means it's actually behind the Eink screen instead of in front.

Cons
The touchscreen requires a special stylus. It only has a 4 day battery life. And it's rather expensive. I never did get the Wifi, search, or dictionary to work.

12:38 PM by pilotbob in E-Book General | News and Commentary

The Ectaco Jetbook Lite, recently shown off at the Frankfurt Book Fair, will be targeted at $149 retail. Similar to the original Jetbook but with replaceable AA batteries and support for Barnes & Nobel DRM (eReader) eBooks.

Please continue the discussion and view more pics and video here:
http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=59668

12:32 PM by zacheryjensen in E-Book General | News and Commentary

Plastic Logic is finally giving their long-hyped reader an identity and most importantly, a firm date for release of concrete specifications.

I heard of this by way of Engadget, but Plastic Logic also has a site dedicated to what will be called the QUE. They will have a site dedicated to delivering content to the QUE which will be "powered" by Barnes & Noble's store.

Basically it's everything we've already known, except now we also know it is black, and it's called a "proReader" to emphasize the target market of professionals. I am distinctly in this market with regards to eReaders so I'm pretty excited.

I can't wait to learn more, especially a price. At least January 7, 2010 isn't very far away.

10:15 PM by Patricia in Miscellaneous | Announcements

It's less than a week to go!

Forum member nigeldb is hosting the Melbourne meet-up at his home in North Balwyn. It's on Sunday 25 October, from 2pm to 4pm.

The details are in this thread:
http://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...128#post629128
Do contact nigel for more details.

Do remember to take some pictures, nigeldb!

07:00 AM by Alexander Turcic in Miscellaneous | Week in Review

Have something interesting to say about e-books or mobile computing? Join our forums and share your view on topics like the ones discussed at MobileRead this past week...

E-Book General - News and Commentary

• Kindle Geographic Restrictions On US Website - Against US Buyers
• Google plans 'buy anywhere, read anywhere' offer
• txtr launch on the Book-Fair in Frankfurt

E-Book General - Deals, Freebies, and Resources

• Contest: Title a book, win $3,000 -- ENDS 10/21/09

E-Book General - Reading Recommendations

• November 2009 Book Club Nominations

11:52 PM by pilotbob in E-Book General | Reading Recommendations

Help us select the next book that the Mobile Read book club will read for November 2009.

The nominations will run through Oct 23.
Voting (new poll thread) will run for 5 days starting Oct 23.

(I started the thread a bit early this month as some people wanted to get an earlier start. Or, the thread can run a bit longer to try to get a decent selection.)

Book selection category for November per the "official" club opening thread is:

November 2009
Classic

In order for a book to be included in the poll it needs THREE NOMINATIONS (original nomination, a second and a third).

How Does This Work?
The Mobile Read Book Club (MRBC) is an informal club that requires nothing of you. Each month a book is selected by polling. On the last week of that month a discussion thread is started for the book. If you want to participate feel free. There is no need to "join" or sign up. All are welcome.

How Does a Book Get Selected?
Each book that is nominated will be listed in a pool at the end of the nomination period. The book that polls the most votes will be the official selection.

How Many Nominations Can I Make?
Each participant has 3 nominations. You can nominate a new book for consideration or nominate (second, third) one that has already been nominated by another person.

How Do I Nominate a Book?
Please just post a message with your nomination. If you are the FIRST to nominate a book, please try to provide an abstract to the book so others may consider their level of interest.

How Do I Know What Has Been Nominated?
Just follow the thread. This message will be updated with the status of the nominations as often as I can. If one is missed, please just post a message with a multi-quote of the 3 nominations and it will be added to the list ASAP.

When is the Poll?
The poll thread will open at the end of the nomination period, or once there have been 10 books with 3 nominations each. At that time a link to the poll thread will be posted here and this thread will be closed.

The floor is open to nominations.

Official choices each with three nominations:

The Trial by Franz Kafka
The Trial tells the story of a man arrested and prosecuted by a remote, inaccessible authority.

The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Karamazov Brothers (1880) is both a brilliantly told crime story and a passionate philosophical debate. The dissolute landowner Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov is murdered; his sons--the atheist intellectual Ivan, the hot-blooded Dmitry, and the saintly novice Alyosha--are all involved at some level. Brilliantly bound up with this psychological drama is Dostoevsky's intense and disturbing exploration of many deeply felt ideas about the existence of God, freedom of will, the collective nature of guilt, and the disastrous consequences of rationalism.

Persuasion by Jane Austen
Twenty-seven-year old Anne Elliot is Austen's most adult heroine. Eight years before the story proper begins, she is happily betrothed to a naval officer, Frederick Wentworth, but she precipitously breaks off the engagement when persuaded by her friend Lady Russell that such a match is unworthy. The breakup produces in Anne a deep and long-lasting regret. When later Wentworth returns from sea a rich and successful captain, he finds Anne's family on the brink of financial ruin and his own sister a tenant in Kellynch Hall, the Elliot estate. Al the tension of the novel revolves around one question: Will Anne and Wentworth be reunited in their love?

Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
Most peoples' knowledge of this probably comes from the 1960s musical, which I'm sure we've all seen innumerable times. The novel, though, is a VERY different beast, and definely written for an "adult" audience. It contains some wonderful writing, and has some unforgettable characters - Oliver himself, of course; Fagin, who runs a gang of child thieves and prostitutes, the professional criminal, Bill Sykes and his girlfriend Nancy, and many more. This is a wonderful, unforgetable book, which everybody should read at least once in their life. I commend it to everybody.

The Picture (or Portrait) of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
Spellbound before his own portrait, Dorian Gray utters a fateful wish. In exchange for eternal youth he gives his soul, to be corrupted by the malign influence of his mentor, the aesthete and hedonist Lord Henry Wotton. The novel was met with moral outrage by contemporary critics who, dazzled perhaps by Wilde's brilliant style, may have confused the author with his creation, Lord Henry, to whom even Dorian protests, 'You cut life to pieces with your epigrams.'. Encouraged by Lord Henry to substitute pleasure for goodness and art for reality, Dorian tries to watch impassively as he brings misery and death to those who love him. But the picture is watching him, and, made hideous by the marks of sin, it confronts Dorian with the reflection of his fall from grace, the silent bearer of what is in effect a devastating moral judgement.

Around the World in 80 Days by Jules Verne
Phileas Fogg rashly bets his companions £20,000 that he can travel around the entire globe in just eighty days—and he is determined not to lose. Breaking the well-established routine of his daily life, the reserved Englishman immediately sets off for Dover, accompanied by his hot- blooded French manservant, Passepartout. Traveling by train, steamship, sailboat, sledge, and even elephant, they must overcome storms, kidnappings, natural disasters, Sioux attacks, and the dogged Inspector Fix of Scotland Yard to win the extraordinary wager. Combining exploration, adventure, and a thrilling race against time, Around the World in Eighty Days gripped audiences upon its publication and remains hugely popular to this day.

Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions by Edward Abbott
A fascinating science-fiction story with some biting, funny satire of Victorian society, Edwin Abbott's Flatland still has a lot to say about modern life, mathematics, people, philosophy and our perceptions of reality. The story takes us to a two-dimensional world where all the inhabitants are flat geometric shapes, and who are all firmly convinced that "length and width" is all there is. But one enterprising shape discovers the existence of a third physical dimension, which leads to speculation about a fourth dimension - and that changes everything.

Orlando by Virginia Woolf
In her most playful and exuberant novel, Virginia Woolf writes the "historical biography" of Orlando, a young boy of nobility during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. A wild ride through four centuries, the novel shows Orlando aging, magically, only thirty-six years between 1588 and 1928. Even more magically, he also changes from a man to a woman.
Orlando enters the book as an Elizabethan nobleman and leaves the book three centuries later as a liberated woman of the 1920s. Along the way this most rambunctious of Woolf's characters engages in sword fights, trades barbs with 18th century wits, has a baby, and drives a car. As she explores Orlando's life, Woolf also explores the differing roles of men and women in society during various periods.

Les Misérables by Victor Hugo
Set in the Parisian underworld and plotted like a detective story, Les Miserables follows Jean Valjean, originally an honest peasant, who has been imprisoned for 19 years for stealing a loaf of bread to feed his sister's starving family. A hardened criminal upon his release, he eventually reforms, becoming a successful industrialist and town mayor. Despite this, he is haunted by an impulsive former crime and is pursued relentlessly by the police inspector Javert.