08:31 AM by Nate the great in E-Book General | News

One MR member got an email yesterday from Enwo, the German distributor of the Hanvon N516. In this email Enwo announced the release of a new firmware, one which finally adds decent format support. Previously the N516 only supported txt and html.

The product page is here. Scroll down to the bottom for the link to the firmware.

05:11 PM by GA Russell in E-Book General | News

Following the lead of Sony and Astak to dip down to the sub-$200 price point, Amazon is announcing on its home page that it will sell refurbished Kindle 1's for $149.

Techflash quotes a price of $199, but clicking on the link shows the price to be $149.

original Kindle $149
Kindle 2 $189

09:39 AM by zelda_pinwheel in Miscellaneous | Announcements

Just a quick reminder that this saturday is the next MobileRead meetup in Paris, France ! Don't miss another glorious evening of lively discussion and rampant geekitude ! We look forward to seeing everyone, familiar faces and new ones alike ! Leave us a message in this thread to let us know you're coming.

Here are all the details :

When : Saturday, 19 September 2009

Petit rappel que le prochain apéro MobileRead aura lieu ce samedi à Paris ! Ne ratez surtout pas cette soirée glorieuse de discussion enlevée et de geekitude débridé et exubérant ! Nous avons hâte de vous retrouver tous, les piliers des apéros ainsi que les nouvelles têtes ! Laissez-nous un petit message ici pour confirmer votre présence.

Tous les détails :

Quand : Samedi, le 19 Septembre 2009

04:01 PM by BookLoverToo in E-Book General | News

Shortcovers.com is now offering Adobe ePub downloads for books. I haven't had a chance to check on their selection yet, but the few bestsellers I did check were offered in ePub for $11.99 CAD (I think 9.99 USD, but I'm not sure how the site determines what currency it displays - perhaps by IP location?). I'm also not sure about geographic restrictions. At least it's another site I can use for my Sony!

01:40 PM by Nate the great in E-Book General | News

Do you remember back in February when Mr. Grisham's agent said that ebooks would be out "soon"? Seven months have passed and nothing has happened.

I've been trying to follow up on this the past several weeks and I can't get the agency, The Gernert Company, to give me the time of day. I invite all of Mr. Grisham's fans to ask his agents directly. Here is the email address:

The Gernert Company <info@thegernertco.com>

06:00 AM by Alexander Turcic in Miscellaneous | Week in Review

What was going on this week at MobileRead? Here's your chance to catch-up if you missed something!

E-Book General - News and Commentary

• iriver Story coming to Germany?
• First look: Pocketbook 360
• Where's the Pandora for e-book recommendations?
• Polymer Vision back from the grave
• E-books for the French (Canadian) market
• On the rising Tower of eBabel
• Is the end near for Mobipocket?
• Baen's Webscriptions turns ten
• EZ Reader Firmware update
• AirPaper 50t - new Chinese liseuse w\GSM

E-Book Devices - Sony Portable Reader PRS-500/505

• New Contest - Win an ebook reader Cover

10:11 PM by Oberon Design in E-Book Readers | Sony Reader

Tell us your stories.

We know so many of our fans are writers, it only makes sense to offer a contest that brings out your best qualities!

The images used for our designs come from a lot of places but each tells a story for the person who sees it. Quite often the memories these images produce lead to a different story from one person to the next.

Weave us a story about what you see in our designs and you could win a cover for your Sony Reader or Kindle DX.

Tell us why you chose the image you did. Get your ‘writerly’ juices flowing and include your own description or story of the image you have. Share your story on your own blog or website and add a link to it on our Facebook page.
Don't have a blog? No problem, you are welcome to share your story on our Facebook page.

The contest will run September 15 to October 15, 2009

Rules
Write a short story about one of the images you find on our website
Remember to include which make and model of reader you have so we can get just the right fit
Please include a link to the image you’ve chosen to write about. It does not have to be a cover of a reader, in fact it can be an image you’d LIKE to see Oberon do on a journal or reader cover.
Share a link to your blog post on our Facebook page or send us a tweet on Twitter and we'll post a link for you.
So come on, browse the images on our site and tell us a story!

See one of our stories here: www.oberondesign.posterous.com

02:19 PM by Nate the great in E-Book General | News

If you've seen Engadget today, you might have noticed that there is a new epaper based liseuse on the Chinese market. Rather than just repeat Engadget, I went looking for more information.

The AirPaper 50T is a product of Datang Telecom, and it appears to be that company's first liseuse. I found the original press release. Datang Telecom is partnering with China Mobile, a cellular company, and the liseuse is supposed to be a subsidized model. I'm not sure what the terms of the subsidy are, so at this point I'm taking it with a grain of salt. But I did find a gallery of pictures. I would estimate the size to be about that of the Kindle. An important difference is that it has a touch screen in place of the keyboard. This raises some interesting possibilities, doesn't it?

I haven't found a spec sheet yet, but one source I found says the Airpaper has a 4 bit screen. Also, I found a gallery that identifies a Micro SD card slot on the upper edge. It also has a picture with the back cover removed.

press release
gallery
commentary
more commentary

P.S. Liseuse is the French term for a hardware device that is used to read ebooks. I am adopting it as a way to differentiate between hardware and software readers of ebooks.