10:46 AM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book General | News

It is priced at around $130, has no built-in memory, comes with a 7-inch LCD color screen (with LED backlight), and is currently marketed as a cooking aid device. I find Photoco's miBook difficult to describe; yet, according to Crunchgear's John Biggs, it could be a real contender in the e-book market.

Partnerships with home and garden television channels, including the Food Network, HGTV and ParentsTV, give owners of the miBook multimedia content from cookbooks, parenting guides and travel books. ... Now that the Kindle is giving Gutenberg’s crazy invention a run for its money, maybe devices like the miBook will give Amazon’s Jeffrey P. Bezos a run for his.

Gizmodo has some more specs and also the press-release.

09:35 AM by ePossum in E-Book General | News

Brief article on a paper that was delivered at a conference in April this year about research on navigation techniques using dual display e-reading devices.

Link: Dual-display e-book reader lets you flip pages naturally

The paper is titled "Navigation Techniques for Dual-Display E-Book Readers", written by Nicholas Chen, Francois Guimbretiere, Morgan Dixon, Cassandra Lewis, and Maneesh Agrawala.

Link: EBookReaderCHI08.pdf

11:49 AM by FreeBird in More E-Book Readers | Bookeen

Hello to all,

this is my 1st post and I hope it's useful for this community.

Bookeen released a new firmware for the Gen3 today (Version 1.1.708).

Here's the changelog:
* New: hyphenation support in Mobipocket files.
* Regression fix: power consumption issue (build 685) fixed.

The update can be found as usual >>>here<<<.

Have fun

FreeBird

04:59 AM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book Readers | Apple Devices

CNET News.com's Greg Sandoval thought he found the right reading device, the Amazon Kindle, until he heard about Apple's soon-to-be-launched iPhone 3G. You might think they'd be two totally different devices serving different purposes. Not so Mr Sandoval:

I know Apple has said nothing about offering an e-reading application for the new iPhone. But what happens if Steve Jobs later surprises us or some developer turns the iPhone into a whiz-bang electronic reader? I'll tell you what happens, my Kindle ends up on eBay.

So I pass the question to our (hard-core) e-book users: Do you believe the iPhone could be turned into a whiz-bang electronic reader?

04:26 AM by kacir in E-Book General | News

I found the following information on BoingBoing today:

A Google engineer has tracked down, munged and XMLified the copyright renewal notices for all the books the US Copyright Office knows about -- now there's a one-click way to discover if an old book is in the public domain (more or less) and who holds the copyright if it isn't.

So now you can find out if the US copyright of a book has been renewed by just one click.

Database download page: Link

04:16 AM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book General | News

Twitter, the popular microblogging/messaging service, got a new round of funding today, with no other than Amazon Founder/CEO Jeff Bezos taking a personal state in it.

Jeff Bezos is said to have displayed intense and varied scientific interests at an early age. Having worked on Wall Street as a computer scientist, built a network for international trade, founded Amazon.com, and launched the human space flight startup Blue Origin, Dr. Bezos (through Bezos Expeditions, his personal venture investment company) serves as more than an investor and advisor because he is also an inspiration to all of us at Twitter. Jeff's attention to business process details and distinctive, "honk-like laugh" are similarly admirable traits as far as we're concerned.

[via Barrons Blogs]

What do you think? Is this just a new round of funding for Twitter (rumored to be around $15m) and Jeff Bezos just happens to be in the mix, or is this something bigger, perhaps something where the Amazon Kindle comes into play?

03:38 AM by daffy4u in E-Book General | News

Christian Science Monitor

Just as Apple got millions of college students to leave their CD collections at home each September in favor of a tiny iPod, Amazon is trying to convince undergrads that there’s no reason to lug around a backpack full of textbooks. Just buy a Kindle.

This fall, Princeton University Press will begin publishing Kindle-edition textbooks. It’s on a short list of printing houses that are testing the e-textbook waters. (Kindle has also snagged Yale, Oxford, and the University of California.) But Princeton is the only to attempt a Kindle-first launch, offering Robert Shiller’s new economics book “The Subprime Solution” on the Amazon electronic reader two weeks before students can buy a hard copy.

03:11 AM by wallcraft in E-Book General | News

As noted on Engadget, and reported by Tech-On:

Ryosuke Kuwata, E Ink Corp's vice president in charge of the Asia Pacific region, who is conducting market development for the company, revealed the worldwide advancement of the electronic newspaper project that newspaper companies are pursuing. (interviewer: Takuya Otani).

Q: When are electronic newspapers likely to emerge in the market? And what terminals and services will they be like?

Kuwata: At the current moment, the newspaper company that is furthest ahead is expected to start a verification test using several thousands of terminals by the end of 2008. After the test, the company will gradually shift to a specific business in the second half of 2009, I expect.

I did not know that Hearst Corp. is developing its own terminal (E-Ink Reader?) in house, but see A rival of the Kindle e-reader is to come.