11:31 AM by carandol in E-Book General | Deals and Resources (No...

Interesting website at http://beta.booklamp.org which aims at finding you books to read by analysing the text of books you already like, in much the same way as Pandora does with music. It's in beta test at the moment, and has only a limited selection of books to analyse, but people are encouraged to give it a go and say what they think on the forums.

08:37 PM by BKeeper in E-Book Readers | Amazon Kindle

So people don't read, we got that....

but they still eat right?

Eat that Jobs!!!

kindle v2 by LilPeaPod

via engadget

Paul: "Unfortunately the screen refresh times of '30-35 minutes at 350 degrees' is just plain unacceptable."

03:25 PM by Richard Herley in E-Book General | News

Silicon Alley Insider is reporting that 'Evan Schnittman, head of biz dev at 35,000-title textbook publisher Oxford University Press, says a pal at one of the "biggest trade publishers in the world" called him this week, shocked at how well Kindle-formatted books had sold in December, just after the Kindle's launch.

'That prompted Schnittman to look at his royalty statements, which he said "stunned" him: He had expected to sell up to 200 Kindle titles in December, but says the real numbers were "an order of magnitude" more than that.'

(Via TeleRead)

Amazon are apparently not releasing any data about the number of Kindles sold so far, but this is still an interesting anecdote.

03:24 PM by Kingston in E-Book General | Deals and Resources (No...

Wired: "If you aren’t familiar with the work of award-winning writer Jeff VanderMeer, now is your chance to see what the fuss is about. GeekDad is happy to be able to offer Wired readers a PDF copy of VanderMeer’s upcoming book The Situation, courtesy of PS Publishing (cover artwork by Scott Eagle). "

It's in pdf but what the hey...it's free.

03:17 PM by wallcraft in E-Book General | News

A Teleread comment references the USA Today article Short Kindle supply is keeping e-book fans waiting which says:

There are no apparent shortages in the display technologies that go into e-book readers, says Vinita Jakhanwal, a principal analyst for mobile displays at iSuppli. Her firm projected worldwide display orders for all e-books to reach 225,000 in 2008 and 1.1 million in 2012, up from 150,000 in 2007. And the numbers could go even higher, she says.

The "no apparent shortages" statement could only be correct (if at all) on the time scale of 3-6 months, and if the 150,000 number is right for 2007 the 225,000 seems very low for 2008.

08:48 AM by Nate the great in E-Book General | News

The PRS-505 has been spotted on the website of UK retailer Play.com. It's being offered for pre-order with a price of £199.99 with free delivery.

I checked, and they will also ship to the rest of Europe.

Thanks, rizzler, for letting us know!

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

It was the week that was. Here's what MobileRead's been talking about since last Sunday:

E-Books - News

• Some disappointing Star Trek e-book news
• Conspiracy Theory: What is Amazon hiding about the Kindle?

E-Books - Elsewhere on the Net

• Diesel eBooks introducing Mobipocket format / 15% discount

E-Books - Reading Software

• Mobipocket "Over The Air eBookstore" for Blackberry devices

E-Book Devices - eREAD STAReBOOK

• First Impressions of the M218A Ebook Reader

E-Book Devices - Future E-Book Devices

• Netronix/PVI 9.7-inch e-reader spotted

Mobile Devices - General Talk

• Poll: Age of People who Read E-Books

Miscellaneous - Announcements

• MobileRead Development Hub launched!

02:38 PM by Nate the great in More E-Book Readers | Netronix

It's charging right now, and I can't use it until it's done. I thought I'd give you my first impressions.

Shipping - It took nine days to get to me from China. I see from the USPS sticker that it arrived in San Francisco on 8 March, and they tried to deliver yesterday. I missed it, and picked it up today.

Packaging - It's about what I expected. It looks pretty much like any other box that contains a small piece of electronics from China. The shipping box was heavy duty cardboard, well taped. I'm not going to post the rest because it's just a standard retail box. Picture is coming soon.

Contents

• M218A
• instruction manual (in Chinese)
• universal power supply
• USB cable
• earbuds
• lanyard
• CD of Chinese language ebooks (no software, darn it)

Okay, it turns out I can use the reader while charging it. The screen is sharp. The resolution may not actually be higher than that of the Kindle, but it certainly feels that way. And the refresh is fast. It's an LCD, so of course it's fast.

It has a nice GUI menu, with six options: settings, search, ebooks, enews, music, and pictures. I will need to be very careful when looking at the settings; it looks like I might have access to the system settings. One option I have under settings is "execute file". Since I can also delete the file, I guess this means that I might be able to run my own applications.

Interesting fact: this device supports folders!

Reading experience
I made a couple WOLF format ebooks while I was waiting. I can't get them to work. But I really don't care; this device has excellent PDF support. It is hands down the best handheld PDF viewer I have seen so far. If you only want to read PDFs, then you should consider this device. I've tried a couple PDF tech manuals. This is it. This is the Holy Grail of PDF readers.

The standard zoom setting is text width. This is very readable. But it also can zoom anywhere from 50% to 6400%. Also, you can zoom in on a 3 by 3 grid, or a 2 by 2 grid.

Connectivity
It's recognized as a USB drive. No problems there. I can see both the SD card and the internal storage (about 56MB). I can see some interesting files on the device; deviceID.log, PDF.log, signature.log. I can also see two Windows executables called Client and ClientUpdate. They run on my Windows XP laptop. Don't know what they do yet.

Music
Yes, it can play background music. The MP3 player looks a little ugly, but it sounds okay. The volume can get quite loud. The only things it's missing as an MP3 player is fast forward and remembering your place. I don't use an MP3 player, but i think this one has all the features.

Downsides
There is no on-screen battery or clock. It's not even an option. I'm really surprised by this.