11:46 AM by Zevs in E-Book General | News

Steve Jobs has something to say about electronic readers, exemplified by the Kindle, but probably likely also his view on the Sony Reader. Gizmodo reports:

I love Steve Jobs. Why? Because when he speaks, he doesn't deal with details or nuance--everything is a sweeping proclamation. I like that. His take on Amazon Kindle, for instance, makes it pretty clear Apple won't be making the actual "iPod of reading":

"It doesn't matter how good or bad the product is, the fact is that people don't read anymore... The whole conception is flawed at the top because people don't read anymore."

I sure hope he is completely wrong...

Zevs

10:37 AM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book Readers | Amazon Kindle

The thought goes: Under the Communications Act of 1934, the FCC has the power to control the awarding and assignment of broadcast licenses, so long as the broadcasters act in the "public interest." Assuming for a moment that it was in the public interest to ban certain books, for instance on the premise that children would be corrupted by reading them, could the FCC potentially diminish our liberties through controlling what can and what cannot be transmitted through Amazon's Whispernet service? Mr. Collins, a former Judicial Fellow at the U.S. Supreme Court, thinks so:

We may not yet know the actual reach of the FCC's authority to regulate the brave new world of electronic books. But if history is any guide, it will only be a matter of time before some well-meaning lawmaker or some ardent advocacy group suggests that the use of the "public airwaves" justifies regulating e-books as we do some other mass media. So emboldened, the FCC could one day go after e-books like, say, The Essential Lenny Bruce or an illustrated version of D.H. Lawrence’s novel Women in Love — to protect our children, of course.

A scary thought.

09:47 PM by T-bag in More E-Book Readers | HanLin eBook

I went back to my hometown Tianjin from the US where I spent my New Year's holiday. I got a chance to visit Jinke and saw a sample of the Hanlin V9. My first impression: so pretty! Compared to my Sony PRS-505, it's definitely bigger. The V9 also adds new functions such as WiFi, CDMA/EVDO and handwriting that can help accessing e-books, newspapers, RSS and blogs through the Internet.

Supported file formats are the same as for the V3, including various open formats such as Epub and PPT. And language support covers almost every corner of the world.

For me, the most intriguing thing is the effect of the A4 screen, allowing without zooming to display A4-sized PDF file almost as clear as on paper; only the font size may look a little small. With zoom-in (half page will be displayed on one screen), the font in turn is bigger than the original font of the paper.

The V9 also has a stylus; it realizes the click function, and allows making notes while reading.

Otherwise, the software and hardware are about the same as for the V3.

All in all, I was positively shocked by the V9 -- I believe everyone who sees it will like to get one right away.

According to Jinke, PVI can not yet mass-produce 9.7-inch displays. The MP is delayed until at least June; also the controller designed by E Ink still has a bug. Epson is busy with designing a new controller; the ASIC can be available in next month. The price is not set yet, probably somewhere between $599 and $699.

Some live photos of the V9 are attached.

05:35 AM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book General | Deals and Resources (No...

I am pretty jazzed to report that Robin Hobb, one of my favorite fantasy authors, has released her novel Shaman's Crossing as a free e-book! In fact, her publisher Eos (imprint of HarperCollins) is giving away a new free e-book every two months for 2008. About the book:

Book One of the Soldier Son trilogy, SHAMAN'S CROSSING tells the story of Nevare Burvelle, destined from birth to be a soldier.

The second son of a newly anointed nobleman, he must endure the rigors of military training at the elite King's Cavella Academy--and survive the hatred, cruelty, and derision of his aristocratic classmates--before joining the King of Gernia's brutal campaign of territorial expansion. The life chosen for him will be fraught with hardship, for he must ultimately face a forest-dwelling folk who will not submit easily to a king's tyranny. And they possess an ancient magic their would-be conquerors have long discounted...a powerful sorcery that threatens to claim Nevare Burvelle's soul and devastate his world once the Dark Evening brings the carnival to Old Thares.

You can download it in various tastes, including Adobe PDF, Microsoft LIT, and Mobipocket. Download Link (read the small print; use the coupon code EOS1).

[via FantasyBookSpot]

04:52 PM by flamaest in E-Book Readers | Sony Reader

This may not be news anymore, but I confirmed with the SONY Reader product manager at CES that there will be a new firmware for the 505 which will include the ability to properly resize PDFs inside the reader [thus, without using rasterfarian].

I actually saw this PDF functionality and it works much better than on our 500's!

Some other things I noticed on the 505 [with the experimental firmware] are:

• Alphabetically grouped book listings
• Book delete function
• Complete off option to conserve battery power
• Some kind of Bookmark viewer in the Sony PC software.

There was also some talk of a future compatibility with a new Adobe book format but I didn't know what that was.

Alas, still no PLAY/PAUSE while reading a book, but I pounded that into Sony's head because I personnel love controlling my music without having to exit the book. Maybe next time.

Time line for the firmware is sometime in Late Feb 2008. Of course, I begged the manager to get these features into the 500. He said he is pushing for this to happen very hard.

Enjoy,
Fabian.

10:20 PM by BKeeper in E-Book General | News

After all the speculation it's time to relax and celebrate. According to Steve Pendergrast, one of the founders of Fictionwise, the eReader format is here to stay:

"We are absolutely *not* going to shut down the ereader format or the ereader web site."

In fact they plan to port the eReader software to a much wider range of devices.

After the Kindle, they just didn't want to be at Amazon's mercy:

Every other DRM format we support is owned by a competitor of ours who could pull it away from us at any time.
(..)

By owning the eReader format, nobody can ever take that format away from us.

(Read the rest at jkOnTheRun)

Don't you love these guys?

12:10 PM by Bob Russell in E-Book Readers | Alternative Devices

With the discovery of the new code name Nova for Palm's upcoming operating system, it seems appropriate to remember the next generation PalmOS that never saw the light of day. And we also have exclusive product information on some Cobalt based smart phones which were almost released. (Click through to the full article to see the attached product information sheets on a candy bar and sliding qwerty keyboard product we nearly saw!)

PalmSource was the company that controlled the development of Palm OS after being split apart from Palm, the hardware company. That split once made sense because the goal was to allow Palm OS to be on more devices, even those not made by Palm. The reality was not so pretty, when no one wanted to make Palm OS devices, Cobalt never was released but never adopted for devices, and then ACCESS bought PalmSource leaving Palm on its own with respect to a new OS.

But in 2005 everything looked rosy for Palm OS, with the expected release of Palm OS Cobalt. (Palm OS5, now called Garnet, is still the only Palm OS operating system being released on actual devices. Palm OS6 was going to be Cobalt.) Here is a description of Cobalt from PalmInfocenter back in 2004 when it was announced...

"Palm OS Cobalt is a complete rewrite of Palm OS designed to maintain ease of use and software compatibility while creating a foundation for next-generation Palm Powered devices and solutions tailored to the growing needs of the communications, enterprise, education and entertainment markets. Palm OS Cobalt improves compatibility with Microsoft Windows, while offering advanced features including:

* Multitasking, multithreading;
* Memory protection;
* Support for more memory and larger screens;
* Industry standards-based security;
* Extensible communication and multimedia frameworks capable of handling multiple connections simultaneously;"

Some prominent members of the Palm development community expressed the excitement that many of us were feeling in those days. These quotes are not presented here to mock any of these people after the unexpected turn of events, but to simply remind you of the enthusiasm and hope of the day.

• Alexis Hinds CEO, Blue Nomad
  With the release of Palm OS Cobalt, we believe that PalmSource has firmly ushered us into the 'post-pc' age...

• August Grasis III, CEO of Handmark
  Our long-term faith in the Palm OS platform is reinforced by the PalmSource commitment to providing a true modern operating system with multithreaded and multitasking in Palm OS Cobalt...

• Brian Hall, president and CEO of Mark/Space, Inc.
  The powerful processors and rich audio and video capabilities of today's Palm Powered devices make them ideal portable entertainment devices for multimedia...

• C.E. Steuart Dewar, CEO of Pimlico Software, Inc.
  I view Palm OS Cobalt as a watershed event in the growth of the Palm OS platform as it incorporates two technologies that will be vitally important for the enterprise: flexible, schema-based databases and a truly robust security system... With these technologies in place, developers like Pimlico Software will be able to develop even more powerful applications, which in turn will secure the dominant position of the Palm OS platform in the mobile market.

So why was Cobalt never adopted in real products offered for sale on the market? Well, technically, there were a few prototypes of a working Cobalt phone for sale at the final PalmSource DevCon before the ACCESS acquisition. I would have bought one, but as a Verizon customer I would not have been able to use it anyway, so I settled for a Treo 650 instead. It's mind blowing how long ago Cobalt was ready, and yet there has been very little visible innovation in mobile operating systems in the following years. (But we all know that behind the scenes there has been a lot of activity by ACCESS, Google, Palm and various other groups working on Linux based mobile platforms.)

As far as why we never saw Cobalt, I guess that remains a mystery. Maybe there are readers that can give us some clues. Some commenters have said performance issues were never solved. Some said it just wasn't ready for prime time. Others have claimed that it wasn't a good fit for product developers. And it has even been said that it was just the wrong time to be asking phone makers to adopt another new Palm platform. At any rate, the landscape of the smart phone market has never been the same. Well, in a way, the failure of Cobalt has caused it to remain exactly the same. Palm still sells Garnet (OS5) phones, now alongside Windows Mobile. And everyone is still chasing the Linux dream. It's has been like the dark ages of smart phone platforms. Thank goodness we are finally seeing the signs of a renaissance! .

02:05 AM by montsnmags in E-Book General | News

There's not much here and Engadget is as intrigued as you might be, but it's nice to see something specifically e-book-related (possibly) at CES 2008:

The product appears to be an e-book of sorts, but with handwriting recognition and potentially a color display. Obviously, there's no more info at the moment to go on, iriver has been feeling a little protype-ish of late, and we never got much of a product out of iriver's last e-book, but hopefully we'll be hearing more about this one soon.

Read

Note, although not e-book-related, iriver may have "stolen the show" this year with some other interesting prototypes. Personally, I'd love the UMPC and the P20-for-photographers.

Cheers,
Marc