05:01 AM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book Readers | Amazon Kindle

Don't place your bets just yet, but rumors are beginning to swirl about the imminent release of the Amazon Kindle. The New York Times reported yesterday that Amazon will be launching their long awaited e-reader device next month at a price of between US$400-500.

Amazon has been showing the Kindle to book publishers for the last year and has delayed its introduction several times. Last fall, a photograph of the device, and some of its specifications, leaked onto the Web when the company filed an application with the Federal Communications Commission to get approval for its wireless modem, which will operate over a high-speed EVDO network.

People familiar with the Kindle also have a few complaints. The device has a Web browser, but using it is a poor experience, because the Kindle’s screen, also from E Ink, does not display animation or color.

Some also complain about the fact that Amazon is using a proprietary e-book format from Mobipocket, a French company that Amazon bought in 2005, instead of supporting the open e-book standard backed by most major publishers and high-tech companies like Adobe. That means owners of other digital book devices, like the Sony Reader, will not be able to use books purchased on Amazon.com.

We invite you to visit this thread to join our ongoing-discussion.

External news coverage:

• Kindle to debut in October…costing $400-500 (and what about the Cybook?) (TeleRead)
• Amazon eBook reader due next month: why I won't touch it (jkOnTheRun)
• Amazon.com To Launch Wireless eBook Reader (paidContent.org)
• Amazon’s Kindle and Google’s Book Thing: More eBook Readers (CrunchGear)
• Amazon's Kindle e-book reader coming next month? (Engadget)

Related: Amazon Kindle "this spring" for "above $400", Will the Amazon Kindle cost US$50?, Amazon E Ink reader?

Thanks to Rachael, 13xforever, lee1234, Jim, TadW, Mallory, and everyone else who sent in the news!

06:08 AM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book Readers | Sony Reader

The Wall Street Journal's Lee Gomes gave the Sony Reader a spin, weighed in with his thoughts.

It is a truth universally unacknowledged that reading a book for pleasure involves a lot of hard work. You have to fight to keep it open and pressed flat, and just when you've comfortably arranged everything, you have to turn the page and start all over again. Naturally, you need to do all this without bothering the cat.

You may not appreciate these difficulties only because you've never had an alternative to a book for comparison. The Sony Reader is slim, light and can be held in one hand. To go to the next page, you just nudge it with your thumb.

Yes, there are things not to like about reading for pleasure on a computer screen, even for generic, text-only paperbacks. You have to forgo the stories that books themselves can tell with all their stains and scribbles. And when you're done reading, you don't get to put another trophy on your bookshelf.

In exchange, though, you get to put an entire bookshelf in your pocket.

We surrender charm and tradition; in return, we get convenience and abundance. With computers, it's always the same compromise.

Also, Mr. Gomes mentions that he enjoyed rereading "Pride and Prejudice" on his Reader, which makes me wonder... did he perhaps download it from here?

Link: full article (req. sub.)

06:03 PM by NatCh in E-Book Readers | Alternative Devices

Perhaps the Palm CEO has also been wondering who would buy a Foleo.

Thanks to MobileReader, Laurens for pointing this out to us.

From today's entry in The Official Palm Blog:

In the course of the past several months, it has become clear that the right path for Palm is to offer a single, consistent user experience around this new platform design and a single focus for our platform development efforts. To that end, and after careful deliberation, I have decided to cancel the Foleo mobile companion product in its current configuration and focus all of our energies on delivering out next generation platform and the first smartphones that will bring this platform to market. We will, of course, continue to develop products in partnership with Microsoft on the Windows Mobile platform, but from our internal platform development perspective, we will focus on only one.

Because we were nearly at the point for shipping Foleo, this was a very tough decision. Yet I am convinced this is the right thing to do. Foleo is based on second platform and a separate development environment, and we need to focus our efforts on one platform. Our own evaluation and early market feedback were telling us that we still have a number of improvements to make Foleo a world-class product, and we can not afford to make those improvements on a platform that is not central to our core focus. That would not be right for our customers or for our developer community.

Jeff Hawkins and I still believe that the market category defined by Foleo has enormous potential. When we do Foleo II it will be based on our new platform, and we think it will deliver on the promise of this new category. We're not going to speculate now on timing for a next Foleo, we just know we need to get our core platform and smartphones done first.

There's some discussion about how they believe that this is the best decision in the long run, and remarks on the $10 million dollar hit they'll take for doing it, for more details, follow the link.

So, what do y'all think? Is this a bad move or a good one?

02:49 PM by RWood in Miscellaneous | Announcements

With HarryT's last post, Burroughs, Edgar Rice: The Efficiency Expert the MobileRead E-Book Upload area reached 1,000 entries. The majority are BBeB/LRF files for the Sony Reader followed by Mobi/PRC files for the iLiad and other MobiReader devices.

Just click on the "E-Books" area of the blue menu bar above and start enjoying free E-Books from MobileRead today.

09:48 PM by Colt in Miscellaneous | Lounge

Due to some discussion that briefly arose in this thread's second page I grew curious about how fast I could supposedly read.

http://www.readingsoft.com/ - Rated me at 295 wpm with 90% comprehension.

http://mindbluff.com/askread.htm - Rated me at 300-350 wpm.

Now, this is above average apparently, but seems much slower than my real reading speed with a book. I don't skim, I actually hear the words being read in my mind. Could there really be that much of a difference in reading speed between the computer and print? I'm curious what other people might get. - Colt

08:45 AM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book General | News

Sara Nelson of Publisher's Weekly has been digging through recent polls and she discovered that,

27% of the 1,000 or so people its researchers [of AP-Ipsos] questioned admitted they hadn't read a single book in the past year. (The median number of books read by the remainder was nine for women and five for men, which struck me as hopeful, or, alas, inflationary.)

A simple question: On average, how many books do you read in a year?

12:02 PM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book General | News

Care for some more intriguing video clips of what's in for us in tomorrow's world of (bendable) e-paper? Slashgear visited the PVI booth at this year's IFA conference in Berlin and shot the following two tasty video clips for us.

Most interestingly, the PVI guy interviewed mentions that his company will be ready to supply the final version of their flexible E Ink screens to companies like Sony and iRex by mid-2008. And - let's take this all with a grain of salt - 2009 should mark the year when E Ink finally turns color. We'll believe that when we see it.

Related: Video of full color E Ink display in action

08:36 AM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book General | News

Well if the headline isn't enough to make fresh milk sour, it appears that the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America abused the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act to justify this step. Quoting Cory Doctorow, whose Creative Commons-licensed novel "Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom" is among many works to be taken down from Scribd (Scribd is a place where people can publish documents online):

More importantly, many of the works that were listed in the takedown were written by the people who'd posted them to Scribd -- these people have been maligned and harmed by SFWA, who have accused them of being copyright violators and have caused their material to be taken offline. These people made the mistake of talking about and promoting science fiction -- by compiling a bibliography of good works to turn kids onto science fiction, by writing critical or personal essays that quoted science fiction novels, or by discussing science fiction. SFWA -- whose business is to promote science fiction reading -- has turned readers into collateral damage in a campaign to make Scribd change its upload procedures.

Meanwhile, in a follow-up notice, SFWA President Michael Capobianco responded to Cory's legitimate outburst of fury, apologizing for the "flawed" list of copyright-infringing book uploads and reiterating his association's well-meant intentions. Yeah, right.

Links:

• Takedown notice 1
• Takedown notice 2
• Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom on Scribd
• Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom removed from Scribd
• Science Fiction Writers of America abuses the DMCA (Boingboing)
• SFWA issues mistakenly broad DMCA takedown notice (Teleread)

Thanks Nate the great for the news!