TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home

Archive for the ‘Dr. Ellen Hage’ Category

By Paul Biba

Thanks to our reader Dr. Ellen V. Hage for pointing this out. Newegg is selling the black ECTACO jetBook Reader for $198 with free shipping. The white version is priced at $299, so this is a good deal. According to the write-up on the site the unit only supports txt, pdf and jpg, but it might be good for some our more technically inclined readers.

Anybody else see any good deals out there?

By David Rothman

“In response to declining music sales in the UK, the Entertainment Retailers Association (ERA) has called for the music industry to put an end to DRM. The organization—which represents retailers who sell music and DVDs—blames draconian digital copy protection technologies for the slow growth of the digital music market.” - Ars Technica.

The TeleRead take: Steve Levy’s fawning Newsweek story on the Kindle downplayed the hassles of DRM, but to his credit, even he complained about it in a Live Talk session later on. And Levy wrote among other things in a sidebar: “Though the copy protection doesn’t affect book-reading, it is limiting, and annoying. You can’t print out a passage, e-mail it to a friend or copy it into a document. You can’t lend a book to someone, or sell it after you’re finished.” Worse, as I see it, your book is tied to your Kindle and its e-mail account, even if you can share the account with family members. What about your other machines, present and future? Oh, and yes, copy protection does affect book reading since you may not enjoy access to the text in the future if tech changes or a company goes out of business or backs off from e-books. That’s no small effect. Perhaps it’s time for Jeff Bezos to experiment with social DRM.

Related: Kindle stories via Google News and Topix and Kindle owner’s defense of the machine over rivals (illustrated), as well as Dr. Ellen Hage on the Kindle’s aesthetics or lack thereof.

Meanwhile…a few more details from an April story in Ars Technica—very possibly applicable to e-books: “Speaking of Apple, Enders Analysis has some harsh words for the iPod-iTunes ecosystem. (more…)

By David Rothman

Kids are among those targeted by Austek for its  Eee PC. So what does Dr. Ellen Hage’s son think of the new computer Mom bought?

"Mommy the screen is just too small for me,” she quotes him. Still, she hopes he’ll grow accustomed to the machine and its software and learn from the latter. Good luck to Kellen!

Meanwhile guess who’s made the Wall Street Journal–via a mention in a piece on the EEE and the rival OLPC machine? Congrats, Ellen! Some weeks ago, Paul Biba, another name familiar to TeleBlog readers, was the first example in an upbeat  article on e-books.

Related: A software downloading page, plus Eee-related comments from another parent. Meanwhile shoppers can see the specs for the Eee, whose screen, by the way, is seven inches.

By David Rothman

"An insider at Asus has claimed that the company has been working on a tablet for  Apple that blends the power of the MacBook Pro with the touchscreen capabilities of the iPhone. Could this mean a Multitouch tablet?" - SlashGear (based on a Crave report).

The TeleRead take: Wow, as wish fulfillment, that was fast. See our earlier item suggesting an Asus tablet. Now if only the rumors check out and the price is reasonable!

Related: Techmeme roundup on the possible tablet.

And speaking of Asus: Dr. Ellen Hage’s mostly positive impressions of her just-arrived Eee.

Other hardware/software news: Palm: No plans to join Google’s Open Handset Alliance (Palm InfoCenter via Handheld Librarian) and Mobile Players Ho-Hum about Android (PC World via Blogrunner). Also: Japan saying Sayonara to PCs (TechNewsWorld) .

By David Rothman

“Yep. My Cybook Gen3 is locked up tighter than Fort Knox. I’ve tried to turn it on and off - that didn’t work because it no longer turns on and off. I’ve tried pressing the Reset button. That works just long enough to get to the point where it freezes all over again.” - Derek Benner, testing a sample unit (spotted via Dr. Ellen Hage).

The TeleRead take: I’ll point Bookeen to this item and see if other testers have experienced the problem and if a solution is at hand. Any risk of the problem delaying the eagerly awaited rollout? In Bookeen’s place, I’d let quality control come first if it can’t diagnose and solve Derk’s problem. I’m certainly not gonna beat up on ‘em for another little delay. Reliable hardware above all else!

Update: See Derek’s comments and Joseph Gray’s. I’ve also received a prompt reply from the good folks at Bookeen. Michael Dehan writes: “Concerning the issue, we are working on it with Derek and we will solve it. Derek and Baen team have done a great job, they really helped us to pinpoint the tiny elements which make the difference and discovered remaining bugs which went through our QC. We took in account their feedbacks and we modified the device accordingly.” Best of luck to Bookeen on this front and others!

Related: Cybook Gen3 news: PDF ‘on track,’ slight design change and definite October release date and earlier TeleBlog stories on the Gen3, including Derek’s favorable first reaction.

By David Rothman

Just who should follow up on the $399 deal under which you buy an OLPC laptop for a child in a developing country, not just yourself?

“The ideal customer, I think, will be someone who views the lack of local support as a challenge and a learning opportunity. It’s been a long time since there was a commercial computing platform that didn’t have a surfeit of support options,” says Peter Glaskowsky.

Still on the fence

Anyone have thoughts to add—especially in an e-book context? Needless to say, I’ll be most interested in the plans of TeleBlog regulars. Who’s going ahead with this? We’ve got our share of early adopters; most respondents to an informal poll said they planned to buy iPhones. I’m still on the fence about the OLPC XO machine. With more resources available, I’d go for the deal in a flash.

Remember, the screen resolution is in E Ink territory. The big negative, of course, is that, at least as far as I know, commercial e-reading programs such as Mobipocket won’t run on it. That’s a plus from the viewpoint of some DRM-haters. But what about the rest of us (nope, I’m hardly a DRM booster, either)? I wonder if Mobi use might be possible, if not immediately then in the future, via arrangements between OLPC and its friends at Pepper Computing? Anyone got definitive answers?

Related: OLPC ‘$100′ laptop to be buyable in U.S. and Canada for two weeks and Dr. Ellen Hage’s thoughts.

By David Rothman

Jinke plans to release the Hanlin eReader V9, an E Ink machine with a 10-inch display, later this year.

Based on photos, I wouldn’t be surprised if it used Vizplex tech, which offers a brighter background than the current E Ink does. But the specs—see PDF–don’t mention Vizplex. Anyone care to share thoughts on this detail?

PDF, DOC, HTML, TXT, ZIP, JPG CHM and Wolf are among the supported formats.

Processor is a “Sumsang Arm 9 200Mhz, SDRAM : 32M Bytes.” Samsung? SD/MMC memory cards can be up to 4GB, according to the PDF.

I agree with Dr. Ellen Hage’s guess that the price will be at least $450—still much cheaper than iRex’s $700 iLiad.

The new machine, due at the end of December, lacks a touch screen. But a TS version is to appear in early ‘08.

By David Rothman

These posts are ahead later today or tonight in the TeleBlog, or maybe early tomorrow morning.

I will say there’s a reason why I haven’t jumped on the news about the new PRS-505 models replacing the current PRS-500. Boredom.

Yawn, yawn

Unless Sony has some new details to add—I’d hope that the new models would come with with the improved Vizplex displays, but things are still a bit vague–I can’t get that excited. On-board memory can hold 160 rather than 80 books. BFD in the era of cheap add-on cards. Plus, you’ve got silver and blue models and perhaps one other color, and menu keys in a different position. Oh, wow. And get this: still no Sony Reader software for the Mac, except from third parties. The price? Apparently a boring $299: yep, the current one.

Like Iraq: Incremental

It’s a little like Iraq. All this incremental stuff—leaked out after a store ad hit the Net ahead of time—is a letdown. Wait! I’m just gonna skip a full-fledged Sony item all together. Here are links to coverage from MobileRead and the Wowio blog. Actually I think that Dr. H’s post on Readng e-books on your Nintendo DS is more interest.

What would have made my heart pound over the Sony: A steep price drop or really improved ergonomics, beyond the possible Vizplex. The Sony Readers have nice touches, But we’re a long way, in thoughtfulness of design, from the original Rocket eBook. How long until there’s a nice, long lever we can press to turn the page? Not that Sony’s the only offender by omission.