Basically, nobody wants to shut up about the new Apple tablet (supposedlydubbed the iPad–consider it nominated for this week’s dumbest new ereader name award). It’s slated to be revealed today, so I’m not going to bother parsing out the rumors. This one bit about pricing strategies and the coming battle between Apple and Amazon is interesting though. Not sure where B&N is in all this. I guess they probably shouldn’t have f-ed up the Nook launch so badly. Perhaps they are waiting for a boost from Apple? If you’re foolishish enough to get a first generation iPad (thus ignoring Apple’s track record of vastly superior second gen devices), here are some other fun uses for it.
Amazon has quietly laxed their DRM policies. So quietly that hardly anyone has noticed. In what could be an enourmous shift, Apple will allow iTunes users to store libraries in the cloud, rather than their harddrives (hopefully it doesn’t require a .Mac subscription). Besides fighting with China, Google is also in a tiff with its old buddy Apple. This may lead to Apple dumping Google integration from their devices and adopting Bing, which is of course owned by–Mac geeks are fainting left and right over this, I’m sure–the evil Microsoft. Regardless of Google’s early success (maybe) with Android’s apps, Apple is still the undisputed ruler of App-land.
It’s kinda old news, but apparently colleges are being sued for using ereaders in classrooms because blind students can’t use them. How using a braille edition to supplement a Kindle (which reads books–poorly–out loud) is less fair than if the other students use deadtree, I do not understand. It won’t help the blind, but if you’ve no backlight on your ereader and can’t figure out how to turn on your lamp, try this dongle. This Boogie Board doodle toy isn’t an ereader (and probably isn’t much use to anyone not a basketball coach) but it does seem pretty cool, and uses no power at that.
We’ll be posting on Friday about some of the many changes we have planned for our second year. There’s a lot of good stuff planned, and we’ll be getting bigger and better as time goes on. Check back Friday for that.
Here’s our last links update of the decade. First though, we’ve updated our eReader Comparison page as well as our Best Ways to Get eBooks, so check them out. Both will be seeing quite a few more updates in the coming weeks and months as much is happening with ereaders and ebook sellers. In fact, we’ve got a lot of changes planned for C4 in the near future as well; we’ll be posting on many of them at some point in January. Also, be sure to check out our Best Books of 2009 series if you haven’t already. We’ll be continuing the series through January.
We’ll have some Christmas reading recos tomorrow, and then we’ll be back on the 28th with a new installment of our Best Books 2009 series.
In the meantime, here’s an extra-long installment of news about books and ebooks from around the web.
OverDrive released an Android audiobook app Monday (via). You can get it here. I’ve tried it, and it’s awesome. You can download mp3 audiobooks from you local library straight to your phone. Once you have the app installed, just check out the book from your library on your phone’s browser, and OverDrive automatically loads it. You can then download the audiobook in parts. Transferring audiobooks from your computer isn’t supported with Android devices (at least, on Macs)—it goes through iTunes for some reason—but it’s not necessary. This is still in beta, but I didn’t get so much as a hiccup in my few days using it. The Android app only works with mp3s—no WMA books (sadly, since the vast majority are WMAs, for now)—and an OverDrive smartphone app is also available for Windows Mobile.
Barnes & Noble’s Nook is turning out to be more popular than they’d expected. More news of shipping delays has surfaced, along with customer service snafus. Although, if you don’t get your Nook by Christmas, you get $100, so things could be worse. Meanwhile, switch11 at the Kindle Review has posted a quick hands-on comparison of the Nook and the Kindle. If you can’t guess from the title of his blog, switch11 leans heavily toward the Kindle in ereader comparisons; however, he seemed to like the Nook, especially for its clearer font. Personally, the features and mixed reviews of the Nook, combined with the hamfistedness of its rollout, have me more excited for Spring Design’s Alex ereader, which—so far—seems a lot like the Nook, only better. Maybe this update will help. (Update: it didn’t help much.)
Macworld has reviewed seven major ereaders—find the roundup here. Surprisingly, their favorite was the Sony PRS-600, the Touch. They dinged the PRS-300—which you can get extra-cheap these days if you’re a student or teacher—for not having a dictionary or image support. If you don’t care about those things and you read mostly novels, the 300’s your best bet, in my opinion. Macworld finds the Kindle’s controls kludgy, and while whispernet’s great, you’re going to be spending most of your time reading, not downloading books.
Here’s a couple of anti-DRM pieces. One by Cory Doctorow (via), one by switch11 (see above). Also, David Pogue’s DRM experiment has found (unscientifically) that lack of DRM has no effect on sales. And, the scary Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement threatens to be a DMCA for the whole world (that’s bad).
This week we got a better look at the Alex, which, depending on the final price point, could provide some decent competition for the Kindle and Nook come Black Friday the holiday selling season. We also saw more of the Entourage. I know I sniped at it last week, but the functionality of an Android netbook hybrid could make for an interesting device. All in one devices are certain to gain in popularity, but will the OLPC really happen?
It’s not really an ereader device at all, but the tech in the new Intel Reader is neat-o and something that could have cool applications for etext down the road, as well for its intended healthcare market. And, in the tradition of stupid names for ereaders: presenting the PocketBook(s). Finally, I’m not sure what I think about the Sungale Cyberus.
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REVIEW: Hell;
from May 26th, 2009--
"I’ll come right out with it: the language of this novel is great, phenomenal in fact. The book is saturated in detail, but not in the soggy paper towel sort of way."
