Before we get to the links, a little site promotion: I was Christmas shopping for books today and I wanted to get a mystery novel for my grandfather. Where did I look? Why the C4 Book Reviews section of course. Give it another peek, maybe you’ll find some gift ideas of your own. Also, check out our Best Books of 2009 feature, which will be updated Mondays through January. Well, enough of that…
I walked by a SonyStyle store the other day, and I have to admit they’re doing a good job of pushing their Readers in brick and mortar stores (I’ve also seen them in Best Buy stores amongst others as well). And while they have a decent selection of models, I’m not sure these themed Readers are quite necessary. In other ereader news, the Aiptek Storybook inColor is pretty neato looking, though I still don’t think an LCD ereader is ever going to really fly. The Aluratek Libre has a nice pricetag, but the same LCD concern still applies. (Before you poo-poo me, electronic ink–in our opinion–really does make a huge difference. Here are my initial impressions of the tech from last spring.)
The COOL-ER is getting a hardware upgrade, making it marginally cool-er in the eyes of the other wallflower ereaders. And there’s lots of Applet Tablet rumors floating around this week, but I’m not going to link to any, beacause I’m sick of them. We’ll discuss an Apple Tablet and its secondary ereader abilites only when (if) it actually gets announced. Here’s a review of the Sungale Cyberus, which also doesn’t look all that impressive.
I’m only recently back in the country, so this might be a bit strange since I’ve been out of the loop for two months. In any case, here’s some news about books and ebooks from around the web:
The Barnes & Noble Nook: We’ve learned a few things from the “nook,” primarily that nobody takes it seriously when you try to uncapitalize your product’s name (and, really, it does look silly). We’ve also learned that people loveloveloveto talk about which gadgets are going to “kill” other gadgets. So is the Nook a Kindle-killer? I could care less; there’s room for more than one device. In reality, the Nook and the Kindle are roughly 95% identical. The Nook has the touchscreen interface, which Engadget says isn’t all that hot, while Gizmodo likes it despite the interface hiccups. CNET says the perks (like lending books to friends) make it a worthwhile device. The big difference in my eyes is that the Nook does Adobe ePub, which means library ebooks, though I’m guessing they won’t work over wireless. We’ve also learned that Amazon isn’t the only one who has trouble filling ereader orders. Oh, and also… remember Borders? I’d say they have about 2 years of financial solvency left. It’s going to be like a brontosaurus dying.
Something called Opium, which is evidently a funny lit mag, has launched an iPhone app. Sounds promising; their interview about it was pretty funny. They publish quick stories and daily content—so far, no word on price.
Canada’s version of the RIAA, the CRIA, has been viciously hoisted by their own petard. For decades, they’ve been using songs for anthologies without compensating the artists, roughly 300,000 times. That’s piracy! In fact, it’s worse than piracy, because they’ve been profiting on their theft. Now they’re getting sued for $20,000 per song (actually a deal compared to the RIAA’s $80K per)—that works out to $6 billion. Ouch. And, ha ha.
Sony’s proprietary BBeB format is deadas of Friday. They’re adopting ePub as planned, meaninglessly rebranding their “eBook Store” to be the “Reader Store,” and rolling out a new 3.1 version of their desktop software. Which was necessary. Very necessary. I’ll give 3.1 a shot and let you know how it goes. Next on Sony’s docket: the Reader Daily Edition, with wireless. Something tells me it might be a Kindle-killer…
It’s the end of the year, so everybody’s doing best book lists, including us (you can keep track of our Best Books of 2009 series here). Sam Jordison at the Guardian’s books blog has a different take: here’s his hilarious post about the worst books of the decade. It’s good therapy, Dan Brown has a starring role—seriously, 80,000,000 readers?
Random of the week: “Mark the Spot” is an official AT&T iPhone app that lets customers tell AT&T where their coverage is thin, and detail specifically how they suck (dropped call, etc.). I’m guessing Mark the Spot won’t be making a cameo on those Luke Wilson commercials anytime soon. Pretty hilarious.
Wednesday again. As usual, let’s start off with ereaders and go from there.
The Barnes & Noble ereader (maybe named Athena or Nook) is looking pretty snazzy. It’s rumored to be priced competitively at $259; it’s got dual screens and runs on Android. Not to be outdone, so does the mysterious Spring Design’s Alex. Plastic Logic also released some details on their upcoming device, the QUE, which looks pretty sleek and will be available in just a few months.
Google has decided to launch an ebook store called Google Editions., which got the Frankfurt Book Fair atwitter. Walmart wants in too, so they will begin selling ebooks on Walmart.com. For the most part I find Walmart to be just about the most evil corporation on the planet, but it will be interesting to see what effect this has on ebook prices, beyond the current scuffle with Amazon–and what formats they make available.
German parliament bought a buttload of ereaders for some reason. And, might we see ebooks in bookstores soon? Aussies will. Corey Doctorow put an interesting piece for Publisher’s Weekly about ebooks and why he thinks they can be free. Read this interesting response to a savage review of Jonathan Lethem’s new book. Find a great “captain” Ahab or Poe tee shirt over at Novel-T.
For fun this week: Ugliest Tattoos is funny stuff. Until 10/25 you can get the awesome World of Goo (Mac/PC/Linux) legally and name your own price. This Brit video is pretty funny/clever.
And, finally, if you are the Russian spammers overloading our comments, please stop. It’s really annoying. (We’ve been scrambling to get the spam cleaned up, so we apologize to any commenters if your post gets deleted by mistake. Feel free to email us if this happens to you and we’ll get your post reactivated.)
