Chad's News

Last week Apple introduced its latest invention, the iPad. Despite the fanfare, I don’t believe the iPad will dramatically change the state of the art. I expect the chief reason for buying an iPad will be its advanced eBook reading capabilities.

The iPad has been described as a large iPhone. It can run all existing iPhone apps without modification. It runs the Safari web browser but has no support for Flash, which disables quite a few websites. It does not have a built-in camera, nor does it allow you to make phone calls (even VoIP is prohibited for now).

Link #1: http://arstechnica.com/…

Link #2: http://www.engadget.com/…

Barnes & Noble has made a dramatic entrance into the eBook arena with a new reader called the Nook. The cost is $259. It’ll be available in stores sometime during the week of December 7^th and is already so popular that pre-orders have exceeded the expected supply for the rest of the year. I had the opportunity to view a mock-up, and they’re pretty small. You can increase the font size, but I’m not sure this would be a good purchase for people with bad eyesight.

An advantage of the Nook is that it supports a variety of eBook formats, including ePub. This means books can be purchased from a wide variety of sources, most notably Google’s huge catalog of 400,000+ titles, and that these purchases will work on devices other than the Nook. Contrast this to the Amazon store which uses a proprietary format that locks the buyer into the Kindle. Also the Nook has more options for connecting to the Internet and a battery that can last up to 10 days on a single charge. To see how the Nook stacks up against the Amazon Kindle 2, here’s an admittedly biased comparison chart.

Link: http://arstechnica.com/…

Sony is offering up some serious competition to the Amazon Kindle. The end result is that we may see a lessening of proprietary eBook formats. But I’m not sure how Sony will be able to match Amazon’s extensive catalog of books.

Link #1: http://blogs.consumerreports.org/…

Link #2: http://www.internetnews.com/…
(via Kim Komando)

The Amazon Kindle is picky about which eBook formats it accepts. So what do you do with an eBook in an unsupported format? The linked article tells how to convert it. The article also lists a couple non-Amazon sources of Kindle-compatible eBooks, and explains how to prevent Amazon from deleting books retroactively.

Link: http://consumerist.com/…

Amazon was recently notified that two of the books in its Kindle catalog were pirated. The company responded by removing the books from the catalog and also deleting every purchased copy. The uproar was significant, with many people being surprised that retroactive deletion was even possible. Amazon has since apologized and promised it will never do this again. To Amazon’s credit, they did refund the purchase price. But this being the United States of America, there has to be a lawsuit involved.

Link: http://apnews.myway.com/…
(via Kim Komando)

Update: The lawsuit has been settled, and Amazon has agreed to legally binding terms on which it can retroactively delete content.

The Amazon Kindle is an e-book reader that’s becoming quite popular. But be warned: the Kindle becomes an expensive paperweight should Amazon decide to cancel your account.

Link: http://arstechnica.com/…

From the article: “Printing the [New York Times] costs twice as much as sending every subscriber a free Kindle.” This sounds great, but I’ve heard there are problems with the pricing of books—specifically that the Kindle version sometimes costs more than the paperback version. Does anyone have any experience with a Kindle? If so, let us know in the comments.

Link: http://www.businessinsider.com/…
(via Slashdot)

Amazon has introduced a new e-book reader called the Kindle. It’s designed to feel more like an actual book and to be easy to use. We’ll see how popular it turns out to be, but a good sign is that they sold out in 5½ hours. The Kindle requires a wireless connection to the internet, but the $399 purchase price includes free lifetime connectivity.

UPDATE: Ars Technica has a review of the Kindle.

Link #1: http://arstechnica.com/…

Link #2: http://www.newsweek.com/…
(via Engadget)

Link #3: http://news.bbc.co.uk/…