Is This the Future of the Digital Book?

By BRAD STONE

PLENTY of authors dream of writing the great American novel.

Bradley Inman wants to create great fiction, dramatic online video and compelling Twitter stream — and then roll them all into a multimedia hybrid that is tailored to the rapidly growing number of digital reading devices.

Mr. Inman, a successful Silicon Valley entrepreneur, calls this digital amalgam a “Vook,” (vook.tv) and the fledgling company he has created with that name just might represent a possible future for the beleaguered book industry.

Publishing, of course, is feeling the same chronic pain as other media businesses, with layoffs, corporate restructurings and a general sense of gloom, doom and kaboom settling over name-brand giants like Random House and Simon & Schuster.

At the same time, there has been a flurry of optimism and activity around the once-derided idea that people might read books on a digital screen. Just this year, new electronic reading devices have emerged from Amazon, Samsung and Fujitsu, while mobile phones like iPhone from Apple have flowered seemingly overnight into acceptable reading devices for many bookworms.

And just as digital media have begun to change the nature of news, music and video, the emergence of e-books is causing various entrepreneurs and technologists to reconsider the kind of experience that books might one day deliver.

Link

Technorati Tags: ebook

Digital Book 2009: May 12th

Digital Book 2009: An eBook Stimulus Plan for Publishing will take place on Tuesday May 12, 2009 at the McGraw-Hill Auditorium in New York City. Our one day conference will discuss the sales, marketing channels and tactics that booksellers and publishers can leverage as well as opportunities to connect with the consumer. Adam Smith, Director of Product Management, Google Book Search will be giving one of the Featured Presentations this year.

New this year is a ½ day of workshops taking place on Monday May 11, 2009 from 1:30 – 5:00 PM. The workshop will have multiple tracks on eBook production, workflow as well as sales, marketing and business development.

Here comes the Palm Pre

At the Consumer Electronics Show, Palm unveiled it's new smartphone, the Palm Pre. Silicon Alley insider says it even gives Apple's iPhone a run for the money. SAI had a set of videos, but I'm not sure they're still there.

Technorati Tags: palm, handheld, smartphone

Kindle A Year Old, Hasn't Changed Reading... Yet (Silicon Alley Insider)

by Dan Frommer

Amazon's (AMZN) Kindle e-book reader celebrated its first birthday yesterday. How was its first year?

Amazon doesn't share sales figures, so we don't really know. Today, either supply is low or demand is high -- there's a three to four week wait to buy them for $359.

The only stat Amazon has shared recently: During its Q3 earnings call, CFO Thomas J. Szkutak said, "Kindle titles already account for more than 10% of unit sales for books that are available in both digital and print formats."

Impressive, we guess. But given that it's still a surprise when we see one on the subway or at the airport, it's safe to say the Kindle hasn't changed reading much in its first year.

(more. . . )

IPhone Steals Lead Over Kindle (Forbes)

by Andy Greenberg and James Erik Abels

It's official: The iPhone is more popular than Amazon.com's Kindle. And not just in the obvious categories like listening to music, browsing the Web or the other applications where Kindle barely competes. Now, the iPhone is also muscling into Amazon's home turf: reading books.

Stanza, a book reading application offered in Apple's (nasdaq: AAPL - news - people ) iPhone App Store since July, has been downloaded more than 395,000 times and continues to be installed at an average rate of about 5,000 copies a day, according to Portland, Ore.-based Lexcycle, the three-person start-up that created the reading software.

Link

Technorati Tags: apple, amazon, iphone, kindle

Amazon Confirms Student Version of Kindle (TechCrunch)

Amazon confirmed our speculation that they are planning to target colleges and universities with a new version of the Kindle, reports the Seattle PI. Textbooks are a $5.5 billion annual market, and most publishers now offer electronic versions of their textbooks. McGraw-Hill Education, for example, publishes 95% of their books electronically as well as in print. But there is no compelling device to read them on. The new Kindle will likely be a large screen version of the original, which is much better suited for textbooks.

Link

Technorati Tags: amazon.com, ebook, handheld, kindle

Samsung Instinct

I have the Samsung Blackjack and when I saw the Instinct. I thought, Great I can now try something different! The only problem, I am on AT&T and the Instinct is only on Sprint. Sale price: $129.99.
http://www.instinctthephone.com/

IMHO, a great iPhone clone.

Bad News For The Kindle: iPhone 3G + Apps (Silicon Alley Insider)

Who needs a separate e-book reader when your cellphone does the trick? For the last few days, we've been putzing around with our new iPhone 3G and a handful of apps from the App Store. Some of the best, so far: E-reader apps for reading books, blogs, offline Web pages, etc. These include:

• Instapaper, which brings Tumblr dude Marco Arment's simple "read later" service to the iPhone. Actually, it's much better on the iPhone than any other platform, since it doesn't just bookmark your stories, but downloads them so you can read them when you're offline.
  
• Stanza, a free e-reader app with built-in access to a huge library of free books/short stories, from "Anna Karenina" to "Paradise Lost," and some newer titles, too, like Boing Boing editor Cory Doctorow's "I, Robot."
• NetNewsWire, a decent port -- not great -- of the popular Web-based RSS reader.
• Byline, a $9.99 app to access your Google Reader RSS feeds.
• NYTimes, which lets you synch up NYT stories to read later.

Link

Smartphones Now Ringing for Women (NYT)

By LAURA M. HOLSON

If recent history is any guide, roughly a third of the people snapping up Apple’s new iPhone are likely to tote it in a purse.

In a big shift for the phone industry, women have emerged as eager buyers of not just iPhones but of all so-called smartphones — BlackBerrys, Treos and other models.

In the last year the number of American women using smartphones more than doubled to 10.4 million, growing at a faster pace than among men, according to Nielsen Mobile, which tracks wireless trends.

The trend is mirrored in sales of the iPhone. In October, nearly one out of four owners of the iPhone was a woman, according to Nielsen. By March that number rose to one in three. The iPhone model announced Monday, with faster Internet access and mapping features, may accelerate the shift.

Smartphones are cheaper now — as little as $99 for the petite BlackBerry Pearl — and are better designed. Women have been using them for years in business, of course, but many are finding that the phones can also help manage their families’ hectic schedules and keep them in touch with friends.

(more. . . )

Electronic Device Stirs Unease at Book Fair (NY Times)

By EDWARD WYATT
LOS ANGELES — Is the electronic book approaching the tipping point?

That topic both energized and unnerved people attending BookExpo America, the publishing and bookselling industry’s annual trade show, which ended at the convention center here on Sunday.

Much of the talk was focused on the Kindle, Amazon’s electronic reader, which has gained widespread acclaim for its ease of use. Jeffrey P. Bezos, the founder and chief executive of Amazon, spent much of a packed session on Friday evangelizing about the Kindle, which he said already accounts for 6 percent of his company’s unit sales of books that are available in both paper and electronic formats.

But excitement about the Kindle, which was introduced in November, also worries some publishing executives, who fear Amazon’s still-growing power as a bookseller. Those executives note that Amazon currently sells most of its Kindle books to customers for a price well below what it pays publishers, and they anticipate that it will not be long before Amazon begins using the Kindle’s popularity as a lever to demand that publishers cut prices.

Overall, traffic at the book fair seemed lower than in past years, a reflecting perhaps that some editors did not make the long trip west from Manhattan, as well as the fact that the growth in the book business has slowed.
(more . . .)

Reading the E-Leaves With Amazon's Bezos (Wired)

Condé Nast Portfolio contributing editor Kevin Maney interviewed Bezos before a packed auditorium at New York University's Stern School of Business:

Portfolio: Let's talk about the Kindle. What do you want it to be?

Bezos: Any book, in any language, ever in print should be available in less than 60 seconds. We worked on it for three years. It's been selling out since being released.

Portfolio: You sold how many?

Bezos: You asked that so innocently, but you know I'm not going to answer. We have a long-standing practice of being very shy about disclosure, and I'll stick to that practice. The Kindle has substantially exceeded our expectations.

Portfolio: Every effort at e-books has failed. Why should this one work?

Bezos: We decided we were going to improve upon the book. And the first thing we did was try to determine the essential features of a physical book that we needed to replicate. The No. 1 feature is that it disappears. When you're in the middle of reading, you don’t notice the ink or the glue or the stitching or the paper — all of that disappears, and you're in the author's world. Most electronic devices today do not disappear. Some of them are extraordinarily rude. Books get out of the way, and they leave you in that state of mental flow.

Portfolio: How do you improve on that?

Bezos: We looked at things that physical books could never do. One of them is that you can look up any word that you're reading. It used to be that if I came across a word that I didn't know, I guessed from context. I'm astonished at what a bad guesser I am. Now that I’m looking up the words, I'm like, "Huh. Really?"

(more . . .)

Cory Doctorow: Put Not Your Faith In Ebook Readers (Locus)

Two fascinating lumps of white plastic hit major snags this past Christmas. One was the Nintendo Wii, a surprise smash-hit game console that compensates for its relatively crude graphics with ingenious gameplay based on a controller outfitted with accelerometers that let you interact with the console by waving your arms around. The other was the Amazon Kindle, an "E-Ink"-based e-book reader that, like its competition, the Sony Reader, delivers long battery life and superb screen quality in a slim and sexy form-factor that is just about the right size to slip into a large-ish coat pocket.

Both devices had the same problem: they sold out completely and new units could not be manufactured in time for Christmas. Both devices spawned entire Internet tool-suites dedicated to helping frustrated would-be purchasers locate their own unit. Amazon was selling 17 Wiis per second at the height of the fever, and more than one enterprising hacker whomped up a little pinger that would obsessively check Amazon for notice of new stock and then IM, email or SMS you the instant the Wii went back on the block.

(more . . .)

Recycle your old Palm: Palm Take Back & Recycling Program

Palm's environmental stewardship program leads us to use environmentally friendly materials, reduce waste, and develop the highest standards in electronics recycling. Our recycling program strives to keep Palm Handhelds and Treo smartphones out of landfills- and we gladly take other companies' devices and all related accessories

....This program allows us to evaluate and disposition handhelds and mobile phones for reuse and recycling to prevent them from going into landfills. Our program safely reclaims metals and also isolates heavy metals, protecting the environment and making these available for reuse.

...Simply place your handhelds, mobile phones and related accessories (chargers, headsets, memory cards) into a box large enough for you to safely send in all your retired mobile devices, apply the postage-paid mailing label, and put it in a mailbox or bring it to the post office. It's free!! Please note that you are responsible for removing all personal information before submitting devices to the Palm recycling program.

(more. . .)

eReader Pro Now Available for Free (Palm InfoCenter)

Fictionwise, the new owners of eReader.com, have made the eReader Pro versions of its ebook software available for free. The enhanced Palm OS and Windows Mobile Pro application formerly sold for $14.95, then shortly following the purchase Fictionwise lowered the price to $4.95. According to the company the price cut is permanent. The price of the add-on font packs remains unchanged at $14.95 each.

Versions of eReader Pro are available for a number of platforms including Palm OS and Windows Mobile.

Kindle DRM hacked to allow protected Mobipocket ebooks (Gizmodo)

We knew the Kindle's DRM would be cracked the minute we heard about it, and it looks like the first chink in the armor is here courtesy of Igor Skochinsky: he's discovered the algorithm the Kindle uses to turn regular Mobipocket books into Amazon's proprietary .azw format. The hack involves replacing a Mobipocket file's PID with one generated from your Kindle's serial number, and then setting a Kindle-specific flag that allows it to be opened. Igor's posted a couple little Python scripts to handle both of these tasks for you, and it looks like sites like Fictionwise already support the hack. That's all well and good, but we're still waiting patiently for the day when we can tether to that free EV-DO.

The iPhone in Libraries - Metro PDA SIG, Nov. 29th

The next METRO PDA Special Interest Group meeting will take place on Thursday, November 29, 2007, from 3:00-4:30pm at METRO headquarters, 57 East 11th Street, 4th floor.

The topic will be: The iPhone in Libraries - Apple's iPhone has been named "the invention of the year" by InformationWeek magazine. Is it really the handheld panacea it seems to be? Join the PDA SIG as we discuss the pros, the cons, and potential library applications for the iPhone and related devices. Linda Braun will on hand to demo her iPhone and share her experiences. If you have an iPhone, iPod Touch, or some other new & nifty handheld device, please feel free to bring it and share your experience as well.

To learn more about the PDA & Handheld Computing SIG, visit our brand new wiki.

Amazon introduces the Kindle ebook

Amazon has introduced the Kindle ebook, a wireless portable reading device:

• Amazon product page
• Introducing Amazon Kindle (press release)
• Amazon's Kindle : first impressions
• Amazon Kindle Roundup (Gawker)
• 15 Things I Just Learned About the Amazon Kindle (BoingBoing)
• Amazon Kindle might be the worst thing that could happen to e-books? (MobileRead)

Palm: No Plans to Join Google's Open Handset Alliance (Palm InfoCenter)

Palm Inc. has no plans to join Google's newly announced Open Handset Alliance at this time according to statements from Palm representatives when reached for comment today.

Google's new Linux based mobile operating system announced earlier today is backed by a new consortium of companies called the Open Handset Alliance and notably includes many of Palm's current partners and competitors. Google's efforts with Android will directly compete with Palm's own mobile linux project as well as its Windows Mobile business.

(more. . .)

RIM releases BlackBerry software for small business (CBC News)

Research In Motion Ltd. is looking to expand its reach with smaller businesses by introducing software that allows firms to link their BlackBerry devices and e-mail systems.

The BlackBerry Professional software, which allows a business's e-mail server to transmit to the devices, is aimed at companies with 30 or fewer people. Smaller companies previously had to shell out for separate server computers to perform the same function. The software, with a five-user licence, sells for $499 U.S., or $849 U.S. for 10 users. (more . . .)

Palm debuts the Centro phone

The Centro will debut for $99 with a two-year service agreement and an additional $50 instant savings and $100 mail-in rebate. In addition, customers will have to sign up for a data plan that is $25+ more per month, such as the Ultimate Pack, the Pro Pack or one of the Phone as Modem plans in order to qualify for the $99 deal.

The Palm Centro runs Palm OS Garnet v5.4.9. It has a Dual-band CDMA2000 EvDO phone radio, a 320x320 pixel touchscreen, Bluetooth v1.2, a 1.3 megapixel digital camera with video capture and 64MB of memory. It has a external microSD expansion slot that supports microSD cards up to 4GB.

The Centro has dimensions of 4.22" (L) x 2.11" (W) x 0.73" (D) (107 x 54 x 18.5 mm) and weighs in at 4.2 oz (119g). It has a 1150mAh removable battery that is good for a claimed 3.5 hours talk time and 3 days standby. (from PalmInfocenter.com)

PC Magazine has a full review of the Palm Centro.