Sony Reader Accessories
I'm probably abnormally excited about the Sony Reader. Possibly because I was so in love with my beloved, but now departed, Librie. So it is with considerable fanboyism that I present to you several sweet photos of the Reader from
Gizmodo, as well as some accessories that will accompany the release of the Sony Reader.
Sony Reader: 10-31-06. $349.
We've been waiting for those
numbers for quite a long time. The Sony Reader was supposed to be the
next e-ink reader more than six months ago. In the meantime, my Librie
broke and the iRex iLiad debuted with a $600 pricetag and I have found
myself entirely e-readerless.
Well, there's still a bit more waiting to do, but the wait to find
out how much waiting I'd have to do is over. The Sony Reader, a
high-quality, non-DRM-crippled ebook reader will be available on or
before Halloween. The device looks spectacular, and the Sony Connect
Store (already used for Music Downloads) will be launching a book
download services at the same time. The prices we've seen (saving
about $4 on the cover price of a new hardback) isn't inspiring much
confidence. But the book's ability to read any text, PDF, or Word document more than makes up for that.
Some shots of accessories are on their way. Boy do I wish they could get the
Times Reader running on this thing. Soon enough, I imagine.
Sony Reader: It Does Exist!
Those lucky folks at
Make: have got their hands on Sony's e-book reader
(confusingly called the "Reader,") and it looks spectacular as
expected. The biggest problem with it, of course, is that they aren't
releasing it. In my opinion, it's because of problems with the market, not
with the technology, as people have largely assumed.
So, it seems that news surrounding e-readers is taking off a bit, what
with the somewhat accidental announcement of Amazon's Kindle
yesterday. Comparing this with my Librie, I'd say the advantages are:
1. Price, this is cheaper at roughly $350 retail. 2. Better contrast ratio,
lighter whites, darker blacks. 3. The instructions are in English! 4.
Faster load times, you shouldn't have to wait for a book to boot up.
5. You don't have to hack the lame DRM!
Unless the Kindle (with it's wireless capabilities) comes in around or below this price, this will be my choice for my next
E-book reader. That is, if they ever release it to the public.
Amazon's E-Book Reader: Kindle
Kindle: Verb, To build or fuel a fire. Boy...I sure hope so. Amazon, who just yesterday launched their Unbox system for selling digital videos, has announced that they will be building their own e-book reader, presumably one that will be connected with an Amazon e-book download service.
The e-book reader is called the Kindle, which, I assume, is a reference to their desire to light the fire to the sales of digital books. This is probably in direct response to the announcement that Sony's E-Reader will be going on sale at Borders sometime in the next year.
Phillips New Rollable Display in Action
So far, all we've seen of the Readius is some static shots that, for all we knew, were CG. But the video below finally shows the Readius in action.
Cool things about the Readius: Extremely high resolution, low-power, E-Ink display; has a display that is actually bigger than the device; wants to be the iPod for print.
Not so cool things: It won't be around 'till 2007, the display is black and white, the refresh rate of E-Ink is still a miserably slow 1-2 seconds. Nevertheless, I want one.
The Readius' five inch display is bigger than anything a device this size has ever seen, but it's smaller than Sony's Reader, a paperback-book-sized device that was supposed to go on sale at Borders book stores months ago, but has been repeatedly delayed by unknown factors.
iRex iLiad Becomes an Ultra-Low Power Web Browser
The iRex iLiad is the most recent and also most expensive contribution
to the e-book market. The device comes equipped with a gorgeous
high-res e-ink display and an internal wireless card. The wireless
card, theoretically, will only connect to the iLiad news service, which
will send you whatever news you have subscribed to (some free content,
some not.)
Well Ali, Arivero and R2D2 have created some pretty
user-friendly hacks
for the iLiad that, when used together, allow web browsing.
This is officially the only
device on which you can browse the web online with an e-ink display. iRex didn't do it on purpose, but you
can do it. The hack is simple and non-intrusive, but it does require
the iLiad network card to be constantly on which will drain the
batteries a bit.
E-newspapers: but what will I wrap birthday presents in?
Silly me -- I thought newspapers were just going to become obselete because everyone read them online. That might still be a bit drastic, and a daily economic paper in Europe called Les Echos is trying to strike a balance by producing the paper electronically using iLiad E-reader.
Readers use a tablet that weighs less than a pound. Currently e-newspapers are only available in black and white, with 16 shades of gray.
The real news is for the ad sales reps -- you can program the devices to show coffee ads in the morning and beer ads in the evening. Or if you happen to be reading your handy tablet near a Wi-Fi spot, ads may become more interactive to Mapquest you to their destination.
Borders and Sony Partner for Ebooks
Sony's new eBook reader (called the Sony Reader ) will be sold, not at Best Buy, but at Borders . We can all look forward to informational displays at Borders, Waldenbooks and Books etc. stores across America. No word yet on other countries. The book stores will also be selling electronic books (though it seems odd that we'd have to drive to a bookstore to buy something we could just download anyway).
In any case, this relationship marks the first real effort to get eBooks into the American mainstream. Trees everywhere should wait to heave their relief until we see how well they sell. But I'm gung ho, I already own one of these pretty E-Ink eBooks, and I can't understand why the rest of the world doesn't yet. (except that, yes, I had to order it from Japan and all of the instructions are in Japanese and the DRM was so horrible that I had to hack the firmware to make it functional.) So, yes, this new version has a much better chance at becoming an iPod for books.
iRex iLiad eBook rEader
Continuing the path towards paperless books...
iRex has released it's specs for it's iliad ebook reader and I'm pretty excited. The only available ebook reader, the Sony Librie, has nothing on the next generation (of course, it has been three years since the Librie came out).
Same as Librie: High Resolution - MP3 plaer / audio jack - low energy consumption - monochrome display.
Better than Librie: Even Higher Resolution - No DRM - Reads TXT XHTML and PDF - 16 levels of gray (librie has 4) - wired and wireless internet - touchscreen - higher contrast ratio - compact flash, USB, and SD card inputs - the buttons are in ENGLISH! (the librie was only released in Japan.)
No word on the screen refresh rate (one of the major drawbacks of E-Ink,) we'll let you know as soon as we get our hands on one. As for the price, probably around $300 or $400.
We'll keep you posted as more Iliad information is available.
