Nate Hoffelder

 Many, many Android tablets have hit the market in the past year or so, including ones from truly unknown companies. This is one such tablet.

The  Visual Land Connect tablet is one I happened across on Walmart, where it wa spriced right in the middle of the many $90 to $100 budget 7″ Android tablet. It has generally unremarkable specs, with the standard 7″ capacitive touchscreen, 8GB Flash storage, a microSD card slot, Wifi, g-sensor, and it is running Android 4.0 on a 1.2GHz CPU.

Verdict

This is an unremarkable tablet with average performance and adequate build quality. There’s not much to set it apart from the competition, and I feel that if you happened to grab this tablet out of a bag full of similarly priced tablets, you’d be getting neither the best nor the worst of the bunch.

The one thing that set this tablet apart (and this is why i bought it) was the 1.3MP camera. That’s much better than you would expect on a tablet in this price range and I was hoping it would be the first one to offer a decent image.  Unfortunately, there seems to be a driver issue. I can’t get the installed camera app to work, and the several camera apps I downloaded from Google Play also do not work.

Battery Life

The specs on the box claim 8 hours battery life, but I didn’t get that much. I tested this on a trip, and I usually got around 4 to 5 hours of steady use. That’s okay, but it’s a little short when compared to other tablets in this price range.

Touchscreen & Performance

The touchscreen worked about as well as I expected. I suppose that might be too vague for some, but touchscreens are a solved problem for Android tablets. I’m beginning to suspect that man budget tablets get their touchscreen from the same source and are built in the same factories.  That would tend to explain the general uniformity of these tablets.

Performance was also at par, and this tablet passed all my tests (Angry Birds, web browsing, Youtube) quite adequately.

What’s in the Box

The Connect tablet is specced to have USB host, but it only has just the one USB Mini-B port. Luckily the manufacturer included a converter cable so you can plug in USB accessories. The box also contains the power supply, asecond  USB cable (for connecting to your PC) and earbuds. But there is no HDMI cable to go with the HDMI port.

Apps & Android Market

This tablet ships with GetJar and a link to download the Amazon Appstore, but not Android Market. Luckily I was able to install it (instructions) as well as several apps. This tablet also ships with Aldiko, YOutube, Adobe Reader, and the usual basic suite of apps. There’s enough to get you started

Specs

• 1.2GHz CPU
• Android 4.0
• 7″ (800×480) screen
• Capacitive touchscreen
• 1.3MP camera
• USB Host
• 8GB Flash
• microSD card slot
• HDMI out
• g-sensor

Columnist David Pogue has just posted a brief but sure-to-be controversial entry to his New York Times blog. Wanting to give his son some good e-books to read at summer camp on his iPod Touch (you go, kid!), he recommended the late Robert Ludlum’s seminal spy novel The Bourne Identity. But when he went to buy it, it was nowhere to be found—it seems that the Ludlum estate and the publisher have not been able to agree on e-book royalty terms.

So, Pogue did what a good many frustrated e-book-desiring fans would do in a similar situation (and, indeed, what untold thousands of Harry Potter fans did do over the years pre-Pottermore)—he torrented it. But then he sent the publisher a check for $9.99. That makes everything kosher, right?

Well, no, it doesn’t. And I imagine, as soon as soon as his post makes the rounds of the blogosphere, angry authors and publishers will be lining up to tell him so. (The obligatory cries of “thief!” and “no no, copyist! copying isn’t ‘stealing’!” are already resounding like wild bird mating calls in the comment thread below the blog.)

It remains to be seen whether this will draw the same kind of reaction as the column by a New York Times ethicist I wrote about when I was at TeleRead, in which he advised his readers that, in his view, it was perfectly ethical to download an illicit copy of a book you had already purchased in print form. Pogue is going a step farther here: he thinks it’s justified to download a book you don’t own in print and pay the publisher afterward. (Though, to be fair, Pogue could own at least one copy of it in print already as well, if he likes it that much. He didn’t really say in the blog post.)

(One commenter suggested that he should have cut his check to the estate instead, given that they actually own the book and the publisher hasn’t e-published it yet. On the other hand, the publisher is the one who put the effort into polishing the book and readying it for final release, so you could sort of see it cutting both ways.)

What it really boils down to is frustration versus “entitlement.” It’s an interesting question when you think about it, irrespective of whether Pogue is right or wrong. Twenty or thirty years ago, the question could never even have arisen. The only comparisons would be of stealing a book from a bookstore and then paying the publisher (not really valid here since no bookseller is missing a chunk of its inventory from what Pogue did) or, more aptly, xeroxing a complete copy of the book and then paying the publisher (which is similar, but nobody would ever have done that because if they had the money to pay the publisher, they’d just buy the book and not futz around with a copy machine).

But then the world got all digital, and in the effort to entice people to buy more things, content owners made those things available in so many different ways as to make buying easy. We can buy almost every song we want from iTunes or Amazon, almost every or e-book we want from Amazon, B&N, or all the other stores, so many digital movies through Amazon, Netflix, CinemaNow, or other such services, that when we find one we can’t get, we get indignant about it. In the case of e-books, Amazon and its 3G Kindle made sure we can buy them almost literally anywhere, at any time.

So perhaps power corrupts. Because we can have almost anything we want at any time, it feels like a personal affront that we can’t get that one particular thing we want right now dammit. So some folks feel entitled to reach out and take it. Even Pogue is doing this, though he’s trying to salve his conscience by sending the publisher a check afterward.

Is there a solution? Well, time, for one thing. Sooner or later all the books people want will be available as e-books, because when people want to trade money for something, the smart content holders will figure out ways to oblige them (as J.K. Rowling eventually did with Pottermore). The only ones left out will be the ones no one wants anyway, because without demand the publishers won’t be moved to make them available. Eventually, the days of people pirating out of frustration with unavailability will be a thing of the past, just like outhouses, or hitching posts and watering troughs in front of businesses. That’s not too helpful for today, of course.

That being said, Pogue’s post could spark some interesting discussion on the ethics of downloading with or without payment, and the frustration of being unable to buy the things you want when you want them.

If people can stop their cries of “thief!” and “no, copyist!” long enough to focus on the issue, anyway.

image by spaceninja

Right now everyone is quietly anticipating Amazon releasing a frontlight-equipped Kindle, but it seems like they might be beaten to the punch by a small Chinese ereader maker. Onyx has just posted a video showing their latest prototype, and from what little I can make out in the darkened room it looks impressive.

They’re calling it the Onyx Touch at the moment. They’ve taken their touchscreen equipped ereader, the Boox i62HD, and modified it so it has a frontlight.  It’s difficult to make out details in the video,  but I did see enough in the first few seconds to confirm that the hardware matches the existing ereader. The i62 first showed up as a prototype last year, and Onyx has been selling it since early this spring.

But the device in the video is actually the i62HD, which has the new flexible higher resolution screen which was developed by LG Display.

This ereader looks to be heavily influenced by the Nook. The i62HD has a Pearl E-ink screen (1024×768), NeoNode zForce touchscreen, Wifi, and card slot. But instead of Android it’s running Onyx’s own custom Linux firmware which is based on the work they’ve done for their other ereaders. It actually has far more format support and much better annotation options, some of which you will see in the video.

I’ve heard from one of Onyx’s dealers that his sample should arrive in late August and the device should be on the market in late September.

We might even see this device hit the market before a similarly equipped Kindle, but I wouldn’t bet on it. Amazon can afford to throw a lot more resources at the problem.

via

As you sit here reading this post you probably have any number of companies spying on you. At a guess, I’d bet that right now Facebook, Google, and the maker of your web browser are all watching what you’re doing online. (And if you found this post via Twitter, you can add them and Bitly to the list.)

With that in mind it should probably come as no surprise that a new start up is planning to start watching you while you read.

Hiptype is coming out of the shadows today, and they’re pitching themselves as the "Google Analytics for ebooks". This start up has developed a new platform which will let publishers know virtually everything about your reading habits as well as personal details like your location, age, and income. Basically it’s going to let publishers know all the juicy details that Amazon, B&N, and Kobo have but don’t share.

Publishers can get the data by first signing up with Hiptype and adding a script to their ebooks before they’re released to distributors and ebookstores. Hiptype is offering a free script for publisher’s first ebook, and they’re charging a monthly fee of $20 to $100 for the various packages, with the higher prices offering greater detail on a larger number of readers.

The data gathered by the scripts is sent to Hiptype’s servers, and I’ve confirmed that it’s only going to be transmitted over Wifi, so it won’t be chewing up your data plan. Publishers can log in and see a dashboard with data organized by title. Hiptype has a demo online,and I’ve clipped parts of it for this post. As you can see, the data is quite thorough. But I’ve also been told it is has also been anonymized  while it was processed, and there’s no indication that publishers can get the specifics about a single reader.

The Hiptype platform doesn’t work everywhere, and in fact it has only been stated to work in iBooks. It won’t work on the Kindle or the Nook platforms because the script involved is written in JavaScript. Neither the Kindle format nor Epub support JavaScript, and if that little bit of code won’t run then there’s no way for the info to get to Hiptypes servers (good).

But the platform is expected to expand beyond iBooks as more apps and devices add support for Epub3. Right now Epub3 support is limited to Readium and iBooks, though I do expect more apps to be released later this year.

And as far as legal concerns go, Hiptype emphasizes that the first time someone opens an ebook that uses a Hiptype script they’ll be shown a short privacy notice. Readers will also have the option to opt out at any time.

Hiptype launches into a private beta this week. I’m told they’re working with several publishers and self-published authors, though none were named when I spoke to James Levy, the CEO and founder of Hiptype. Nor would I expect them to be; this is not exactly the kind of thing that publishers would like to be caught doing.  Sure, you know you’re being tracked by everyone, but there’s still a social stigma attached to the idea.

Publishers and self published authors can request to join the beta on Hiptype’s website; new customers are being accepted in clumps as Hiptype expands their servers to support the load.

As interesting as the tech details are, one detail I’ve picked up over the years is that readers who use one app don’t always behave like readers who use a different app. If publishers start tweaking ebooks based on data from Hiptype, there’s no guarantee that the tweaks will have the same effect across all ebookstores.

Speaking of other ebookstores, I’m going to make a prediction. I bet that someone at Apple, Amazon, Kobo, or B&N will notice Hiptype and decide to respond by either sharing similar data with publishers (or selling it).  And it’s a tossup which it will be; Amazon tends to jump on new ideas first but Kobo is already known to have this kind of info going through their servers and they’re still building out Writing Life.  It wouldn’t take them long to  build a new dashboard so publishers can see the data.

Earlier this week I broke the news that the Kobo Touch launch was not going well in Japan, and after getting a lot of negative reviews Rakuten decided to hide the problem rather than deal with it.

I happen to still be waiting for a response from Kobo, and to be honest I don’t expect to ever hear from them (their marketing dept doesn’t like me for some reason). But Rakuten has chosen to respond to the issue and I have a quote from them here:

Following the launch of Kobo Touch in Japan we saw a tremendous consumer response. Unfortunately, some users were able to gain access to the system before our official launch timing of 15:00 on July 19th. Users began writing reviews and comments about the service that was not yet ready for public release. We then launched on schedule, but considering the review board had been populated by feedback not relevant to the actual service we decided to temporarily suspend the review board feature, which we felt was not fully reflective of the service at launch time and was misinforming consumers.

However, we understand that we did not meet the high expectations of our loyal customers. We have been listening to their feedback through our customer support center and having been working around the clock to resolve all outstanding issues.

So according to Rakuten they let the site go live before the service was up and running. This let people get in and post reviews before Rakuten was ready.

I don’t believe that is the core of the issue, but even if it were it would only explain some of the problems reported. They’re glossing over a number of other issues.

For example, Rakuten promised 30 thousand Japanese language titles; they launched with only 18,894. What’s more, the statement above ignores the fact that (according to one of my readers) Rakuten/Kobo pushed out a buggy firmware update.There are also reports of activation issues for the Kobo Touch as well as problems with the Kobo Desktop software.

And Rakuten is also failing to mention how their customer service fell down on the job. This was clear in a number of reviews posted (though Google translate isn’t the best at Jap-Eng), and there were even complaints about Rakuten 's CS dating from the 20th through the 22nd – which means that the early access wasn’t relevant at all.

Folks, Rakuten & Kobo are pitching themselves as the only real answer to Amazon on the global ebook market. If this launch in Japan is any indication of their combined abilities I think we might want to save some effort and go buy Kindles right now.

Rakuten can’t even come clean on their mistakes – not even after they’re know to the world. Is this really going to be someone you’d trust to sell you anything?

Unlike the past couple infographics I posted (which ranged from bad to hilariously terrible), the following infographic is based on a recent survey of consumers and includes info not posted elsewhere.

Computers continue to dominate as the most popular reading device, and nonfiction edged out fiction as the most book category.

More Infographics

via spectros.com

There’s buzz going around Twitter this morning about a recent WSJ article (the top link). The article covers the various ways that Amazon and Apple are going head to head, including tablets, smartphones, app stores. and app development.

It’s a nice summary article, and aside from mistaking Amazon’s budget Android smartphone for a direct iPhone competitor (and getting the sizes of the app stores wrong), the article does show how the 2 companies are competing for your pocketbook. But I’m only interested in one little bit towards the end.

There was a footnote near the end of the article about a new app Amazon might be testing. No name was given, but reportedly this is a competitor to iBooks Author:

At the same time, Apple is trying to chip away at Amazon’s e-book business with new technology to build interactive e-books, called iBooks Author. Amazon has tested its own similar technology with publishers in response, said another person briefed on the project.

While I have no evidence to prove it exists, I’m betting that it does exist and that the new app is called the Kindle Scribe (or at least it was at one point).

Do I have any inside info? Not currently, no. Did I find a trademark? No, but then again Amazon does tend to file trademarks after they announce the product so that’s no big deal.

My one piece of information is a website address that Amazon registered last August. It’s kindlescribe.com, and while the address goes no where at the moment this is something which could be changed.

You might recall the name from the buzz around that time; many blogs were erroneously calling it Amazon’s next ereader or tablet. I didn’t. While many bloggers didn’t look beyond the obvious, I declined to speculate on how Amazon might use the site. Once again I am amazed at my foresight.

Even though I have no real evidence, you’ll have to agree that the name alone is compelling. The name Kindle Scribe is a good choice for an app to make Kindle ebooks, isn’t it?  What’s more, Amazon already has ebook creation software to build on. Mobipocket had already developed MobiCreator by the time Amazon bought them, and while development dies out in 2009 Amazon still has the source code to build off of in much the same way that the Kindle iPhone app used parts of Mobipocket’s never released iPhone app or the way that the original Kindle shared code with Mobipocket’s Java based reading app.

To be honest, I’m not sure we’ll ever see the Kindle Scribe app, but I do think Amazon registered the website address just in case they ever needed it. And I do think that the app exists.

P.S. If anyone at Amazon wants to leak details or a copy of the app, you know where to find me.

It’s been just under a week since the Kobo Touch started shipping in Japan, and things are going so well that Rakuten has removed from their website all the reviews of the Kobo Touch.

No, seriously, all of the reviews are down – both good and bad.  I suppose there were too many people writing things like "I’m going to buy a Kindle" and that upset someone at Rakuten.

Luckily one of Rakuten’s potential customers tipped me to the story, including giving me a link to a blog that had collected responses and a screenshot of the review page before Raskuten removed it. That’s why I can show you things like this:

If you can’t see the image above, it says that the Kobo Touch has a 3 star rating largely due to the vast number of 1 star reviews. I unfortunately cannot show you the reviews themselves; no one thought to save them before it was too late. But I have been told that the many low ratings shared a number of complaints:

Generally people were complaining in their reviews about problem with crashing setup of kobo desktop application, very limited offer of Japanese books, unresponsive touch screens, poor customer service, etc

And you have to admit that graphic speaks for itself.

Update: My source found a Google Cache page of reviews. Thanks, Bibo!

Second Update: I’ve been reading some of the reviews. Here’s one that jumped out at me.

Reading revolution seems to have ended in failure, unfortunately. Ringleader of the revolution or imprisoned or beheaded will?

Rakuten launched the Kobo Touch in Japan with the expectation that they would dominate their home market. They are native to the country, and Rakuten does have a sizable retail presence there. Given their technical and CS resources, you’d think they would have been able to pull this off.

Unfortunately, it now looks like Rakuten has paved the way for Amazon to dominate yet another ebook market.This launch is rapidly turning into a debacle and  it’s going to damage Rakuten’s reputation. And according to some of the tweets I’ve seen (in Japanese) it already is.

Folks, they took the reviews down from the website so new customers wouldn’t be warned about the many problems. I want you to look past the fact they did it and think about how customers will feel once they discover the deception. That is what will make this a major debacle and not merely an embarrassment for Rakuten.

A bad launch could be recovered from. This is closer to being a systematic effort to lie to their customers. Okay, eventually people will forgive Rakuten, but in the short run this debacle could drive readers to Amazon.

And we know Amazon is planning to launch in Japan as soon as they can. If they get the Kindle Store live in Japan in the next month or so they’ll be able to capitalize on this story without lifting a finger.

I’ve reached out to Kobo, but they not yet responded at the time I posted this. I will update this post with their response.

When the Kindle launched in late 2007 it came with an experimental web browser as well as free web browsing over the 3g connection. As nice as that was to have, all good things come to an end. There are reports over at MobileRead today that Amazon has imposed a 3g bandwidth cap on some users. MR user Chamekke was surprised earlier this week while using their Kindle 3G:

I was using the browser when it popped up a message to say that I’d hit my 50 MB monthly limit of 3G Web access on my Kindle 3G. When I clicked the 'OK' button (which was my only choice, really), I got a second message saying that I’d have 24 hours of grace to continue to use 3G for Web browsing, but that after that I could use 3G only for visiting Amazon.com, Wikipedia, and the Kindle Store. Otherwise I will be obligated to use Wi-Fi.

From what I can tell, this new bandwidth cap was imposed at the start of July.

Now, as you probably know, the Kindle Touch lunched last fall with browsing over the 3g completely blocked, both in the US and without. This has led some to continue to buy the K3, which until recently didn’t have any restrictions imposed on the 3g connection (aside from when it simply wasn’t available). This was one of the K3’s nicer features (especially once we learned that the Kindle Touch lacked it), and it led to the Kindle being regarded as a precursor to you-know-what:

But it is only fair that I point out that Amazon has had this policy in place for some time now, even though I’ve never heard of it being enforced before. Here’s the relevant section of the K3 support pages:

The Experimental Web Browser is currently only available for some customers outside of the United States and may be limited to 50MB of browsing over 3G per month. This limit does not apply when customers are browsing over Wi-Fi.

Some are saying that this rule is being enforced because of the instruction on how to hack your Kindle and get free 3g data connection for your laptop. They were posted back in February, and I’m not sure they had anything to do with this.

That free web browsing was an expense that Amazon took on so they could get more people interested in the Kindle. It was a promotional item which cost Amazon money everyday. It was a constant drain on their purse and like all freebies it had to go away at some point. That’s simply how things work.

image by Try Stan

Qualcomm held their quarterly meeting with investors on Wednesday and given the size and magnitude of the bombshell they dropped I’m surprised California hasn’t fallen into the sea.

They’re getting out of making Mirasol screens and will instead be licensing the technology to other manufacturers. (Seriously, how did this not get reported everywhere?)

Mirasol was just one of the many topics discussed, but TBH I’m not all that interested in the many chips (3g, 4g, Wifi, GPS, Bluetooth, CPU) made by Qualcomm; I just want to read about the Mirasol screen tech. Here’s what Paul E. Jacobs, the CEO of Qualcomm, had to say about Mirasol:

With respect to QMT, we’re now focusing on licensing our next-generation mirasol display technology and will directly commercialize only certain mirasol products. We believe that this strategy will better align our updated roadmap with the addressable opportunities.

Given today’s news, it would seem that Qualcomm is having insurmountable issues in manufacturing the screen tech themselves. And that means that they’ll start looking for someone else to do it for them. Good luck with that.

From what I can tell Mirasol is not now nor has it ever been an easy screen to manufacture. And that’s according to a source at the company who used to make the demo Mirasol screens for Qualcomm.

Way back before Prime View International bought E-ink and then changed its name, PVI acted as a manufacturing partner for a number of companies. They used to do small production runs for Qualcomm to produce the Mirasol screen (this was before Qualcomm’s own factory was up and running). According to my source PVI could never get the QA rating high enough for the screen to be cost-effective for the consumer market; too many screens failed the final checks.

And that production issue likely carried over into Qualcomm’s own factory. In checking back over my notes, I see that one of my sources with Pocketbook told me in April 2011 that the reason Pocketbook hadn’t produced the Pocketbook Mirasol eReader was that they lost "about half of the screens in mass production".

I don’t think Qualcomm has seen the success they expected when they bought Iridigm (the original developer of the Mirasol screen tech) back in 2004. That set Qualcomm back $170 million, and the subsequent 8 years of development and production costs would probably have been sufficient to invade a small 3rd world country.

Note, though, that this comes as not much of a surprise. The latest I had heard was that the South Korean bookseller Kyobo, Qualcomm’s first partner, was discontinuing its only Mirasol eReader. And from what I was told at SID Display Week, Qualcomm’s new factory in Taiwan was facing yet another delay before it could get to making the Mirasol screen.

At this point the Mirasol screen is used on a handful of Chinese ereaders, and in spite of what the population would have you think the Chinese ereader market is actually quite small. That’s not a good sign that Qualcommwas able to make enough screens for the US or European markets.

But I’m not sure that imminent death of the Mirasol eReader is all that big of a loss.

Mirasol is one of the several revolutionary screen techs that came and went in the past few years, and like most of its competition there were hopes that it might succeed in the consumer market where Mirasol’s low-power operating costs might provide a great enough benefit to justify the high cost of making the screen.

PlasticLogic is another example of a failed screen tech. As impressive as it was when I saw it a couple months back, their screen was simply too expensive to sell well. After a couple failed devices, PlasticLogic decided to pursue a plan to license their tech, not make it.

Unfortunately for just about everyone, over the past several years battery life improved while most chips in consumer devices got more energy efficient. This largely killed any need to go with a more energy efficient screen.

And yes, consumer devices were the holy grail of the screen manufacturers. While screens do go on many another device in many market segments, tablets and ereaders were potentially the single largest market anywhere.

via

OLPC, the One Laptop Per Child program, is determined to switch to tablets for their next device, but the XO-3 tablet won’t be out until at least 2013. Not everyone is willing to wait that long.

Just over a year ago Thailand decided to launch their own independent OTPC program, and the first shipment is coming off the trucks this week. This first shipment is going to first grade classrooms in 20 schools spread across 8 provinces of Thailand, and reports indicate that an additional 800 thousand tablets will be issued to first graders this coming year

The device in question looks to be a 7″ Android tablet from a Chinese manufacturer. It looks to have rather mixed specs and is running Android 4.0 on a Rockchip 2918 CPU. (Luckily it gets better from there.) The 7″ capacitive touchscreen has a resolution of 1024×600, and the tablet also has Wifi, Bluetooth, a pair of 2MP cameras, mike/speaker, and a g-sensor.

The 7″ tablet costs around 2500 baht (~$81 USD). Thailand is also looking at a 10″ model, but the price of 6000 baht (~$189 USD) has been deemed too expensive.

"The students who will receive the tablets will be able to take them home, if parents and teachers allow them. The children will have ownership of the tablets after three years," said Education Minister Suchart Thada-Thamrongvech.

Thailand also plans to distribute another 800 thousand tablet to 7th grade students this fall, but not all of the funds for the new tablets have been budgeted until the 2013 fiscal year, so there’s always a chance that this program will dry up. The 7th graders will be getting a more capable tablet which is expected to cost around 12,000 baht (~$379 USD).

On a related note, Apple is also participating in the project. They’ve donated 600 iPads to be used by students in 20 classrooms, and Apple is also organizing training courses for teachers. "Apple will train teachers to use the tablet and develop education applications to share in Apple’s App Store. The project participants will be able to use iCloud service to store content. The project will kick off this year," said a senior Thai official.

Thailand has a population of around 70 million, with a school age population (primary and secondary) of  just over 10 million. Over the long term this project is going to supply tablets to all Prathom (grades 1 through 6) students, though it’s not clear when this will happen.

New curriculum is currently being developed for grades 2 through 4 which will make use of the tablets, but it’s not clear when that will be released to the teachers. The Office of Basic Education Commission (OBEC) that it’s ready to distribute the tablets to the first graders now, and that it has 336 learning objects ready for use by the students.

So will it work? There have been some doubts that the Thai government was truly prepared to retrain teachers to make best use of the tablets rather than simply tossing them in the classroom in much the same manner as the Peru OLPC project. But I am reasonably confident that this project will turn out well.

Thailand is currently in its second decade to reform and modernize its education system. They’ve made significant improvements in teacher to student ratio, attendance, and the general quality of teaching. While this doesn’t guarantee that the tablet program will be a success, it does indicate that the Thai Mibistry of Education has the right general mindset.

via Bankkok Post

For the longest time now I’ve been bugged by the fact that Amazon continues to label the 4 year old web browser on the Kindle experimental, but after today’s news I can see that  it is still an experiment.

A German security firm has just posted a proof of concept hack which exploits a security hole in the web browser on the Kindle Touch.

The security hole was identified about 3 months ago over on MobileRead. It seems that the latest update to the Kindle Touch added a new plugin for the web browser.

It’s a NPAPI plugin, and you actually have a variation of it running in your web browser right now. Ever open a PDF in the browser? That’s one kind of NPAPI plugin, but in the case of the Kindle Touch the plugin is set to look for commands embedded in webpages and then execute them on the Kindle Touch.

Okay that doesn’t sound like much, but it turns out that the plugin can execute the commands with admin or root privileges on the Kindle Touch. For example, if a hacker embedded the right commands in a webpage, they could erase your Kindle. There’s also a chance that the hacker might be able to get at the credentials for your Amazon account.

This is something of a concern, but I wouldn’t get too worried. So far it doesn’t seem that very many people have noticed the hole. There’s a browser-based jailbreak that exploits it, but that’s about it. And there are reports that Amazon is working on a patch which will close the hole.

At worst you’ll end up reporting fraud on your account. It’s a pain, but not the end of the world. Still, I’d give up on any potentially unsafe web browsing for the time being, just to be safe.

So apparently Amazon’s definition of experimental involves using all of us as guinea pigs. Hey, Amazon, take this experimenter back to the lab, would ya?

via

Of all the many infographics I’ve seen about ebooks and ereader, this is the first that shows real thought went into the design. There’s not much that’s new, but it does an excellent job of illustrating the changes to our reading habits thanks to the development of ereaders.

TBH, I’m not sure that we’ve seen the positive change described below – not yet. Sure, some people are reading more, but are more people reading?

More Infographics

via

An author who wants to give away their work currently has a lot of venues to do so, including Feedbooks, Smashwords, the Kindle Store, and they can even set up their own website. Last week Project Gutenberg  threw another option into the mix. It hasn’t gotten any serious amount of attention yet, but Project Gutenberg is now letting authors upload and distribute their own works. The new site can be found at self.gutenberg.org.

The new site currently has 677 titles, and it doesn’t quite operate under the same rules as the Project Gutenberg main site.  It’s being run independent of the main site (search doesn’t cover both), and while the 40,000+ titles on the PG main site are in the public domain (and thus can be freely shared), the ebooks offered via the new site are still under copyright. What’s more, not all of the titles are offered under a Creative Commons license.

You can still download the ebooks; you just cannot share them. This not so subtle distinction should appeal to some authors; they still have the option of adding a CC license to their ebooks if desired.

I have to say that I have mixed feelings. Yes, it’s a good idea to offer this service, and it ties nicely into PG’s own free ebook downloads, making it easy for authors to attract the attention of readers looking for freebies.

But I do wish they’d offer some format other than PDF. Say what you will about the format being supported on almost every device, it’s still not supported well on the Kindle or a number of other ereaders. I’d much rather have Kindle or Epub as an available download.