Nate Hoffelder

The big 6 publisher HarperCollins (owned by Rupert Murdoch, curiously enough) has recently announced a new policy for ebooks lent from libraries. Libraries will now only be allowed to lend an ebook 26 times before they are forced to buy another copy.

Apparently HarperCollins believes that’s when the electrons that make up an ebook are worn out and need to be replaced. This story broke today because of a letter sent  out by Steve Potash, the head of Overdrive. That letter was only sent out to member libraries, but it fairly quickly started being passed around. Here’s the important part:

We have been required to accept and accommodate new terms for eBook lending as established by certain publishers. Next week, OverDrive will communicate a licensing change from a publisher that, while still operating under the one-copy/one-user model, will include a checkout limit for each eBook licensed. Under this publisher’s requirement, for every new eBook licensed, the library (and the OverDrive platform) will make the eBook available to one customer at a time until the total number of permitted checkouts is reached.

I have to admire some publishers; they work ceaselessly to make themselves only slightly less repugnant than pirates.

via Library Journal

That’s what I’ve heard through back channels. But I think the why is more important.

A software developer who used to work for Kobo has been causing a stir the past few days. He’s blogged this about Apple:

Their in-app purchasing system only allows 3000 or 3500 distinct items to be in your catalog (depending who you talk to). Kobo and Amazon each have around 2.5 million titles. Judging by the title of Kobo’s app, 1.8 million are public domain (or otherwise free), so some 700’000 are paid titles, which they are under obligation to the content owners to make available for sale to all their users.

Last night I got confirmation that he is correct. Apple’s in-app system can’t handle more than 3,000 items. This means that it simply won’t be possible for any of the ebookstores to use it.

I already knew they wouldn’t; they can’t afford it. But now we know it’s impossible. So what is Apple trying to accomplish here?

I’ve no clue, but I do know a couple other details. For example, this new rule about in-app purchases was only added to the developer agreement in September 2010. I’ve seen notes from a conversation with an Apple rep  that clearly indicated that out of app purchase was fine and that there was no requirement to have in-app purchases. This conversation took place in October, and it wasn’t until January that Apple changed the interpretation of the developer agreement. One of my sources also said that Apple changed the rule literally over night. Apple went from being friendly in late December to actively hostile in January. Another reported getting an app approved (under the old rule) as late as 20 December.

No one understands it (and that includes the big boys). At this point everyone is resigned to the fact that Apple will pull the apps come June.  Amazon, B&N, and Kobo are stuck.

And yes, I have off the record confirmation that they’re going to let Apple pull the apps. What else can they do?

One final note: What’s even worse is that this new rule will probably drive a number of smaller iOS devs out of business. A number of the smaller developers survive on making apps for the smaller ebookstores and other content providers. Those ebookstores can’t afford to pay Apple’s vig, so they won’t be hiring anyone to make an app.

I just came across a blog post by Wolfire Games, an app developer. They recently uploaded their first game to the Mac Store, and much to their surprise a pirated copy was already in the store.

You might have heard of this developer before. They’ve made a couple games and a while back they agreed to let one of their games, Lugaru HD be bundled into the Humble Indie Bundle, a charitable fundraiser. That’s the game that’s been pirated, and the pirate is claiming that because the Humble Indie Bundle was released under GPL, the pirate can do anything he wants.

Um, no. The code for the games were released under GPL, but not the actual games. The games have a lot of content that isn’t covered by the GPL (graphics, sound, etc).

Wolfire report that they’ve already complained to Apple, and Apple ignored them. I’m not surprised. Why should Apple care about the little people? They’re Apple.

Leaving aside the Apple bashing, this is not the first time we’ve heard of Apple selling pirated content. I’m surprised that Apple have continued to fail to fix the problem. They clearly have a flaw in their procedures, and ignoring the problem is a worrisome pattern of behavior.

Okay, it’s only fair that I point out this is only a few days old. You could argue that Apple haven’t had time to respond. I disagree. The pirated app should have been suspended within 24 hours, and then left down while Apple investigated.

image via Wolfire

I came across this interesting little tidbit the other day. Fnac are a French retail chain, and back in November they started selling their own ereader (alongside the ones they already carried). According to the magazine Challenges, Fnac have sold 12 thousand of the FnacBook since November.

That’s really not much, is it? I tried to come up with a way to convince you that this was a decent number of units sold, but really it’s not. Sales have been lackluster, and I don’t think they’ll improve. The ereader market in Europe is crowded, and it’s being encroached by tablets. (Why do you think Samsung pulled out?)

via Actualitte

My 9″ Pandigital Novel died in Las Vegas.  I didn’t break it or drop it, it just died. This was one of the many minor irritations that made the trip less than fun, but never mind that.  I’m here to complain about getting the gadget repaired.

Late last Sunday night I filled out the contact form on the Pandigital website. I told them that it had died and gave them all the info so they could deal with it under the warranty.

And then I waited.

Final Update: This company has folded. It has been handed over to a liquidator to be sold off in order to pay creditors.

And I’m still waiting. It’s been 9 days now and I still haven’t heard back from Pandigital. What’s worse is that was only the first of 5 times I’ve contacted their service department on this. I’ve filled out that contact form twice (the second time was on Friday) and sent 3 emails and received no response whatsoever.

BTW, if you’re thinking that I could have just asked my contacts at Pandigital to swap my broken device, you’re right. In fact, I told them it was broken (and how). I’m doing this the hard way because I wanted to see how good their service department is.

Frankly, it sucks. I had heard complaints about Pandigital from a few people but I hadn’t realized quite how bad it is. Basically there is no tech support or warranty. Once you buy one of their gadgets you’re on your own.

I cannot recommend that anyone buy a device from Pandigital. It’s too big of an investment to throw it away.

(image via miss_ohara)

I’ve just been told that the Sony Reader app is now listed in the Android Market. It supports Epub and PDF ebooks purchased form the Sony Ebookstore, and it requires Android v2.2.

That last detail is kinda funny considering that all of Sony’s Android phones run v2.1 (according to my tipster). Here’s the description from AppBrain:

Carry your favorite eBooks on your iPhone or iPod touch with Reader™. The intuitive design is ideal for on-the-go reading, allowing you to make bookmarks and highlights – and adjust font size – as you read. Synchronize your reading position, bookmarks and highlights with the Reader Daily Edition™. Purchase books available from the online Reader™ Store.

Yes, I know that it says iPhone. Obviously someone goofed. And no it’s not in iTunes. I checked.

I’d appreciate hearing what you think of this app. My latest device runs v2.0, so I don’t think I can use this app.

AppBrain

Thanks, De!

Editor’s Note: Scroll down to the second update for the proof.

I just got a tip yesterday that Samsung bought the screen tech development company Liquavista. They have not announced the sale, but I did find this job listing from 20 December (translated from Dutch):

HR Manager
Compagnon Partner
EINDHOVEN
HR Manager The position As HR Manager you are contributing to the further development and growth of the organization. Ean of your main tasks in the initial phase is to establish a framework around employment such as pensions. The profile you have HBO / university working and thinking and at least 5 years experience in an all round HR function. You are used to operate in a "sales driven, dynamic and international organization. Also detects yourself the following skills: self pioneer Very flexible Proactive Pragmatic Visionary Energetic Excellent communication skills Excellent command of English spoken and written Willing to occasionally travel abroad Full time available (40 hours) The organization has a new Liquavista division of Samsung. The company is active in the field of display development. The offer Location: Eindhoven Salary: between, ¬ 3800, – and, ¬ 5000, – gross per month, excluding holiday and bonus. Contact Information Simon Onck 073-7511716 Reference number 5806 english home contact search login Compagnon Compagnon Jobs HR Manager vacancy

The translation doesn’t come through clear, but it does say that Liquavista are a new division of Samsung. I’ve also gotten confirmation from Natasja  of ereaders.nl that Samsung are now listed as a corporate parent of Liquavista on the Netherlands Chambre of Commerce website. It doesn’t say how much Samsung own, just that they’re involved.

Natasja has better contacts with the companies so she followed up on the rumor. She reported that Liquavista have denied the story, but her Samsung contact admitted to having heard this being discussed in the office. He didn’t know that it had already happened, just that it was being discussed.

Now I understand why Samsung closed their screen tech r&d division back in August. They had already decided to work with Liquavista and they’d probably already started discussing buying the company.

in collaboration with ereaders.nl

Update (Tuesday): here’s a screen shot from the CofC website. It shows Samsung listed as one of the owners of Liquavista.

Second Update (Wednesday): One of Liquavista’s investors just announced that they sold their share to Samsung:

Gimv sold its stake in Liquavista to Samsung Electronics Europe Holding Coöperatief U.A

…

The sale has a positive impact of EUR 4.6 million (EUR 0.20 per share) on Gimv’s last published equity value at 30 September 2010. Over the entire investment period, the shareholding’s return is in line with Gimv’s historic average. No further financial details on this transaction will be disclosed.

That would depend on your definition of success, but I think they’re doing quite well.

Paper.li is a 5 month old news aggregation site driven by social media. It helps you publish a daily (digital) newspaper with content drawn from sources you follow on Twitter or Facebook. It doesn’t use the tweets, though; instead it uses excerpts from articles linked to in a tweet. The process is largely automated is largely automated and the result looks something like a newspaper.

It’s been a while since I last looked at paper.li, and I can tell that they’ve improved their layout system. I have to say that I find it a lot more visually appealing now than when I saw it last back in September.

My interest in paper.li is twofold. I look at it as a possible way to gain readers, and I also look at it as a way to find new information for my readers. It’s not very good at either task yet, but that doesn’t mean this won’t change in the future.

Right now I’m seeing about 5 times as many visitors from Twitter as I am from paper.li. I’d say that’s good; paper.li is probably less than a fifth the size of Twitter. It’s also less than 5 months old. But neither site is a major source of traffic so it doesn’t really matter.

On the other hand, I’ve spot checked the more popular newspapers on paper.li. They’re really not getting all that many page views. It’s hard to measure the daily traffic but the lifetime traffic for the popular newspapers isn’t all that high considering some have been running for 4 or 5 months.

My other interest in paper.li is as a source of info. But at this point it is still less useful than Twitter or my RSS feeds. Yes, I really am looking to replace RSS feeds; RSS is a slow way to get news. A post might show up in a feed 6 or more hours after it was published. Snicker if you want, but a link to that post will show up on Twitter within a minute of publication. Also, the news in the post often shows up on Twitter before the post is published. Seriously, in spite of it’s many technical failings Twitter really is the best real time source for news. Paper.li, on the other hand, is only published once a day so any news it has might be as much as 24 hours old. That’s simply not fast enough to suit me.

But that "daily newspaper" aspect is still useful. I wish I’d thought to use paper.li while in Las Vegas for CES. I didn’t have time t check my Twitter feed but I might have had time to glance through the aggregated content.

I actually have a third reason to watch paper.li, but it’s a little odd. I track all the new content sharing platforms (like paper.li) because I want to be ready when a replacement for WordPress comes along. I like WordPress and it’s a very good platform, but there are a lot of smart people out there messing around with platforms. If a better tool comes along I want to be ready for it.

It’s a little early to say yet, but this really could be the next big thing. Before it can do that, though, paper.li will need to find a way to break away from Twitter and Facebook. It needs to stand on its own; otherwise it will stay an appendage of the bigger sites.

P.S. I have a paper.li newspaper based on my Twiiter account: paper.li/thDigitalReader#

I wrote a post a few days ago about First One Digital Publishing, a new publisher who plan to focus on ebooks (yes, another one). I wish I’d taken a closer look at them at the time, because I’ve now learned of their rather questionable business practices.

They’re going to have a writing contest next month. First One are planning to use this as a promotional tool to draw in potential authors and to draw attention to the company. (Actually, this contest has brought them a lot of attention – just not the kind they wanted.) I have  no problem with the contest, but I do have an issue with the contest’s rules. Did you know that they’re charging a submission fee? basically this means you’re paying for the privilege of

7.  FEES: There will be a $149.00 entrance fee for each submission. The fee must be paid online before the manuscript will be accepted.

It actually gets worse from there. Any work you submit immediately becomes the property of First Digital.

All submissions become sole property of Sponsor and will not be acknowledged or returned. By submitting an entry, all entrants grant Sponsor the absolute and unconditional right and authority to copy, edit, publish, promote, broadcast, or otherwise use, in whole or in part, their entries, in perpetuity, in any manner without further permission, notice or compensation.

If you’re like me the t&c boggled your mind and you think you read it wrong. No, you didn’t. If you enter this contest you’re giving away your work and paying them for the privilege.

WTF?

I know that a lot of people are going to fall for it, but did they really think they wouldn’t get bad publicity? Did they really think no one would notice that this is a scam?

One of the things I was looking forward to at CES was getting a chance to look at Bridgestone’s QR-LPD screens. This is a type of color epaper technology that’s been under development for quite a few years and is only just beginning to hit the market.

Vivitek is the distribution partner for the ereaders with the Bridgestone screen, and they were at CES this year.They brought both devices I’d heard about before: an 8.2″ eReader and a 13.1″ (e-Pad as they called it).

There was a third example of Bridgestone’s screen in the booth; it measured 4.1″ and was designed to be shelf tags in a super market.

I only have a video of the 8″ ereader because the larger device just didn’t do enough to justify shooting a video. It’s targeted at the professional market and the demo software running on it was designed for real estate agents and couldn’t actually do much.

The colors on the Bridgestone screen would best be described as washed out. Screen refresh was slow, and the ereader couldn’t actually do much besides turn the page. (If you can’t see the color in the photo or video, try watching again in HD.)

As you can see from the video, the screen refresh rate was slow. But I’m told that the software is still under development, so hopefully that will improve.

The 8.2″ eReader is expected to be available soon in Taiwan and they don’t know when the e-Pad will be released.

I just got word over twitter that Amazon have enable ebook lending for the Kindle. Here’s the summary from the help page, and you can find out ore from Amazon.

Eligible Kindle books can be loaned once for a period of 14 days. The borrower does not need to own a Kindle — Kindle books can also be read using our free Kindle reading applications for PC, Mac, iPad, iPhone, BlackBerry, and Android devices. Not all books are lendable — it is up to the publisher or rights holder to determine which titles are eligible for lending. The lender will not be able to read the book during the loan period.

Amazon

Interesting story today. B&N didn’t bother to keep track how many Nooks they sold this holiday season. The B&N servers that are supposed to support downloading ebooks and Nook activation crashed on Christmas, and the servers are still down. The problem is actually bigger than that. The servers that support the B&N community discussion boards are also down. Apparently so many people are on the site, complaining about their Nooks not working that B&N can’t handle the load. I don’t know how many people are reporting the problem because I can’t even load the site.

How could they have allowed this to happen? Seriously, folks, they should have seen it coming months ago. Count how many Nooks are sold, and subtract the number that number that get activated right away. You’ll be left with an approximate number of Nooks that will be activated right after Christmas. It’s not rocket science.

Every site I know (that is involved with ereaders) saw a spike in traffic on Christmas day (and today, too). For example, my traffic tripled yesterday, and I expect to see about twice nearly triple the normal traffic today. MobileRead saw their best day ever yesterday, and TeleRead also  saw a significant jump. How could B&N not have planned for this?

It’s simply pathetic.

via Twitter

The 9″ Pandigital Novel is not one of those gadgets that get launched with a lot of fanfare. It  popped up on the FCC website a few months ago, and then it popped up on QVC.com without any actual announcement from Pandigital. I do find that a little odd, considering that this is the best tablet in its price range.

Update: This review is over a year old and slightly out of date. There’s a new hacked firmware for the 9″ Novel that adds Android Market and other apps. It’s worth getting.

If you want to know how good, this is the device I plan to carry around at CES 2011. I’m planning to go laptop-free on the show floor and only carry this tablet and a Mifi (for the web connection). Yes, that’s what I think of this tablet.

But I feel that I should also add that I keep seeing a hardware problem. My tablet kept turning itself on when left unsupervised.  On several occasions I’ve opened the case in the morning and found the battery depleted.

Hardware

The 9″ Pandigital Tablet is based on a 9″ LCD screen (800×480) with a resistive touchscreen, Wifi, accelerometer, stylus, SD card slot, and 2 GB Flash. It runs Android v2.0 (which means you’ll be able to install most apps). On the upper edge is the Sd card slot and the USB port. On the left edge is the power jack, and on the right edge is the power button, volume buttons, and headphone jack. There are 4 buttons on the front below the screen: back, home, menu, and forward.

It ships with a case, power supply, USB cable, and an 8GB microSD card. Yes, the card size is strange. But it works, so who cares. And as much as I appreciate the case I do wish it didn’t stink so much; fortunately the smell faded after a few days.

It has a stylus, but I didn’t need it. I was quite content with using my fingers. The screen is very responsive. Oh, and if you are concerned about the screen resolution, I have to say that I wasn’t bothered by it (and I’m picky). I expect that the only ones who will notice and be bothered by the screen resolution are tech snobs (like me). The geometry is a little odd, I must admit, but it works.

I’ve been using this tablet late at night. With the WordPress app I can visit TDR and approve posts as well as leave short responses. I don’t think i could use this tablet for a full blog post, but for short stuff it’s great. And this is the first Android tablet that I thought was worth using for this purpose.

Apps

It ships with the same apps as the other Novel tablets, of course: browser, email, Facebook, etc. And like the other Novels this tablet doesn’t have the Android market. That wasn’t a problem, though. I didn’t have any trouble finding apps for this tablet becuase I used to be my favorite app store, SlideMe.

I have my usual apps, but there’s one in particular that I’d like to mention. I recently discovered a web browser called Dolphin. Do you want to know how good it is? This is the first time that I’ve mentioned browsing as a strength of Android tablets. Actually, it’s so good that I stopped installing my usual web apps so I could replace them with Dolphin.

Video & Audio

I tested the 9″ Novel with my usual videos. It did not do well. It had trouble playing the sample video (640×480 at 30fps) that shipped with the tablet without dropping frames, and it completely failed on my test videos (720p MOV). This isn’t going to be PMP, ever.

I also tested it with some Youtube videos. The videos streamed without pause or jumps. Sound quality was okay, but the built in speaker wasn’t nearly loud enough even for a quiet room. But there’s a headphone jack,  so it’s not a serious problem.

Reading experience

The Novel shipped with Pandigital’s usual reading app, of course, but I never like it. I went and got Aldiko and Kindle right away. Now that I’ve imported my ebook library, I’m happy with the tablet.

I also want to mention that the PD reading app does a very good job with PDFs on the 9″ screen. You can use your fingers to scroll around the screen while zoomed, and yes, you can reflow a PDF.

Opinion

I think I’ve made it clear that I really like this tablet. If you’re trying to decide between the larger and smaller Novels, let me assure you that the extra few inches of screen real estate is worth it.

Do you recall that tablet with an odd screen size that I showed you last month? It’s now available from the Home Shopping Network for $199.

The Next3 is based on a 8.4″ LCD screen (800×600). According to the spec sheet it has 2GB Flash, a SD card slot, Wifi, accelerometer, headphone jack, and speakers. Like the Next2 I reviewed last week, the Next3 is tied to the Borders ebookstore.

But unlike the Next2, the Next3 runs Android v2.1. This is very good news; it means that you shouldn’t have trouble installing apps.

I’d want to get my hands on it before making a recommendation, but at $200 i think this might be a good value. The Next2 was a decent tablet, and I expect the Next3 to be a good one, too.

I finally got my hands on one of the Next2 ereaders I showed you a couple months ago. This is a pretty decent ereader, and it was slightly better than I expected.

Read on for my review.

Hardware

This is a minimalist ereader based on an Android tablet. It has a 7″ (800×480) resistive touchscreen, 2GB Flash, a SD card slot, Wifi, accelerometer, a headphone jack, and 2 page turn buttons. It runs Android v1.5. It ships with a reversible case, USB cord, and power supply.

You can’t swap the page turn buttons, but I didn’t find that to be such a problem. And TBH, I’m pleased just to have the buttons. I have the feeling that this was a hybrid design. They took a tablet and changed it just enough to make it a usable ereader.

The resistive touchscreen is the good kind (trust me, there’s a difference) and I thought it was easy to use and more responsive than some I’ve had my hands on. This tablet lacks the 3 standard Android buttons, but that’s okay. They’re on the taskbar at the top of the screen.

Apps

Since the Next2 runs v1.5, you will have trouble installing apps. So it’s good that it ships with certain basics such as a file manager, web browser, email, an app store, as well as a Youtube app. All are the basic apps you’d find on any Android tablet and they work fine, with the exception of the Youtube app.

Update: The Next2 got a firmware update early this year. Current models should be running Android v2.1, a much newer version of the OS.  it should be a lot easier to find and install apps.

As you might know, the Youtube app for Android can’t play all Youtube videos. But this one might be kinda funky. I’ve searched for my standard test clips and I can’t find them. This is rather odd. I’ve found them with other versions of the Youtube app, so I really don’t know why they don’t turn up on the Next2.

The app store is one I’ve seen before. It’s okay, but it’s one of the smaller stores and the selection isn’t very good. It also doesn’t help you screen for compatible apps.

Sidenote: if you’re interested, one of my test videos on Youtube is "High on Firefly". I use it for an audio test because there is one particular word that poor speakers will screw up. Play the video and listen for the line "he lives by one law – Murphy’s". If the last word sounds like "herpes" then the speakers are poor quality.

Video & Audio

It ships with video and audio players, yes. I don’t have the hearing to judge audio, but I watched the included  clip and it was shown full screen at 30 fps without dropping any frames. For a budget tablet, that is impressive. But then I played a couple clips I shot myself. The Next2 can’t handle MOV 720p at 30fps.The video and audio don’t stay in sync.

I don’t expect it to play full screen, but I think it should at least be able to handle the file and gracefully downgrade it. I have other tablets that can do that much.

Reading Experience

The Next2 is tied to the Borders ebookstore, and the registration process is a pain. They want me to enter my Adobe ID, which tells me that this isn’t using the borders/kobo app, just the Borders ebookstore. Fortunately, you don’t have to have a Borders account to read your own ebooks.

Sidenote: I usually don’t bother to authorize my ereaders. I will do it sometimes in order to make sure a particular device can or if I’m helping someone troubleshoot. But it’s generally too much of a nuisance. As a rule I download an ebook and strip the DRM right away. It’s much less hassle to just get rid of it right away. DRM is a pain in the ass.

The only annotation option is bookmarks, and the only font option is font size (5 sizes). But it does at least have TOC support and a jump to page option.

Page turn speed was okay for both Epub and PDF (when not in zoom mode). When you zoom in on a PDF, page turn is quite slow. But on the upside you can use the touchscreen to scroll around each page of the PDF.

The Next2 can’t reflow PDFs, only zoom. This isn’t much of a problem for a 7″ screen, but the Next2 also can’t crop the PDF (remove the white space around the edges). That is a shortcoming, because on 7″ screen the standard PDF is quite readable if you can crop it.

Opinion

All in all, I’m rather pleased with this ereader. It’s comfortable to hold and page turns are reasonably fast. But it’s also rather heavy, and I’m concerned about the battery life when it’s left in standby. Be sure to turn off the Wifi when you’re not using it. I didn’t and the Next 2 kept trying to stay connected to my home network (even though it was in sleep mode). This drained the battery in only a few days.