Nate Hoffelder

So this past week I’ve been having problems with Verizon DSL, my ISP. I decided to turn lemons into lemonade and have a serious attempt to switch over to Virgin Mobile. They have a pay as you go broadband plan with unlimited internet for $40.

Other than the Kindle, this was my first wireless plan. I liked the price, and I liked that I could take the connection with me. I’ve been using it since Monday (yes, my Verizon connection has been down for 3 days). BTW, this is the second time I used it. I also used it on my trip to Philadelphia last month, with similar speeds.

Virgin Mobile are using the Sprint network, and supposedly have good data coverage in my area.  Would you be surprised to find out that good coverage means a download speed of 20KBps? I was. Let me give you some details to compare it to. An old dial up modem can download at 56KBps. My Verizon DSL had a download speed of 200KBps (when it worked).

I can’t beleive anyone is actually paying for this.  Yes, it’s great to get information whenever, but I think of it this way: I’m paying how much for how little?

This is giving me a whole new understanding of 3G data networks. I really don’t understand why anyone would get a 3G equipped iPad or tablet. The benefits do not outweigh the cost.

Do you recall when I told you about KindleQuest, a website that runs adventure games like Zork for your Kindle? Amazon just released an app that removes the need for an internet connection.

It’s called Dusk World, and after playing with it for a few minutes I’d say it’s closer to the old Choose-your-own-Adventure books than it is to Zork. The price is $5.99, and it only works on a Kindle (not the apps).

Here’s what Amazon had to say:

Dusk World is an interactive story for Kindle devices that combines interactivity with a graphic novel. The story takes place in Dusk City and combines crime, mystery, superhero and classic noir elements to create a vivid landscape full of colorful characters for you to interact with. The choices you make as Agent Patriot will lead you down different paths that determine the fate of both Dusk City and the world, not to mention Agent Patriot himself.

Here’s a demo video (which may or may not work):

Dusk World

There’s a story going around today about an open letter to Apple  from 4 Japanese publishing industry trade groups.  According to the complaint (translated by Google), they are upset by the quantity of pirated material in the Japanese iBookstore as well as the difficulty in getting Apple to remove the pirated content.

I almost missed this story. When I first came across it in the WSJ, I thought it was just a rehash of the iBookstore piracy story from a few weeks ago. I didn’t understand why everyone was reporting on it; it was old news. I was wrong. It’s a month later and we have 4 publishing trade groups that are so annoyed with Apple that they released an open letter. Yikes. How bad must the piracy problem in the iBookstore be that they did this in public?

Is apple trying to let the iBookstore die by benign neglect? I thought they usually functioned better than this.

This ereader has popped up in several places over the last year. We first saw it on the JCPenney website last November, and it then showed up under the Copia brand. Both fell through, and it finally showed up under the Elonex brand. I’ve also been told by the manufacturer, Gajah,that it will be sold in Russia by Nexx.

Hardware

The Elonex 500EB is based on a 5″ (800×480) LCD screen and it has a SD card slot, accelerometer, and headphone jack (but no Wifi or touchscreen). Yes, it’s a basic ereader, but it’s the prettiest one I’ve seen in a while. Format support includes Adobe Epub, PDF, FB2, and txt. BTW, Elonex are also selling a 500FB with the same hardware specs but without support for Adobe DE DRM.

The power button is on the upper edge, and the page turn buttons are on the right edge. Below the screen are 6 buttons and a d-pad.On either side of the d-pad are the menu and back buttons. Below the d-pad are a second set of page turn buttons, font size, and music.

The d-pad has the standard problems shared by most d-pads, so I won’t cover them here. (I’ve been meaning to post on d-pad and joystick design – someday.) Actually, the d-pad would only bother people who know what’s wrong with it, so never mind.

I should probably tell you that my review unit developed a hardware fault. It now has a high pitched whine which surprisingly is in one of the few tones I can still hear. I still like the ereader, though.

One important detail that I almost forgot: The 500EB does charge over USB, so you don’t have to bother carrying the power supply around.

Software

The 500EB also has music and video players, a photo viewer, and a file manager. They’re all accessible under the menu button on the library screen. The video player can take a 720p at 30fps and show it without dropping frames. The image quality isn’t all that great, though. A lot of the subtleties in color and texture are lost.

The only annotation option is bookmarks. But, you do have some customization options: screen brightness, font size (6), font color (6), background color (6), and screen orientation. It also offers a page jump option and auto page turn option.

It does support PDF reflow, which is great. But you need to remember that if you reflow a PDF with graphs or charts, you’ll lose them.

The library menu has a couple serious shortcomings. First, the font size for all the menus is small and you can’t adjust it. Second, you can’t sort the ebooks by title. Instead the 500EB mistakenly offers you the file name (but you can see the author, which is weird). This will be a problem for me becuase a lot of my ebooks have numbers for file names.

Opinion

Pictures don’t do it justice. Seriously.

Right now I’m waitting to hear back from Gajah on whether they’ll send me a replacement. If they won’t, then I’ll start bugging Elonex.  If that doesn’t work I’ll seriously consider buying one.

I like it becuase it has a near perfect placement of page turn buttons. They are in the middle of the right edge, which puts them in just the right spot for me to hold the 500EB in my (rather large, male) left hand and read one handed.

Addendum: I just now noticed that it has a neat trick in the menu. If the file name is to long to fit the screen the 500EB will scroll the file name left and then right.

SmartphoneMag are reporting that according to the B&N rep they spoke to, the NC will be getting an official update that brings Android v2.2 and legitimate access to the Android Market.

The 2.2 update, or overhaul if you prefer, will give you access to a retooled Android Market, the typical Android home screen and even has pinch zooming with the browser. The Android Market app was still under development and was not on the device to see. I was told that Nook users may not have access to the full market. The Nook I looked at had apps loaded via the SD card slot and seemed to run fine. The device will still give you access to all of your Nook material via the current interface that will be switchable for the user.

I’m a little surprised, myself. If they are going to open the tablet, then why did they lock it down in the first place? It took time and money that will basically be thrown away in January.

This story doesn’t make sense.

Update: And now we know why it makes no sense. Android Guys are reporting that B&N have denied this story. The Nook will be getting its own app store, not the Android market. And there are no plans to have the Nook App Store available in January, either.

The GPO announced today that they will be partnering with Google to sell government documents through the Google eBookstore.

The U.S. Government Printing Office (GPO) and Google have entered a partnership to offer the public, for the first time, federal government titles in an e-book format.  The titles will appear on Google’s recently launched Google ebookstore, which can be searched, purchased and read on any connected device with a capable browser.

HAHAHA

These documents are (for the most part) in the public domain. They were created using our tax dollars, and now someone want you to pay for them again! What drugs are they on? And what’s worse is that Google will be crippling these ebooks with DRM.  They’re public domain, for pete’s sake! Google have no right to tell me what I can and cannot do with them.

Okay, I hope you understand that I am laughing because this is one of the more absurd examples of a convenience tax. Basically you’re paying so you don’t have to search for the titles yourself.  In fact, the press release clearly states that you can get all of the ebooks from the GPO from the Federal Digital System. (At least, you’re supposed to be able to get them there; the site is down.)

Over the weekend, the BiblioFuture blog posted a set of ebook predictions that Microsoft made back in 2000. Where they dug it up, I have no clue. But I’m glad they did. It’s fascinating what some anonymous MS employee that would happen with ebooks over the past 10 years.

I’m going to go through the list and dissect it. I do find this list rather interesting. A lot of the missed predictions could have come true if MS had gotten behind ereaders back in 2000.

And they could have, too.  By 2002 Microsoft had released their reading app (MS Reader) for Windows CE.They also released Windows CE 2.11 in 2002, which was a pretty decent mobile OS (and the best at the time). And in 2003, Mobipocket released kick but reading apps that worked on multiple platforms. (Amazon killed them.)

The technology was there; what was missing was support from MS and acceptance from the publishing industry.

2002– PCs and eBook devices offer screens that are as sharp as paper, with 200 dpi physical resolution, and an effective resolution of about 500 dpi with ClearType.

2003– eBook devices weigh less than a pound and run for eight hours on a charge. Costs run from $99 for a simple black and white device to about $899 for the most powerful, color magazine-sized machine.

Okay, these 2 were insane. There’s no way these could come true in only 2 and 3 years.

2004– The Tablet PC becomes a mainstream option for computing. It is a pad-sized device that supports writing as well as eBook reading, and runs powerful computer applications in a slate form factor. More than half of all eReading is done on PCs and laptops, but dedicated eBooks, handheld machines and now Tablets account for the other half.

2005– eBook title and ePeriodical sales top $1 billion. Many serial publications are given away free with advertising support that now also totals more than $1 billion. An estimated 250 million people regularly read books and newspapers on their PCs, laptops, and palm machines.

2006– eNewstands (kiosks) proliferate on street corners, airports, etc. As usual, airlines offer customers old magazines on the flight, but the magazines are now downloaded to eBook devices.

2008– eBook titles begin to outsell conventional volumes in most countries. The price of a new bestseller title is about $8-$10, but unit sales are much larger than average paper sales for similar titles a decade ago.

Nope.  None of those predictions came true. Tablet PCs were a niche  in 2004, but until the iPad it was a very small niiche. I find it particularly surprising that the advertising revenue prediction was so off base; ad revenues have actually dropped since that prediction, not grown. On the other hand, the digital kiosks don’t surprise me, nor does the fact they didn’t happen.  There wasn’t enough content to make them worth installing. And as for ebooks outselling paper books, *snort*. That will never going to happen, IMO. There are many things you can do with ebooks, but there are many more that you cannot.

2009– Several top authors now publish directly to their audiences, many of whom subscribe to their favorite authors rather than buy book-by-book. Some authors join genre cooperatives, in which they hold an ownership stake, to cover the costs of marketing, handle group advertising sales and sell "ancillary" (that is, non-electronic) rights, including "paper rights." Major publishing houses survive and prosper by offering authors editing and marketing services, rather than arranging for book printing. Printing firms diversify into eBook preparation and converting old paper titles to electronic formats.

This prediction was slightly off, but it’s now coming true. J.A. Konrath now makes more money from his self published titles than from his contracts with a Big 6 publisher.  And as for Genre Cooperatives, I know of several (Book View Cafe, which was founded in 2008).

But the rest of the prediction for 2009 weren’t quite as accurate. The Major Publishers are still holding on without any serious change in their behavior (aside from trying to strangle the ebook market), and some printing firms are diversifying  but not that many. Most conversion and ebook prep is done by tech companies or handled internally.

2010– Popular eBook devices weigh eight ounces, run for more than 24 hours, offer beautiful non-backlit displays, are available in flexible/foldable form factors, and hold more books and magazines than most university libraries. They cost less than $100 and are often given away free with the purchase of several books or a magazine subscription.

This one almost came true. The weight battery life, screen tech, and storage capacity are about right but we’re not quite there on price.  I also don’t think we’ll ever see the folding form factor.

The rest of the list is predictions for the next 10 years. I was going to pass on discussing them, but one caught my eye.

2012– The pulp industry mounts its pro-paper "Real Books" ad campaign, featuring a friendly logger who urges consumers to "Buy the real thing – real books printed on real paper."

That’s already happening, sort of. The magazine industry  have been running a "we’re not dead yet" campaign this year to try to regain the readers they lost to the Web. It’s not quite the same, but it is similar.

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.

 

The UK publisher Dorling Kindersley have just announced the launch of their app store where they now sell Android apps to the public. You can also vist their store to find links to Tunes so you can buy iOS apps.

Technically, the store is being run by Handango, not DK. Not that I’m criticizing; it makes sense that they’re using someone’s platform (it costs less than developing their own).

The app store currently has 2 sections, one for the US and the other for the UK. DK are also planning to add more sections for Canada and Australia, but I don’t understand why they’re hamstringing themselves this way. A digital market is a digital market; geographic restrictions shouldn’t matter.

ALso, I spent a few minutes looking at apps for phones that DK don’t have apps for  (Symbian, Blackberry).  DK aren’t doing a very good job of excluding other company’s apps from their app store. I suppose that’s okay, but how is it a DK App Store if it has everyone else’s apps?

DK App Shop via The BookSeller

The Open Library have just announced an updated version of their BookReader. This web baed reading app is designed to work with Open Library’s ebooks as well as the Internet Archive’s collection.

You know that the Internet Archive, the patron saint of deceased websites, try to archive everything, right? Well, the IA have a pretty extensive collection of scanned pd works converted to PDF as well as a large library of CC and user uploaded titles. That’s what the BookReader is for.

Some of the improvements include:

• Redesigned user interface that maximizes the amount of space given to the book. Click the down arrow on the navigation bar to hide the user interface. (The Origin of Species)
• Navigation bar that helps show your location in the book and navigate through it. Search results and chapter markers (if available) show up on the navigation bar.
• New Read Aloud feature reads the book as audio in most browsers.  No special software is needed – just click the speaker icon  and go!
• Tables of contents are being automatically generated for most books and can be edited or added manually through the Open Library site.  The chapter markers appear in the new navigation bar. (Launching Out Into The Deep in Wake of the War Canoe)
• Vastly improved full-text search.  Search results are shown on the navigation bar and include a snippet of text near the matched search term. (Search results for “hawk” in book of birds)

The read aloud isn’t that bad (Blio is much worse). If you’d like to see a live demo, click here:

The AAP have released their report on book sales in the US market for October 2010.  I don’t have a opy yet, but GalleyCat uploaded one to Scribd (thanks, Jason).

Ebook sales for October were $40.7 million, which is only slightly different from sales in September, August, and July. I’ve said it before, so I won’t bore you with a repetition. But sales have plateaued.

BTW, do you remember that chart I made a few weeks ago? One prediction I made was that the NC would cause a jump in sales.  It didn’t, but it also turned out not to be as popular as anticipated.

AAP Reports October Book Sales

It looks like no one noticed that Kobo announced their ebook gifting yesterday.

From the Kobo blog:

Give the gift of eReading…

Now you can easily share and give eBooks to your friends and family.  This is a great way to send a personalized, thoughtful gift, while avoiding the holiday rush and the crazy mall madness.

Kobo offers Kobo eGift Cards in a selection of fun and festive eCard designs to select from and send by email. The eGift Cards are delivered instantly (or by scheduled delivery) and can be redeemed anytime.

Kobo also offers the ability to gift an eBook! Have you just finished a book that you love and know that your friend would absolutely love the same book?  Now you can purchase and gift that book to your friend, so that they receive it on a special occasion – or just because!  eGift cards and eBook gifting are both great ways to send a gift to a friend or loved one who is far away to let them know that you are thinking of them during the holiday season.

I’ve been watching the tablet vs ereader debate for some time now, and I decided that it’s time to take a position. Tablets will probably never replace ereader for one simle reason:

COST.

Take an ereader with a 7″ screen. Add a touchscreen, a faster CPU, and Android OS (don’t forget the increased dev cost). Put it all together and you now have a tablet – which costs $50 to $100 more than the ereader. The cost will be even higher if you also wanted a camera, GPS, or any other extra features.

As it gets cheaper to make tablets, ereaders will also get cheaper. And they’ll stay cheaper simply becuase ereaders have fewer hardware components.

But wait, you say. There’s already a $150 tablet to compete with the $139 Kindle.  True, but does that tablet do the Kindle’s job as well as the Kindle?

Now, when we get a decent $100 tablet, that’s when the ereader market might start to feel the pinch. The profit margin will be so thin by that point that tablet features might show up on ereader becuase there is little money  saved by leaving them out.

By that point, though, I’m not sure we’ll still be calling them tablets or ereaders. The market will have changed to much.

Smarthouse, an Australian blog,  discussed yesterday’s Google bookstore launch with the managing director of Borders Australia (part of Redgroup Retail). He gives basically the same opinion as what I told you yesterday; Google can’t run an ebookstore becuase they suck at customer service.

James Webber, Managing Director of Borders, said that at this stage they do not see themselves as being threatened and that what Google is offering is not a legitimate bookstore.

"They could become a legitimate bookstore. They aren’t today," said Webber. "They tried to sell telephones too. They failed," added Webber.

He’s more worried about Amazon, with good reason. Amazon have already taken a bite out of Redgroup’s market share since the Kindle came to Australia in May.

Smarthouse