If they do, please let me know. I’ve been told that problem has been fixed, and if it hasn’t been then we need to raise a stink.

But if you’re not sure what I’m talking about, read on.

A few weeks back everyone started complaining about Epubs they bought from Kobo. People were transferring ebooks to other ebook readers and apps and finding that the formatting looked terrible.The line and paragraph separation looked wrong, the font size was off, and it generally looked like crap.

Some of the more tech savvy stripped the DRM and pulled the Epubs apart. It turns out that Kobo had been adding extra files to Epubs that are sent to them by the publishers. These extra files (besides breaking the Epub spec) were the source of all the problems.

I heard about this a couple weeks ago, and after asking around I got confirmation from 3 different tech people, all of whom knew what they were talking about. But rather than post a rant about it, I decided to find out why Kobo was doing this.

You may have known about the problem, but there was one relevant detail that wasn’t mentioned anywhere I could see. Did you know that Kobo has always had their own internal Epub format? It’s been there for as long as they’ve sold Epub, but it was only recently that anyone noticed.

The problem, as I understood it, was that Kobo’s internal format had been escaping into the wild. And it had only been happening for a short while – even though Kobo had been selling Epubs for a couple years now.

Doesn’t that make you wonder what changed? And that’s why I asked before I posted.

I’m told that it was a technical error, and that it has been fixed. Also, I was told that Kobo did not intend for the modified file to get into the hands of customers. According to my source at Kobo, you shouldn’t see any more of the funky looking Epub.

—

But has the problem really been fixed? I’m not disagreeing with my source, but if you still see the bad formatting in the next Epub you download then the problem is obviously not as fixed as Kobo thinks.

Please let me know if you keep getting the funky looking Epubs.

—
For more ebook news, subscribe to the RSS feed or the daily email newsletter. You can also follow me on Twitter: @thDigitalReader or find me on FaceBook.

Yesterday I reported on the rumor that B&N wanted to sell off Sterling Publishing, and naturally I assumed that B&N had decided that digital was the future. Today I learned that B&N is looking to sell off the Nook business unit. Apparently digital isn’t the future either.

B&N put out a press release this morning. Buried in with the glad tidings about great sales over Christmas was a mention that B&N was looking at "strategic exploratory work to separate the NOOK business."

They want to sell it.

But first, B&N also released a few details on this past holiday season. The total unit salesfor the ebook readers were up 70% over last year.  The sales reports were mixes. The NookColor and NookTablet sold well, but the Nook Touch did not meet expectations. Digital content was also up, with apps, ebooks and the periodicals from the digital newsstand selling at over twice the rate of last year.

Sales from the website were up 43% over last year,  to $327 million. According to B&N this "increase was driven by continued growth of the NOOK business, offset by a decline in online physical product sales." The brick and mortar stores saw a spike in sales of 2.5%, to $1.2 billion. B&N also reported seeing a bump in sales from the closure of Borders. That bump tis expected to be about $200 million to $230 million in fiscal 2012.

I cannot help but wonder if today’s and yesterday’s news are related. I posited yesterday that B&N wanted to recover the capital invested in Sterling so they could invest in digital.  And today it looks like B&N is looking to take a step back from the development side of its digital business. Note that sales were good, so this probably isn’t a retail question.

But it could mean any number of things.

At the very least, you could put the 2 stories together and reach an interesting conclusion. B&N wants to pull back from creating products (publishing books and developing the Nook) to simply selling them.

Perhaps B&N senior management has decided that they’re investing too much in developing the products and the platform? While they like being able to sell the product, having to pay all the costs to develop it might not be as appealing as it was back in 2009.

This might also be a hint that the Waterstones deal is going to get a little closer than we expect. A few weeks back I reported that one source had told me that B&N might buy Waterstones. Now I would argue that the deal could go the other way. Waterstones might buy into the Nook development as part of deciding to carry it in stores. It’s certainly a possibility, now that we have today’s press release.

In any case, something interesting is happening.

—
For more ebook news, subscribe to the RSS feed or the daily email newsletter. You can also follow me on Twitter: @thDigitalReader or find me on FaceBook.

I have the new Boogie Board RIP on my desk at the moment, and I have to say that it was a lot more interesting than I expected.

Early last year Improv Electronics shipped their first product, the Boogie Board. This was an 8.5″ digital writing tablet based around a new type of cholesteric LCD screen.

This isn’t your average tablet.  It might have a new hi-tech screen, but Improv built a product that behaved as not much more than a sophisticated etch-a-sketch. You might also think of it as a digital whiteboard, because like a whiteboard the Boogie Board couldn’t show anything other than what you drew on it and it also couldn’t save your scribbles after the screen was wiped.

That not being able to save the screen killed the idea for me. At least, it killed any interest I might have had in the first gen Boogie Board; the Boogie Board RIP is a whole other matter.

Given that this is an ebook reader blog, you can probably guess that I’m interested in screen tech. So I’ve been keeping an eye on the Boogie Board, and about 2 months back Improv Electronics shipped their second gen device, the Boogie Board RIP. This model costs a lot more, but it adds that one key feature that I wanted.

Now I can save the screen shot as a PDF.

The RIP has only 4 functions. You can scribble, clear the screen, and you can save the screen as a PDF.  After you save the PDF, you can then transfer it to your PC via a USB cable. The RIP has 8MB of storage, and that’s enough space for thousands of single page PDFs (each is about 2k in size.)

And there’s also a 4th function. After you install the companion software (Windows only), you can plug the RIP into your computer and use it as a Wacom type of writing slate. You cannot do anything more than the same 3 functions you had when it wasn’t attached, and I think it’s actually more useful unplugged. But it’s still cool.

You can draw on the black monochrome screen with almost anything, but a stylus works best (one is included). In a pinch you could use a pen with the cap on.

As you scribble, your marks will show up as gray lines on the screen. I found that the best way to use it was to write at a normal speed. This was quite readable. Also, if I scribble quickly the lines get thin, but if I draw at about writing speed then the lines are more visible.

It took me a few minutes to learn the best way to use it, but once I did I began to see the value. This tablet would make a great semi-permanent sign. I know someone who has the original $40 Boogie Board and uses it as a whiteboard (an alternative to notes on the fridge), but that’s just one use.

This tablet doesn’t quite do what I need but it’s interesting none the less. I seriously considered bringing it to CES so I could take notes on it, but eventually I realized that I usually needed to start any set of notes with a couple entries that I wrote at home. And when I go to a trade show, I usually have a dozen or more sets. That means I need to have a pad of paper with the starter notes, and once I have the pad I might as well stay with it.

But if I didn’t need to start my notes with saved info then the RIP would be great. This tablet could make a great replacement for paper notes in certain situations. For example, it might be usable for a student in a lecture.

On the other hand, it does save the notes as only single page PDFs. I can easily foresee that by the time I took a few dozen pages of notes, sorting through them will be rather annoying. I wish it could concatenate the pages into a single file or that the RIP offered screenshots instead of the PDFs.

Still, this is a neat little gadget. If you get a chance to see it at CES 2012 (or some other trade show), you should.

Improv Electronics

Companion Software Download

This post is the (somewhat delayed) second part of my Kyobo Mirasol eReader Review. I wanted to cover the screen tech separately because I thought the device it was built into deserved its own pummeling.

I’ve been following this screen tech for a couple years now. I first heard of it just after CES 2010, and I saw it for the first time a couple months later. Ever since I saw it, I’ve lusted after Mirasol (for the obvious reasons). It’s a low-power color alternative to E-ink which was supposed to offer video abilities and can be read in sunlight.

But the screen is not there yet. As I showed in the other post, it’s not all that much more energy efficient when compared to LCDs (at least the Kyobo eReader isn’t). And while this screen is daylight visible, the color quality is disappointing.

Have you seen the old demo videos posted to Youtube or possibly glimpses one of the demo units on display at a trade show? The production model looks very little like the prototypes. I wonder if the reason for the difference is how the screens were made, or possibly the fact that I can finally interact with the screen rather than just watch a demo video.

On a related note, guess who made the demo screens? Prime View International, that’s who. Yes, back before they bought E-ink, PVI was E-ink’s main manufacturing partner but they also did small production runs for just about everyone, including LiquaVista, E-ink, Sipix, and Mirasol.

The dominant color of the screen is silver, not white like an E-ink screen. The color quality  of the screen is best described as washed out  when the frontlight is on, and when it’s off the screen resembles the monochrome screen from an old PalmPilot (with a few hints of color added). Yes, it’s visible outside, and that does improve the color quality. But it still looks washed out.

In fact, I’m not sure that this screen really offers better color than a color E-ink screen. I’m going to have to put it side by side at CES to confirm, but I have the feeling that the color E-ink screen will only be marginally worse than Mirasol.

And then there’s the viewing angle. It’s difficult to catch this on camera, but the Mirasol screen has a narrow viewing angle (unlike E-ink screens or good quality LCD screens). I know it’s not fair to compare Mirasol and E-ink viewing angles, but the Mirasol screen is narrow even when compared to even LCD screens.

One of the Kyobo commercial for this device shows a family clustered around the small screen. Unfortunately, that scene is just not possible. If you turn the screen more than about 10 degrees in any direction, the colors shift drastically.  It’s still readable, but most subtle details are lost. I would go so far as to say that the viewing angle on this screen is actually narrower than some cheap LCD screens in my collection.

I’m really disappointed, and TBH that’s why I held off this part of the review for several days. I wanted to take time to really think about the screen and confirm my impressions. I had been unhappy with the Kyobo eReader’s performance as an ebook reader, and I didn’t want my dissatisfaction with one to bleed over into the other.

P.S. All photo credits belong to Mersfire, who is a much better photographer than me. Check out the review post for a gallery of photos.

It looks like I was slightly mistaken when I reported that the Aakash tablet was dead; it turns out that Datawind, the hardware partner, couldn’t make the tablet nearly as fast as they were sold, so they stopped taking orders.

Over a million of the cheap junky tablets were ordered in the first couple weeks, and the website was so active that their service provider thought the site was under attack.

Sales are so good that Datawind has already made plans to open 3 new factories in India in the first half of 2012. "We never expected such a high response from both corporate and individual buyers. We plan to supply 70,000-75,000 units per day once the factories are in place by April," said the CEO of Datawind, Suneet Singh Tuli.

In fact, the Aakash tablet is already the best selling tablet on the Indian market.  It hit that milestone back when it was still in the pre-order stage in October. About 400k aakash were ordered, and up to that point the entire Indian tablet market was around 300 thousand units.

If and when Datawind manages to catch up with existing orders, they plan to put the Aakash back on the market. But until that happens all they have to sell will be the Ubislate 7, the more powerful and costly model. This tablet is running on a significantly fast CPU (700MHz vs 366MHz), and it will ship with both Wifi and a GPRS data connection. The Ubilsate is expected to cost 3,000 rupees (~$60), not the $45 that the Aakash cost.

And that extra cost is probably worth it. I’ve come across a number of early reviews, including one where the tablet died in under an hour. Another reported that it has only a 3 hour battery life and that the touchscreen was best described as sticky. It looks like you really do get what you’re paying for.

Now, you might argue that I’m being unduly pessimistic, but consider those 3 factories that Datawind will be opening. Until they get the bugs worked out of the assembly line, those factories are going to make a fair number of manufacturing errors. At least some errors will be missed by QA and that means customers will be stuck with them. Given how much the specs have been pared down to reduce cost, I suspect that the cheap components will also contribute to a higher than normal failure rate.

via Times of India

Earlier this week the govt of Sweden formally recognized the Church of Kopimism as a religion, finally displacing Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster as the most unusual religious group in the world.

This church was founded in 2010 by  Isak Gerson, a philosophy student. Isak is such a religious file-sharer that he decided to form a group to recognize and protect his beliefs. He then petitioned Sweden to accept Kopimism as a religion. It took 3 attempts, but they finally did.

As of last week, Kopimism is a religion in Sweden. I’m not sure what value there is in this, Kopimism’s 3 thousand plus practitioners now have it.

Isak  is thrilled about the news, and he hopes that it will motivate more people to come forward as ‘Kopimists’. “I think that more people will have the courage to step out as Kopimists. Maybe not in the public, but at least to their close ones,” Isak tells TorrentFreak. “There’s still a legal stigma around copying for many. A lot of people still worry about going to jail when copying and remixing. I hope in the name of Kopimi that this will change.”

While I’m sure some will laugh at this (I snickered at first), there’s more to the idea than piracy is good. This is actually a group of file-sharers.  Do you like the idea of the Creative Commons, GPL, or any other open license? Then you share some of the beliefs of Kopimism.

This isn’t just about piracy. The core of Kopimism is about the value of  freely sharing knowledge. In fact, if you look at the growing number of authors and developers who have already decided to give away their work under open license, you’ll see that the idea is both widespread and an accepted practice in much of the world.

Cory Doctorow behaves like a practicing Kopimist, and so does Lawrence Lessig. Gary Hart, the founder of Project Gutenberg, could arguably be considered the patron saint of Kopimism.And that is not a joke. Why do you think he founded Project Gutenberg?

Now, I don’t expect most to take it seriously as a religion, but the values Kopimism espouses are not the lunatic fringe. They existed long before the religion was organized.

Wikipedia

via

http://torrentfreak.com/images/kopimichurch.jpg

It’s been just over 2 years since Qualcomm first started showing off the Mirasol screen, and a little over a month since the first Mirasol equipped ereader hit the market.

And today I have one in my grubby little hands and can finally post a first hand review.

I’ve been looking forward to the screen on this device for over a year now, and I find it difficult to express how disappointing the actual device is. Yes, the screen tech is very cool, but the device wrapped around it does not live up to the hype that Qualcomm generated over the past couple years.

This is actually my second post on  the Kyobo Mirasol eReader, and the first was more of a how-to guide. There are a number of details on this device’s abilities that I haven’t repeated here, so I suggest that you go read that post as well.

I’m also going to cover the screen tech in a later post because I feel that the device itself deserves its own discussion.

Hardware

So what’s the device like?

The Kyobo Mirasol eReader runs Android v2.3.5 on a 1GHz Qualcomm SnapDragon CPU, but it is most definitely an ereader. It’s not a tablet, and just to make sure it stays that way you are blocked from installing apps. While I have not made any strenuous effort to bypass the block, all the obvious tricks did not work.

The screen measures 5.7″ and it has a capacitive touchscreen. It has Wifi, of course, but it also lacks any accessible internal storage. If you want to load your own ebooks you will have to get a microSD card.

There’s a power button and microphone on the upper edge, and on the lower edge is the headphone, microSD card slot, and USB. On the lower back of the device are a pair of speakers. It also has a set of notches on the upper and lower edges that I believe are intended for a case.

I wish I had the case, because the back of this device is smooth. It’s not easy to maintain a good grip (without having a thumb on the screen). I’ve found I cannot use it one handed. The Kyobo is noticeably heavier than any of my 6″ ebook readers, and I have to be careful how I hold it so I don’t drop it.

Battery Life

One of the key selling points with the Mirasol screen is that it is a low-power alternative to LCDs. Unfortunately, the Kyobo eReader is an example of how battery life depends on more than just the screen. The CPU, software, and general hardware design is almost as important as the screen tech. This is doubly true with any device using a low-power screen; the rest of the device uses a greater proportion of the battery power and a poor design can negate any savings from the low-power screen.

I’ve only had this device for a week, but based on how the battery is dropping with only light usage (with Wifi on) I am going to estimate that actual battery life is not much more than 2 weeks. Clearly that is far less than a number of ebook readers, and it’s also not much more battery life than some of the better tablets.

Reading Features

Qualcomm Kyobo blocked a number of tablet features on this device, so you would think that it would at least be a good ebook reader, right? Well, no, it’s not.

First, it takes over 30 seconds to open an ebook. Yes, 30 seconds. I timed it.

Also, the reading app crashes often. It kicks me out to the web browser, which is a little strange. I’m guessing that I end up at the browser because there’s no actual home screen. Note: this stability issue might be useful for hacking the Kyobo eReader.

But wait, there’s more.

I cannot get it to load DRMed ebooks. I tried repeatedly to authorize this device with Adobe DE, but the app never noticed it. While I have an extensive library of DRM free ebooks, I still feel that DRM support is one of the minimum requirements for an ebook reader – especially one that costs $300.

To be fair, I’m not sure that the DRM is a valid complaint. No one ever claimed that the Kyobo could support Adobe DE DRM. But you have to wonder why it doesn’t; that’s the dominant Epub format.

Next, this device does not properly support Epub. Yes, the spec lists PDF and Epub, but the reading app does not display the CSS correctly nor can it find the external TOC in an Epub. It also cannot use an internal TOC because it’s not configured to let you click on a link.

And the reading features are quite limited. It has a landscape mode for both PDF and Epub, which can be triggered by the g-sensor or locked in one position. I can adjust the font size or set bookmarks, and that’s the limit of the actual functional features. I can also theoretically search for a word, look it up in the dictionary, or use TTS, but none of those features work for me. The search does not work, the TTS is crap, and the dictionary is in Korean.

On the upside, the page turn speed is slightly faster than that of my Kindle Touch. But it is also slightly slower than the page turn speed of Aldiko (running on my Samsung Galaxy Tab).

PDF support is also lacking. There’s no reflow mode nor any set zoom levels (fit to text would have been nice). You can zoom using a inch (and you can scroll around a page), but it’s incredibly sensitive. It was very difficult to get it to zoom to any specific level.

The reading app is exceptionally disappointing. While I could forgive the latter several broken features, this app fails at basic abilities like DRM support and properly displaying ebooks. These are the kind if mistakes that you do not make with your flagship product.

Video

The video abilities of this ereader do not make up for the poor reading app.

Like I said in my getting started post, this device doesn’t have a video app. That means there’s no way for you to play the demo videos that Cheryl Goodman showed off for NetbookNews. To be honest, I think the video app was left out deliberately. But lucky for me this device is using a standard Android web browser so I was able to watch Youtube.

I wish it had been blocked.

This device has a slow refresh rate for video, and the refresh rate is most obvious with higher resolution videos. It’s so slow that I could often see it pause after refreshing 2/3 of the screen and then the rest would update. Also, it has an annoying screen wipe when the scene changes in a video. And when the camera view scrolls to one side, it’s jerky.

These problems are likely due to a crappy graphics driver, but it boggles the mind that anyone let it happen.

In fact, now that I’ve seen it in action, I can understand why this device was locked down. If this ebook reader had been released as a tablet then there would be shrieks of horror from almost everyone. The video abilities are that bad.

frontlight off

frontlight at 100%

frontlight off in outdoor lighting conditions

image credit: Mersfire

Wrap Up

I’ve carefully left out details on the screen tech and focused this post on just how well the Kyobo eReader performs as just an ebook reader. While I do lust after the screen tech, I felt that the rest of the device deserved its own review.

This is a most unsatisfactory ebook reader. It’s not only limited in features, but it is also unstable and less capable than most tablet or ereaders in its price range. There are many devices on the US market that offer a better value, and that includes both tablets and ebook readers. I would get one of those.

But if you’re lusting after the screen tech, I’d still wait for a better device. I freely admit that I bought this just to see the screen, but I regret that. I wish I had waited for the next model. It’s bound to have better performance.

  Update: The link to the firmware no longer works, sorry, and I have not found a replacement.

I’ve just learned of an update for one of the better budget tablets that came out last year.

Pandigital is one of the more successful budget tablet makers, and they’ve been releasing tablets since July 2010. Late last fall they released the 9″ Novel, and at the time it was one of the better  budget Android tablets. It’s getting a little long in the tooth now, given that it has a single core CPU, resistive touchscreen, and runs Android v2.0.

But I’m still seeing readers show up and ask questions about this tablet. Given that in the past week someone came looking for a way to update this tablet, I thought it worth a post.

Now, Pandigital never released any firmware updates for this device, but someone else did. It’s a hacked update, and it actually came out in March. I only found it today.  I just finished with the update, and I’ve confirmed that the Android market does work, and so does the Kindle app and the Amazon Appstore. The process went without a hitch, and I think it’s safe for the average user.

This firmware is based on the one that originally shipped with the 9″ Novel. It was copied off of one and then modified. It comes with a number of apps, including:

• Android Market
• Kobo
• B&N
• Kindle
• Android Appstore
• File Manager
• Spare Parts
• Task manager

It’s still running an old version of Android, and you can get most of the apps online. But I would still get this update just because it adds the official Marketplace.

How To

The process is pretty simple. You’ll need an SD card and you should charge your tablet first.

1. Download this ZIP file.
2. Copy the DAT inside that ZIP file to the SD card in your 9″ Novel.
3. Turn off your Novel.
4. Start the update cycle by pressing the up volume button and the power button at the same time.

I found the update via SlateDroid. The developer had a 9″ Novel back in March and April, but he returned. He’s not supporting it anymore, but there are a number of tablet owners over at SlateDroid who probably already have this update installed.

Qualcomm’s Mirasol screen has finally made it into the hands of a few bloggers, but sadly I am not one of them. Cheryl Goodman, the head of marketing for Mirasol, is in Taipei this week for a conference. A couple of bloggers caught up with her yesterday and they got to shoot videos of the elusive ebook reader.

I’ve already covered the details of the Kyobo eReader (price, specs, and content) before, so I’m really just interested in the screen tech. I turned off the sound.

The first video is by TweakTown. Watch carefully and you’ll see that the video confirms the long load time for ebooks. The video also doesn’t give a very good impression of the true screen quality. And about 3 minutes in you’ll find a video playing in the eReader. It’s surprisingly jerky.

The next video was shot by Nicole Scott of NetbookNews. It shows pretty much the same thing, only in this video the screen is lit by natural light. What do you think of the color quality on the screen?

Nicole reports that it’s doing just under 30 frames per second video, and that the hardware was capable of doing 40 fps. She wasn’t too pleased with either the color quality on the display or with the viewing angle.

This ebook reader is going for about $310 in South Korea, and it’s not available elsewhere. That’s probably a good thing; it doesn’t look like the Mirasol screen is ready to seriously compete with either E-ink or LCD screens.

Nicole also says that Qualcomm plans to announce partners at CES 2012, but I don’t see that happening. I’ve heard from a couple sources that Qualcomm is still having a lot of trouble with rejected screens. My industry source told me that they’re losing an incredible number (it’s so high I’m not sure I believe him), and my source inside Pocketbook says that their device is stalled because they can’t get enough screens.

But all that could change once Qualcomm gets the factory up and running. They broke ground back in December 2010,and right now they are setting up the equipment. The factory is due to open in the 2nd half of 2012. With a lot of luck, we might see the Mirasol screen on more devices in time for next Christmas.

Of course, that’s what Qualcomm said last year, and as you can see it didn’t happen.

On Monday I posted about the new Kindle Format 8 and how I was pretty sure that the Kindle Fire could already read it. It looks like I was right.

This morning someone left a comment and confirmed my suspicions. Kindle Format 8 is in beta right now and it is being tested by a select group of publishers.

I’ve checked with Amazon about when it will be released to the rest of us, but I never got a response.

My source pointed me at the guidelines for the new format as well as the tools needed to make KF8 ebooks. While I cannot share the tools, I can share a demo file I made. It only displays correctly on the Kindle Fire, but it does work.

First let me give you the file (because I know that you’re dying to try it). You’ll need to transfer it over USB; I suspect that emailing it to your KF could mangle the formatting.

Download

Second Demo (embedded fonts, tables, and more)

It doesn’t demo everything you can do with KF8, but it was made from a 2009 Epub (source) that used a lot of the more advanced formatting features (which at the time you couldn’t do with a Kindle ebook). Note that this is an Epub file, not Epub3; I’m not sure that Epub3 will convert properly.

Sidenote: I’m willing to post any converted files I’m sent so we can all see them.

My source shared a number of details, and I spent most of today reading the guidelines. Amazon is using a fair amount of proprietary tags for some features. For example, the zooming on fixed layout ebooks appear to be all Amazon’s html code, not software features. I was also told that the new format is more of an update to the exiting Kindle Format, not something completely new. From what I can see that certainly appears to be true. There is a high degree of similarity between these guidelines and the previous one.

I’ve converted a few Epub files myself, and I was a little surprised how well they transferred over. It looks like Amazon paid a lot of attention to the Epub conversion. I’ve read through the error report and virtually everything came through the way it was supposed to.

But KF8 doesn’t support everything, unfortunately. For example, the audio and video tags used in the iOS apps won’t work on the Kindle Fire (and they are mentioned by name as not working).  And there’s no indication of any plans to add them. My source also said that publishers had to modify their Epub files so the table of contents could be converted properly.

I’ve also checked and the guidelines says Javascript is not supported, and neither are some HTML5 tags:

• Canvas
• Command
• Datalist
• Script (reserved for Amazon use only)
• Base
• Form
• Eventsource
• KeyGen
• Input
• Embed (Only SVG is supported for Kindle Fire)
• Object (Only SVG is supported for Kindle Fire)
• Param
• Noscript

On a related note, if you want more KF8 ebooks you can probably go buy them. There’s a bunchaton of graphic novels available exclusively for the Kindle Fire. Those are almost certainly KF8 ebooks. The same might also be true for the KF exclusive magazines (like this one), but I’m not sure.

Now that I’ve had some time to think it over, I’m beginning to get the impression that Kindle format  is a response to Epub; it’s not an attempt to match the abilities of Epub3. There’s still plenty of room for Epub3 to get ahead of KF8, including in terms of active content.

But before that can happen we’re going to need devices and apps that support Epub3 as well as tools to make it. Who wants to be that we’ll see KF8 on the market first?

P.S. If anyone has an Epub you’d like me to convert, let me know. I want to see what this format can do.

click to enlarge

What would you think if I told you that jailbreaking the Kindle Touch/K5 was as easy as playing an mp3 file? I hope you’re sitting down, because it really is that simple.

A hacker by the name of Yifan Lu has just posted a jailbreak for the K5/Kindle Touch, and I just used it on my K5.

Update: A reader commented that he was confused by my calling the Kindle Touch the K5. I use this term because the Kindle Touch is running Kindle OS5, while the other new Kindle is running Kindle OS4.  That makes the Kindle Touch the fifth generation Kindle, aka K5.

How T0

I’m covering this first because it’s easy.

1. Download this zip file.
2. Copy the mp3 over to the music folder on your K5.
3. Play the mp3 (from the experimental menu).

If you see the screenshot at right then congratulations. You now have a hacked Kindle Touch.

The Technical Explanation

I told you earlier this week that the K5 (Kindle Touch) was based on a completely different code base from previous Kindles, and that turns out to be more true than I realized.

Yifan  discovered that the software running on the Kindle Touch is written mostly in HTML5 and JavaScript, not the Java that all the other Kindles use.  In fact, the menus can be thought of as webpages in disguise. Pretty cool, huh? I think so, because this means that it won’t take long for hackers to release custom menus and spice things up.

That HTML5 base is also the security hole that Yifan exploited. He assembled an mp3 with his hack buried in the ID3 tags. The Kindle displays the tag info while playing the mp3, and it will also execute the code in the tag.

This hack is quite simple. All it does is install a key to root the K5 and allow you to install other hacks. It’s really just for developers at this point.

The Future

I’ve now hacked my K5, but that doesn’t mean much at the moment.

Yifan reports that none of the existing hacks for previous Kindles will work on the K5. He also didn’t add any amazing new features with his hack; he just wanted to show that it could be done and thus open the door so everyone else could get started. We’re going to have to wait a while for new hacks.

On the upside, the K5 is written in HTML5 and its Java code is not disguised. It shouldn’t be too hard for just about anyone to release a hack that adds a new feature. I myself am hoping we’ll see an Epub reader.  I’m also looking forward to HTML5 sketchpad apps.

In any case, I’m glad I kept my K5. It’s going to get a whole lot more useful in the near future.

via Yifan Lu

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So it looks like the Amazon-Foxit deal was announced yesterday for a specific reason; the Kindle for Android app can now read PDFs. The update showed up in the Android Market a couple days ago, but it’s not being pushed out as a recommended update. I didn’t know it was available until I got a tip on Twitter.

There’s not much to the update. Along with basic PDF support and bug fixes, the update also adds better support for Android v4.0 ICS smartphones. I suppose that would include tablets except there aren’t all that many Android tablets running the latest version of Android.

The new PDF abilities are rather basic. I’ve tested the app on my eeePad Transformer, and the only thing I can do with a PDF is pinch zoom, turn the page, and jump to another page. There’s no typed notes, highlights, bookmarks, or TOC support.

Performance was okay. It was quite fast to turn the page and jump around inside a text based PDF, and the app also survived the PDF that Mike was using to crush an iPad. To be more specific, I was seeing page load times about the same as GoodReader displayed (8 to 15 seconds).That’s actually a pretty good result, considering that this was a killer PDF made from high resolution page scans. The perfomance may have been poor but it was on par with the best PDF app on the iPad.

On a related note, there’s no mention of support for Kindle Print Replica format. This is Amazon’s own PDF format, and they use it for some textbooks. I’d half expected to see the Android app get support for both PDF and KPR, but that didn’t happen. i tried a KPR file; it wouldn’t load.

Like the PDF features on Kindle for PC, there’s no mention of who did the code, but I suspect that it was Foxit. I’d gotten a hint yesterday that any improvements or new features may have come from them. But I’m also surprised that I got the hint; these features aren’t worth much of anything. Remember, the Kindle app normally supports bookmarks, highlights, notes, and you can share content. You cannot do any of those things with PDFs just yet. I would have waited and claimed credit when the app could actually do something.

All in all, it’s a good first step. It’s also a sign that fixed layout is going to be a fixed feature in the ebook marker from here on out. When even Amazon caves and starts supporting the format in their apps, you can tell it’s here to stay.

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Android Market

Amazon

Some time back, Dymocks, an Australian bookseller,announced that they were going to launch their own self-pub service.  That service is going to be up and running in about another 8 hours, and it’s called D Publishing Network.

And yes, it does fleece authors. In fact, it might actually be a worse deal that the Book Country service I told you about a few weeks back. That program charged both a extortionate conversion fee and a commission. I’m not sure that Dymocks charges a commission on copies sold but their conversion charges are just as ridiculous.

Like Book Country, D Publishing Network offers both print and Epub conversion and distribution services. You can pay for just one service or bundle them for a lower fee. I’m more familiar with digital, so I’ll cover that first.

Print only – $499:  They take your manuscript and typeset it for their digital print  option. They understand that (as with any typesetting process) that it may not be correct the first time and you can keep adapting for up to five times. You also receive a PDF ebook with this package.

ePub only – $399: Conversion of your manuscript to an ePubebook format.

Print and ePub – $699: Combined package deal.

Dymocks wants to charge you $400 AUD to convert and distribute your ebook. It will be sold via Dymocks.com, Google eBookstore, and they also plan to add more distribution channels in the near future.

Now, I’ve said before that $300 was a ridiculous charge for ebook conversion (that’s what Book Country charges), and this is even more so. If you shop around, you can get both Kindle and Epub done for under $150. Also, Dymocks is only offering the one format, and they’re not going to distribute it to the Kindle Store. That means they aren’t going to bother with 40% the world ebook market.

Oh, they will put your ebook into the Google eBookstore, but one, you can do that yourself, and two, that only covers a fraction of the world market. It’s only open in a handful of countries ATM.

As for print, that might actually be a worse deal. They’re charging $500 to format a print book and sell it via the Dymocks website. You also have the chance of getting the book into their 96 bookstores. The book will be POD, of course, and not have a traditional print run.

Update: I’m told that the price may not be such a bad deal. Someone whose opinion I respect says he’d charge about that much to do basic formatting of a print book.

I’m not as familiar with paper distribution as digital, but I’m pretty sure I can come up with a better offer. Dymocks is only going to sell via the one website in a few small markets (Australia and New Zealand). You can cover most of  Dymocks' markets by selling your paper book via The Book Depository. They offer free shipping to a lot of countries and I’m told they stock POD titles (Create Space or Lightening Source).

Also, Lightening Source now has a plant up and running in Melbourne. I suspect that Dymocks plans to have your books printed there. Why not cut out the middle man? LSI is more than happy to work with you direct, and they already have a distribution network.

BTW, one thing that sets Dymocks apart is that they focus primarily on Australia. I can understand that an Australian author would want to cover their home market, but you don’t need to use an Australian company to do that. But if you want one, I would check out Booki.sh. I don’t have current info on whether they will accept self-published authors, but they are a reputable Australian tech company and ebook distributor. You can read more about them here.

But you don’t need an Australian company to cover your native market. You can do that yourself with the right marketing efforts. What’s more important is that you make your work available to as many people around the world as possible with the least amount of cost and effort.

And that is the best reason not to bother with Dymocks.

D Publishing Network

via

Amazon surprised us all back in September when they announced not just the Kindle Fire but 2 ereaders as well.

The K5 looks like it is going to be Amazon’s premium ereader from here on out. It ships with the latest Pearl E-ink screen and a touchscreen based on Neonode’s infrared technology. It doesn’t have a card slot, so you’re limited to just the 3GB or so of onboard storage (as well as the 5GB available online in the Kindle Cloud).

Update: I just got sniped at in the comments because I’m calling this Kindle the K5. Well, it’s running Kindle OS5, while the K4 (or Kindle basic) is running Kindle OS4. That is a valid reason to call it the K5, IMO.

It comes with most of the latest software features, but it lacks the language support found on the K4 and it also lacks the ability browse the web over the 3G connection. That 3G web browsing is only available on earlier Kindle models like the K3, Kindle DX, K2, and so on.

Pros

• Improved PDF app
• Games
• responsive touchscreen
• A marked lack of bugs for a first gen device

Cons

• Web browser issues
• Feature tradeoffs

Hardware

At first glance Amazon 5th 6″ ereader is a rather hefty alternative to the basic K4. But while it is heavier than a number of other ereaders on the market it is also fractionally lighter than its predecessor, the K3 (according to Amazon’s specs).

It has a wide bezel around the screen with just the one button below. The back is nicely curved, with 2 speakers on the lower edge. On the bottom edge is the USB, power button, and headphone jack.

I found the K5 easy to use with either hand. The touchscreen is divided so that a strip on the left side goes back, a strip at the top opens the menu, and tapping on the rest of the screen will turn the page. While I’ve heard some complaints about the K5 not being a one handed ereader, I don’t see what the issue is. Yes, certain activities like looking up a word or navigating a menu works better with both hands, I can still read one handed.

Menus & Navigation

The K5 features new menus that were designed for the touchscreen, but the design is confusing and takes some time to understand. For example, I kept clicking on the home button because I thought it would open a menu while in an ebook. I know it’s a home button, yes, but I was instinctively thinking of it as a menu button.

And I’ve heard one or 2 complaints about the page turns. Like I described above, Amazon divided the screen so most of it is reserved for the next page button.  But the only reason I knew that is because I was careful to ay attention during setup. If you don’t notice the instructions then it would be easy to be frustrated by the odd behavior.

Reading

Aside from the new menus, I believe the K5 is using the same reading app as the K3. It has the same 8 font sizes and 3 font faces, as well as the same options for words per line and line spacing. It also has the same PDF and text to speech support. It has the same annotation options, only instead of typing notes on a physical keyboard the K5 has an onscreen KB. I thought it worked pretty well. I almost never hit the wrong key and the K5 always kept up with my typing speed.

You can search for a word either in the dictionary, Wikipedia, or Google by tapping and holding on the word onscreen. The K5 can also show you the popular highlights and let you share excerpts via Twitter or Facebook. But before you can share you’ll need to crosslink your accounts.

Update: No it does not.

The K5 also has a new feature called Xray. This offers background material on books sold by Amazon, and the content is pulled from the user generated articles on Shelfari. It’s quite fascinating, but not much use for me. Most of my ebooks are from elsewhere.

The K5 appears to be using a new PDF app, and it works well. It uses the same page turn options as the other reading app, which is good. And the zoom settings are gone; you now use the touchscreen to pinch zoom and scroll around the page. You can also use the touchscreen to highlight and add notes.

The PDF app is awesome, actually. You’re still reading on a 6″ screen and there’s no reflow mode, but the PDF is one of the high points for the K5.

Web Browser

The K5 web browser lacks the zoom settings found on the K4 and K3, but it replaces them with a pinch zoom. That’s nice, but it’s off set by several other issues.

I don’t think it’s using quite the same web browser, and I don’t like the changes.  The browser is set to always crop the left margin,  no matter the zoom setting. This means the text is close to the left edge of the screen. The left margin is far too narrow to be read comfortably on some websites, and there is no way to zoom out and make the margin a little wider. But the web browser did keep the article mode found in the earlier browsers (a viewing option that lets you reflow the text so it can be read comfortably). This means that the browser is not a complete loss. You can still read web pages; it’s just not terribly convenient.

I’ve also had trouble loading a number of the bookmarked websites (BBC, Yahoo).  I know my connection is fast enough, so I have to wonder if the K5 just isn’t up to the task. And I have to say that the K5 is rather slow to respond to swipes and zooming. This is probably just a software issue, but Amazon really needs to speed this . The K5 is noticeably slower to respond than my Sony Reader Wifi.

Games

I said in my first impressions post that I liked a number of the games on the K5.  This is indeed where it shines. There are a number of the Kindle games that are quite fun, and I do like how Amazon lets games use the swipe to scroll the screen as well as the inch zoom option.

In particular, I like games like Mahjong Solitaire. This is a game best played with a mouse, and that’s why it works better with a touchscreen than with the d-pad (on the K3 and K4).

Unfortunately, not all the games work. It’s best to check to see if the game is compatible before you buy it. But that is easy to do. As you can see in the screenshot at right, Amazon tracks apps based on their compatibility with specific Kindles.

Opinion

This is a nice ereader, but it still has tradeoffs. If you buy it you should first weigh what it loses vs what it gains. For example, it has more storage than the K4, but it lacks the language support. It has a touchscreen, but it loses the keyboard and the 3G web browsing found on the K3. And the web browser gains some features but also loses others.

But it is a well functioning device, and it’s a solid middle of the road ereader. While it’s not the best ereader on the market, it’s also not the worst.  I haven’t found any worrisome signs that might turn me against  the device (like the touchscreen issues on the Kobo Touch).

All in all, I have to say that the touchscreen is what makes the K5 worthwhile. Between PDFs, reading, games, and the web browser, Amazon actually put a fair amount of work into integrating the touchscreen. It’s much more useful than I expected going in.

Specs

• 6″ Pearl E-ink screen (800×600)
• 16 levels of grayscale
• IR touchscreen (Neonode zForce)
• 3.2GB Flash storage
• Wifi, 3G
• speakers, headphone jack
• ebook support: AZW, TXT, PDF, MOBI, PRC
• audio support: , Audible, mp3
• Dimensions: 4.7 in x 0.4 in x 6.8 in
• Weight 7.5 oz

About 4 months back I posted the FCC paperwork for the Slick ER-701 ereader, a new budget device that was going to be sold by Southern Telecom. I haven’t heard anything about it since then, but today my competition found the ereader on the Sears website.

This 7″ ereader is selling for $50, and that’s a heck of a lot less than I was expecting. It’s also less than the price in Europe, where Trekstor imported it and is selling it for 60 euros ($80). Actually, most of the difference is because Sears knocked $20 off the price.

It has a card slot and internal Flash storage, but I cannot tell from the Sears listing exactly what those are. As you might be able to tell from the screen, this ereader was originally designed by Gajah. That means it will have a decent reading app, decent battery life, and at the current price it’s certainly worth buying. This ereader will likely also have decent video and audio ability and the several Gajah ereaders that I have reviewed all had broad audio, video, and ebook format support.

The ER-701 also comes tied to the Kobo ebookstore. I’m not sure how that works; this device does not have Wifi so there’s no built-in ebookstore. It probably ships with the installer for the Kobo desktop app, and you can use that to download ebooks.

If you’re looking for something basic then this is a serious contender.

Sears