Here’s another nugget of ereader history that you might find interesting.

If you know anything about the history of ebook readers, then you probably know that Sony have been in this industry for quite some time. The released the first Sony reader, the PRS-500, in 2006. And before that they also released the Sony Librie in 2005 (only in Japan). But long before Sony released the Librie, they also released the Data Discman.

Sony have been dabbling in the ereader market for a lot longer than you realize, and they actually released their first Data Discman in 1990. By 2000, Sony had released a number of different Data Discman models. I just acquired another one via  Ebay.

These weren’t the ebook readers you’d expect today and in fact they have very little in common with most ereaders on the market. The Data Discman were conceived in a pre-PDA, pre-smartphone gadget ecosystem. This was so long ago that it even predates modestly priced laptops. They didn’t have many fiction titles available, and they were also rather expensive (prices started around $400 and went up from there).

The DD-S35 was one of the last Data Discman, and it was priced around 44 thousand yen when it was launched 10 years ago. Depending on the conversion rate and inflation, that would be about $600 to $750 today.

The prices limited the market to those who really needed the compact format, and that probably affected the title selection. Most of the ones I’d seen were reference guides, encyclopedias, and other dense information sources.

The Data Discman  used a proprietary cartridge that Sony sold but inside the cartridge was a standard 3.5″ CD. (No, seriously, you can still buy this CD size if you want.) The file format was also proprietary, and while the format has supposedly been hacked, I never had much success in burning my own CDs for the Data Discman.

BTW, there were actually 3 (or possibly 4) file formats for the Data Discman, not one. The base format only supported text, and the more sophisticated formats had images and audio.

The multiple formats made things a little interesting for end user, because the several dozen Data Discman models didn’t all  support images and audio. The various models also came in a variety of shapes, including slabs and clamshell.

I just got a DD-S35 off of Ebay. It’s not the sturdiest of the models, but it’s also one of the few I have that is completely functional. It has a keyboard, a 5″ LCD screen (320×240), speaker, headphone jack, and it runs off 2 AA batteries. My unit was originally released in Japan, so I’m at something of a loss to figure out what the symbols on the keyboard mean. On the upside, the DD-S35 does support the enhanced formats. At least it should; I haven’t found any images or audio to test.

The software is rather limited, but the hardware is quite well done. That’s no surprise; according to one source I have one of the last Data Discman model that Sony ever released. It hit the market in 2000.

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A couple different blogs have turned up the paperwork for the Kindle Fire trademark this evening and unfortunately for me, there’s a know-nothing over at Gizmodo who has misinterpreted what the paperwork means. He’s kicking up all this ruckus over what is a non-story.

First let me tell you what’s getting him all excited. If you go to www.uspto.gov and look up "Kindle Fire", you’ll see that it was registered by a Delaware company called Seesaw LLC. Seesaw also hold the trademarks for Amazon Silk, the new browser for the Kindle Fire.

Please do not get excited about this detail  because it is not news. Lots of companies file for trademarks via a holding company of one kind or another. It doesn’t mean anything.

Barnes & Noble, for example, file all their trademarks under a company called Fusion LLC. That’s just how they have chosen to handle the paperwork; it doesn’t mean anything more than that.

Also, the original Kindle trademark was filed through a dummy company long before the Kindle launched. Amazon used the dummy company to hide the trademark – not because they were planning to spin off the Kindle.

Sorry for getting pissy, folks, but this kind of mindless blogging irritates me to no end.

It looks like Barnes & Noble has decided to take a scorched-earth policy on future Kindle exclusives.

Late last week DC Comics announced that they had worked out a deal with Amazon. 100 of DC Comics' best titles are going to be available exclusively on the Kindle Fire when it launches next month. The exclusive is going to last only 4 months, but it’s going to include Watchmen, Sandman, V for Vendetta, and a lot of other popular graphic novels.

Naturally Barnes & Noble is a little pissed about the matter. They had probably been trying for some time now to get DC Comics titles on the NookColor,and to lose them to the competition? Well.

It took them a few days to decide how to respond. According to Bleeding Cool they first tried to talk to DC Comics about the issue and they were stonewalled. And that’s when they retaliated. B&N corporate sent an email to all stores and ordered them to pull all 100 of the titles covered by the Kindle Fire exclusive, including Dark Knight Returns, Fables, Blackest Night, All Star Superman, and Y The Last Man.

Don’t worry; you’ll still be able to order the comics and graphic novels on the B&N website, but you won’t be able to pick up the novels in store.

This reminds me of last year during the early weeks of the Agency pricing fight. Amazon were fighting directly with Macmillan over the pricing issue, and Amazon responded in a manner just  like B&N. They delisted all Macmillan they wee carrying and turned off all the "Buy Now" buttons. naturally it did not go over well with Macmillan, authors, or the book-buying public.Amazon eventually had to back down and apologize, but I’m not sure they’ve ever been forgiven.

Barnes & Noble might not have taken on as powerful of an enemy as Amazon did, but B&N also picked one that can afford to hold a grudge. DC Comics didn’t have a compelling reason to get their comics on the NookColor, and now they have an emotional incentive to refuse.

Let’s hope B&N didn’t piss off anyone other than DC Comics; they need all the goodwill they can get.

The French ebook reader maker Bookeen have just popped up again after several months of quiet. Now we know what they were doing while incommunicado;  it’s called the Cybook Odyssey.

Bookeen hasn’t released all the details yet, but they did say that the Odyssey  is equipped with a 6″ Pearl E-ink screen (with a touchscreen), Wifi, a web browser, page turn buttons, and it’s running on an 800MHz Cortex A8 CPU. The Odyssey is due to launch in Europe in the next few weeks, according to Bookeen, but the exact retail price has not been set.

The touchscreen tech isn’t named, but I suspect that the Odyssey uses the Neonode zForce touchscreen that has proven so popular on the Sony Reader, Kindle Nook, and Kobo.

This is Bookeen’s 4th ereader, and this time around we’re in for a treat. Bookeen have been mostly silent for the past year or so because they were working on increasing the refresh  rate of the E-ink screen and it looks like they might have really pulled something off here. They posted a demo video all the way back in February which showed off video, and then in May they demoed scrolling on an E-ink screen.

The video ability is old hat now, but I’m still impressed by the scrolling. That could be incredibly cool, assuming it’s fast enough, because it means that the E-ink screen is one step closer to being a functional replacement for a tablet screen.

Bookeen are getting more and more impressive as they get older. Their first ebook reader was the Cybook Gen3, which was based on the original and outdated Netronix design (it looked much like the original Kobo). Then in 2009 Bookeen released the Cybook Opus, a lighter and slimmer model with a 5″ E-ink screen. 2010 saw the release of the Cybook Orizon, which had a 6″ Sipix screen, capacitive touchscreen, and Wifi.

We don’t know the full details on the Odyssey, but I’m looking forward to finding out.

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It looks like I was right on Saturday when I posted that the UK Google eBookstore would open soon; I have to say that it happened faster than I expected. The UK branch of the Google eBookstore is now up and running (here).

According to Google, the eBookstore has hundreds of thousands of titles for sale in addition to the couple million PD titles digitized in the Google Books project. Google signed deals with a number of UK publishers, including Random House, Hodder & Stoughton, Hachette, and others. They’ve also worked out a deal with indie bookstores  via the Gardner Hive network. This deal offers the booksellers much the same terms as a similar partnership with US booksellers; they can earn a commission on customers they direct to Google and they also have the option of selling the ebooks themselves.

Readers can now buy ebooks and read them on all of Google’s apps (iOS, Android, as well as online via a web browser), but there’s no sign that Google have partnered with an ebook reader like they did in the US. The iriver Story HD, while not terribly popular or successful, is available in the UK so there’s nothing stopping Google from using it there.

This launch comes just over a year since the Google eBookstore first launched in the US (December 2010). The exact details haven’t been shared, but by all indications the US eBookstore seems to be lagging behind in the marketplace. Most estimates of ebook market share mention Kindle, Nook, and Kobo, while the Google eBookstore is rarely mentioned.

So now that the UK branch has launched, it’s time to turn our eyes on Canada, NZ, and Australia. We already know that Google are prepping the eBookstore to launch in those countries but we don’t know when.

via Google

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E-Fun have started shipping their latest tablet today, the Next8. It’s an interesting mid-grade tablet that falls somewhere between budget tablets that E-Fun first started shipping last fall and premium tablets like the Xoom, Transformer, Galaxy Tab, and the like.

The Next8  is running Android v2.3 on a Rockchip RK2918 CPU, and it uses an 8″ capacitive touchscreen with a resolution of 800×600. It has 4GB Flash storage, a microSD card  slot, Wifi, a front facing 2MP camera, g-sensor, and a speaker.

E-Fun ship their tablets with a decent set of apps, including a file manager, web browser, email and the usual. It also ship with the Kobo ebookstore as well as the SlideMe app store.

The Next8 is retailing for $300, and that puts it in an awkward position. For $100 you can get a 7″ Gingerbread tablet with similar specs, and for $100 more you can get the eee Transformer.

I first got a look at the Next8 when it cleared the FCC back in July. The  Next8 is a decent looking tablet, but it also had the misfortune to hit the market the week after Amazon unveiled the Kindle Fire. That kinda puts the Next8 at a disadvantage because it’s weaker than the Kindle Fire in a couple ways: CPU, screen resolution, and price.

Product Page

I’ve just come across a new tip today and I just knew that someone would appreciate it.

If you’re like me, then you may have bought a subsidized Kindle without realizing quite how annoying the ads are.  And if you’re like me, you’re seriously considering returning the K4 and buying a Kindle without the adverts.

It looks like Amazon noticed that a lot of people bought a K3 SO and hating the ads, and that is probably why they added a solution to the K4 before it launched. You can go into the Manage Your Kindle page and unsubscribe from the adverts.  This only works on the K4 (and probably the kTouch when it is released). It’s also going to cost you the difference between the retail and subsidized price. In this case it’s $30.

Getting rid of the ads is pretty simple. Go to the Manage Your Devices page. There’s a column on the list if devices, and it tracks which Kindles are subscribed to the special offers.  Click the edit button and then click the orange button.

I bought a subsidized K4, all right. What can I say  besides it was cheap? But what I had forgotten until after i turned it on was quite how annoying the ads are. I dislike ads so much that I’ve given up TV, cable, and TBH it’s the main reason I watch all my content online (where I can block the ads).

I forked over the $30 to get the ads off my K4, and it was money well spent, too.

It looks like I was wrong last week when I predicted that the $35 tablet wouldn’t happen; it shipped today.

Today’s tablet has almost nothing in common with the Hivision tablet that the Indian gov’t. had been showing off got the past year. Both cost students $35, run Android, and have a 7″ screen, but that’s about it. And they don’t even have the price in common; today’s tablet will cost students around $45.

The Aakash tablet is running Android v2.2 Froyo on an unknown CPU. It has a 7″ resistive touchscreen, Wifi, 2GB Flash, and a microSD card slot. It’s not clear what CPU it’s using, but some reports list the speed at 366MHz. I hope it’s wrong; that’s woefully underpowered.

The tablet is being provided by Datawind, a Canadian company that (in the past) made a name for themselves with bundling web access into the sale price of a tablet, handheld, or netbook. I came across this company at CES 2011, when they were about to enter the US market with a netbook and tablet. That never happened, unfortunately. Datawind are also about to sell a slightly better version of the Aakash as the UbiSlate 7.

It turns out that the $35 (1,750 rupees) price is real, but no one’s going to be getting it just yet. That price might happen in the future, but only after the India government places an order for 1 crore (a million) Aakash  tablets.

Students will instead be paying 2,200 rupees ($45). The Indian government negotiated a reduced price for  the Aakash  tablet by placing an order for 1 lakh (a hundred thousand) tablets as well as pairing down the hardware. The student version of the Aakash is missing some features from the stock model offered by Datawind. For example, it won’t have the GPRS connection. That will only be offered in the retail model, which is expect to hit store shelves in December with a price of 3,000 rupees ($60).

It may have taken them over a year, but the Indian gov’t. did eventually ship a $35 tablet. that’s a lot better than what i would expect from most government programs.

On the other hand, this tablet sounds rather cheaply made. Is a $60 worth buying if it’s junk? I would think that not having a tablet would be better than having a crappy one. The poor quality can interfere with getting real work done.

What do you think?

via

The  gadget cost experts at iSuppli  have just released their estimate of the parts cast for the new Kindle Fire. As we all suspected, the Kindle Fire is probably subsidized by Amazon and selling below cost.

Update: iSuppli released a new estimate yesterday. Now that they can see the guts of the KF, they think it cost around $202 to make.

But before you read too much into it, please remember that the experts at iSuppli have not seen the guts of the Kindle Fire so they don’t actually know what is in the Kindle Fire. There are so many wild guesses in this estimate that it might aw well be next year’s federal budget. In fact, I doubt that anyone who worked on those numbers has even been in the same room as the Kindle Fire. I’d strongly urge you to take these numbers with about a pound and a half of salt.

With that being said, iSuppli estimated that the Kindle Fire cost $191 in parts alone. Add in their estimate of the manufacturing cost and the total rises to #210.

I would guess that their estimate is probably on the low side, perhaps by as much as $30. But to be honest I do not know. In any case, we already knew that the Kindle Fire was a subsidized tablet.

Once I knew that it had a dual core CPU, IPS screen, and Gingerbread, I could pretty much guess that it was subsidized. Even if Amazon had stripped it down to the cheapest components possible, the software development cost, once factored in, would have been enough to convince me of the subsidy.

Oh yeah, that’s one detail that iSuppli can’t estimate. It’s a people cost, not hardware, so without inside knowledge it’s almost impossible to guess. But you can bet that it adds enough to the cost of each tablet that Amazon are probably taking a loss in the short run.

Of course, once they sell their millionth Kindle fire they won’t be taking a loss anymore. But I doubt that will happen for at least a couple months.

Kobo had a minor booboo today. Their new Android tablet, the 7″ Kobo Vox, has shown up on Futureshop.ca with a spec sheet, ship date, and a retail of $250 CAD.

Update: The product page is down now. Wow that was quick. It went up and down in less that 2 hours. Fortunately I grabbed a copy and saved it here. I also got a .

It’s now confirmed that the Vox is an Android tablet, but it’s not clear yet what OS it’s running. The 7″ screen has a resolution of 1024×600, and the Vox also has Wifi, 8GB Flash storage, microSD card slot, a speaker, and if the product listing is to be believed it will have access to the Android Market.

Battery life is estimated to be around 6 hours and it will weigh 400 grams. Edit: I also just got a hint that not all of the specs are correct, so I wouldn’t rely on them.

I’m a little surprised to see this tablet, but not by much I’d already gotten a hint a few days back that Kobo would be releasing this tablet, and that the FCC paperwork was just a convenience, not a sign that they had passed on the tablet.

But I’m also not surprised to see this because I know that Kobo have been working on an Android tablet for at least a year now. In fact, I have a photo from last October of what might be the Kobo Vox. It was called the Kobo Color back then but it’s basically the same tablet.

Given that they have been working on it for over a year, I’m hoping against hope that the Vox will have the enhanced Kobo app that can be found on the HTC Flyer.  That app is incredibly sophisticated and does a lot more in terms of annotation than any of the other mainstream reading apps.

Here’s a video, in case you’re interested:

via MobileRead

While everyone was distracted by the new Kindles yesterday, Apple quietly expanded the iBookstore.

Liz Castro got a tip yesterday afternoon that all of a sudden, publishers and authors had more options for selling their ebooks in iBooks. In addition to US, UK, France, Germany, Australia, and Canada, where you could already sell an ebook, Apple have also added 26 more countries as new markets:

Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Czech Replublic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portgal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland.

Yep, they added a lot of Europe to the list, which makes me wonder why Apple didn’t just enable an option for the EU as a whole. That would have been so much simpler. Apple is also not making it easy to add the new markets; each has to be added individually and you have to set the retail price one market at a time. In any case, the iBookstore is now up to 31 countries supported, and that’s a paltry sum when compared to Kindle Store (150+) or Kobo (everywhere).

Liz has also gotten feed back from a number of publishers, and most are a little frustrated with the new system.

Also it would be nice to be able to choose Greek as the language of your ebook since it’s in Greek and it going to be sold in the Greek iBookstore.

and

Between their near non existent help from iBooks itunes connect when a book is not accepted, to adding territory by territory for sale. iBooks is about as pleasant to work with as a proctology exam. (or so I hear.)

Apple launched iBooks with the iPad back in January 2010, and it has taken them 20months to add parts of Europe as market options. Hmm. In case it wasn’t c;ear already Apple aren’t going to put any major effort into iBooks. They are far behind Kobo and Amazon and it looks like they are content to stay there.

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So I’m sitting on someone’s doorstep a few doors down from 508 W 37th ST.  I thought you might be interested in 2 photos of the good-sized tent that Amazon have sitting out front. This doesn’t look like a terribly large venue (it has the feel of a converted storefront), but then again I have not been inside yet.

Update 12:15: They took away the kFire (and other demo units) before I really got a look at it, but this is not a make-do device. Not for $200. It’s slick looking, fairly fast, and it’s running on a dual core 1GHz OMAPS CPU. It’s running Gingerbread and I have confirmed that. The home screen running on top works both vertical and horizontal.

This will suddenly become the best tablet in that price range when it ships on 15 November. Oh, my, is everyone screwed.

Update 12:15: I still haven’t had a chance to get to the kFire yet. Will go do it now. Note that I barely got a chance to play with the basic model and I was not allowed to use the upper models.

Update 12:12: The Kindle Touch is just as fast and it has a new menu layout. Looks interesting. it ships 20 November for $99 and $149.

I’m told it’s running Kindle OS 5.0. I like the thought they put into the touch screen layout, even though they wouldn’t let me actually touch it. Page turns are both swipe and tap (in about the right spot).

FYI: The current Kindles will stay on the market for now and stay at current prices.

Update 12:06: Oh good. I just got my web connection back. I’ve just come from playing ith the new basic Kindle.

It’s a neat little device that drops the keyboard. It has no card slot, no speakers, and only the page turn buttons d-pad, and 4 other buttons on front (back menu, keyboard home). I noticed that it is designed to work with a dock (little metal squares on back). It’s very fast and very light 6 oz.

I confirmed that if you email a document to this Kindle it will save your file and annotations in the Amazon Cloud. I think this new feature is supported by the Kindle OS 4.0 that it is running.  It also has a neat trick of a second menu.Call up the keyboard, click back, and you have a second menu of search options  including  find, my items, store, Google Wikipedia, dictionary,

This is the D01100 from the FC paperwork I found last night. The $80 price is actually for the Kindeal model; advert-less it will set you back $110. Both are shipping now.

Buy it NOW!

Update 10:52: Ships 15 November.

Update 10:51: kFire to cost $199.

Yes, we are up to 3 ereaders and a tablet.

Update 10:47: Comixology confimred on the kFire. Also screen res is 1024×600. Kindle Fire has its own cloud supported browser called Amazon Silk. It works kinda like how Opera Mobile works. There are servers supporting it.

Update: 10:41: Dual core CPU does games great. This isn’t a stop gap device.

Update: 10:38: Now Showing off the Kindle Fire. It’s using its own interface, just like TC reported a few weeks ago. Appears to have a camera in upper left corner.

Update: 10:36: Whispersync now works for Movies and mp3 bought from Amazon.

Update: 10:34: Just pulled out Kindle Fire. 7″ IPS screen (not same as on NC), 14.6 ounces. Sells Amazon content including ebooks mp3s, movies, etc.

Update: 10:32: Still pitching service but now doing AWS (Amazon Web Services).

Holy shit. Amazon now have 3  Kindles to undercut the Nook Touch and Kobo Touch.

Update: 10:29: Now promoting Amazon services – MP3, appstore, AmPrime, etc.

Update: 10:26: Now showing new Kindle commercial.  Same 2 geeky white folks as last freinds commercial.

Update: 10:23:  And now the $79 6″ non touch Kindle. Ships today, weighs under 6 ounces.

Update: 10:21: Amazon just revealed the Kindle Touch 3G same as the Kindle Touch but for $149. Both ship November 21st.

Update: 10:16: Jeff just pulled out the Kindle Touch, a 6″ model with a Neonode touch screen, Price is $99. Also has new feature called X-Ray.

Update 10:14am: Bloomberg leaked the complete presentation at 9:35am. Yes, it’s going to be 3 devices that I foudn the FCC paperwork for last night.

 Update 9:51 am: Inside now and waiting for it to start. I almost got a picture of the new gadget but they covered it up before I knew what I was looking at. BTW I’ve heard via Twitter that someone at Amazon accidentally uploaded a test video to their Youtube channel. It’s supposed to be the same very high res video as RIM used to show off the Playbook’s video ability way back when. The Playbook could play it and that demonstrated its ability to stream the video to HDTVs and the like.

Update 9:37 am: We’re lined up inside, but they haven’t let us go into the event and sit down.

Update: 7:57 am: The big boys have started showing up in their fancy TV trucks: CNN, CNBC, Fox. There’s also a satellite truck around the corner but that’s been there since before me.

Update 7:28 am: Still no sign of any gadgets but Amazon decided to remove any doubt about who was throwing the party today. See the new picture at right. I think I might end up using this post to live-blog the event.

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I’ve just been given the most amazing tip about Amazon’s new gadgets. It looks like Amazon may have quietly put 3 devices through the FCC over the past few months, not just the one we expect to see tomorrow.

Update: I just flipped my prediction around. It used to be 2 tablets and an ebook reader. I changed because only the 1400 is referred to as a tablet. The other 2 are "electronic display devices".

Something you need to know about Amazon is that they are incredibly secretive when they can get away with it. They’ve sent several Kindles through the FCC, and they concealed the Kindle the exact same way each time. Amazon created a dummy corporation for each Kindle and then had the FCC hide all the identifying documents (photos diagrams, user manual, etc).

Today I have for you 3 FCC listings for 3 devices from 3 companies from 3 different parts of the USA. The listings have nothing in common aside from the fact that they have everything hidden, they’re using similar model numbers, and they have pretty much the same FCC label design as on the current Kindles.

Two of the devices have Wifi and the other has 3G. I disagree with my source about which is which, but we agree that these belong to Amazon. The similar model numbers and virtually identical labels are too much of a coincidence.

The image above is from one of the listings. That is the backside of a Wifi equipped D01400. I’d estimate, based on the diagonal, that it has a 7″ screen. I expect that to be the device that Amazon will show off tomorrow. BTW, the D01400 is from a dummy company by the name of Okakopa. The name is a Hawaiian word that means October. Some one at Amazon clearly has my sense of humor.

I don’t have time today to trace the dummy companies back to Amazon; that would have to wait for business hours, anyway. But I will be taking a deeper look into this later in the week.

D01200 (FCC)

D01400 (FCC)

D01100 (FCC)

That’s what the gdgt blog are reporting, but I’m going to take this one with a grain of salt. Ryan Block posted this morning that his sources at Amazon told him that on Wednesday Amazon will be launching the tablet they have, not the tablet they want.

According to Ryan, Amazon had to make a number of compromises in order to get the Kindle out the door in time for this holiday season. They decided to go outside their own team at Lab126 and signed a deal with Quanta. The kTab is reportedly going to look a lot like the Playbook, and that’s because the Playbook was the starting point (according to Ryan). This shortcut was used because of time. If Amazon want to ship by the end of October this was their only option.

It sounds like Amazon and Quanta made a number of changes to the design, but we won’t know what they are until Wednesday. The tablet is "supposed to be pretty poor" and is a "stopgap" measure. It sounds like Amazon are afraid of what Barnes & Noble might launch next month, and that they’re pretty anxious to get something out the door – anything, just so long as it ships.

TBH I never took the "kTab as an iPad Killer" idea very seriously, and now I clearly had a good reason. The kTab is clearly going to be about as well designed as the original Kindle. The software features will be good, but the general performance and appearance might turn stomachs.

At least that’s what the latest rumors say. I’m not taking a side until I see it on Wednesday.

Update: I’ve just finished reading and thinking about the TechCrunch rumor that Wednesday’s announcement will be the Kindle Fire. MG Siegler also reports thatthe kTab will be based on a Texas Instruments OMAPs CPU, same as on a number of newer Android gadgets (and the Playbook). The kTab is also believed to be running Android v2.1, which is not a good thing. That is last year’s OS and it feels like it.

I’m not so sure I beleive it. First of all, there’s no trademark for the term. Amazon have not registered Kindle Fire or Fire. That tends to make me doubt that they will use it. More importantly, Kindle Fire doesn’t sound quite right. It’s a verb- noun pairing, and while it does roll off the tongue it doesn’t quite have the same alliteration of just Kindle.

On the other hand, this is the guy who got the first look at the kTab. He clearly has inside sources so this report is probably true.

Amazon will be holding a press event on Wednesday, and everyone pretty much expects them to announce the Kindle Tablet. But have you considered what else they might announce?

I came across some code last night that might give us a clue.

Yesterday I posted about some new code that was found on one of Amazon’s webpages. An industrious Kindle fan had noticed that there were references to "prime ebooks", and that there were menu options for returning and deleting them (just like library books).

There was also a detail in the revealed code that I had noticed but didn’t mention in the post. I was planning to save it for Monday or Tuesday and then get the attention of the major tech blogs. (But then one of my readers pointed it out and I kinda have to post now.)

There’s unused code on the "Manage Your Kindle" page that (when enabled) is going to let you manage your uploaded ebooks in the exact same way as you manage any of the ebooks, periodicals, or audiobooks that you’ve purchased from Amazon.

And I’m not just talking about a fragment here or there; the code appears to be completely written and is waiting to be turned on. You can see a sample above.

The image above shows some of the possible attributes for a Kindle (has Wifi, Prime_ebooks, Pdocs_Archival_Support, etc). One of the attributes will track whether a given Kindle can have the personal documents backed up onto Amazon’s servers.

Now, we don’t know that current Kindles will get the personal document support, but it’s clear that some piece of Kindle hardware will  be getting that support. That’s the whole point of "Pdocs_Archival_Support".

This means that there might be a Kindle that will have the equivalent of the Cloud Drive that Amazon launched a few months back. You’ve always been able to upload docs to  the Cloud Drive but you couldn’t access them from any current Kindle. That is probably going to change.

Needless to say, that is a big deal and it’s arguably more important than the "prime ebook" hints. Of course, what could be even more important is that this new support might also archive your annotations as well as the ebooks. Now that would be a nice additional feature.

Everyone assumes that the Kindle Tablet will be launched on Wednesday, and it is safe to assume that the kTab will have the Cloud Drive integrated into the software. Amazon will already let you upload all sorts of files to the CD, so it would be a little silly if their own tablet couldn’t read the personal Kindle ebooks that the kTab can get from the CD.

I suspect that the personal Kindle ebooks will actually be stored in your Cloud Drive and that would mean that the Kindles themselves might get better integration with the CD. I don’t know for sure that this is a sign of better Cloud Drive integration, but you have to admit that it is the most likely possibility.