Charbax has posted another hands-on video from IFA, and this time around he spent time with Pocketbook’s newest tablet, the A10.

I know that it might look odd to see the buttons lined up like that, but that was part of the design. The tablet has a wedge shaped design with the thickest part under the buttons and the back is rubberized so you can get a better grip.

The A10 is running Android v2.3 Gingerbread on a Texas Instruments 1GHz CPU.  It has a 10″ (1024×768) capacitive touchscreen, and it will come with Wifi/Bluetooth, 4GB Flash storage, g-sensor, a microSD card slot, speaker/mike, and a 2MP camera.

Charbax was his usual charming self and he managed to talk a lot of details out of the tech rep. The retail is going to be 299, but it’s not clear if that is the price in euros or dollars. The A10 is supposed to hit store shelves in November, just in time to compete with the AmTab. The PB rep said that it had around 7 hours battery life, and if you turn it upside down the screen will automatically reorient itself.

It’s a pretty slick looking tablet, isn’t it? I really hope that the price ends up being $299, but even at that price I’m not sure it’s worth it. For not too much more I could get the Asus Transformer.

It’s only been a few short months since Improv Electronics launched  new Boogie Board models and today they’re ready to unveil their new and improved model.

The Boogie Board is based on a low-power LCD screen tech that was developed by Kent Displays. The idea behind the Boogie Board is that you can write, draw, or scribble on it with a stylus or your finger. The screen will hold the contents without using electricity. The only energy cost is when you blank the screen and remove the current scribbles.

The Boogie Board Rip is the model I’ve been wanting ever since I heard about the Boogie Board last year. It’s the first Boogie Board that lets you save what you sketch.

It saves each screen capture as a PDF and you can transfer the PDFs to your computer over USB. There’s no info on how many screen images you can store nor did Improv mention if you could pull up old notes and edit them. Update: Improv told me on Twitter that the Rip could save about 200 screen shots at a time. It cannot load them again.

Cost wasn’t mentioned, but the Boogie Board Rip will go up for pre-order soon on the Improv website and it’s going to ship in November.

I’ve just gotten a tip from one of my contacts that Pocketbook are going to have a new tablet at IFA Berlin, a trade show that opens this weekend.

Update: I have new info from another source.  The image at right is supposed to be the Pocketbook A10, and it’s running on a 1GHz CPU.

Second Update: I now have info including a video from IFA. Check out this post.

It appears to have a camera and microphone on the upper right side, and the upper and lower dots are possibly speakers.

I couldn’t get the product’s name, but I was told that it has a 10″ screen and that it will be running Android v2.3. My source also said that the tablet will have page turn buttons (WTF) and that it will come with Wifi and optional  3G. The price will be competitive. Unfortunately, I don’t have any pictures.But the announcement is only a few days away so there won’t be much of a wait.

Now, one thing my source didn’t mention was the Mirasol Reader that I knew they had been working on. Now that’s interesting. It’s probably a sign that they won’t be announcing it, but do you suppose it’s because the screen still isn’t ready or because they stopped development?

Either way, it’s a disappointment and it pushes the release date back again. IFA was the best best date (short of CES 2012) for Pocketbook to announce the Mirasol Reader.

I’ve been wanting to see Qualcomm’s Mirasol screen tech hit the market ever since I saw it at CES 2009. It was originally due out last fall, and it keeps getting delayed (again, again, and again).

This evening Amazon launched a fun new feature that’s going to thrill the rabid fan. How would you like to ask the author a question about the book while you’re reading it?

You’re going to need a Twitter account (and a participating author), but  now you can.

Simply open the Kindle ebook (it has to be one Amazon sold you), highlight a passage and type @author and your question. If you’re following the author on kindle.amazon.com, the question and the author’s answer will both become Public Notes in your book. The question and answer will also be visible on the author’s page on kindle.amazon.com.

If your question is answered, you’ll get an email from Amazon with the answer included. And even if the author doesn’t answer, other readers can do so from the author page.

Amazon has 16 participating authors right now, and you can find a complete list as well as a FAQ here.

You may not know this, but the Kindle has had similar @search options for some time, including @dict, @help, @store, @ur, @web, and @wiki. This new @author is a clever addition to the bunch. It’s also a smart way to start tying the Kindle hardware with the Kindle Social Network.

BTW, Amazon also secured the @author account on Twitter, but I should warn you that it can’t be used to ask a question.

via

The German book wholesaler Koch, Neff, und Volckmar announced today that they would soon be carrying iriver’s latest ebook reader, the Story HD Wifi.

They’re going to formally launch it at IFA-Berlin later this week, but I can’t find what the actual release date or who will carry it.  This is indeed the Wifi model, not the one that had previously been sold in Europe. Retail will be 139 euros. The Story HD Wifi will be tied to their ebookstore.

KNV is a distributor, not a retailer, and they support around 7,000 booksellers in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. They also distribute ebooks to their retail partners, and according to Wikipedia they have around 35 thousand titles in their ebookstore.

via

There’s been no formal announcement yet, but Bluefire Reader is now available in the Android Market.

You probably know of Bluefire Reader on iOS, but unless you’ve been following this blog you might not know that Bluefire  have been working on an Android version of the app since last year. BTW, they already released an Android app which had been built for one of their customers, Libri.de.

Bluefire Reader is a wildly popular iOS app that supports Epub and PDF. Unlike Stanze, Bluefire reader supports Adobe DE DRM. It works with any number of ebookstores and it even supports library ebooks. It has long since replaced  Stanza as the touchstone reading app for iOS, and I would say that Bluefire Reader might give Aldiko, the leading Android reading app, a run for its money.

Android Market

If you’re selling ebooks through the Google eBookstore then you might want to go configure the selling options for Canada, Australia, and the UK.

A publisher friend of mine noticed this evening that Google offered a number of new options for his ebooks. We don’t know when the new menus were added, but he can now set the selling price, DRM conditions, etc for 4 different countries now.

Note that this only applies to publishers getting ready. Google won’t actually sell ebooks outside of the US just yet.  An Australian tried to buy an ebook and he could not.

I wouldn’t get to excited just yet; remember, Google had the publisher support pages open to the public months and months before the Google eBookstore launched in December of 2010. They’re just as likely to hold the international expansion for a few months just to make sure content is available.

Does anyone know when those options first appeared?

Edit: Couldn someone in the UK, CA, or AUS try to download the Google eBooks apps for Android or iOS? I want to know if you succeed. If the apps are live already then the expansion should happen soon.

Paul over at TeleRead finally beat me to something today. He got an email from one publisher that tipped him to a new Kindle ebook format.

Alongside Kindle (AZW) and Kindle (Topaz), Amazon now sell "print replica" ebooks. This is a completely new format and you need to update to the latest version of K4PC in order to use it.  (It’s also US only, darnit.) If you read the help pages, it sounds like Amazon have created a format that is something like PDF. Also, look at the toolbar that I copied from K4PC. It looks a lot like most PDF tool bars I’ve seen.

Yes, I have one of these ebooks (and yes, I found a way to fix my broken copy of K4PC). It seems to use a different suffix (AZW4) than my other Kindle ebooks. I would take it apart but that’s a little beyond my abilities.The file has about 150 pages (counting the cover) long and 10.8MB in size.

Update: I’ve been told that publishers submit a PDF for this format. My source is also pretty sure that this is nothing more than a wrapper for the PDF, but he’s not sure.

I tried to rename it as a PDF and Adobe couldn’t make heads or tails of it. Oh, and I just noticed that it actually notes the cover by name as well as the front matter (numbered i-xvi). That is most definitely new and strongly suggests that this is somehow based on PDF (or some other fixed layout format).

BTW, before you buy a print replica ebook, keep in mind that it requires the latest version of Kindle for PCOSX. That means that the DRM is very likely  unbroken (at the moment).

So far as I can tell, the new Kindle Print Replica format (KPR)  appears to be a full featured format. It has all of the same annotation options as the other Kindle formats (highlights, notes, copy, etc). It can also use the dictionary/Google/Wikipedia search option.

And it also seems to be mostly concentrated in textbooks and technical manuals. At least, I’m pretty sure KPR are all textbooks; there’s no one single listing so I’m not sure. Here’s a Google search that will help you find some if you like.

Huh. I guess this means that fixed layout formats (like PDF or KPR) have won in academia. And I mean they really won; this new format is Amazon’s concession that reflowable content just isn’t usable for some textbooks.

But I’m not surprised; I’ve seen far too many PDFs with complex content that simply could not be shown in any other format.

And this new format also means that Amazon upset the textbook market again. Forget digital textbook rentals; they’re just ebooks sold under a different contract. No, this new format means Amazon can now go after all the science and math textbooks that they couldn’t sell before.

And that is going to make things interesting.

Amazon

This actually happened a couple weeks ago, but I can’t see that anyone covered it but me.

According to a couple tracking sites, the Android Market now has more apps than iTunes. The margin is not very wide, but it’s real. The Android Market now has just over 480 thousand apps listed, and iTunes has 460,000.

Curiously enough, in the 2 weeks since iTunes fell into second plac, the Android Market added 20 thousand apps (approximately). In comparison, iTunes added only 5,000 more apps in the last 2 weeks.

The story is actually  more interesting now than it was 2 weeks ago. The Android Market is growing 4 times as fast as iTunes. It’s not only unseated iTunes, there’s also a pretty good chance that iTunes will never be able to catch up.

BTW, the Amazon Appstore had around 10 thousand apps in late May. If you were thinking that it was a serious competitor , think again.

via Androlib, 148apps

The Dutch web retailer and ebookstore bol.com accidentally leaked the product page for the next Sony Reader, and that means the FCC filing for the new Sony Reader that I found last month has just turned very real.

There’s no word on when it will be out but retail is listed as €164.95 and there is a fair amount of detail on the technical specs. It looks like this will be another E-ink ebook reader. It has 2GB Flash, a 6″ screen, a capacitive touchscreen, and it has Wifi and a microSD card slot (we knew that from the FCC paperwork). The description very specifically mentions pinch-zoom,but that doesn’t really tell us anything. The zForce touchscreen tech from Neonode already supported multi-touch, according to the press release.

The description mentions 12 dictionaries and that you can search Google and Wikipedia, which suggests a web browser.  The new gadget also has a stylus and when you put it in sleep mode it shows the cover of a book. Battery  life is listed at a month.

I’ve contacted Sony and I’m waiting to see what they say.

Update: I wanted to get this out as fast as possible, so it wasn’t until after I posted that I had a chance to really think about this. I’m disappointed. I feel that Sony continue to remain 1 step behind everyone else. I was hoping for something new and amazing, but Sony gave us an ereader that is only an incremental improvement on the last generation.

via MobileRead

The Australian developer Shifty Jellie posted an update yesterday on the conclusion of their saga with Amazon. You probably recall Shifty Jellie  from a few weeks back, when they were complaining about some fundamental problems in the Amazon Appstore.

Today’s update had a couple rather interesting bits of data. Shfty Jellie asked Amazon to remove their app from the Amazon Appstore and guess what Amazon did?

Amazon asked if Shufty Jellie had also removed the app from other Android app store that served the US market. No, that wasn’t a joke; it’s actually written into the developer agreement.

3.a. Delivery Commitment for Apps. You will deliver electronically to us and continue to make available during the Term all versions of all software applications, games or other digital products (including any special or collector’s editions) (i) that are designed for the Platform, (ii) for which you have the rights required under this Agreement, and (iii) that are the same versions and editions (except as otherwise provided in this Agreement) that you or your affiliates make available directly or indirectly to any Similar Service….

Please respond to confirm that your request for app(s) withdrawal is compliant with our policies. Once we hear back from you, we will verify and then let you know how we will proceed.

Shifty Jellie really should have read the contract before they signed it, but would you honestly have  expected that clause to be in there?

But let’s set that aside. The real issue here isn’t that Shifty Jellie didn’t read the contract; it’s the fact that Amazon included the clause at all. This is just the latest way that Amazon have shown that they are incredibly hostile to the developer.

Developers don’t get to write their product description, they don’t get to control (or even set) the price of their apps, and (as Shifty Jellie reported before) developers don’t get diddly from the Daily Free App promotion.

Damn. At this point I have to wonder why anyone would do business with Amazon at all. I had been hoping that the Amazon Appstore would grow into a serious competitor to Google’s Android Market, but I don’t see that happening.

So long as Amazon continues to mistreat developers, they won’t be able to build anything. Frankly, I’m surprised that Amazon have any paid apps given how they mistreat developers.

The ebook developers at eReaders.nl announced earlier this week that  they are launching a new ebookstore.  This is their second major digital project; earlier this year they launched eLinea, a magazine and newspaper platform.

The new ebookstore is starting small, with only 40 titles, and they will be adding more. Their ebookstore will only be selling DRM-free ebooks, which means you won’t have to pay the Adobe tax when you buy an ebook. Instead the ebooks will be marked with digital watermarks. Traceable user data will be encoded into each ebook at the time it is downloaded. This will enable to track down and punish just the person who who shared the ebook while leaving all the other customers unassailed.

See, this is the nice thing about watermarks as opposed to the other more restrictive types of DRM. When publishers apply most kinds of DRM to their ebooks they are punishing me because someone else _might_ pirate that ebook. And I am being punished even though the DRM doesn’t actually stop the pirates. But with watermarked ebooks publishers can pinpoint and go after just the pirates. This leaves me alone and makes me happy.

via eReaders.nl

What with all the excitement yesterday over the Kindle Cloud Player, it seems that everyone may have missed one of the Kindle’s other new features.

Amazon reorganized the Kindle Store yesterday and launched a new section. Kindle Indie Books is going to highlight a limited selection of title published via KDP.  Books will be chosen for this section through automated techniques and then selected by hand by the editorial staff. The Indie Store is currently limited to 7 of the genres and categories offered by the Kindle Store; according to the FAQ they are the more popular genres.

This doesn’t look like much, but that depends on how you see it. Amazon just launched a store section that emphasizes their direct partners. It doesn’t look like Indies who publish through sites like Smashwords will be included, and that could have some interesting long term effects.

Yep, this is an incentive to deal directly with Amazon, and that means cutting out a middleman. Clever, no?

I got into a discussion on twitter earlier today with a friend, and it inspired this post.

He didn’t understand the design of the eee Transformer, Asus' premium Android tablet. That’s understandable; if all you know about the Transformer is what you read in the gadget blog  headlines then you missed the facts of what it really is. You have to actually put your hands on it before you realize what Asus did here.

First, let me list some of the current eeeProducts. (If you want to understand the Transformer, it first needs to be in context.) It wasn’t until I gathered these details into one place that I realized quite what they meant. Note that this isn’t all the eeeProducts listed on the Asus website, just the ones I’m familiar with.

When you line up the product names (not always mentioned in complete detail), the unique nature of each model should be pretty obvious:

• Asus eee Reader DR900 (ebook reader w9″ Sipix screen)
• Asus eee Note ea800 (digital notepad w8″ unique LCD screen)
• Asus eee Pad Transformer (Android netbook convertible disguised as a 10″ tablet)
• Asus eee Slider (Android tablet convertible)
• Asus eee Slate (Win7 tablet PC)

Do you see how each one has very different specs and how they’re each a one-off product alone in a niche? That’s because each of the devices listed above is an experiment. Much like the original eee 701, Asus is experimenting to find the new product niches, uses, and abilities. In fact, I would bet that the eeeProduct line will be where you find a lot of Asus experiments.

It’s not surprising that few understand what the eee Pad Transformer really is; after all, it’s being marketed as a tablet.  (The keyboard component is even called a Mobile Dock, for reasons unknown.) Yes, it’s a very nice tablet, but it’s also a very nice netbook convertible.

Add the keyboard component and you have 16 hours battery life in a netbook that costs only $50 more than an iPad. It also has a heavily customized version of Android v3.0 Honeycomb. The trackpad, function keys, and other parts of the keyboard are so thoroughly integrated that it clearly wasn’t an afterthought. The keyboard is part of the original design.

I suspect that Asus made the eee Pad Transformer not just to release a premium tablet. I think it’s also an attempt to create a new hybrid tablet/netbook niche. Yes, netbooks are dead, but if you combine the 2 niches then you have a new usability model. And like the eee701, Asus got into the new niche before anyone else.

BTW, you could slap a keyboard on an iPad in order to get similar functionality, but it wouldn’t work this well. An iPad with a keyboard is still an iPad with a keyboard; the Transformer is a netbook convertible.

So if we could go back to the list, I’m not really sure that each of the eeeProducts are actually experiments. But I would give that label to the eeeNote, eeePad, and eeeSlider.

I also suspect that the eeeReader was an experiment in a niche that for the most part died before the eeeReader was released.Whoops. But that’s what happens with experiments; they don’t always succeed.

This, folks, is why I am watching Asus with anticipation. They keep doing interesting things.