If you think the market is tight in the US, you won’t believe what’s happening in China.

Shanda recently cut the price of their Bambook ereader in half. This 6″ E-ink, Wifi equiped ereader is now selling for only RMB499. That’s $74 USD, and so far as I know that’s actually less than the cost of the components.

Hanvon have also cut the  price of a number of their ereaders, with some models now as low as RMB 599 ($92 USD).

If I had to guess, I would say that Chinese ebook readers are facing fierce competition from cheap tablets and handhelds. It’s not the same in the US, where we have 2 giants fighting. In China there’s hundreds if not thousands of small companies trying to produce gadgets as cheap as possible. It’s quite clearly driving the prices lower at a faster rate than anywhere else.

via TechNode

Back in February of this year the Internet Archive started a new partnership with a select group of libraries. These several dozen libraries across the US worked with the IA to provide in-library access to the Open Library, the IA’s new, cooperative 100,000+ eBook lending collection.

Yesterday the IA announced that they’d expanded to include libraries on 6 continents. The exact count isn’t done yet, but it’s up over a hundred library systems with a thousand or more branches.

In case you were wondering, I’m counting the participating libraries differently from how IA did it. They counted individual branches, and ended up with over 1k. I’m counting systems and treating all the branches of a system as 1 library.

The open Library functions in much the same way as OverDrive. Library patrons can check out up to 5 titles at a time for a period of 2 weeks. The ebooks can be read online or on any Device or app that supports Adobe DE DRM.

Open Library

The hot story today was the official launch of Pottermore, J.K. Rowling’s new website. it’s going to have all sorts of interesting content for the pottermaniacs, including Harry Potter ebooks as well as "sumptuous newly-commissioned illustrations and interactive ‘Moments’ through which you can navigate, starting with the first book" and that Rowling has brought to life "both the Sorting Hat and Ollivanders experiences from her books for the first time on Pottermore, by revealing the questions asked by the Sorting Hat – which places newcomers into their Hogwarts houses according to their characteristics – and the magic behind the Wand Chooser – which finds the right wand for each user from over 33,000 possible combinations".

While that’s very interesting, it’s not the big news today. The Inquirer is reporting that Pottermore will be selling the ebooks DRM-free.

The ebooks won’t be encumbered with DRM but they will come with watermarked data. This should make it possible to track a pirated copy back to the original source.

Okay, now I understand why the ebooks will be sold on just the one website. This new piece of data also lends credence to the twitter rumor that Kindle ebooks will also be supported. (Obviously they’re not using the Kindle DRM either.)

I have to hand it to J.K. Rowling, her agents, and her publishers for being more tech-savvy that I anticipated. Someone figured out that DRM doesn’t actually prevent piracy. And since they can’t prevent it, they picked the next best thing.

They’ll know which customer pirated which copy of the Potter ebooks. That’s going to put them at least 1 step up on publishers.

The American Library Association have released a new report on Monday, and the report covers the state of American libraries.

This report is based on a survey sent out to all participating libraries. The report as a whole is packed tightly with information, but the one detail I’m interested in is ebooks. The number of libraries that support ebooks is now up to 67%, and that’s a 30% increase in the past 4 years. (We probably won’t see a simialr bump next year; budgets are being cut.)

The ALA report also includes a number of online extras like the map I clipped and posted at right.  At full size the map tracks how many libraries offer ebooks in each state. You can find the map here.

via ALA

But they managed to keep it very quiet. BTW, Sagem Wireless changed their name to Mobiwire back in February, so I’ll refer to them as such.

I don’t have full details on the story just yet, but I do have a back channel confirmation that Mobiwire did indeed file for bankruptcy at the beginning of May. (I have to admit that I missed the story at the time, but then so did most people.)

Mobiwire look to be primarily a designer of OEM equipment. Their website shows a wide selection of interesting looking phones, and even a few ereaders.  The one at left is the Chromer 6. It never hit the market, but its 6″ color E-ink screen does show that Mobiwire were pushing ahead.

Mobiwire did release an ereader to the European market; it’s called the Binder. It was rebranded as the Thalia Oyo and the Fnac Fnacbook. The Binder looked much the same as the Chromer6 pictured above, only it had a 6″ Sipix screen (grayscale).

The Binder was not a terribly successful design, and its poor market performance may have hurt the company. Last month I told you that the Fnacbook only sold 14 thousand units since it launched late last year. The unfortunate part there is that I’ve also been told Fnac had signed a deal to buy 100 thousand. That’s a fair amount of money that Mobiwire could have used.

The latest news with Mobiwire is that several of the management are trying to make a buyout of part of the company. My guess is that it won’t be the ereader section.

The popular children’s book Go the F–k to Sleep has been released today and you can find it on Amazon in print and Kindle, and as an audiobook on Audible.com. This book hit the top of the bestsellers list last month because its satirical take on children’s bedtime stories appealed to most parent’s sense of humor.

The book was written by the award-winning novelist Adam Mansbach, who was moved to pen the book when his own daughter was suffering sleepless nights. The audiobook might actually be better than the print book. It’s narrated by Samuel L. Jackson, and if you’ve followed his career then you can appreciate the additional depth of humor that his presence brings to the book.

He explained in the narration: “I was anxious to do the audio read of this book because my agent has twins and he gave me the book and I read it and I fell out laughing. I remember all those times when I did read to my daughter when she was that age. Everybody tells you reading stories will put kids to sleep, but it never works. It didn’t in my house.”

Here are some of the lyrics, in case you haven’t gotten the audiobook yet:

"The flowers doze low in the meadows / And high on the mountains so steep. / My life is a failure, I’m a shitty-ass parent. / Stop fucking with me, please, and sleep, The cubs and the lions are snoring, / Wrapped in a big snuggly heap. / How come you can do all this other great shit / But you can’t lie the fuck down and sleep?"

Audible.com

There’s a particular thread over at XDA-Forums that I’ve been following today, and I’m a little astounded by what I’ve seen. the thread was started by a guy who’s hacking his Nook Touch, and every so often he posts another update. BTW, that’s the thread where I got the Nook Kindle video I posted earlier (via Mike Cane).

Zonyl has just posted that he has ADW Launcher running on his Nook Touch, which is great. It’s going to make it a lot easier to run apps. But that’s not all. he’s discovered that the Nook Touch appears to have a Bluetooth chip installed and it appears to be working. He hasn’t paired the NT with anything yet, so we don’t know for sure if it works. But this is a very good sign.

Can you believe how many features B&N buried in their ebook readers?  The NC had Bluetooth and the NT had a hidden web browser as well as Bluetooth. At this point if someone told me that the NT also had a laser built in, I think I’d believe them.

BTW, that Bluetooth feature isn’t mentioned in the FCC paperwork. I double checked.

Update: There’s a reason why the Bluetooth isn’t mentioned in the FCC paperwork. The Nook Touch doesn’t actually have a Bluetooth chip. All it has is the software for the chip.

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Mike Cane beat me to this one, but given that he had to be up at 3am to do it, I really have no problem with that.

You’re looking at the first Nook Touch to be hacked and run the Amazon Kindle app. It’s nowhere near ready for the average user, and even when it is I’m not sure you’d want it. This app has been tweaked to look good on an LCD screen and frankly the animation is almost painful to watch on the NT. I kinda wanted the NT as an E-ink Android tablet, but as I watch this video I think I’ve changed my mind.

But you have to admit that this a rather odd use of a $139 ebook reader.

via XDA Forums

Kobo has quietly jumped the gun and started offering ebooks in multiple languages. There’s been no official announcement, but one clever MR member clued me in.

Kobo announced a few months back that they were working on local ebookstores for Europe, it looks like I found the early pre-launch testing. What’s even more interesting is that apparently the prices are being converted to Euros for a German MR member.

I’ve already found listings for Spanish, German, French, Italian, and Dutch. The Dutch ebooks appear to only be free ones from the Internet Archive, while the other languages have paid ebooks. I’d give you numbers, but the search listings don’t quite match with what my Kobo contact said they have.

Yes,  I have checked with Kobo and they are doing some early tests with the new selection and the new localized ebookstores. BTW, I’d say that we now know why Telefonica were in such a hurry to announce their ereader this week. They knew that Kobo were almost ready to launch.

This might not seem like a big deal, but it is. Kobo didn’t exist 18 months ago and they’re about to beat Amazon into several European markets.

You know that ebook apps have been in itunes ever since the app store launched, right? Well, that might not last much longer. Apple is pushing ebook app developers to instead submit an ebook to iBooks instead of submitting an app to iTunes.

I’ve come across a number of reports today from developers who had one or more apps bounced by Apple. It’s been happening for at least the past 7 months (I’ve heard from one dev who fought with Apple in November-December). I won’t be naming that dev; it was a private email. But I saw screenshots from that developer’s app and trust me, it would not work well in iBooks.

There’s more. A friend on Twitter tipped me to this 4 month old post on a public forum, and the story is much the same. The ebook app had text, background music, and sound effects, but that wasn’t enough for Apple. Also, a second dev chimed in about a month later on that thread; he had the same experience.

I also have a 4th case, and this one from the Baker Framework community. (BF is a pre-written library of code that helps you build ebook apps for the iPad.) One dev reported that his app was rejected because it wasn’t app enough. Apple told him to submit it to iBooks, even though it’s not clear that you could translate the design of his app into Epub.

On the other hand, the devs who maintain the Baker Framework have heard back from a bunch of developers who succeeded in getting their app into iTunes, which suggests that the rejected apps might be a minority. It looks like approval depends on who reviews the app.

So here’s the problem, folks. Most of these apps have complex formatting that doesn’t work well in iBooks. That’s why they were submitted as apps.

Even if they do work, I wouldn’t want to have them as ebooks. iBooks forces you to experience a number of faux-book effects that I really don’t like.  It inserts a fake crease down the middle of the screen and as for the fake page turn – ugh!

P.S. Apple does have a rule for this, but it’s not being applied consistently.

* 2.21: Apps that are simply a song or movie should be submitted to the iTunes store. Apps that are simply a book should be submitted to the iBookstore"

What is a book?

P.P.S. If you have heard of other ebook apps being rejected, please let me know.

Last week I reported about how Kobo and Borders had reorganized their partnership, and that it looked like Kobo were going to put their logo on the Borders ebookstore. Ithought they were doing this to buck up the investors and reassure everyone that Borders owe money to (collectively known as "the publishing industry").

It looks like I was wrong. Kobo didn’t just put their logo on the site; they took over the Borders ebookstore completely. Borders are out of the ebook business.

If you try to buy an ebook from borders, you’ll get the pop-up window at right. Before you buy the ebook you’ll have to transfer your account to Kobo.

This is worse than I thought. It’s not a measure to prop up Borders; Kobo are planning ahead for the inevitable collapse.

If you’ve bought ebooks from Borders, I would go there now and move them over to Kobo. Do it now, before it’s too late.

via MobileRead

Google has deprecated a total of 18 of their APIs this week, and there’s a good chance you might feel the bite.

First, let me explain a deprecated API.  An API (in this instance) is a body of code that a developer can integrate into an app. You might have used Google News search, Google Translate, or other parts of Google’s websites, yes? An API lets a developer integrate that service into the app. Eighteen APIs have been deprecated, which means Google won’t be continuing to develop them.

For the most part this won’t affect users – except for the Google Translate API. That one is going to shut down in 6 months, and any app that relies on it will stop working. There are 11 APIs that have been deprecated but will continue to function for 3 years. If you have a news fetching app, it might rely on either the Blog Search or News Search APIs.

• Blog Search API
• Books GData API – replaced by a new Books API
• Books JavaScript API – replaced by a new Books API
• Image Search API
• News Search API
• Patent Search API
• Safe Browsing API version 1 – replaced by a new Lookup API
• Translate API – deprecated now, shut down December 1st
• Transliterate API
• Video Search API
• Virtual Keyboard API

There are 7 more APIs that have been deprecated but don’t have a shut down date:

• Code Search API
• Diacritize API
• Feedburner APIs
• Finance API
• Power Meter API
• Sidewiki API
• Wave API

The Feedburner API is another one that could hurt, but I’m not sure anyone’s using it. Feedburner runs so slow most of the time that I would suspect that mostr developers have junked it in favor of something else.

A few weeks ago I showed you PV’s new concept design for their smartphone with a foldable screen. A couple days ago they uploaded a new video which show their latest working sample of a new 6″ rollable screen. It’s designed to last 25k uses  and can be rolled around a dime.

This screen has the same resolution (800×600) as E-ink’s other 6″ screens, which is new. All the previous prototypes had a lower resolution or they were much smaller. It’s after the break.

This isn’t as interesting as the demo they had back in 2008. That was a rollable color E-ink screen. Of course, it was only a (much smaller) early prototype.

I just got an email from a pr contact with Barnes and Noble. They know what Amazon did today and they’re not taking it lying down.

I was sent the following quote:

With up to two months on a single charge, the All-New NOOK has the longest-battery life in the industry and superior battery performance to Kindle 3. In our side-by-side tests, under the exact same conditions, continuous use of the device resulted in more than two times Kindle’s battery life. While reading at one page a minute, the All-New NOOK battery lasts for 150 hours where the Kindle battery, using the same page-turn rate, lasts for only 56 hours (both with Wi-Fi off). We’ve also done a continuous page turn test and at one page turn per second, the All-New NOOK offers more than 25,000 continuous page turns on a single charge.

-Jamie Iannone, President of Barnes & Noble Digital Products

According to B&N, the new Nook has 3 times the practical battery life of the K3. B&N pretty much called Amazon a liar for manipulating the battery life claims.

Oh, this promises to be so much fun!

I’ve just added a new netbook to my collection. The 100CT is a 10 year old, 2.5lbs brick, but mine isn’t in nearly as good cosmetic condition as the one above.

It’s running Windows 2000 on a 166MHz CPU with 64MB RAM, 4GB hard disk, and a 7.1” screen. It also has 2 PC card slots, a small speaker, and mike and headphone jacks. Mine came with an external floppy drive and a docking station (which provided access to a VGA, a serial, a parallel, and a PS2 port). The screen is 7”, which should give you an idea of the general dimensions.

If you look at the photo you’ll see a small circle to the right of the screen. It’s a trackmouse. There are also a pair of mouse buttons on the backside for the screen. If you put your thumb on the trackmouse and grip the screen then the mouse buttons should be right under your fingers.

It is surprisingly zippy for such an old system. I’m not going to try to install anything new, but it’s a little surprising how much WinXP software will work on such a limited CPU. So far I’ve installed Mobipocket Desktop, MSReader, and a few other basics. Lucky for me it came with a lot of the usual apps you’d expect to see on a laptop (Opera even), which saved me from having to go looking for them.

I got it because I didn’t have a Win2k system nor did I have one of the old Librettos. I wanted to get it so I can use it as proof of how bloated modern OSes are. I’ve got a full desktop OS running on a 166MHz CPU and it’s only slightly more out of date than WinXP. Can you imagine what would happen if I tried to run Win7 or Android on this? *snicker*