Do you remember how back in August I told you Pocketbook was working on an ereader with a Mirasol screen? They’re finally ready to confirm it.

Pocketbook put out a press release today. They’re going to have their newest ereader on display at CES 2011, and yes it will have a Mirasol screen. I’m a little surprised that they announced it this early.

Update: I just heard back from one of my sources with Pocketbook, and he gave me a few technical details (but no pictures, sorry). Their prototype can currently do 12 frames per second (video is usually 30 fps), and a Mirasol  screen costs about one and a half times the cost of an E-ink screen. My source also said that it should hit the market in Q3 2011.

Second Update: Okay it turns out they’re not ready to confirm it. This was an accidental release.

From the press release:

PocketBook USA, the North American division of PocketBook International, will display their entire line of ereader products at the 2011 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, January 6-9.

One of the world’s top five producers of electronic reading devices, PocketBook sells more than 50,000 ereaders each month through offices in the USA, Germany, Russia, China and the Middle East with a distribution network covering more than 20 countries worldwide.

The company will showcase six different product models — PocketBook Pro 602, Pro 902 – standard models, PocketBook Pro 603, Pro 903 – premium class models, PocketBook IQ701, and Mirasol – PocketBook’s newest model.

…

The IQ701 offers a number of different features including a seven-inch color TFT touch screen with WiFi and Bluetooth connectivity. Functioning on the Android 2.0 operating system, this model is best suited for customers seeking entertainment in an ereader. The newest PocketBook model, Mirasol, features Qualcomm’s full-color Mirasol display which is based on a reflective technology.

The HomeSurf 8, a tablet from the UK based consumer electronics company Binatone, just sjhowed up on the FCC website today.

It’s based on an 8″ (800×600) screen and runs an unspecified version of Android (my guess is 2.0) Th einternal photos were too fuzzy for me to make out any details, so all I have to go on is the product page and external photos. It has Wifi, a stylus, a microSD card slot, and 2GB Flash. As you can see from the lead picture, the HomeSurf 8 ships with a cradle. It’s just a charging station, unfortunately.

I’d like to tell you what it’s selling for in the UK, but it’s not carried by any of Binatone’s retail partners. I don’t know when it will be released.

FCC

by Mike Cane

It shouldn’t have to be this way, either.

Harriman House thought so highly of the late Max Gunther’s long out-of-print books that they’ve gotten not only the print rights, but the eBook ones too.

While the print editions are probably very readable, the eBook ones are just a disaster.

Thanks to Moriah Jovan, I’m able to compare screensnaps of the bad Kindle formatting with iPad screensnaps I took from an ePub version sample available at the iBookstore.

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While the cover’s dimensions are suitable for an 600×800 eInk screen, the cover is lost in all of the whitespace of the iPad’s larger screen. Publishers need to create large eye-popping covers for tablets.

The indicia:

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Notice how it all clumps together in the Kindle version and even has some very bizarre line breaks!

It’s not much better on the iPad, either:

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No blank lines between the block paragraphs, as there would be in a proper print version. No publisher would even allow that in a professionally-produced print version, so why let it pass here?

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Moriah doesn’t like the fact “Harriman House, 2010? is in gray text. But it works on the iPad:

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Notice however that the line is now left-aligned, not right-aligned!

And here comes the horrendous formatting in the Kindle version:

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It’s just about all one block of text! What were they thinking?

I think they were counting on something the iPad tried to do:

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Notice that the iPad tried to insert some spacing between the paragraphs. But this is still bad formatting and should be redone.

It doesn’t get any better as it continues:

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Really, just a line of asterisks as a separator? Do proper dingbats cost more? I don’t think so. An amateur would do that line of asterisks back in the days of IBM Selectrics and Liquid Paper. It has no business showing up in the 21st century in an eBook!

Below is just a rough I did myself. I took the Kindle sample, converted it to HTML, dumped it in Atlantis, and just put in proper paragraph indents. This is just messing around. I’m not saying this is pro quality (it’s damn well not!):

Click = big

So they can get proper frikkin paragraph indents, they just didn’t bother to do the little bit of extra work that would take.

I’ve recommended Max Gunther’s books. They’re excellent. But I can’t recommend these eBook versions until Harriman House lives up to its commitment to Gunther and formats them properly

I’m looking at my Lookbook right now, and the words "squandered potential" come to mind.

I first heard about this ereader from the internal CVS docs that someone sent to Engadget. I’ve been quietly waiting for it to be released, and I got mine about a 2 weeks ago. It’s a Kindle clone based on a 7″ LCD screen, and I’ve covered the physical description in detail in my previous post.

Before I get into the review, it’s important for you to know that the Lookbook is a close relative of the Literati that we reviewed a several weeks ago. It has the same Kobo reading app and ebookstore access, so it shares a lot of the same shortcomings with respect to formatting, margins, etc. But one difference is that the Lookbook has page turn buttons instead of the Literati’s swipe pads. I like buttons; they’re  a heck of a lot easier to use.

I actually like how the Lookbook is designed, and if not for the poor reading experience, many debilitating bugs, missing web browser, and difficult joystick, I would recommend this devices to anyone. To be exact, I think it sucks as an ereader but it has potential has a MID. I think there’s a market niche for an MID that looks like a Kindle clone, and if the Lookbook had the right software it would fit in that niche.

Unfortunately, the Lookbook is crippled by a SD card bug similar to the one found on the Literati, so I can’t load my own ebooks. It also can’t find ebooks that I’ve copied to its internal Flash storage. This is a pass fail for me.

The Lookbook also shares the wide margins, limited font choices, and poor formatting found on the Literati. But do you know what’s really odd about this? I checked and the Kobo iOS app doesn’t have the same problems; it showed the ebooks as made by publisher. So I really have to wonder why Kobo handed over the crippled reading app. I suppose there was nothing better, but if that were true then I wouldn’t have released the app.

BTW, there have been a couple requests in the reviews of the Literati that I discuss how color image look on the screen. I can’t. The ebooks I get from Kobo don’t have pictures, and I can’t load my own. The cover images are often in color and they look nice, but without other images I really don’t care.

Battery life was disappointing; it only lasted 4 days between charges. The really bad part is that I didn’t use it much, so it was in sleep mode most of the time.

One last problem that the Lookbook shares with almost all Kobo reading apps is the slow loading of ebooks. that isn’t a bug they can fix; it’s unfortunate consequence of how the reading app was designed.

The ebooks you buy from Kobo aren’t stored on the ereader as Epub files. Instead, they’re all crammed into a SQLite database. The ebooks are slow to load becuase first they have to be extracted from the database.

If you’re wondering why they did this, well, it probably seemed like a good idea at the time. It let Kobo get around the $75k per device license fee that Adobe charge for Adobe RM. Yes, that’s a nice chunk of change they saved, but in exchange Kobo inflicted a worse reading experience on us all. I don’t think that was a good trade.

Opinion

I’m almost tempted to keep the Lookbook. It’s a poor ereader for $149, but I really want to see what happens once hackers start messing with the firmware. Give this device a decent reading app (FBReader) and a web browser and it would be a serious competition in the ereader market.

Update: The Lookbook is now available at Overstock.com for $123. This doesn’t change my mind about it as an ereader, but the price is tempting.

The problem with the internet is that it has such a short memory. This unfortunately makes it necessary to dredge up old news and remind people.

Cherrypal just announced a 7″ Android tablet for $188. Don’t order it; you"ll never get it.

I was scammed by Cherrypal and Max Seybold last December. His business is nothing but a scam, and I’m surprised he keeps getting away with it.

I first came across Cherrypal back in December 2009. They had just announced "grab-bag" type laptop for $99. The idea was that the laptop would be made from whatever parts that could be found cheap and that would have certain minimum specs. I bought one, and that was my first mistake.

Here’s what I wrote about Cherrypal back on 13 January 2010. When I wrote it, I hadn’t yet figured out that Cherrypal was a scam.

First, let’s cover the lies told to me. I ordered a Cherrypal Africa laptop on 21 December. I waited a couple days for an email about when my order was shipped, but received nothing. I did not get a response from Cherrypal until after the 4th email I sent. The email I received on 30 December said that I would get a tracking number the next day, and that I would receive my order soon. Needless to say, neither event occurred. I still do not have my laptop, nor have I gotten a refund.

Second, let’s consider what I had to say to get a response at all. My first 3 emails were ignored. In order to get a response to the 4th email, I had to include my concern that this was a scam. When I sent a 5th email to point out the broken promises, it was ignored as well. My 6th email did get a response, but that may have been because I asked "Where is my F***ing laptop"? It was questionable, yes, but I am very angry about the treatment I have received. Four weeks had gone by without a word from Cherrypal other than when I poked them.

My last response from "Max Sebold" was that I would get a refund by Wednesday (today). It has not happened.

Third, there was supposed to have been a blanket email sent to all outstanding orders. I did not get it. Other than when I poked them, I did not receive any emails from Cherrypal. According to this PDF, which was supposedly sent to all customers, my order should have been refunded on 2 January. I did not get the PDF, and I still do not have my refund.

I never got my refund and I never got my netbook. I was scammed.

P.S. I strongly urge you to go read the accounts of other people scammed by Cherrypal (here, here, here, here, and here). Note that some of the stories date back to Christmas 2008. This scam has been going for a long time.

P.P.S. If you’ve been scammed by Cherrypal, please post a comment with your story. I want to hear from you.

I think they may have learned from their mistake with Gentouch 78.

Augen just announced that they will soon sell no less than 6 Android tablets ranging in size from 7″ to 10″, with retail from $199.99 to $599.99. All the tablets run v2.2 and all will support Adobe DE DRM.

First up are a pair of 7″ tablets, the Latte, and Latte Grande.   Both have Wifi HDMI out, 2GB Flash, and a SDHC card slot.

• The Latte has a 7″ WVGA resistive touchscreen (800×480), a stylus, and retails for $199.
• The Latte Grande is a big step up for only $50 more. It has a 800 MHz CPU, 7″ multi-touch capacitive touchscreen (800×600), accelerometer, compass, and light sensor.

Next is the Espresso series, and these babies will support Android v3.0. All have Wifi, Bluetooth, a 3MP camera, accelerometer, compass, and light sensor.

• The base Espresso model has a 7″ multi-touch capacitive touchscreen (800×600), 1GHz Cortex A9 CPU, 8GB Flash, microSDHC card slot. All this for $349.
• The Espresso Dolce has a 10.2″ multi-touch capacitive touchscreen (1024×768), 1GHz Cortex A9 CPU, 8GB Flash, microSDHC card slot. Retail is $429.
• The Espresso Doppio is the tablet convertible I showed you in the first image. It’s a dual boot system with Android/Ubuntu as options. It has a 10.2″ multi-touch capacitive touchscreen (1024×768), 1GHz Cortex A9 CPU, Wifi, Bluetooth, 8GB Flash, 2 USB ports, trackpad, and a 160GB HD. All this for $599.

And then there is the Espresso Firma. This baby has a 7″ resistive touchscreen(800×480), a 600MHz dual core CPU, Wifi, Bluetooth, and 2GB Flash. Retails is $349. It also has this odd pen that’s supposed to let you write on paper, and the strokes will be transmitted to the Firma. I’ll believe it when I see it.

I got a Literati about a week ago, and I was 1 of 4 blogs to get it. I’m sitting here right now, watching it fail to load my personal ebooks, and I’ve decided that I’ve used enough to give my opinion.

DON’T BUY IT!

At the very least wait for a firmware update. I have a number of complaints with the Literati, and I’ll take them one by one. But first I’ll give you a summary of its abilities.

Highs

• HTG, I can’t think of any

Lows

• poor formatting
• no annotation options
• slow to load ebooks
• buggy & unstable
• page turn buttons are iffy

The Literati is a Kindle clone that doesn’t bother to make use of its keyboard. It has a 7″ LCD screen, Wifi, and supports the Kobo ebookstore.  The library is pretty much identical to the Kobo PC app, so I’ll skip it here and jump straight to the reading abilities.

The Literati has no annotation options (not even bookmarks). This really bugs me. Why put a keyboard on a device if you don’t plan to use it? You have 5 font size, 2 font choices, and you can adjust the brightness (seven settings). There is a dictionary, but you can’t select a word on the screen (you have to type it in).

I also don’t like the joystick, but there are so many other problems that I’ll skip this one.

Page Turns

I’m covering this irritation first because even if you disagree with my other complaints, this one will give you pause. The Literati doesn’t have page turn buttons. Instead it has spots on the case that are touch sensitive. I hate it. You can’t tap and turn the page; only swipes work. The swipe sensor is also incredibly sensitive. I keep having trouble with it flipping forward, and then back to the page I just read. I also have trouble with it not recognizing a swipe, which irritates me to no end.

I can’t load my own ebooks

I took one of my SD cards with my standard Epub library (about 600 titles) and stuck it in the Literati. It can’t find the ebooks. In fact, it can’t find any ebooks (not even the Kobo ones already on it). I tried a second time with a SD card that had only a dozen titles; the same thing happened.

I’ve never actually had an ereader fail to load ebooks before. I’ve sometimes had to reboot, but in the end the books were loaded. This is a pass fail for me.

Kobo formatting sucks

Until I started using the Literati, I didn’t realize that Kobo ebooks had such limited formatting. I’ve downloaded a dozen freebies, and they are all the same. There’s space between paragraphs and no indents. I hate it. If you appreciate a well designed ebook then you will hate it too. I’m also annoyed by the large margins, but that’s really just a minor problem given the rest of the formatting issues.

The Kobo editions are also significantly less pretty than their counterparts. I have several commercial titles in both Kobo and another format. The Kobo edition always lacks the subtle refinements found in other editions. Heck, Kobo ebooks are actually less pretty than Kindle ebooks, and that’s saying something.

And I just noticed that on a couple of ebooks, the Kobo edition doesn’t even have the full TOC. WTF is Kobo doing different from everyone else? It makes no sense.

Here are a couple of photos that show the relative formatting. The same title is on both ereaders. BTW, I’m showing 2 photos because the first shows a section break that the Kobo edition doesn’t have.

(click  = big)

Update: Mike Cane pointed out that it’s not fair to compare the different font size. Well, those are the font sizes I find comfortable on each ereader. Yes, the font is larger on the Literati, but it’s the fault of the Literati. I think the font is bigger because I hold it further away.

I just crashed the Literati again

I tried to bring up the TOC and the Literati rebooted. That’s not the only bug. It also takes a long time to load an ebook every time I open it. This isn’t just the first time; it’s slow every time I open an ebook. The Literati isn’t recognized as a USB drive. This actually isn’t a big deal; I’m sure it will be fixed. But it’s irritating nonetheless.

Opinion

The Literati costs $159, and the K3  Wifi costs $139. I don’t see any reason to get the Literati over the Kindle.

Calvin Reid over at Publisher’s Weekly posted a follow up article this morning where he contact KNFB (developer of Blio) and asked them to explain some of the details of yesterday’s debacle. One comment made by Peter Chapman, the KNFB spokesman, caught my eye. He said that Feedbooks knew it was being included in Blio months before the launch.

I checked with Hadrien Gardeur, founder and CEO of Feedbooks. According to Hadrien, they were not asked, they were _told_ by Mike Angelo that Feedbooks would be included. When Hadrien protested, he was ignored. I like the reasons he gave for objecting, so I copied his email to the end of this post.

This is actually worse, if you ask me. It’s one thing if you forget to ask, but asking and ignoring the "no", well, in terms of business ethics I think it falls just short of piracy.

Okay, that was melodramatic, but what they did was still pretty bad. What do you think?

The email:

More precisely:

• I’ve known for a while that KNFB were using our OPDS feeds for dedicated systems designed for print-disabled people (http://www.knfbreader.com/products-kreader-mobile.php). Which I’m glad they’re doing.
• Two months ago, Mike Angelo sent me an e-mail asking if we could add Blio to our premium partners on our ecosystem page http://web.archive.org/web/20120816012316/http://www.feedbooks.com:80/help/ecosystem) because Feedbooks would be part of Blio. I replied that I wasn’t aware that Blio planned on including Feedbooks and that I was against it for several reasons (see below). He never replied.

At Feedbooks we allow reading systems to preload our catalog if it provides the following features:

1. supports EPUB (not the case with Blio, they need to do a conversion)
2. fully supports OPDS (once again, not the case with Blio, they don’t offer our full catalog, they only aggregate a few of our feeds and use our search feature)
3. enable users to add OPDS catalogs (not the case with Blio)
4. if the reading system also includes commercial content, we require that the reading system should also support payment in OPDS and ACS4 support in order to sell content

If a reading system doesn’t support all four (or the first three if it’s oriented towards free books like FBReader for example), they can still provide OPDS support and let users add manually our catalog.

I just got this tweet today. I’ve checked, and it’s correct. That option is indeed missing in the latest version of KindleGen. I don’t know that it was offered in the previous version, though.

I don’t see a reason for stashing the Epub inside the Kindle file other than because they are planning ahead for a switchover. Actually, it would be more accurate to say they are giving themselves the option of a switchover.

FYI: KindleGen is a command line tool for making Kindle ebooks. If you’re using MobiCreator or MobiGen then you will probably want to use this instead. KindleGen supports larger image sizes as well as the video and audio tags for embedded content (for ebooks like Nixonland).

The picture is from my most recent visit with Entourage.  And yes, it is the Pocket Edge.

You might recall that I found a video last week. Well, after a lot of begging, pleading, and whining, Entourage let me take some pictures. The cat was out of the bag, after all.

Due to a tight schedule I only had a few minutes with it, though.

I was right. The Pocket Edge does have a 6″ Eink screen ( Vizplex, not Pearl) and a 7″ LCD (800×480). The touchscreens, speakers, and buttons are all in the same place as on the original Edge.

The 2 major changes to the face of the device is they moved the camera (it’s over the Eink screen now), and they replaced the nubbin with an optical mouse (the little black square). The general specs are similar  (CPU, OS, apps), with a couple exceptions. The pocket Edge has a microSDHC card slot and only 1 USB host port. Also, the battery is not removable (as on the original Edge).

There are going to be 2 Pocket Edge models. One only has Wifi, and the other will be tied in to Verizon. They should be available late next month.

I didn’t catch the price, but I was told that it weighs around a pound. You know, if they sell this for $300 then it will be a serious competition to the name brand Android tablets coming this fall. Even at $400 it will still cut into the tablet  market.

BTW, I got a couple pictures that show the ports:

And here’s one last photo to show the size difference between the Pocket and original Edge.

A friend tipped me to this photo from Yahoo News this morning. Apparently a couple weeks ago the Governor of California toured the Marvell headquarters. And of course he was accompanied by the press.

One detail that no one noticed at the time was that Marvell had all of their partner’s devices on display. One of those partners is Entourage.

The first picture is from Yahoo News. I want you to look at the gadgets on display. In between the Spring Design Alex and the Entourage Edge is the Pocket Edge. (Sorry about the image size.)

It’s not a good image, I know. But there’s no need to find a bigger version because I already found a video shot by Forbes. If you skip to about 41 seconds in to the video you’ll see the Governor holding the Pocket Edge.

The embedding options offered by Forbes suck, so I clipped a couple key images. You’re really better off watching the video over at Forbes.com, anyway.

If you look at the very first picture, you’ll see that the Pocket Edge has E-ink screen about the same size as the Alex. I’d say it has a 6″ E-ink screen and 7″ LCD. I have both screens on my desk right now. The proportions match what we see in the video.

Note that there is a sign in the video (at 44s) that says Verizon Pocket Edge. This confirms the Verizon leak from last month. Also, if you look carefully you can kinda see the words "Verizon" and "Pocket Edge" above and below the E-ink screen.

Looking at the video, I can see they kept the speakers in between the 2 halves as well as all the buttons. This would suggest that they also kept the Wacom touch screen, CPU, and probably most if not all of the hardware specs. I’ll go a step further and suggest they also kept the software features (which would make sense).

About 3 months ago I found the FCC paperwork for a new Wifi equipped ereader. Kobo were one of the companies listed as a potential distributor, and I can now confirm this.

When I posted before, I wasn’t able to show everything because Netronix had requested that some details be hidden. The confidentiality request has expired on some of the documents and I can now show you the Kobo Wifi.

It looks just like the original Kobo.

You might want to glance through the PDF. There are a number of rather pretty shells on display, including the Elonex that I just announced and one from Luarna, the Spanish ebookstore.

kobo Wifi (PDF)

I came across an interesting list on one of the blogs I follow. They found 10 sites that will help you create and or distribute a digital newspaper.  (It’s worth noting that I’m using a pretty broad definition of newspaper here.)

1. Issuu – One of the most popular and successful online digital magazine creators/publishers around, with a very nice user interface.
2. Yudu – Upload a document or PDF to create an online magazine that can be emailed our or embedded into a site.
3. Openzine – Very user friendly site with an abundance of templates and layouts to create a professional-looking magazine and share online.
4. NewsCred – Create a terrific looking online newspaper in 5 minutes, similar to Openzine.
5. Scribd – A very popular Web 2.0 site for creating online content and publishing.
6. Fodey – A fun site to create a newspaper and then download to print out or put on a blog or site.
7. Zinepal – A great way to bring the news to students by "clipping" online articles. This is a wonderful site for those making the move to ebook readers.
8. Paper.li – A fantastic site to turn Twitter into an online readable magazine.
9. Crayon – Create a professional-looking newspaper with this nice online creator. There are several options to choose from, so it has a bit of a higher learning curve.
10. Mygazines
    

via TechLearning

P.S. Can anyone add to the list? I’d like to see how long it can get.

The image at right is a closeup of a Sipix screen. You  should click on it and see the difference between this screen tech and E-ink. Hint: yes, that is a hexagonal grid.

Okay it’s not actually under a microscope, but I’d say it’s close enough.

One of my readers noticed my recent post about the Luarna Avant, a 6″ ereader originally made by Benq. Mario didn’t have this particular device, but at one point he did have his hands on a version that is being distributed in Russia.

He took this picture, and then he shot a few more pictures (from top to bottom: K2, Kindle DXG (Pearl screen), and PER3162).

Pocket-lint are reporting:

Qualcomm has confirmed to Pocket-lint that it will launch, in connection with a partner, a device, probably an ebook reader, that features its Mirasol colour screen technology in the first quarter of 2011. An announcement is expected at CES in Las Vegas in January.

…

The company wouldn’t tell Pocket-lint which partner would be making the announcement, but did confirm that, after months of waiting, shoppers would be able to get their hands on the revolutionary technology.

I wonder who Pocket-lint are talking to at Qualcomm? I can’t get anyone at Qualcomm to respond to my emails, much less pass along a hot tip like this.