From the press release:

Infibeam continues to make significant additions to its eBook store. For the first time in India, technology ebooks from publishers like Cambridge University Press, Tata McGraw Hill, Elsevier, Taylor & Francis, Pearson and John Wiley & Sons have been made available on a single platform.

Readers can now legally purchase and instantly download digital eBooks from each of these publishers. These eBooks can then be ported and read on 5 devices including laptops, computers, tablets, mobile phones and eBook readers.

Speaking on the new initiative, Ms. Neeru Sharma, VP Corporate Development, Infibeam.com said, "After the success of Infibeam Pi, India`s first EBook reader and the launch of eBook titles on Infibeam, we had a constant demand for technical eBooks for students and professionals. To be able to cater to this specific segment, Infibeam introduces eBooks from renowned technical publications today". He added, "The present catalog of almost 1 Lac technical eBooks are from the largest publication houses and we look forward to enhancing the catalog".

With this addition the total number of eBooks on Infibeam crossed 5 Lacs, making it India’s largest eBook store. eBooks besides being cheaper than physical books provide the advantage of instant access as soon as you purchase them. Further they are also eco-friendly and save paper.

Check out Infibeam’s range of eBooks at www.infibeam.com/eBooks

About Infibeam.com:

Infibeam.com is India’s leading eCommerce portal with a selection of more than 100 lac products across books, media, lifestyle, gifts, electronics and automobiles. Infibeam.com is known for its innovative navigation, lowest prices, free shipping and dedicated customer service.

Infibeam.com also offers its web-store technology and associated infrastructure as a service to well-known brands and retailers such as NDTV, K Sera Sera, Hidesign, TTK Prestige etc.

Infibeam.com was founded in 2007 by a group of ex-Amazon employees with expertise in e-commerce and technology. Headquartered in Ahmedabad, Infibeam has 250 employees based out of offices in Bangalore, Delhi, Kolkata and Mumbai. The leadership team consists of MIT, IIM and IIT graduates amongst others with more than 100 years of combined experience in Retail and eCommerce.

I just came across a thread over at MobileRead.  One MobileRead member went through the effort to find links to firmwares for all the different versions of this ereader made by BenQ.

BTW, I’m talking about the Pantigital Novel with a 6″ Sipix screen, not the LCD models. If you’re confused by the naming convention, this might help.

I’m not sure that you should risk your Novel, though. I don’t have the original firmware for it so if you flash a new one you won’t be able to go back.

I really think you should go read that thread.He also found instructions on how to enter the various debug modes as well as Frank’s Wiki, where Frank is beginning to develop his own apps for this ereader.

via MobileRead

I’ve just heard over at MobileRead that someone is starting a project with the goal of hacking Augen’s ereader. His long term goal is to be able to use The Book as a limited netbook computer.

This could be shiny, but only if Augen follows through and hands over the source code (as required by the software license). I’m excited because I can see the potential of the design.

The The Book is a Kindle clone with a 7″ LCD screen, Wifi, and support for Adobe Epub. It runs Linux and it has a reasonably useful keyboard. I reviewed it in August.

This general design could be the next netbook. Right now the only thing stopping that from happening is the limited software on these devices. If the Book gets hacked it will be so much more useful.

I’m also thrilled to finally meet someone who gets it. Here is why Chris started this project:

Well, that’s a good question. TheBook really doesn’t have the battery life to be the greatest book reading device, but the software platform is mostly based on open stuff, and it’s an interesting little piece of hardware. The same LCD display that makes it hard on the battery makes it respond more quickly than the E-Ink based readers for things like web browsing and games. It might be nice to adjust the built-in software bundle so that it does more of what it does well. Also, I have one.

Open The Book

Of course, they didn’t have a Christmas season last year, but that’s beside the point.

Earlier today I was snide about Hanvon’s announcement that they’d achieved 1 million users. Look at the following Kobo announcement and you’ll understand why.

From the press release:

Kobo, the only pure-play global eReading service built on an open platform, today revealed its Holiday 2010 momentum. This Christmas, readers around the world received new eReaders and iPads and other eReading devices under their tree. Over a million people connected to Kobo, and hundreds of thousands of devices were activated each day since Christmas Eve, fuelling the highest eBook download rate in the company’s history. People around the world chose Kobo this Christmas, with the popular easy-to-use Kobo Wireless eReader, dozens of compatible eReaders, top-rated applications for iPad, iPhone, Blackberry, Android, and one of the largest catalogues in the world with over 2.2 million eBooks, newspapers and magazines.

“The Girl Who Kicked The Hornets' Nest”

“Earlier this month we predicted that Christmas would be a record breaker for Kobo, and we have exceeded our expectations driving several ebook downloads per second since Christmas Eve, or an equivalent number hardcover books stacked as high as 50 Empire State Buildings,” said Michael Serbinis, CEO of Kobo. “I would like to thank our customers for choosing Kobo to start building their digital library this Christmas. Our success this holiday season is a pre-cursor to a New Year with people reading more than ever thanks to eBooks and Kobo.”

Kobo’s holiday growth also included:

• Total registered users nearly doubling from the six weeks prior
• A 50X increase in purchases from previous Holiday weekend last year
• A 5X increase in purchases from the previous biggest weekend (also in December)
• Customer purchases from over 130 countries, with some of the biggest gains outside of US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, UK, occurring in Germany, Netherlands, and Singapore
• A significant increase in device mix, with eReaders and Tablets accounting for the largest percent in sales

iFlow Reader is getting a lot of attention today. This is a new reading app for iOS, with different versions for iPhone and iPad. While it comes with a good set of reading options, iFlow’s one big pitch point is that it abandons page turns in favor of scrolling.

This is so not a good idea.

Did you know that the new trend in long form web content is pagination? Yep, designers are starting to use HTML5 to move away from scrolling because if the article is long enough pagnation provides a better experience.

You might recall that I showed you a demo project last month. Of course, they were looking at it as tablet style reading, but I liked it for the pagination.

I don’t have any hard data on this, just my personal experience. (But if you know anyone else who examines the act of reading while they’re reading, I want to speak to them.)  As I mentioned in the related post, I’ve found myself abandoning web articles because they were too long to read comfortably. I believe my discomfort was caused by scrolling.

Of course, there’s a chance that the iFlow Reader will prove me wrong. But I don’t expect that to happen.

Steve Weber, editor of the Plug your Book blog,  got this email from Amazon a few days ago.

Soon, publishing for distribution in the Kindle Store will no longer be available through Mobipocket.com.

Publishing and selling in the Mobipocket.com store and other Mobipocket partner retailers will not be affected, but the Digital Text Platform (DTP) will become the preferred path to publishing on Kindle. In the coming weeks, we would like to begin consolidating your titles into one location – DTP.

We’re writing to remind you about our earlier message, and to again offer assistance with moving your Mobipocket.com titles to DTP. By making the move, you’ll be able to take advantage of the new royalty options and great features available only on DTP.

You may already have a DTP account, but if not, please sign up today at http://dtp.amazon.com/

When I first read this, I could have sworn that Amazon already did this months ago. It’s been so long that I honestly couldn’t remember when it happened. But with a little digging, I found this notice on the Mobipocket EbookBase website from last year:

Effective September 2009, we will no longer open new accounts for publishers to sell titles through the Kindle Store or MobiPocket.com. If you have an existing account, there will be no change and you can continue to upload and sell titles using Ebookbase. New publishers with a US address and bank account can sign up to sell ebooks in the Kindle store via our self-service publishing channel at http://dtp.amazon.com

Now this is a delicious story. I’ve written before that I don’t like the app store as a concept, and every so often Apple like to give me another example why app stores are a bad idea.

I awoke this morning to find a tweet waiting for me. A friend had bought the new Skyfire browser for the iPad, and before he downloaded it he had to confirm that he was over 18. Why? Becuase according to Apple, this app has: Frequent/Intense Sexual Content or Nudity. It’s a web browser, for crying out loud!

I did some digging, and all the web browsers in iTunes have ridiculous ratings. Opera got an NC17 for: Frequent/Intense Mature/Suggestive Themes.  Terra was rated NC17 for Frequent/Intense Sexual Content or Nudity.

But the really good rating was stuck on the Atomic web browser. I wonder if Apple thought this one was better and decided to respond with a harsher slap? Here’s the warning label on the Atomic web browser:

• Frequent/Intense Horror/Fear Themes
• Frequent/Intense Simulated Gambling
• Frequent/Intense Profanity or Crude Humor
• Frequent/Intense Mature/Suggestive Themes
• Frequent/Intense Realistic Violence
• Frequent/Intense Alcohol, Tobacco, or Drug Use or References
• Frequent/Intense Cartoon or Fantasy Violence
• Frequent/Intense Sexual Content or Nudity

I’m going to demonstrate Apple’s hypocrisy in one sentence: Safari didn’t get this rating, and it can access all the same websites.

This photo popped up on Reddit today. You’re looking at an original reference doc for the Saturn V. It was originally published for the Apollo Lunar Program. Do you see the signature? That’s Werner von Braun. Do you have any idea how much that thing’s worth?!? It’s a neat photo, but I’m not the type to be satisfied with just looking at a historical document when I could be reading it. I did some digging , and I found this page on the NASA History website.You’ll find a scanned to PDF copy of this manual, but you’ll also find a bunch of other really shiny stuff.

BTW, some of the comments on Reddit are priceless.

You know what makes this really mindblowing? Not only did they have less computing power than a Commodore-64 did… but they managed to get PDFs to display.

Adobe’s Reader wasn’t so bloated back then.

Apollo 12 Flight Journal via Reddit

Interesting story today. B&N didn’t bother to keep track how many Nooks they sold this holiday season. The B&N servers that are supposed to support downloading ebooks and Nook activation crashed on Christmas, and the servers are still down. The problem is actually bigger than that. The servers that support the B&N community discussion boards are also down. Apparently so many people are on the site, complaining about their Nooks not working that B&N can’t handle the load. I don’t know how many people are reporting the problem because I can’t even load the site.

How could they have allowed this to happen? Seriously, folks, they should have seen it coming months ago. Count how many Nooks are sold, and subtract the number that number that get activated right away. You’ll be left with an approximate number of Nooks that will be activated right after Christmas. It’s not rocket science.

Every site I know (that is involved with ereaders) saw a spike in traffic on Christmas day (and today, too). For example, my traffic tripled yesterday, and I expect to see about twice nearly triple the normal traffic today. MobileRead saw their best day ever yesterday, and TeleRead also  saw a significant jump. How could B&N not have planned for this?

It’s simply pathetic.

via Twitter

That’s what Bloomberg are reporting:

Amazon.com Inc. is likely to sell more than 8 million Kindle electronic-book readers this year, at least 60 percent more than analysts have predicted, according to two people who are aware of the company’s sales projections.

I’m not sure if I believe it. Amazon are very close mouthed about their sales. It’s highly unlikely that anyone at Amazon would talk, much less give a figure. On the other hand, this is a reputable news organization.

Actuall, what makes you think that someone at Amazon talked? It could just as likely have been a business partner or some other ereader manufacturer. This industry isn’t that big. Even if they don’t know exactly what Amazon are doing, quite a few people get to see (for example) the screen shipment reports from E-ink. It would be pretty easy to estimate Kindle sales.

via Bloomberg

In a rather meaningless gesture, Apple uploaded a set of 6 iOS reference manuals to iBooks yesterday. The titles range from Cocoa Fundamentals Guide to iOS Technology Overview.

If you’d like to read a manual on the device you’re developing for (the tautology is amusing), open iBooks and search for "apple developer". That should help find all 6 titles.

I’m calling this a meaningless gesture because you could already get  these docs on Apple’s developer support site. You can read them online or download them as PDFs. Start here.

I’m also bugged that they’re releasing these docs in iBooks while at the same time hiding the info you need to actually make an ebook for them.

via TUAW

I just cam across a review of the Phosphor World Time watch on the watch blog, aBlogToRead.

Phosphor watches can be credited with a very special honor. That being of the brand the officially popularized and mainstreamed e-ink watches. While they didn’t invent the concept, they made them cool enough and affordable enough for mainstream adoption. With prices under $200, now everyone can have a neat looking, easy to read e-ink watch on their wrist. The newer World Time watch adds just that to the mix – a world time complication. In addition the time and a calendar, you can now scroll through time zones of the world. Aside from one minor drawback, the watch is a nice addition to the Phosphor watch collection.

The video is worth watching, but I really have to wonder: who buys watches anymore? I’d buy this one just to have it, but I am TBH a hoarder. I’d never actually wear it.

Watches used to be something everyone wore. Is it just me or have they been replaced by cell phones?

Just a few minutes ago I posted on the new Cruz T301 Android tablet. This tablet had one really interstinf feature: it ships with the Kindle android app. I didn’t realize what that meant until after I hit the Publish button.

If Amazon had planned a Kindle tablet then they wouldn’t have partnered with Velocity Micro.

One thing that makes this really interesting is that Amazon added the former CEO of Palm to their board of  directors this week. The consensus is that Jon Rubenstein was brought on board to add his development experience to Amazon’s tablet project. I don’t think that’s going to happen.

I’m going to take this one step further: Amazon canceled their tablet becuase they’ve heard rumors about a smaller iPad. A  7″ iPad that costs $250 or $300 would drop the bottom out of the tablet market.