The PageOne was developed by a Korean company, Next Papyrus. It’s currently being sold in Korea (and  elsewhere in Asia). They had worked out a deal for Foxit to sell this ereader in the US under the name eSlick PS (running Foxit’s software, of course). But then Foxit dropped out of the ereader market, and that plan fell through.

I’ve mentioned this ereader before, but this is the first time I’ve been able to get my hands on it. I have a good relationship with Charlie Dulin, owner of Dulin’s Books. He sells ereaders (obviously), and when he got this ereader he lent it to me so I could write a review. I think it’s an attractive but basic ereader.

Hardware

The PageOne is based on a 6″ Vizplex screen, and it’s one of the smallest 6″ ereaders I’ve seen. It has a glossy plastic back and a metal facing around the screen. On the lower edge it has a proprietary port, and on the upper edge it has the power button, headphone jack, mini USB, and a microSDHC card slot.

The button design takes minimalism to an extreme. There are 5 buttons on the right side of the screen: menu, prev. page, enter, next page, and back. I call the button design an extreme because I think they went to far. I can’t find the buttons by touch; they blend into the casing and one another too well. I have to look at the buttons, and that means when I navigate through the menus I alternate between looking at the screen and looking at the buttons.

The button design also has a negative effect on the reading experience. I 'm not sure that my thumb is on top of the correct page turn button so I feel compelled to double check before I click it.

Library

As you can see, the library menu is relatively straightforward. There’s a second view for folders, which I prefer. The thumb nail shows the pop up menu. (click to enlarge)

I don’t like how the Library works. My most recently read book is never at the top of the Recent Readings list (it’s at the bottom).  Also, the folder view is not permanent. If you open an ebook while in the folder view, when you exit the ebook you’ll be in the standard Library.

Reading Experience

The PageOne supports FBReader, so format support includes Epub, PDF, Mobipocket, and many more. PDF support does not include reflow, so be warned. I mainly focused on Epub (that’s what my collection was in).

If you click on the picture at right you’ll see one of the problems with the PageOne. The centered text is caused by the PageOne, not the ebook. I’ve found the same problem in a number of other ebooks. The general reading experience was okay, but until this bug is fixed I don’t see a reason to recommend this ereader.

Reading Options

The PageOne has several neat options so I thought I’d cover them separately. The thumbnail at right shows the in book pop up menu. The top 4 items are the expected bookmark, bookmark list, Goto, and TOC, and rotate. The next entry is font size, and you have (I think )21 options to choose from. They range from impossible tiny to about 22pt. That last isn’t very big, actually.

The next entry is font setting, which lets you choose between 1 of 4 fonts (Droid Sans, Droid Serif, NanumGothic, and unifont). After that is add/delete from favorites, book info, music settings (you can start and stop an MP3 from inside the ebook), and delete ebook.

The last option is screen mode. You have the option of adjusting the page turn speed (3 speeds) and you can change the contrast (3 settings). I can’t see the effect of changing the contrast, but I do know that you can get a faster page turn if you want to trade for more ghosting. I wasn’t bothered by the ghosting so I kept the highest speed option.

Opinion

It’s a very pretty ereader; I can tell they spent a fair amount of time perfecting the industrial chic. But it doesn’t work well. There are bugs that need to be fixed and behavior that needs to be changed.TBH, I’m looking forward to when the software is raised to the same quality as the hardware.

The IDPF have release the reported sales figures for July 2010. Sales jumped from $29.8m in June to 40.8m. If you’ve been following this blog for any length of time then you might recall that last month I announced that the reported sales had hit a plateau. I bet most of you will beleive that today’s numbers prove that I was wrong.

Not necessarily.

I made a number of predictions 2 months back and I want to highlight one of them:

Four, I don’t think ebook sales will grow on their own at quite the same spectacular rate as last year.  Instead, I think market growth will be directly related to the publicity surrounding new ereader announcements. (The big January sales might have been caused by the Nook.)

The new DX Graphite was announced at the beginning of July, accompanied by the usual media frenzy. I won’t make the claim that it is the only cause of the sales increase, but you have to agree it probably had a positive effect.

There was an interesting story this past week about the Insignia Infocast. This is a $169 internet appliance with an 8″ screen, and this week someone had developed a web browser for it. All the tech blogs started calling it a tablet, but it’s not a table (no battery & strange shape). It’s still running ChumbyOS, so it’s still a Chumby.

A little background would probably be a good idea. An internet appliance is a computer that’s just powerful enough to get you on the internet and do basic browsing. It lacks the basic abilities that you’d expect on a computer (video, games, office).

A Chumby is a particular type of internet appliance. I can’t find the name of the OS, so I’m calling it Chumby OS (for convenience). The apps that run on ChumbyOS are based on FlashLite. They’re all rather basic in their abilities, and most are designed to help you do one browsing activity. For example, there’s Facebook, Twitter, and Gmail apps. You can browse the apps available at Chumby.com. In case you were wondering, there is no reading app.

The first Chumby showed up in 2006 and it became available to the public in 2007.But it was really a niche until Sony announced their Chumby at CES 2010. The Sony Dash has a 7″ screen, Wifi, and of course it runs Chumby OS. Retail is $169.

What caught my attention this week wasn’t the new browsing ability. No, I’m interested in the fact that there are now 4 Chumbies on the market. We now have the Dash and the Infocast along with 2 native Chumbies. Chumby is beginning to become a serious platform. It’s still confined to the one niche (IA), but it’s the most recognizable platform for that niche and it’s been getting a lot of publicity lately.

I don’t think it will go anywhere I’m interested in, but it has grown to the pint where it’s worth watching.

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).

This photo popped up yesterday, and of course it’s already made the rounds of the blogs. I held the post because I was waiting for a response from my contacts at Sony. And now I have.

This isn’t a prototype, unfortunately. I’m told that it was loaned by E-ink for the Sony Dealer Convention this week. In fact, it would best be described as something Sony would like to do rather than something Sony will do. Which is a shame, because Sony make some really pretty ereaders.

Franklin, a maker of educational products from apps  to electronic dictionaries, have announced the AnyBook Reader. This is a new product that is going into an old niche.

It’s a very simple device about the size of a tv remote. The Anybook consists of a microphone, speaker, and a sensor. It’s entirely self contained and runs on 2 AAA batteries. Retail is $39 (15h recording time) and $59 (60h recording time).

Here’s how it works. While in record mode, scan one of the included stickers and record a message. When you put the Anybook in play mode, you can scan the sticker again and listen to the recording. (I said it was simple.)

It doesn’t actually read; instead it plays an MP3.

One of the hot topics right now is mobile content. A lot of developers are trying to figure out the best way to turn a complex media rich website into an app so visitors can use it on their handheld device. I’ve come up with a solution that is both device and software independent, and I’m surprised more blogs aren’t using it.

A few weeks ago I changed to my current WP theme. I didn’t draw attention to this at the time but I also added a theme switcher widget. One thing you might not know is that there are many free themes out there, including one called Carrington Mobile. I find it quite usable on my iPod Touch. I haven’t tested it on other platforms yet, but I expect it to work fine.

P.S. If there is a theme you’d like or if there is a better free mobile theme, please let me know. I’ll see if I can add it.

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 was following up yesterday on the Next1 ereader, and rather than wait for Nextbook to get back to me I contacted Elonex for details (the hardware is the same). Elonex responded early this morning with links to the press kits for all of their devices, and I’m a little surprised at how many models they have. They really deserved more coverage. Now that I have solid data, I’m going to be posting on most of the new devices. But for some I will simply update an existing post.

They demoed 2 new 6″ ereaders at IFA, and the ereaders actually are new. If you follow ereader news then this ereader should look familiar.  It’s an updated version of the standard 6″ Netronix ereader with a 532 MHz CPU as well as more Flash and RAM (but the same general appearance as the original). There’s no word on the screen so it’s probably still Vizplex, not Pearl.

The only real difference between the 2 models is that the 631EB has Wifi. Other than that the hardware is identical. I don’t have the price or availability yet. Elonex are currently negotiating with an international distributor, and they didn’t want to release details until after the deal is signed.

Footnote: Pocketbook had planned to carry the Wifi-less model as the 601. They dropped it because it’s not a very good design.

Second Footnote: Do you recall the post from last week about Col-ER partnering with Elonex? Well, these 2 ereaders are the same hardware as the Cool-ER and Cool-ER Connect. The only difference is the shell. I’m not sure what Elonex will gain from the partnership.

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).

My local Borders bookstore got a Velocity Micro Cruz Reader on Friday. I’d stopped by yesterday but unfortunately they had made the natural mistake of assuming it would charge over USB. That doesn’t work with this hard ware.  So I went back today and played with it for about a half hour. I also shot a couple videos (they’re at the end of the post).

FYI: this is an Android tablet running v2.0 on a 7″ (800×600) resistive touch screen with Wifi, SDHC card slot, accelerometer, and support for the Borders Kobo ebookstore. It’s based on hardware similar to the white Pandigital Novel. The retail will be $199.

Long story short: The Cruz Reader is a significant improvement over the white Pandigital Novel. (I still don’t like the resistive touchscreen, though.) But I’m comfortable with giving a conditional recommendation in favor of the Cruz Reader.

The size, weight, and screen were the same as the white Novel, but the rubber back on Cruz Reader made it a lot easier to hold. The screen calibration also seemed to work better than on the white Novel. The Cruz Reader uses the same onscreen keyboard, though, and it still sucks.

The software was generally more responsive. Page turns were faster, and they are triggered by a tap, not swipe. There was a task bar across the top of the screen (this solved the problem of a missing menu and back buttons).The task bar was easy to use and relatively error free.

It had the standard desktop, apps, etc (with the exception of the Android Market). But Velocity Micro did supply their own app store. I glanced through the Cruz App Store, and there were hardly any apps. But it did have apps for a bunch of other app stores, so you should be able to find the app you want relatively easily (unless it’s in the Marketplace).

The second video was actually shot first, but it got interrupted by an idiot who couldn’t be bothered to leave a voicemail message. I was in the middle of re-shooting the video when my battery started to die.

I learned a new detail about Blio today and it has changed my opinion. Earlier this week Mike Cane asked me about Blio DRM on Twitter (Here is the site he linked to). I had thought that Blio used Adept DRM on its ebooks. On the off chance that I was wrong, I sent an email to the Blio website and asked them to clarify the DRM question.

Blio will not be using Adept. Instead it will use Microsoft PlayReady.

I will not tolerate a new DRM on a mainstream format. I’m going to make it one of my goals to kill this format as expeditiously as possible. Who’s with me?