Sony, that’s who.

Let me assure my antipodal readers that I know I’m a week behind on this story. I missed it the first time around because I was distracted by the device announcement. But I think this story is important enough that it’s still worth a post. This was probably missed by a lot of people outside the region and it’s an important detail.

I’ve just gotten confirmation from my new contact with Sony Australia that they will not open a Sony ebookstore in Australia or New Zealand. Instead they’ve signed a deal with Redgroup Retail to use the Redgroup branded Kobo ebookstore. In New Zealand that means Sony Reader owners can now use Whitcoulls to buy their ebooks, and in Australia you have the option of either Borders AU or Angus & Robertson (same ebookstore, dfferent color scheme).

I wonder how they’re  handling the device registration issues? Do they all work with the same desktop app?

Ooh. I just now realized that now we have the new Kobo Desktop app (it supports Sony Readers), Australian owners will be spared the agony of using the Sony Library. You lucky dogs.

From THE Journal:

Education publisher Houghton Mifflin Harcourt has launched a new algebra curriculum delivery system for Apple’s iPad. Dubbed "Fuse," the system is being piloted for a one-year period in middle schools in four California school districts.

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt said the Fuse: Holt McDougal Algebra 1 app is the first full-year algebra curriculum application for the iPad. In addition to Holt McDougal content, the app’s interactive tools provide feedback on practice questions, allow students to take notes and save them for later use, give students access to video-based lessons, and provide guided instruction. It also offers tracking tools focused on student comprehension, as well as real-time reporting tools for teachers.

I made a vow to be less negative on this blog, but this is such a bad idea. We’re talking about a $600 piece of electronics running a custom app (which was probably pretty expensive to develop).Does anyone really think there are any school districts who can afford  expand this program to cover a whole school district? I don’t.

I don’t see any value in even trying these pilot programs if there are no funds to expand upon it. And so long as a school district asks parents to send in supplies to be used by the teacher, no, there is no money to spare.

Telecom Italia supposedly announced their ebookstore today, but I’m having trouble getting specific details like number of titles, ereader price and availability, and format support.

Right now it appears to be in a private beta at a festival, Festivaletteratura 2010. They’re using Wifi devices at the festival, but according to their website they will be selling 3G equipped ereaders when the store is officially launched.

In case you were wondering, yes the ereader pictured is the same hardware as the Thalia Oyo.

ebook.telecomitalia.com

Update: New reports indicate that Sagem will be providing the ereader for Telecom Italia. I’ve covered them before (and I even have a video of their ereader).

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.

So Kobo announced a new version of their reading app today. There was only one major change, and that was the new support for third party ereaders (Sony, Aluratek, etc). BTW, the rebranded Borders app can use this update. If you’re using the Borders app then all you have to do is run the app and let it download and install the update.

I have the older Borders app open alongside the new Kobo app, and I can’t see any new features. They’re basically the same basic reading app. The library view continues to make the same mistake as most apps. They show a bookshelf, not a catalog. If I imported my complete ebook collection then this library would be unusable. There’s also  no way to check the metadata for a title, or to see which title was read last.

There’s no support for active reading (bookmarks, highlighting, notes). There’s no support for changing line spacing, margins, justification or other basics. You’re limited to just the one column of text (half my screen is wasted).

The app is tied into the Kobo ebookstore and I can’t see a way to add my own ebooks. I really expected more from Kobo. I’m disappointed by how little this app can do.

HTG, this is the first time that I’ve ever downloaded a reading app that was a waste of time. Really. If you don’t use this ebookstore then there is no reason to get this app.

An interesting article was posted on Monday about the relative sizes of the various ebookstores. It took me a couple days to think about and double check his methodology. I’m now confident that I can tell you the data is not valid and I can show you why.

The author didn’t go far enough. I found the error in the data because I checked more stores than he did. He only checked 4 ebookstores, and among the ones he skipped were Borders, Kobo, and Smashwords. There are others, yes, but most all of the smaller ebookstores are honest about the number of titles they sell so there is little reason to double check.

I’m going to take you through the methodology and and the results, then I’ll explain why the results are invalid.

First, a word about Smashwords. This was the one honest site of the bunch. Their about page says 18k titles and I found 22k. Obviously they’ve grown since the last time that page was updated.

Methodology

I used Google to search the ebookstore sites. In this day and age, a professionally made site should be set up so Google can find every page. (If it’s not, then it’s the fault of the developers, not me.) The Google searches fell into 2 types. Some sites (Kobo, Sony, Smashwords) had their ebooks organized in a particular location. Other sites required me to identify and search for a particular term found on each ebook listing. Here are the searches, if you’re interested:

• Sony (www.google.com/search?q=site:ebookstore.sony.com/ebook)
• Kobo (www.google.com/search?q=site:kobobooks.com/ebook/)
• Borders (www.google.com/search?q=site:borders.com "About the eBook")
• Smashwords (www.google.com/search?q=site:smashwords.com/books/)
• iBooks (www.google.com/search?q=site:itunes.apple.com/us/book "This book is available for download with iBooks")
• B&N (www.google.com/search?q="buy this ebook" site:search.barnesandnoble.com)

You might have noticed that I left Amazon out of the mix. If you ran a similar search for them you’d get around 700k titles.That’s about the number they claim to have (even though most of the titles are in the public domain).

Results

• Sony (57k)
• Kobo (128k)
• Borders (92k)
• Smashwords (22k)
• iBooks (33k)
• B&N (29k)

Analysis

Smashwords were the key to finding out the results were invalid. You see, Smashwords are both an bookstore and a distributor. Their titles are available from Sony, B&N, and iBooks.

Think about it. If Smashwords are providing 20 thousand titles to B&N then all of B&N’s other distributors account for only 9k. Does that make any sense? The same applies for iBooks. Do you really think that all of the Agency 5 only account for 13k titles?

It was an interesting idea, but unfortunately this method doesn’t work.

I noticed something the other day while I was working on a post. Ebooks.com have started selling some titles by the chapter (I don’t think this was an option the last time I shopped there).

I have no problem with selling by the chapter; it’s the prices that have me pissed. They’re selling the chapters of one ebook I own  for anywhere between $5.59 and $10.34. The whole ebook only costs $16!

My first reaction: Yes, but October of what year, exactly?

One of the stories from IFA that’s not getting the attention it should is about the long delayed Txtr ereader. Johannes of lesen.net met with the Txtr people the other day and he’s reporting that the Txtr will soon be going through a beta test and should be officially launched at the Frankfurt Book Fair. Retail will be €299.

It’s been so long since the Txtr was in the news that you could probably use a brushup. It’s based on a 6″ E-ink screen, and it has a microSDHC card slot, accelerometer, Wifi, and 3G (no touchscreen). It also has a unique feedback when you press a button: it vibrates. I had my hands on one at CES 2010. It was a pre-production model, and it was considerably heavier than any other 6″ ereader I’ve used.

One thing you should keep in mind with the Txtr is that it is heavily dependent on having a Web connection. I didn’t have one in Las Vegas and it felt half crippled. If Txtr over closed their doors this ereader would be crippled. BTW, so would the iOS, Android apps.

Johann shot a hands on video:

My sources are telling me that Hanvon have announced that they’re planning to release a new ereader  with a color E-ink screen in November. I’d rate this as somewhat more than a rumor but less than a certainty.

This is rather interesting, though. I’d pegged Hanvon as one of the likely Mirasol partners. If they’re working with E-ink, then wouldn’t it suggest they they aren’t working with Qualcomm?

Then again, they could be working on both new screen technologies with the plan to release whichever was ready first.

via MobRead

Yes, that is the car company. (They’re more than just a car company; they’re a manufacturing conglomerate with quite a few product lines.) I’m used to finding strange stuff, but this time I think I outdid myself.

Hyundai announced 2 ereaders last week. The HYV-C700 and HYV-C600 have 7″ and 6″ LCD screens, which makes the C600 a rather odd beast. This is the first 6″ LCD screen I’ve seen in a long while (if ever).

I’m having trouble finding complete specs, but from what I can tell the C700 has a 7″ screen (800×480 resolution). It doesn’t appear to have Wifi or a touchscreen. But it does have good audio and video support (720p HD, RMVB, AVI, MPEG4, FLV, WMV, MP3, APE, FLAC, OGG) as well as decent ebook support (TXT , PDF , HTML , ePub ,FB2,PDB).

The C600 does have a touchscreen and the same format support. I don’t know the screen resolution, but I do know that it supports  taking notes on the touch screen.

There’s no indication of price or availability, but Hyundai are planning to release several more ereaders, including at least one with a 5″ screen.

via MobRead

The videos are in Ukrainian (or so I’ve been told), so I’m not sure what they’re saying. But I can tell you that there are at least 2 ereaders in the video; one is the PB 901 (it has the colorful buttons up the side of the screen) and the other might be the PB902 or PB903 (they look the same).

These are not hands on videos; they’re from a news broadcast.

Bebook announced their newest ereader today. The Bebook Club is a close cousin of the Bebook Neo. They were both designed Onyx, a Chinese ereader company. In fact, I’ve shown you this hardware before under different brand names.

I have the press kit in front of me, and it looks like the Club has the same hardware specs as the Neo (except the club doesn’t have Wifi). They also share the same broad format support, so I would guess that the software features are the same.

Update: Price will be under 190 euros, and it should be available almost immediately.

Specs:

• 6″ Vizplex screen
• 8 level graycale
• 512 MB Flash
• Adobe DE support
• wieght: 278 gram
• dimensions: 196 mm x 121mm x 10.6 mm

I don’t see a mention of price or release date. I’m following up on that.

Bebook

Update: I found a video of the Boox X60s shot at IFA by Charbax. It’s the same hardware, so if you look past the garish green color you can get a pretty good idea of the look and feel for the design.

Pocketbook-Global have announced a new education platform for the Russian market. It’s based in part on Pocketbook’s 9.7″ ereader, but it goes beyond just the hardware. P-E is intended to assist the entire educational process. It’s not just for reading; you can do other activities including homework.

In terms of hardware, though, it sounds like this is a completely new device. It has Wifi, Bluetooth, and it obviously has a touch screen, but there’s no mention of the 3G connection on the 903.

The-eBoog.org

I’m not talking about users; I’m talking about the company. I was just sent a link to this post through Twitter. Lynn Viehl, author of books such as Frostfire, had uploaded some of her older works to Scribd so everyone could read it for free. Much to her surprise, Scribd then started charging people to download it. Here’s the kicker: Scribd aren’t paying her anything.

It’s been brought to my attention that Scribd.com has begun charging people to download my free e-books hosted on their site. To get around my copyright and the free distribution notice I’ve placed in each e-book, they are using an archive subscription scam to make their money (this also neatly avoids them having to pay me any royalties on the profits they make.) Evidently all the money they’ve been raking in from the Google ads they’ve posted on my e-book pages hasn’t been enough for them.

…

I find the situation particularly ironic, as anyone can bootleg my work on the internet with no problem, yet when I try to give it away for free, greedy people still try to make a buck off it. Writers just can’t win.

If you’re going to argue that it’s technically not piracy, you’re right. But it’s still a shitty thing for Scribd to do to their members.

Update: Scribd have updated the account options page to include a check box so you can opt-out of  the archive. They need to find a better solution; opt-out check boxes are sleazy.

Update: The Sony Style product page has been updated.

APPS!

Do you recall that job listing I showed you a few weeks back that specified Android experience? Sony wanted someone to work on the apps, not a Sony Reader running Android. They’re going to release Sony Reader apps for Android and iOS in November, and new PC and Mac apps in December.

New markets

They’re expanding this year into Spain, Italy, and Australia. Later expansion will include China and Japan.

Firmware

There won’t be any firmware updates for the current models, and the new models will not be getting the new DRM that B&N are using.

Now let’s talk about the hardware. All 3 ereaders have been updated. They’re all getting the new Pearl screen and a bump in Flash storage. Also, the touchscreen component has been improved, I’m told. It’s supposed to be a lot better than the current screens. All 3 models will also have 12 dictionaries (2 English, 12 translation).

First, the hints about PRS-950 that I showed you a week ago are confirmed. Sony did update the Daily Edition with the new Pearl screen and Wifi. It’s also getting a boost in Flash (4GB), and it’s keeping the dual card slots.

They’ve boosted the battery life (27 days standby). Retail hasn’t changed, unfortunately. It’s still $299.

Next we have the Sony Touch Edition. It has the same general size and shape as its predecessor, and it kept the dual card slots. It also got the new Pearl screen and a bump to 2GB Flash. It won’t be getting the Wifi.

This one’s shipping immediately. and the retail is $229.

Last, we have the new Sony Pocket. We already knew from the leaked photos a couple weeks ago that it had a touch screen. But now I can tell you that it still lacks the card slots, but it does have the new screen and 2GB Flash. And since it now has a touchscreen, it will also the note taking and highlighting abilities of the Touch Edition.

It’s shipping immediately, and the retail is $179.