Some might wonder if Amazon is quietly sweating the release of the Nook and the surge of excitement for Barnes and Noble’s ebook platform…but today Amazon has reason to celebrate. Continue Reading

Welcome to another State of the eBook! This will be a short post this week, as it seems there will be some sort of exciting announcement this Tuesday.

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photo credit: Ozyman

Technology can be a lot of fun. It can keep us connected with one another, it can transform our work habits, and it can help us become more organized and efficient.

It can do all these things, but of all the great uses of technology the one that stands as most important is this: that it can help us solve the problems life throws at us.

Dan is a good example of some of the ways technology can help overcome otherwise challenging issues. Back in January he wrote a post entitled A Crash Course in One-Handed Blogging. Dan had just undergone surgery to fuse one of his wrists after it had been destroyed by rheumatoid arthritis. With one arm tightly wrapped and constantly elevated, voice recognition software allowed him to keep blogging and writing for his rabbinic works (and for Gear Diary), even as he recovered from a surgery that was far more extensive than he expected.

Dan continues to do a great deal of his writing using various voice recognition solutions, and he will be introducing a new series about the subject here on Gear Diary later this week. But this story isn’t about VR, it is about another technology that has helped Dan deal with some of the after-effects of RA and his surgery; it’s about a technology that I have long advocated.

With his permission, here is the story…

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Welcome to another “State of the eBook”. We’ve got some quick news to review, and then a discussion of something that keeps publishers up at night; piracy in ebook-land. Is it an epidemic of music proportions or is it the straw-man argument that publishers use to justify high prices, digital rights management, and slow ebook adoption?

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Don’t look now but Amazon has just dropped pricing on their Amazon Kindle from $299 to $249. On October 19 they’ll also introduce a $279 International Kindle with GSM capabilities (AT&T provides the service) in over 100 countries. According to Amazon 48 copies of eBooks are sold for every 100 physical copies of those books. Amazon has a resounding lead in eBook readers with Forrester Research estimating a 60% market share for the Kindle vs 35% for Sony.

Kindle

Welcome to another installment of “State of the eBook”. A few quick news-y items, and then onto the major heart of today’s discussion, where we’ll be tackling the greatest debate in the book world today. Interested? Read on…

First, in the “cut up your nose to spite your face” department, we have the news that both Sarah Palin’s book “Rogue” and Ted Kennedy’s book “True Compass” will not be released as eBooks until some time has passed after the hardcover release. Let’s consider that for a moment. At a time when people are looking for better deals, trying to find ways to save money, and publishers are trying to find ways to keep readers, they’re actively forcing people to wait longer to get a book in their preferred medium. (via MobileRead)

Losing track of the insane number of devices that do eBooks, eBooks plus web browsing, eBooks plus web browsing plus dog walking, etc? Businessweek is reporting that there are more devices on the horizon; suddenly being able to read an eBook on it has become almost as important a feature as GPS!

There are two (general) sides to the ebook debate: those who see the technology as an amazing leap forwards, who see words as words no matter the medium. Then there are those who believe the tactile sensation of holding a paper book, the turning of the pages, the smell of the glue and the paper and the binding, cannot be replicated with screens and that reading is for paper.

So let’s do a quick rundown of where both sides have their advantages…

eBooks:

• Can carry multiple (hundreds of multiple!) ebooks in one device without using a truck.
• Multi-device support means you can read a book anywhere; on your couch, in line at the grocery store, at work during a meeting…
• Fonts are adjustable! No more doing the “large print walk of shame” at your local bookstore!
• Downward price pressure (if you buy from Amazon or Sony)
• No waiting by the mailbox them to arrive, or driving to the bookstore and encountering underpaid employees.

Paper books:

• A unique tactile experience
• Cover art
• Shopping experience can be more spontaneous and social.
• Powells, The Strand, insert your favorite local bookstore.
• No digital rights management
• Less publisher-imposed geographic limitations, books work in any country.
• Very few books (outside of textbooks) cost as much as a dedicated ebook reader.
• Worst outcome when you spill coffee on a regular book is a stained book (as opposed to the sound of your wallet screaming in horror).

I see both sides of this debate; I love my Kindle, I love ebooks. But I also spent three years managing bookstores, and there are some experiences that cannot be replicated by point and click. Personally, I have a handful of books that I will always want to have in paper form, and it will take more than the convenience of a Kindle to keep me from spending way too much money in every bookstore I see.

Where do you fall in this debate? Do you straddle both sides, clinging to the paper and the digital? Or have you sworn off all things paper and only buying books you can measure in megabytes instead of pages? And finally, even if you are all digital, are there some books you simply can’t bear to have in anything other than dusty old paper?

Remember the Amazon Kindle DX? That is the huge eBook reader from Amazon that’s just like the Kindle only bigger and geared toward college student use? Well there’s a study underway at Princeton University to see how well students adapt to the gigantic eBook reader. As may be expected there’s been a period of adjustment. Although people have remarked that they can read for a longer period of time with the e-Ink pages – several students are complaining about the lack of note taking and page flipping. A pretty good summary of the experiences would be:

“Much of my learning comes from a physical interaction with the text: bookmarks, highlights, page-tearing, sticky notes and other marks representing the importance of certain passages — not to mention margin notes, where most of my paper ideas come from and interaction with the material occurs,” he explained. “All these things have been lost, and if not lost they’re too slow to keep up with my thinking, and the ‘features’ have been rendered useless.”

FoxNews

Welcome to a new series we are starting here at Gear Diary called “State of the eBook”. Every two weeks or so (more if the news warrants it) I’ll be bringing you the latest news in ebooks, publishing, and the general digitization of our reading lives. Continue Reading

Way back in the spring, I posted about Dan Brown’s “The Lost Symbol” and its potential to be an e-book star. With eBook apps on smartphones, and Sony Readers and Kindles coming down in price, more people than ever can get their hot little hands on eBooks. And sure enough…

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Since I began writing for Gear Diary I have gotten to know my FedEx and UPS delivery people quite well. Fact is rarely do two days pass when I don’t see one or both of them.

I sold my Kindle2 a few weeks back and had no plans to purchase another one unless Apple doesn’t come out with a light-weight tablet in the next few months. For reasons I will go into in another post, however, I ordered a Kindle DX. That’s where this story begins.

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Jealous of your iPhone toting/Kindle toting friends? Of course you are. But who has $299 to spend on a new Kindle? If you can handle the “wedge” style, and don’t mind buying refurb, then here’s a deal for you to snap up: Original Kindle for $149!

Now take the money you saved, and start stocking up your new Kindle! Happy reading!

Via Mobileread

A story yesterday in the Boston Globe spotlighted Cushing Academy – a New England prep school. Their library is undergoing a radical change. All 20,000 of their books are being discarded in favor of electronic editions. Instead they’ll spend $500,000 to outfit the library with a “learning center” containing three large flat-screen TVs that show Internet data, special laptop friendly study carrels, a $50,000 coffee shop that will include a $12,000 cappuccino machine. The students will have access to both Sony Reader and Amazon Kindle devices as well as be encouraged to read material via their laptops. This all sounds like a great idea. One question. When did prep schools start serving cappuccino to students?

Boston Globe via Slashdot image via Dawn Endico flickr

Amazon is sending an email to Kindle owners who were impacted by their mid-July erasure of the book 1984 from Kindle devices. Apparently the book, which had been uploaded by a third party publisher through a self-service area of the Kindle site, had copyright issues and even though Amazon briefly allowed the book to be downloaded they quickly cut off sales of the book. Then, in a move that angered Kindle owners and eBook fans everywhere, they electronically erased it from all Kindles. Now Amazon is notifying those affected that they’re sorry – and you can have your book back or here’s $30 for your problems in the form of a credit.

As you were one of the customers impacted by the removal of “Nineteen Eighty-Four” from your Kindle device in July of this year, we would like to offer you the option to have us re-deliver this book to your Kindle along with any annotations you made You will not be charged for the book. If you do not wish to have us re-deliver the book to your Kindle, you can instead choose to receive an Amazon.com electronic gift certificate or check for $30.

gadgetsonthego

Kindle-gate exploded when Amazon remotely removed a number of books by George Orwell. At the time  I wondered what would happen to any notes taken on those various books if such a thing were to happen again. And although Jeff Bezos apologized for the action and promised to do better in the future, the question remained.

Well now we have an answer. A student was taking notes for an AP class and found that his notes remained. No problem right? Nope, big problem. It seems the pages referenced were left useless once the book was gone hence the notes themselves were useless too.

So what is the poor teen to do? Sue Amazon of course.

Read the full article here.

JAVOedge recently released a new line of cases for the Amazon Kindle 2.

These cases, called Hardwood Sleeves, are eco-friendly sleeve style cases made to protect your Kindle when you’re not reading.

The cases, which are made to look like hardwood, come in two styles, Oak or Ash.

JAVOedge was kind enough to send along both styles for me to review.

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