(image courtesy nikdaum)

eBooknewser reported today that Amazon quietly shut down Mobipocket, an ebook store that those of us with PDA roots probably remember fondly. Amazon purchased Mobipocket and still uses their format as the basis for Kindle books. After reading the post, I headed over to Mobipocket and found what appears to be the internet equivalent of a broken, abandoned storefront. There’s no announcement that Mobipocket is gone, but the files appear to have all disappeared. Bestsellers, fiction, non-fiction, everything is just gone, with the exception of a handful of classics that appear on the main page.

Meanwhile, things aren’t exactly hopping over at eReader/Fictionwise. They haven’t carried a new bestseller or mainstream… Continue reading on Gear Diary ...

There’s an interesting (and honestly, inevitable) trend in the book world lately: no one’s talking hardware anymore. Yes, there’s new devices, and sales are touted when they’re impressive. But the big announcements that come up again and again are “ebook sales are increasing by these triple digits/these authors are making this much money through ebooks/we have this many free ebooks, etc”. Plus, all those lovely ebooks are available on tablets, computers, smartphones and dedicated ebook readers…so does it pay for a company to offer the hardware without the ebooks anymore?

In my view, the answer is no, and I think 2012 is the year we see many of the unaffiliated hardware drop by the wayside. Sony, Ectaco… Continue reading on Gear Diary ...

Big news from B&N today! They’re looking to push down the price of the NOOK and drive more subscription services, so they’ve combined the two! You can get a free NOOK Simple Touch or a $99 NOOKcolor with a subscription to the New York Times through B&N ($19.99/month). Alternately, if you are more of the entertainment news type, there’s always a $199 NOOK Tablet with a subscription to People!

This is potentially huge for the ebook industry. It turns the reader hardware into a commodity, not the main show. It also pushes prices down while also lining up ongoing cash flow for B&N and the periodical providers (who I assume are splitting the subsidy costs). Finally, this is a… Continue reading on Gear Diary ...

It’s good news/bad news/WHOA! news from Barnes & Noble this evening. Everything good they had to say came with some bad news, and with some news that could go either way … let’s look at the good and the bad,21 here!

First, NOOKTablet sales were off the charts, and B&N had a 70% increase  in sales of ebook readers. These are all really good things. Champagne for everyone at B&N! Except…apparently the NOOK Simple Touch “lagged expectations”, and while B&N claims it’s because of higher NOOK Tablet demand, that’s still a worrisome comment. Especially if you consider that B&N’s competition (Amazon and Kobo) are crowing about great sales, without any “except our newest product” caveat. That’s the… Continue reading on Gear Diary ...

Every now and then we are invited to review something that just looks… well… ridiculous but we end up agreeing to take a look anyway. When the “ridiculous review item” first arrives and we open the box our first impressions are, for the most part, confirmed. Yes, more often than not the product is silly, looks like a bad joke and poses a bit of a challenge with regard to actually writing the review. Every now and then however, once we actually start using the item we discover that our first AND second impressions were actually wrong! Sure, the item still looks silly but it actually works well.

That was my experience with the ePillow. I’m not fully sure why I agreed to review it since the pictures didn’t impress me but I’m actually glad I did. I’ve used it to watch some movies on my iPad this weekend and I actually found it quite useful. Seriously!

I swung by my local library today and discovered they put together a very clever way of promoting library eBooks. They had free “gift cards” out for “free eBooks”, which was just a printed card with the library’s website on the front and QR code for the site on the back. The marketing campaign signs around the library suggested people could give them alongside Kindles, NOOKs, etc.… Continue reading on Gear Diary ...

Good news! You can now play Words With Friends on your NOOK Tablet. Bad news…it’ll cost you $2.99! Apparently there’s no free rides in the NOOK ecosystem, as many apps that are free with ads on bigger platforms cost a small amount on the NOOK. This is a trend we’ve seen in other “big” apps like Angry Birds, and I think it’s more likely to harm than help B&N in building a sustainable platform.

Before I get into my logic, I want to make one thing clear-I have no problem with paying for apps, or with developers needing a way to make money. My issue is that B&N has an Android base to their tablet… Continue reading on Gear Diary ...

Well … ok, maybe not! But thanks to the mad image juxtaposition skills of Dan Cohen, it looks that way. And really, just HOW surprised would you have been if it WAS true?

Let’s be serious – Angry Birds has ‘jumped the shark’ … in reality it did so in 2010. It is a cute 15-minute time waster with enough content to be highly replayable. But when you think about it … it really isn’t much beyond a well executed touch-based singular game mechanic. Try this – play it on the PSP or on a PC. Guess what? It is crap. Without an iOS or Android device the game is not… Continue reading on Gear Diary ...

I have always loved Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, and introduced my kids to the book as well as the 1966 movie (free to stream on Netflix or Amazon with accounts). Now for the 50th anniversary of the classic novel, Bradbury has finally relented and allowed for an eBook release.

From the LA Times:

Simon & Schuster released an e-book edition of Ray Bradbury’s science fiction classic “Fahrenheit 451″ on Tuesday. First published in 1953, “Fahrenheit 451″ is a dystopia in which reading is banned and it is the job of firefighters to burn books. 451 degrees Fahrenheit is the temperature at which paper burns.

The irony of releasing an

(image courtesy Put Me In Coach)

The new NOOK Tablet is out, and slowly but surely more details about how it is different from its NOOKcolor predecessor are being released. For most users, the Tablet is a great upgrade; better screen, more memory, more multimedia options…it’s a win all around. But what about the people who loved their NOOKcolors for their supreme hackability?

According to The Digital Reader, it appears that B&N has locked the bootloader on the NOOKTablet. In english, this means they’ve added an additional level of security, making rooting (and installing the Android marketplace, etc) a far more difficult proposition. It’s hardly the easy sailing it was for the… Continue reading on Gear Diary ...

Last month I reviewed the TruConnect ‘pay as you go’ mobile broadband solution, saying:

TruConnect absolutely delivers on their claims of a simple device, easy setup and configuration, and clear pricing of as little as $4.99 per month. Beyond that, every person needs to make their own value judgement in terms of the data fees. For light or occasional use, you can get 250MB for less than $15 a month, but once you break 1GB of monthly data you might be better off with a full access plan. The good news is that you have no contract and no termination fees – you own the MiFi (or USB access point), so you cancel

From the Editorial Staff of Gear Diary: Is there someone in your life who loves to read? If so, here are five gifts with which you can’t go wrong.

Kindle/NOOK: Either one, but this is a must for anyone who loves reading. And the entry-level prices make them an affordable tablet companion even if you already have an iPad.

Kindle prices start at $79.

nook touch is $119.99 in our Amazon Affiliate Store.

eReaders are a bit delicate so you need a sleeve for protections. Carly’s favorite is the Timbuktu sleeve. It is lined in soft fabric… Continue reading on Gear Diary ...

I wrote about the Android app TouchDown by NitroDesk as an ‘App I Can’t Live Without’, so naturally when I got my Kindle Fire, one of the first things I did was load up TouchDown from the Amazon Appstore for Android to configure my work email account.

The problem came when I went to switch from a ‘trial’ to licensed mode. On any other Android device I would simply download the TouchDown License from my ‘purchased apps’ on the Android Market. But, since there is no access to the Android Market, I couldn’t do that on the Fire. Further, when I asked the developers, they said that different terms and… Continue reading on Gear Diary ...

Well, the rumors turned out to be true, and the NOOK Tablet (aka NOOKcolor 2) is official. B&N is releasing a minor upgrade to the NOOKcolor, with an HD screen and an emphasis on multimedia. The real question is this: B&N is #2 in the ebook world, and will consumers pay more money to buy the #2 guy’s tablet?

Here’s what worries me about the NOOK Tablet: It does have some measurable benefits over the Fire (better storage options, polished and recognizable design, strong hacker community behind it), but it’s straying from the NOOKcolor’s ebook roots. It’s more tablet than reader, where the original was more reader than tablet. Why does this matter? Because on the one… Continue reading on Gear Diary ...

Dear B&N,

I want you to succeed. Really, I do. I know it’s hard to believe, being the former Borders’ girl that I am. And sure, my personal library is pretty heavily Amazon-focused. But I like competition. And I like bookstores. And you bring both. But come on, you need to step up your game, and it seems like you’re falling behind at exactly the wrong time.

Let’s look at your main competition, Amazon. They have the Kindle Fire tablet coming out, and the “special sauce” is their ecosystem. Point for point they offer more value to a new customer. Let’s see:

• Apps:Amazons AppStore is well stocked, and works on multiple