Quite a few different ebook news stories today, mostly device related.

iBooks 1.1 for any iOS 3.2/4.0 device is out today. Now syncs bookmarks and notes between devices, and is the first version usable on an iPhone/iPod Touch. It also adds PDF compatibility, but annoyingly, it works like the rest of iTunes media only allowing syncing from one computer. I'll be keeping GoodReader around to be able to drag and drop PDF files to the iPad at work, while keeping my sync computer my home machine.

The Barnes and Noble Nook dropped to $199 for the 3G version, and a new WiFi only version is out for $149. Also an update to 1.4 is available today.

And Amazon decided to join in on the price slashing, dropping the Kindle with 3G to $189.

I gave iBooks a try on my 3G today, it is painfully slow. Slow enough that you keep tapping twice because you are convinced that it hasn't registered you tap. Very un-iPhone [-]

Wow, hadn't heard about the Kindle dropping price too. Really, they had no choice but to do this. $149 at the highest should be the target for these guys in the future, but if the iPad base price doesn't dip below $499, they should be okay with these new prices.

B&N are really smart to get a WiFi-only version out there. For some people, 3G isn't necessary, and $149 should sell quite a few of those things.

...I wonder if that's the least expensive Android device on the market (unsubsidized)...

The LCD screen on the Nook is tiny so it wouldn't be very good to use as a general purpose Android tablet.

There are quite a few $100 craptastic Android tablets appearing now anyway. You get what you pay for however so don't get your hopes up.

Ugh, I certainly wouldn't use it as a tablet. Not sure where that came from...

I just conjectured that it might be the cheapest Android device on the market, for no reason other than to wonder it.

*edit*
Just wanted to mention that the screen is 3.5", though it is more rectangular.

Nope. The craptastic $100 Android tablets like the Eken M001 beat it in price. You get a usable sized screen as well. If they can sell it for $100 then the parts can't cost that much.


Its 1"x3.5" :P Not particularly useful unless you're using it like the Nook as a secondary display/input.

I've recently become a bit disillusioned with Amazon's Kindle. Mostly because of the Topaz format that more of Amazon's e-books are being supplied in. I won't knowingly buy an e-book in that format. edit: Pretty much means I'm not going to be buying e-books from Amazon.



I'll admit the format is a neat hack, take a book, scan all the pages, decompose the scans into small images, I'm presuming word level images, remove redundant images, all the while generating playback sequences for same. Then for display flow the images back together as needed. (My interpretation of what is happening.)

What don't you like about Topaz? Bad performance?

It can be, later in a large book. But also, no readers other than Amazon's can display Topaz.

But I'm also a recent convert to the use of Calibre to manage my e-book library. Part of that package is a searchable content server, with which I can access my books over the internet. Downloading to whatever software/reader is handy.

Calibre can store and server out topaz files but it's not useful to do so when it's format locked to Amazon readers, and drm locked to a specific device.

So your complaint is that the books you download to the Kindle can only be read on the Kindle? Which other platform do you suggest, then? If anything, you can read Kindle store books on more platforms than any other stores'. My apologies if I'm not understanding you...

I can understand not wanting to support one thing due to its association with another. For example, I returned a DIVX player I got as a gift, and replaced it with a regular DVD player because I was opposed to the whole notion of DIVX, despite the fact that, I'm sure, it would have worked just fine as a DVD player without ever having been hooked up to a phone line.

But this is like complaining about a device having DIVX when every other device supports a completely different but equally locked down format.

iBooks ebooks only work on Apple devices. B&N store-bought books only work on the Nook. And so on. I'm just trying to understand the logic.

I can't find a reference right now, but I seem to recall that Barnes and Noble's DRM and the Sony Reader's DRM are open specifications, while Amazon's is not.

The folks over at ereader.com have an interesting solution to the social engineering defeat of encryption (without trying to give a private key to a user, yet somehow also keep it secret from them) of simply sharing passwords: Make the password your full name and credit card number. People are probably far less likely to share that information. Even if they use a disposable credit card number, it still has their full name, as verified by a bank. (Doesn't really help in the case of identity theft, but that's a different can of worms.)

The logic for me is that I could easily break the DRM on the books I bought from Barnes & Noble and then use them in any program or device that supports the ePub standard. There is no need to then also transcode it into a different format, though since I suppose it's just words instead of compressed audio, the loss of quality concern isn't valid here.

And yes, the Nook uses the same Adobe DRM that the Sony products do, along with a few others. So it's possible to buy a book off Sony's store and load it onto a Nook, or vice versa.

There are publishers out there that do not encumber their ebooks with either drm or closed formats. Baen is in the lead providing DRM free books in a variety of formats.

Baen is also following the traditional pricing forms for their e-books. While a book is only available in hardback, typically the cost is $15, after paperbacks are available, $6.

Companies like Amazon, B&N, and now Apple, are trying to recreate the success of the Apple/iPod/iTunes trifecta.

I just don't think that's going to happen. Already there are many sources for e-books that do not force the use of a particular reader-device.

http://www.mobipocket.com/en/HomePage/default.asp?Language=EN
http://www.fictionwise.com/
http://www.feedbooks.com/
http://www.baen.com/
http://www.ereader.com/
http://www.randomhouse.com/delrey/ebooks/
http://us.penguingroup.com/
http://us.macmillan.com/
Honorable mention: http://www.gutenberg.org/

Kindle v3 is available for preorder and its available in the UK also. £109 for WiFi only version and £149 for WiFi+3G. 3G access is free and includes web.

Got my Kindle 3 today. So far I'm happy with it.

It looks like a decent device and it's finally being sold at a more realistic price.