Andrea’s Amazon Bits

Andrea James has a nifty blog that covers Amazonand has a couple of interesting bits on it lately. One of them looks at the new Amazon “window-shopping” experience, that’s at http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/amazon/archives/152723.asp. The other one looks at Oprah’s endorsement of the Kindle and discusses the possibility that Kindle may be a better buy for women.

I don’t know about that. I do own a Kindle, however, and know that my expectations of what a book should offer me has been much changed since I got my Kindle (which I love and which I use constantly.) I also find myself very irritated if a paper book on Amazon is not available on Kindle. Now do I still read paper books? Heck yeah. But Kindle books are cheaper for the most part, there’s no waiting for delivery, and I do believe that reading on the E-Ink screen is just as comfortable (possibly more comfortable) than a paper book.

Sony Announces New E-Book Reader

On October 2, Sony announced its new E-Book rear, the PRS-700. From the wording it looks like it will complement, not displace, the PRS-505.

The new reader is about 10 ounces with a six inch display, similar to Kindle. The new Sony Reader will also have a touchscreen (which Kindle does not) and has a stylus with virtual keyboard for virtual notetaking.

Sony Reader, like Kindle, has e-ink display, which means no backlight, which means no night reading. Except the new reader has a built-in LED reading light (wonder what that does to battery life.)

The Kindle has built-in wireless for buying books from Amazon. Sony Reader doesn’t have that but it does have SD and Memory Stick card slots, and the Sony Reader is making major inroads at retailers, being stocked at both Borders and Target.

The PRS-700 will be available next month for about $400. You can get pix and more details at Sony.com.

Pirate Bay Hoists the Lawsuit Flag

I don’t know if I’m more bemused by the role-reversal or the pure-D ballsiness. A Wired Blog notes that Peter Sunde, a co-founder of torrent site the Pirate Bay, is accusing a group of Swedish book publishers of illegal scraping, and is threatening a lawsuit, saying Pirate Bay owns the copyright to its database of torrents which the publishers violated.

Once you get past the surrealism, there’s a pretty astonishing statistic you might want to make note of. The book publishers, who were doing all this scraping for a study, noted that 85 percent of the best-selling books in Sweden are available on the Pirate Bay. And Sunde is quoted by TorrentFreak that he’s “a bit sad that it’s not 100%.”

Penn State Hands Out Sony Readers

Penn State is trying an experiment. As the university notes on its Web site, it will begin a yearlong pilot program using the Sony Reader. (Sony donated 100 of them to the university libraries.) The readers will be used in the English department, will be available for borrowing in the Course Reserve Reading Room, and will be used in the libraries’ first-year seminar class for developing information literacy skills.

Sexy iRexy

Forbes has an article on the new iRex Technologies e-book reader, the iRex Reader 1000. This new reader apparently sports a 10.2″ (diagonal) E-Ink screen (Kindle’s is 6-inch.) The reader will also accept e-book, PDF, HTML, and Word formats. It also has a stylus and a touch screen. iRex says the basic version of its reader will be $650 — yikes! Additional options could pump it up to $850.

The iRex Reader will still be greyscale, just like Kindle and the Sony Reader. When are we going to get color from E-Ink-based devices? “E-Ink enthusiasts will likely have to wait until 2009 for color E-ink and as late as 2012 for video, says Russ Wilcox, the chief executive of Cambridge, Mass.-based E-Ink, which developed the black and white pigment now used in every paper-like reader.”

You mean I could carry around a Kindle that would allow me both to read a book and watch a podcast of the morning news? I’ll wait. Not very patiently, but I’ll wait….

Target to Start Carrying Sony Reader

Sony has announced that Target is going to carry the Sony Reader starting September 14th. That’s today, boys and girls. The model in question is the Reader Digital Book PRS-505. If you buy the reader at Target, you’ll also get a coupon for a free e-book. The store will also carry a selection of accessories and accouterments; the Reader will retail for about $300. You can get a few more details at this PC Magazine article.

Here Comes the Kindle Competitor?

So the rumors about a new Kindle have been quashed by Amazon. But there is an 8×11″ e-book reader on the horizon. It’s just coming from a different company. TG Daily has a brief update about a new reader from Plastic Logic with plenty of good photos. You can catch it at http://www.tgdaily.com/html_tmp/content-view-39220-97.html. Wired.com has a few more details at http://blog.wired.com/gadgets/2008/09/plastic-logics.html and some more pictures.

Briefly: 8×11 view display, flexible plastic (Wired has a picture of the reader going all bendy), pop-up touch-sensitive keywords, Office documents read without fuss, no price announced as yet (bummer.)

No, Virginia, Santa Claus Won’t Have a New Kindle

After watching rumors about a new, textbook-friendly Kindle coming out soon, Amazon has finally stepped in and — squashed the rumor. According to a blog at the New York Times, there will be no new Kindle this year. No news about the potential for a new Kindle next year. Read the comments for perspective from current Kindle owners and students thinking about what it would be like having a single e-book instead of a giant pile of books.

Ooo Look! Actual Kindle Numbers!

A post at the Electronic Frontier Foundation asks some questions about the future of the Kindle — and has some sales numbers! Well, some guesses of sales numbers. The guess is that Amazon is on track to sell 380,000 Kindles this year, with sales expected to hit $1 billion by 2010.

This article at the EFF asks several questions about the Kindle, including question about how open the Kindles are and will be to different types of material, how the first sale doctrine fits into all this, and exactly what’s going to happen to the bookstores.

Bookstores must find a way to interact with digital content and monetize a broader range of goods and services that come attached to “book culture,”…

Yes! Yes! But how? And who is discussing this? And does this explain why Borders is creating concept stores that sell stationery?

Big Screen Kindle in the Works?

This is an interesting blog post about a big screen Kindle and what it might do for the textbook market. And when you think about it, prices on Kindles wouldn’t have to even drop that much for this to be a great idea. If you halved the price of textbooks when making them available electronically, the Kindle pays for itself in — what — a year?

Unfortunately there are a couple of big Kindle drawbacks. B&W only, for one. You also can’t mark it all over with a yellow highlighter and Post-It flags.