We are giving away one of our review copies of the previous generation Amazon Kindle Keyboard! This is the only Kindle still marketed by Amazon that has a physical keyboard to type words or internet addresses. You can surf online, share book updates via Twitter, and shop for plenty of newspapers and books!
We are giving this away on February the 7th to one lucky winner of our blog! We will pay for the shipping, and you get the e-reader and everything that originally came with it! To enter, all you have to do is vote for us in the Freescale Smart Mobile Device Pundit 2012 Top 20! Once you vote, simply comment below and let us you did it. We will pick one winner and let them know by email and by updating this post. So check back often and you can vote once a day, so you enter the contest more than once!
Vote for Michael Kozlowski of Good e-Reader at the following link – http://freescale.com/pundit
One Click Vote the easy way – HERE
Introducing the Good e-Reader Android App Store Client
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We are proud to unleash the beta version of our standalone Android App Store client! This is an extension of our browser based store that we unveiled last month. It brings to the table exciting new features and a very clean interface.
The Good e-Reader Android App Store has been a huge success for us with over 50,000 visitors on the website since it launched in the second week of Janurary. The premise of the store is to give people outside of the USA a chance to get their hands on the latest apps! We have apps that Getjar and other alterantive markets simply don’t have and we put a strong emphasis on reading programs. You can get popular apps like Kindle, Nook, Sony, Kobo, Aldiko, Flash 11, Marvel Comics and tons more! We currently have over 250 apps that are basically, in our minds, the best apps out there.
Our new client is easy to install to your device and there is a few ways you can get it on your Kobo Vox, Kindle Fire, Pandigital Novel, Micro CRUZ or any other android device. You can open up your browser on your tablet and visit our App store HERE. You can also download the Android file straight to your PC and then copy it to your tablets memory. Finally use your file manager on the tablet to launch our app and get downloading new programs right away.
We are always updating the app daily, so much sure to keep on checking for our Beta 2 release. This will give you push notifications when new updates are available, so you will always make sure you have the latest version available. Also you can chat with other people who have installed the app and get troubleshooting assistance with our dynamic commenting system.
We are looking for your feedback on the development of this app, it is polished and nearly done. If you have a large tablet or rooted device, we would love to hear how it looks and any key features we might have missed. Please comment on this post and let us know how it looks on your end and how you like it.
Download the new Good e-Reader App Store for Android Client HERE.
Amazon in the Process of Launching a Retail Store
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Amazon sources close to the situation have told us that the company is planning on rolling out a retail store in Seattle within the next few months. This project is a test to gauge the market to see if a chain of stores would be profitable. They intend on going with the small boutique route with the main emphasis on books from their growing line of Amazon Exclusives and selling their e-readers and tablets.
Seattle is where Amazons main headquarters is based and is known as a fairly tech savvy market. It is a perfect launch location to get some hands on experience in the retail sphere. A source has told us that they are not looking to launch a huge store with thousands of square feet. Instead they are going the boutique route and stocking the shelves with only high margin and high-end items. Their intention is to mainly hustle their entire line of Kindle e-Readers and the Kindle Fire. They also will be stocking a ton of accessories such as cases, screen protectors and USB adapters.
The company has already contracted the design through a shell company as they are most famous for. When Amazon releases new products to the FCC it is always done through anonymous proxy companies to avoid disclosure to their competition on what they are working on. They are doing this for the actual first store layout and design and modeling themselves after Apple.
The store itself they are creating is not just selling tangible items like e-readers and tablets but also their books. Amazon recently started their own publishing division and has locked up many indie and prominent figures to write exclusively with the company. This has prompted their rivals such as Barnes and Noble and Books-A-Million to publicly proclaim they won’t touch Amazons physical book with a ten-foot-pole. Amazon launching their own store will give customer a way to physically buy books and also sample ebooks via WIFI when they are in a physical location.
This is exciting news and Amazon in a great position to make a strong go out of their retail endeavors. They are starting locally and small mainly to test the waters with a new store but also figure out how their going to avoid paying massive taxes. In the last few years there has been a huge tax debate because Amazon sells things online and only pays State taxes if they have a distribution center within a particular location. Having a physical store means the company will have to start paying more taxes and they are currently working out the logistics and tax loopholes before they launch.
We have heard a time-frame of their first location starting up before the end of the year to capitalize on the lucrative holiday season. I expect it to launch soon after the Kindle Fire 2 is announced to maximize the exposure they are going to get.
The battle between Apple and Samsung, fought in the courts of Germany, has taken a new turn and Apple is counting the losses. The court has ruled the newly redesigned Galaxy Tab 10.1N does not infringe on any of Apple’s patent rights and its touchscreen technology. Judge Andreas Mueller said while delivering the ruling at the Munich Regional Court: “Samsung has shown that it is more likely than not that the patent will be revoked because of a technology that was already on the market before the intellectual property had been filed for protection.”
Apple had filed a suit against Samsung stating that the technology by which the scrolling effect on the screen occurred had been copied by Samsung. Samsung on their part argued on the basis of the time period that is mandated for a patent was active and hence sale of their tablet shouldn’t be banned before the nine months period has elapsed.
The Tab10.1 N is Samsung’s response to an earlier law suit by Apple wherein they claimed their iPad had been copied in the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1. Samsung had tweaked a bit of the outer design of their Galaxy Tab and came up with the 10.1N variant. Now the court has freed Samsung from the ban on the 10.1N model. Samsung has, however, been barred from selling its Galaxy Tab 10.1 in Germany, though Samsung will remain unscathed as it had already stopped selling that particular tablet.
via bloomberg
Corning, the company behind the famous Gorilla Glass screen technology found in many phones and tablets, has been living and breathing the avant garde. The brilliant minds at the company have been releasing concept technology for many years, trying to get companies to bite. They released a new video today that expanded upon their original day of glass video that saw seminal success.
The video shows how their glass technology can be employed in the home, school, business, and medical fields. Words simply cannot do this video justice and you have to watch it to fully appreciate the company’s vision to durable and highly interactive display surfaces.
Barnes and Noble made waves earlier this week when they issued statements that they would not carry any Amazon published books in their stores. It seems this proclamation resonated with the nation’s second largest book seller Books-A-Million. The company today officially announced that they also would not carry any of the books that Amazon publishes.
Books-A-Million is headquartered in Birmingham, Alabama and has bookstores in 31 States in over 200 locations. They are the second major company thus far to resist the urge to carry physical books in their retail locations from their arch-nemesis Amazon. There is no word yet on whether this applies to ebooks. Barnes and Noble mentioned that although they will not carry paperbacks by Amazon they will sell the ebooks in their online store, because there is a higher profit margin on them.
BlackBerry PlayBook for $199 Is Back Again
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Perhaps RIM has made more experiments with the price of its PlayBook than anyone with a tablet device anytime before. However, of all the prices that the PlayBook can be associated with so far, it seems it is the $199 price tag that suits it best. Which is perhaps why the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet is up for sale at just $199 one more time. Last month, the same tablet had been made available for $299 and the price covered any of the 16, 32, or 64 GB PlayBook model. However, you have until the 11th February to avail of the special prices, after that the prices won’t be this low again, though you never know when RIM will start it all over again.
For those in Canada, wireless carrier operator Telus is offering an even better PlayBook deal. They are offering the 16 Gb and 32 Gb PlayBook model for $150 and less starting from the 3rd of February.
The much awaited PlayBook OS 2.0 is expected this month, while RIM has already announced they are also developing a sequel to the current PlayBook device. Looks like the worst for the PlayBook is already well past it and the beleaguered tablet can only grow from here.
via pcworld
The US government is poised to commit to a five year plan to integrate digital textbooks into the K12 educational system. There are many benefits of going this route because of the interactive nature and higher potential to enamor students. Apple is one of the leading companies in America that stands to benefit from this arrangement with its new ecosystem unveiled last month.
Education Secretary Arne Duncan said earlier today that “Do we want kids walking around with 50-pound backpacks and every book in those backpacks costing 50, 60, 70 dollars and many of them being out of date? Or, do we want students walking around with a mobile device that has much more content than was even imaginable a couple years ago and can be constantly updated? I think it’s a very simple choice,” Duncan said in an interview.
Digital Textbooks are nothing new and companies such as KNO have been doing it for years. New projects have been launched in Florida, Idaho, Utah and California. One of the barriers so far as been dedicated high-speed connections to push the data and WIFI networks being employed by the schools.
Textbooks are big business and about $8 billion is spent annually in the U.S. on children in kindergarten through 12th grade, said Jay Diskey, the executive director of the school division of the Association of American Publishers. Diskey said textbook companies have been working on the technology for the past five to eight years to transform the industry, but that in many cases, schools simply aren’t ready.
There is no disputing that in wired cities and select areas digital textbooks are a boon. If you are reading a science book you can interact with the molecules and get 3D renderings on cancer cells. Updates can be pushed right through the Apple App Store and immerse students because of the interactive nature.
The American government much like Russia seems committed to the Digital Textbook revolution but the future remains uncertain. Small town American simply does not have the infrastructure in order to provide enough bandwidth and internet access to the schools to facilitate downloads. Obviously students will benefit from the low prices and schools themselves will save money on buying books that will be outdated in a few years.
The way I see it the best way for schools to handle digital textbooks is to put the onus on the parents to purchase the books at a low price instead of providing the books themselves. Part of the problem is because there is no aftermarket for digital textbooks, the school would need to purchase them each semester for each student individually. Not to mention how will schools and especially schools that are not generally higher income based, will handle giving the students iPads or other tech to read the books on? The schools would be better off upgrading their bandwidth and WIFI connections in order to serve data faster. In the end, I doubt we will see a ton of schools embrace digital textbooks. The logistics would be a nightmare and most administrative staff are not technologically savvy enough to make this work.
via AP
The ALA Midwinter Conference was held in Dallas, TX, only a couple of weeks ago, but some major news came out of that event for the American Library Association. Essentially, the leadership finally expressed that it was fed up with the current upheaval in public library ebook lending, with different members of the Big Six publishing houses setting their own rules—from no lending of our new titles, to a book can only be borrowed a specific number of times, to no lending of any of our titles at all—it was chaos for the libraries and disappointment for their patrons.
But a meeting between the ALA and some of those publishers was called for by ALA executive director Keith Fiels, and that meeting took place over the course of several days beginning January 31. Fiels spoke with Andrew Albanese from Publisher’s Weekly about the need for coherence on the issue of lending.
“The issue of e-books has really been boiling up over the course of the last year, and I think if you had to say there was something keeping librarians awake at night, this is the issue, and there is a range of aspects to the issue,” explained Fiels. “You have issues with a variety of different formats, technical standards. And, you have issues with just the demand at this point. I still have people approach me and ask how libraries feel about e-books, and well, libraries can’t get enough of them. Which is obviously where the big issue comes up, because you have some publishers that will not make e-books available to libraries, from a triage standpoint. This is a serious issue, and there’s been a lot of interest expressed on part of ALA members that we take a strong stance on this.”
One of the end results of these meetings is an agreement from Random House that it would support ebook lending of its catalog of titles, but that the price that libraries must pay for those books would have to increase. While that’s not welcome news for any industry trying to maintain budgets, libraries are typically charged more than consumers for library editions of many of their works. More importantly, it’s an acceptable solution when considering that the alternative is to not be able to offer ebook lending to their patrons, an initiative that libraries will have to offer if they plan to move forward into a future where so many readers are going digital.
Amazon Kindle Fire Satisfaction Survey Released
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The Amazon Kindle Fire since it sale last year has quickly became the most demanded android tablet in the USA. A recent survey was conducted with over 254 new Kindle Fire owners and asked them various questions to see how they used the device and what they thought about it.
When asked how satisfied they are with their new tablet device, better than one-in-two Kindle Fire owners (54%) say they are Very Satisfied. Another 38% say they are Somewhat Satisfied.
In previous ChangeWave surveys we’ve found that the percentage of tablet owners who say they are Very Satisfied with a particular device is highly predictive of future demand for that device. So how does the Amazon tablet rating match up against other tablet devices?
While the 54% Very Satisfied rating for the Kindle Fire is considerably below the 74% rating of the industry leading Apple iPad*, it is higher than the 49% average rating for all of the other tablet devices combined.
They also asked the users what they actually liked about the tablet itself. The Cost of the Kindle Fire (59%) is by far the thing new owners like best about their device, followed by the Color Screen (31%) and its Ease of Use (27%). Other top responses include the device’s Selection of Books and its Size/Weight.
Now obviously not everyone is going to be totally happy with their purchase and we got some indication on what exactly people aren’t enamored about. The top dislikes reported by Kindle Fire owners are No Volume Up/Down Button (27%), the fact it has No Camera (21%), and that the Battery Life is Too Short (15%). Other dislikes include Lack of 3G/4G Capability and Number of Apps Available
New Asus Tablet – TF300T Revealed
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Asus is working on a new tablet device with the model number TF300T. Now this is one of those pieces of news that need to be ingested with some salt though just to add some respectability to it, the model number does rhyme with those associated with other Asus tablets such as the Transformer Prime. The original Transformer carries the model number TF101 while the same for the Transformer Prime is TF201.
Meanwhile ASUS has also announced their upgraded Transformer Prime would be carrying the model number TF700. The tablet would be running on a Tegra 3 quad core processor and will have a screen resolution of 1920 x 1200 pixels.
Not surprisingly, almost everything about the new tablet is in the dark except a few photographs which shows a read textured background.
Good e-Reader Radio Show – Feb 3 2012
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Welcome to another edition of the Good e-Reader Radio Show! It’s good to be back! We took a brief few month vacation from doing the show as we focused on many different trips and projects in the last few months.
In this edition of the show we talk about all of the latest Android projects we have in the works! The Good e-Reader APP store launched recently and we give you the full details about the initiative and the new standalone app we are working on. Speaking of Android we just released our first Android application that is a mobile version of our own Good e-Reader Blog. We also talk about all the latest news and new e-readers in the works from Barnes and Noble.
Should e-Readers Embrace Social Media More?
By Michael Kozlowski · Comments (3)Many e-readers such as the Amazon Kindle and Kobo Touch have embraced social media, but in very different ways. Amazon allows you to share via Twitter and Facebook quotes and passages from the books you are reading. Kobo has developed “Reading Life,” which takes this premise a step further and earns you awards and achievements. Kobo even allows you to access Reading Life with no software on the Kob Vox and Apple iPad gives you the freedom to talk with other people in real time who are reading the same book as you are. Are these companies doing enough with various social media platforms or is this a feature that takes away from the book experience?
Social Media is growing. A recent survey conducted yesterday on Facebook Burnout states that even though the social network is many years old, people are clearly not jaded or banal about it just yet. Facebook is in the news a ton lately due to its recent IPO filing and the company imminently going public, making many people rich. Twitter is the other mega-network that helps foster the revolutions of the Arab Spring and lets you find out what your friends ate for lunch.
Clearly, social media has come a long way since the early days of Friendster and Myspace. These networks are embedded into the fabric of our society and at the very least people can keep track of their old high-school friends. The question is how these networks enhance the reading experience or take away from it.
Reading is often an anti-social endeavor and whether you read for a few hours or an entire day it can be quite cathartic. People love to get into a book and live the life of someone else, battle dragons, or find out how Apple was created. Reading gets you away from your normal life and even for a brief moment you forget about emails, text messages, work, or the kids. Do people really want the distraction of popup messages or social media elements taking them out of reverie?
Many people who have emailed us or commented on our blog during the last few years have mixed reactions about social networks employed by Amazon and Kobo in their book experience. Some think its a great idea to chat with friends about quotes they are reading or form their own virtual book-clubs. Others find it a nuisance and a distraction from the process of reading. The companies offering the service do give you options whether you even want to use those features and are not embedded into the book experience, yet.
Clearly social media elements are severely lacking in the whole e-reader and ebook experience. I can send Tweets of a paragraph or make a Facebook status update of a book I am reading? How 2009. Kobo is about the only company that actually does something unique with the whole social experience while your reading a book. They stared with Reading Life, which was basically updating your status with text from a book. They expanded on this and offered merit badges and progress achievements on books you read and allowed you to share with it friends. Recently with their VOX Tablet they unleashed “Pulse” which allows you to read comments other users made about the book. It even gives you “spoiler” options so you will not read any comments made by users who have progressed further in the book as you. People use it to post reviews, ratings, or even just to chat. A few weeks ago they updated their “Timeline” feature into Facebook which was a culmination of their partnership with Facebook they announced at the D8 conference last year.
I think companies aren’t using social media right and are not offering anything very innovative or indicative of how it should work in the book experience. For one, this is no great virtual bookclub feature that allows me to talk with other users about the book I just read or are in the process of reading. Kobo Pulse strives to do this but falls short in the execution. I would love to see each book published in ebook form to have an automatic Facebook Group page started that is developed to be a virtual bookclub for that specific book. People who are reading the book have options to talk about it as they are reading it and say “I loved it when the character said this” and see an immediate response like “OMG ME TOO.” Blending a Facebook Page with a live chat option would really develop a sense of community. Personally I love the idea of a bookclub that meets once a week for coffee and discusses books they read, but seriously, they are so hard to find. I want to talk with other tech savvy people with e-readers that are reading the ebook version. When I am not reading at work, I want to login to the Facebook eBook Page and talk to the new friends I made or just relive past chapters.
There are clearly other major options, and standalone Twitter API and Facebook APP coding knowledge will reap you huge rewards. The sky is the limit based on the limitations of the platform to develop innovative ways for an e-Reading program to let you socialize more. Humans are naturally social beings and adding an expanded twist on the reading process might encourage more people to actually read. If a company were to use social media correctly, they would have a major selling point for their product or service. Customers who were looking for a more social book experience would gravitate to that company and everyone would make money.
In the end, social media in electronic books is severely lacking. Most companies are not exploring the myriad of ways that you can improve the experience of talking to other like minded people. What paltry features we have now really just spams other peoples walls and most of your friends don’t have the same taste in books as you do. Having more embedded social functions in an e-reading indie app or mainstream company taking to the next level will only help the industry grow and spurn more companies to offering competing or better options.