Archive for Most Popular News
The Chief Marketing Officer of e-Ink Holdings Discusses Technology and e-Readers
Posted by: | Comments
e-Ink Holdings is the company responsible for the technology found in some of the world’s most popular e-readers. If you have the Amazon Kindle, Barnes and Noble Nook Simple Touch, Kobo Touch, or most Sony devices, they have an e-ink screen. We caught up with the Chief Marketing Officer of E Ink Holdings Inc, Sriram K. Peruvemba, for a great discussion on the current state of affairs with their company and the e-reader sphere.
E-ink is doing record financial numbers due to the rising success of the screens used in Kindle, Nook, Kobo, and Sony e-Readers. As a company how are you adjusting to the added income?
We are in the consumer markets primarily both with our FFS LCDs used in Tablet devices as well as our ePaper displays used in eReaders, such as the ones you mentioned. In the consumer world, we are required to constantly innovate and provide new technologies and features pretty much every year and this involves a lot of investment. In addition, predicting product volumes in the consumer space is non-trivial, so our factories have to flex its capacity to cater to peak months when the volume could be as much as 4x above average. Building factories to cater to cyclical demand has been a major area of investment for us. In a nutshell, our investments have gone into research, design, and manufacturing primarily, and we have also invested in all other areas of business from office buildings to new enterprise software systems. Most of our investment has been in human resources, meaning we added a number of scientists and engineers to various groups. In the area of manufacturing, apart from a lot of hires, we also invested in infrastructure.
E-Ink Triton had a ton of potential but we have yet to see a major company releasing a product. Of course we have Hanvon with their model and they made a deal with Ectaco to re brand it as the Jetbook color, why hasn’t it caught on yet?
E Ink Triton meets the needs of applications such as eTextbooks and eNewspapers and we have seen customers such as Jinke, Hanvon, Ectaco publicly announce products using our technology. Other customers are also working on designs that are not announced yet. This is both in the area of ePublishing applications as well as in areas such as signage. Triton does not support full motion video, we can only do animation at this point hence other mobile devices such as tablets use our FFS technology based LCD rather than our Triton displays. We are confident that Triton and further generations of color ePaper will play a significant role in the display space. What is interesting about Triton is that when you increase the pixel size the color is much more saturated and the display meets almost all color needs in various applications but the increased pixel size renders the display more suitable for viewing from 6 feet away (signs) than from 6″ away (eReaders). All the same, when the Triton eReader in Hanvon, Ectaco device is compared in a outdoor, high ambient setting alongside any tablet or laptop, the effect is remarkable.
What are some of the hurdles you have to overcome to offer companies who want to use Triton the kind of end costs found in e-ink pearl?
Since Triton uses the same chemistry as Pearl, the cost of the base materials are not different, the color filter does cost extra, but as a percentage of the cost of the end device, the cost of the CFA is not as significant. The color ePaper devices will cost more than the monochrome devices not mainly due to the display but due to other features that can be enabled in the software and UI that were not possible in case of the monochrome device. We are confident that our entire eco-system (the display is probably one of about 100 sub components in a eReader as you know) will work towards finding competitive cost structures to make the Triton based devices suitable for consumer applications. And yes, we want it to happen sooner, our customers such as Ectaco and Hanvon are leading the way in the eReader space.
What is in development right now. Things from e-ink has been rather quiet lately, are you doing something new?
We have actually been busier the past two years than ever before. We have alots of projects in the pipline. We typically release a major platform once every 18 –24 months and in between we release a number of smaller innovations.
Pearl went into production last year.
Triton went into production this year.
In the meanwhile we have worked with our semiconductor partners to transform dedicated display controllers plus memory into System-On-Chip products. This resulted in increased speed and performance of our existing products (See Bookeen video using E Ink/TI jointly developed SOC as well as the E Ink/ Freescale joint collaboration SOC in action: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24srQXX81Oc )
At the same time the SOC partners – Freeescale, TI, Marvel, Epson, Samsung found ways to reduce the overall cost, which benefitted our end customers. In each case E Ink has a joint development agreement with the respective semiconductor company that allows for collaborative design activity.
Another area where we made great progress during 2011 was in the area of touchscreens. Last year, the majority of E Ink displays on eReaders had no touch screen. This year almost all of them do. This required a lot of close coordination and work with touchscreen companies as well as our end customers. You will notice that, unlike in the case of LCD, when you use the touch screen on an E Ink display, chances of accidentally pressing an adjoining key or button is minimized. You feel like you are touching the actual image rather than a surface high above the image.
When we first started, our designs had a power management circuit that had about 40 discrete components – E Ink designed, we have worked with Maxim and TI to create PMIC chips that replace those 40 components and increase reliability, reduce a lot of board space and take out more than 50% of the cost. A huge benefit for the end customers
A not so well known fact is that E Ink also makes software that accompanies our product – its a suite of software options- and our customers have recently used these features to enable faster page turns among others. If you look at the top three benefits offered by a number of eReader customers of ours (see http://www.barnesandnoble.com/p/nook-simple-touch-barnes-noble/1102344735), all of these are due to the display. This is a fairly large undertaking within E Ink.
You’ve no doubt noticed that we have been showing demos of flexible displays for the past 2-3 years and that we are working with nearly a dozen companies to get this to market (Our publicly announced partners include Epson, Sony, Plastic Logic, HP, Flextech, LG Display, Samsung). Recently our customer Plastic Logic launched a fully functional device in the Russian market (see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FAv4XFiPDB4&feature=player_embedded#! And I had the chance to toss it around recently, see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DvCS4v8XMYQ ) This project has been a multi-year effort at E Ink.
In the area of segmented or what we call SURF displays, we’ve made great progress. We’ve designed dozens of new products from watches to indoor and outdoor signs, secondary displays on mobile phones, battery and memory indicators etc. Our customers Neolux and Motion Display both delivered dozens and dozens of new products to end customers using our product line that we refer to as Ink-In-Motion. These are essentially used in retail signage applications. If you need more details about the SURF products, let us know, we can even ship a few samples to you.
With our matrix displays, we have launched into non-publishing applications in partnership with a company named Pervasive Displays (spun out from ChiMei/ChiLin) and created several designs for industrial, medical and consumer applications. We have already won business using these designs and the products are in mass production. See http://www.pervasivedisplay.com/home
We had been working with Ricoh for a number of years to create and launch this unique design called eQuill see: http://www.ricoh-ews.com/ricoh-equill . The product just launched and we are excited about the prospects.
Finally, in partnership with Epson, we have developed a 300 dpi display (current shipping 6″ eReader displays are 167 dpi) that looks better than ordinary paper. Epson makes a semiconductor chip that drives our high res display. We are in the process of working with customers in various sub market segments to get these designed into actual products. If you are at CES, we can show this display to you.
There are many other promising technologies being worked on and I will let you know when I am able.
What is your relationship with Freescale, since many companies using your e-ink screens use Freescale processors to power their devices?
We have a Joint Development Agreement (JDA) with Freescale where we license technology, patents and have a collaborative effort to develop new products. We think Freescale has done a fantastic job with their new SOC products, which enables new features on the E Ink Pearl and Triton displays.
Are you guys coming to CES? If so, what will you be showing off?
We are but we typically don’t exhibit at CES. We will have several E Ink display based devices being exhibited by our customers and industry partners.
I was speaking with a e-ink Representative at the 1st annual e-Readers Conference in San Francisco a few months ago and they mentioned e-ink clothing, that would change color, what news do you have on that front?
This was a research project we worked on with a government customer and therefore samples are not available to send. As such, the pruduct is not yet commercialized though there is market interest.
Mirasol recently released their first color e-reader in South Korean with Kyobo, how is your company responding to that new technology and what do you think about it?
We admire their technology, it’s quite fascinating. They have been working on this for a long time, we know how hard it is to take product from lab to fab, we wish them the very best.
Shop e-Readers Strikes a deal with Simon Fraser University
Posted by: | Comments
Shop e-Readers a Vancouver, British Columbia based company has struck a deal today with one of the largest universities in Western Canada. Starting later this week Simon Fraser University will begin selling e-readers such the Amazon Kindle Touch and varies other readers.
Simon Fraser University gains a number of e-readers, screen protectors and leather cases to sell to their students. Diligent young scholars will have the opportunity to purchase the devices for use in the classroom right in the store. Amazon provides thousands of digital textbooks that can be used in various programs and have the option to surf the internet and listen to lectures in audio format.
“We are very excited to be dealing with SFU.”said Kelly Hannah of Shop e-Readers. “This is a great opportunity for us to deal an educational institution focused on innovation and promoting a green environment. We look forward to a long and fruitful relationship with SFU and other schools in the lower mainland.”
Shop e-readers already has established relationships with a number of indie bookstores in Vancouver such as Blackberry Books on Granville Island and Odin Books. The company is currently in the preliminary stages of ironing out agreements with other universities such as The University of British Columbia (UBC) and (BCIT).
As always, Shop e-Readers deals with not only the Canadian market but internationally too. You buy the latest devices and have them shipped to you in time for the holidays. Currently bestsellers are the Amazon Kindle Fire, Barnes and Noble Nook Tablet, Kobo Touch and the Kobo Vox.
via www.shopereaders.com via Press Release
Amazon Kindle Touch VS. Barnes and Noble Simple Touch
Posted by: | Comments
Welcome to another Good e-Reader Exclusive Comparison Video! Today we check out two of the most popular e-ink touchscreen e-book readers on the market today. We are of course talking about the Nook Simple Touch which has been available for a number of months and the recently released Kindle Touch.
There are some striking differences between these two devices that begin on the hardware level. The Kindle Touch is running a faster 800 MHZ processor that makes speed notable from opening books to accessing programs and games. They both have the same amount of RAM and use e-ink Pearl as the method of touchscreen e-ink.
The Kindle Touch is solid because it uses a new service called X-Ray! This is a innovative feature that tells you who all of the main and minor characters are in any given book. It will give you a character biography crowdsourced from Amazon and reference all of the times they are mentioned in the book.
Kindle as more bang for the buck with the special offers edition subsidizing the initial hardware purchase to serve you advertising on the main home screen and screensaver. It also gives you stereo speakers and a 3.5 mm headphone jack for audiobooks and music. The Simple Touch is a basic reader with a better designed home menu and available for under $99.99. Both of these devices have different virtues depending on what you want to get out of your reader.
Hands on Review of the Amazon Kindle Touch 3G
Posted by: | Comments
The first touchscreen e-ink based reader has just been released by Amazon, and it is in direct competition with the Nook Simple Touch and Kobo Touch in the North American Market. The overall design of this latest device is fairly solid and offers many features not found in the other competing devices. How does the screen sensitivity hold up and is it a valid buy?
Hardware
The new Amazon Kindle 6 features a six inch e-ink Pearl display with a resolution of 600×800 Pixels. The same screen technology that the Kindle uses is found in many of the competing devices, such as the Sony PRS-T1, Kobo Touch, and Nook Simple Touch. It packs Freescale 800 MHZ processor under the hood and 256 MB of RAM, which keeps the reader speedy.
Amazon has completely done away with the page turn buttons, which contributes to the overall simplistic design of the hardware. There is merely a new home button on the bottom of the screen which brings you back to your home screen when you press it.
There is 4 GB of internal memory for you to store your media on and the device does not limit your manually loaded content of books and audio like Barnes and Noble does. There is no expandable storage via SD or Micro SD like its competition, but you can store added books in the Amazon Cloud. If you have a copious amount of purchased books you can simply delete them from your device and they are stored on your main account. I found you can access other cloud storage services with the web browser, such as Dropbox, to store extra files.
On the bottom of the Kindle Touch is a Micro USB cable used to charge your reader with your PC or a USB wall charger. Unlike previous models of the Kindle, they do not bundle the charger with purchase of the unit to keep the costs down. There is also a 3.5 mm headphone jack to listen to music and audiobooks, and beside that is the power button.
On the back of the device on a slanted edge are the two stereo speakers, which is refreshing since the Amazon Kindle 4th generation was billed as budget reader and did not have any audio functionality at all. The sound is very solid and I found it was a significant upgrade from previous iterations of the Kindle. I also loved the fact that the speakers were not on the physical back of the unit where your hands might cover it up. It is in a fine position to always give you a great audio experience.
There are two different variants of this new e-reader: the WIFI and 3G. There is also a small weight and size difference because of the added hardware on the motherboard. The WIFI only weighs 7.5 ounces while the 3G clocks in at 7.8. I found the overall weight was more prominent than other touchscreen devices on the market, but this is due mainly to the addition of the free 3G service Amazon provides and the inclusion of audio. In comparison with the Kindle 4th generation, this one is longer, wider, and heavier. It suffers from the same portability factor, but is the total package in the e-reader world.
I found interacting with the screen via touch to be a simple and robust experience, mainly attributed to the faster processor used compared to its competition. To be honest, I think the Nook Simple Touch has the advantage in the touchscreen department.
In the end, this is a designed piece of hardware that will not limit your audio experience like many of its competition. There is a Kindle Touch to suit all budgets, with the WIFI and 3G versions, and then the advertising support Special Offers Edition. One of the drawbacks of the internet connection is that you can not access the web-browser on 3G and must use WIFI. I was also disappointed to see no software or hardware functionality to switch perspectives to landscape mode. This is the first Kindle that does not allow you to do this.
Software
The Amazon Kindle Touch runs on the customized version of Linux that is found in their entire line of readers. The new Kindle experience is very similar to all of its previous models and not much has changed on the software front. The main home-screen has not been updated and pales in comparison to the cool design of the Nook Simple Touch or Kobo Touch with their customized GUI. If you have ever had a Kindle before you will feel right at home. The main difference now is you can swipe left and right to view your content, which makes the entire process a bit faster.
One of the few new features found in the Kindle Touch that are not found in their other e-ink variants is X-Ray. This is a fabulous new addition that taps into crowd sourcing and gives you a massive list of central characters to any given book and how often they are referenced. When you open up a book, such as Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games, and tap on the X-Ray button, it gives you a massive list of all of the main and tertiary characters in the book. It lists them from most referenced to least and gives you a small graph on how much they are talked about during the book. If you click on a particular character name you are greeted with a small biography of the character and then a chronological listing of a small paragraph of text citing the context in which all of these references were used. Not only can you do this with characters, but also specific events or other tangibles that are mentioned throughout the book.
X-Ray is quintessentially the most unique feature found in any e-reader I have ever reviewed and it really can do a ton of positive things. Normally I sometimes juggle two or three books at once. I may start a book and then come back to it a month later if it’s not a provocative read or if a book I have waited a long time to read suddenly comes out. Sometimes when you come back to a read you may forget some of the central characters or even the main plot. With X-Ray, you can instantly become familiar with the main story arc and the important characters. This may also lend assistance to people who belong to bookclubs and give you talking points during the meetings. Finally, this could be tremendously useful in textbooks or other educational material to get almost a “Cliff’s Notes” version of the most important content.
Aside from X-Ray, the Touch gives you a very Kindle experience with the audio and internet. All of these features are still listed as “Experimental,” which I find hilarious because in reviewing new Kindles for over three years, Amazon has made no headway in releasing this software as a fully featured release. My impression is the company is attempting to port over Silk to its e-reader units, which relies on storing your most visited websites in their massive network of servers to instantly load web-pages. This new web browser experience is found in their Kindle Fire.
Typing on the virtual keyboard is a solid experience and I found it to be one of the most responsive ones found in any e-reader. When you are surfing the internet, the keyboard includes a .com button. This is very useful, and when you are searching your device for books or using internal search the keyboard is always bit different depending on what functions you need to perform. Overall it is a full QWERTY keyboard which is refreshing since I found the virtual keyboard on the 4th generation Kindle to be abysmal.
Reading Experience
Reading on the Kindle Touch really sets the bar on your entire experience and should be used as a case study for new entrants to the market.
The primary formats that the reader is compatible with include PDF, PRC, KF8, and DOC. You can easily purchase books from Amazon and have them instantly synced to your reader or load in your content using 3rd party programs like Calibre.
First lets talk about the PDF experience, since many of our readers always ask us how newspapers, magazines, technical documents, and game manuals look. First, this is no re-flow or any font options to change the physical layout. I was also shocked to not see any way to augment the linespacing or margins to change the layout. One of the main benefits (and something the Nook Simple Touch does not do) is allow you to pinch and zoom any text or images on a PDF document. This process is almost a bit better because you can, on a case by case basis, change your experience and tailor it to your liking. If you zoom in on a complex newspaper, you can read the article and then use your finger to scroll in any direction to continue reading or swipe the screen to move to the next page. I found this methodology of reading PDF files just blew the Kobo Touch and Nook Simple Touch out of the water. The main drawback is that you cannot switch the Kindle Touch into landscape mode, with software acceleration like almost every other Kindle on the market.
Reading normal books proves to be a great experience in the ability to tap on the margins to change the page or even to swipe. Since this new device does not have any manual page turn buttons you need to fully interact with the screen in order to access menus or to change fonts.
In order to change fonts, linespacing, or margins you need to tap on the upper right hand corner where the clock and WIFI symbols are. This will bring up a menu, giving you the option to access X-Ray or change your fonts. One of the shortcomings of the entire Kindle line of e-readers is that it does not give you a wide selection of fonts to select from or allow you to access the publisher defaults. This gives the obvious advantage to the Kobo Touch that allows you 12 different built in font options and the unique ability to load your own in. In retrospect, when you want to change the layout or font size, everything is updated in real time.
When you are physically reading, one of the boons of this e-reader is that the refresh rate applies to every sixth page. This reduces the flickering that many lower quality readers are known for and really irks me. I dig the feature that makes page turns seamless and I can handle the total refresh every six pages.
Like most Kindles you can add notes and highlights to share via Social media specific words or phrases. In order to do this you want to long press on a particular word and then you can select one word or all of the text on the page if you want. If you select a single word, like “Father,” it brings up the Oxford American Dictionary and instantly gives you the definition of it. You can also expand it to give you different meanings, pronunciations, and whatever you need. The dictionary loads FAST! This surprised me.
Aside from the standard dictionary lookups, you can highlight specific words and then add a note. When you add a note it adds a little number in the upper right hand corner of the specific word. These notes are stored in the Amazon Cloud and you can access them with the iPad or Android versions. If you are a social person like me, you can select a specific word or phrase and send it to Twitter or Facebook.
People who have large collections of ebooks will be happy to know that you can start your own collections on the Kindle Touch. When you are on the main home area you can access the menu and start a collection. You can name it whatever you want and then if you want to add books to it you can long-press on any book listed on your device and you get a new set of options giving you the ability to add that particular book to your unique folder.
In the end, the Kindle Touch really sets the bar in the overall reading experience. You may not have the ability to load in your own fonts or have a crazy selection of ways to augment your entire experience, but it has enough font sizes to keep people with good or poor vision tailoring it to their particular liking. Page turn speeds are super fast, and taking notes and annotations to store in the cloud is a useful feature
Our Thoughts
The Kindle Touch instantly won me over because it is the e-reader that does it all! For our review we used the Kindle 3G as a benchmark and in most areas of Vancouver it gave us a full 5 bars no matter where we were. I dig the fact Amazon is in an unique position to provide free 3G internet access via the SIM card baked into the motherboard. In a feature test, we will attempt a full tear-down of it and try and use the simcard in other devices to see if we can get free data via Amazon.
Seriously, for the price you get a tremendous amount of value with the stereo speakers and audio functionality. Amazon has a huge wellspring of audiobooks and music available in its store and allows you to load in your own tunes from your personal collection.
I feel the Kindle Touch has the best value in the market because the touchscreen is so responsive and the internal hardware overcomes most of their direct competition. I would recommend this to anyone who is comfortable with exclusively dealing with Amazon and does not mind the fact that they cannot shop in other stores. It is a great, responsive piece of hardware that excels in all of the tasks that I would use it for.
Pros
Keyboard is Very Responsive
X-Ray
Pinching and Zooming PDF’s
Very Fast
Great Internal Hardware
Amazon Cloud
Collections
Cons
No Landscape Mode
Cannot Access the Internet Exclusively on 3G, You Need WIFI
More Expensive Than Nook Simple Touch or Kobo Touch
Rating: 9/10
Amazon Kindle Fire VS. The Kobo Vox
Posted by: | Comments
Welcome to another Good e-Reader Comparison Video! Today we take a comprehensive look at two of the latest e-reader/tablet hybrids that is taking the world by storm. Of course we are talking about the Amazon Kindle Fire and Kobo Vox.
These two devices have a fair bit in common with the same 7 inch display screen and 1024×600 resolution. Surprisingly these two e-readers look very much alike with the overall aesthetics. The Kindle Fire blows the Vox away in terms of its dual core processor, where the Vox only has a single core 800 MHZ one.
In this video we go over most of the facets in which people will gauge whether the device is suitable for them. The Fire taps into a large ecosystem via Amazon and you can get videos, books, audiobooks, magazines and newspapers. The company is also putting on the finishing touches on its new comic book section. BY contrast, the Vox only offers books, magazines and newspapers.
This video compares book reading experience, internet, Youtube, hardware, software and a battery of tests. If you are thinking of purchasing these two e-readers for the holiday season, this is a MUST see video.
Barnes and Noble Nook Tablet Review
Posted by: | Comments
The Barnes and Noble Nook Tablet is the second iteration of the original Nook Color. The original tablet was a huge success for the company and has been their most bestselling device of all time. It spawned an entire Textbook and Kids Book area that matured over the last two years. Since the second generation version launched a few days ago many people have been wondering how it stacks up against the original and the factors that make it distinctive.
Hardware
The Nook Tablet features a 7 inch multitouch display with a resolution of 1024×600 pixels. Underneath the hood it is running a dual-core 1GHZ processor and 1 GB of Ram. Internal storage bestows upon you a whopping 16 GB and you can further enhance it via the Micro SD up to 32 GB.
The hardware specs alone are double the original Nook Color and in most comparison tests we ran outpace it in every way. Switching the device from landscape to portrait mode is almost instant and the navigating around the interface is quick and robust.
The form-factor of the new Nook Tablet bears striking similarities to the original Nook Color. It is simply lighter and slimmer which enhances the portability factor. On the front of the device is a small built in microphone which allows you to record your voice in certain ebooks that have the ‘read and record’ feature and benefits new applications such as Skype. There is also the ubiquitous “N” on the front which bring you back home when you are exploring apps, menus or reading books. The new feature this key brings to the table is that it calls up the main menu. This is handy because all it takes as you hitting the key and you have full access to your library, web browser, store, and applications. This makes life simpler then the original Nook Color because it only brought you back to the home screen and required a touch area to bring up the main menu.
The sides of the Nook Tablet have physical volume buttons and a 3.5mm headphone jack on the top. The bottom of the device is simply the Micro USB port that allows you charge it via your PC and transfer media to it. Finally on the left hand side is the power button to lock the device or turn the power off. I love the physical buttons on the Nook Tablet because the Kindle Fire is entirely software driven and you need to interact with the touchscreen in order to accomplish anything. This is important because frequently late at night I will be listening to an audiobook and at certain moments I want to turn up the volume. This is much easier accomplished with physical volume buttons instead of having to turn the screen on and turn up it up, like the Kindle Fire mandates you to.
Speaking of Audio and Volume, the Speaker is still on the bottom of the device and this is a matter of contention with many users. A fair number of people find the speaker gets muffled when you are holding it in landscape and portrait mode because your hand overlaps it. The volume level quality is fine but the Kindle Fire did a superior job with its dual stereo speakers.
The Nook Tablet allows you to browse the internet with the built in WIFI browser. It has full Adobe Flash integration to play games and watch embedded Youtube Videos. The internet experience has not really changed since the original Nook Color. You really notice the enhanced processor and RAM when you are scrolling around web pages and pinching/zooming. There is no artifacting or checkered background of notice that ever happens. This carries over all other aspects of the device, programs instantly load and there is little to no wait-times involved.
In the end, the Nook Tablet is a solid second generation device in terms of the hardware. It doubles everything the original Nook Color had and if you were a fan of the original you will be completely sold on the second iteration. I was very impressed that they did not make sweeping changes that made the chassis feel completely different. Instead most of the enhancements were made underneath the hood and on the software side of things.
Software
The Nook Tablet is running Google Android 2.3 which is a more current version of the OS then the original Nook Color had. There are many benefits of the new updated operating system including faster loading time on major UI elements.
The menus and settings features have a fair bit in common with the Nook Color but they have expanded on many of the Graphical elements that make it feel like a more current device.
Most Android Tablet being billed as e-readers give you a very standard Android experience. Barnes and Noble has always crafted their own unique appearance that made it their own. This has promoted Amazon to overlay their own distinctive interface with the advent for the Kindle Fire. The GUI B&N has employed is one of the major selling factors and presents it as a innovative device in the current market.
Hitting the N button on the front the unit brings up the main menu now which makes accessing common tasks much easier then ever before. The main options are Home, Library, Shop, Search, Apps, Web and Settings. The only thing different in the Nook Tablet, in terms of setting is the inclusion of the Home Button.
The home screen is very customizable and allows you to hold down on a book or app and manually place it wherever you want on the main screen. There are three different sub-screens you have access to aside from the main one which can allow you to make one dedicated to apps, another books and the last one for magazines, newspapers or kids books. The decision is ultimately yours and I dig the fact they made it more dynamic. In retrospect the Kindle Fire is very static and does not allow you to change very much.
The top of the main home screen on the right hand corner is a new option called “More.” It is divided into 3 different areas for you to quickly pickup where you left off in a particular book, access the files you used last and check out past videos and TV shows. When you sign into your main Barnes and Noble account it will also present new content for you based on your reading or viewing habits.
Your main Library shelf has undergone a revision in terms of the way things are laid out and has new navigation entries. It feels much more initiative then the last model because before you had to jump through various hoops to access kids books and apps. Now you have Books, Magazines, Newspapers, Kids, Apps and My Stuff on the very top. You can easily make your own collections and organize your purchased content.
Lets talk about each shelf individually to give you a sense on how it changes from the original model and give you a sense on what you can do.
Books
This is your main shelf for reading the electronic versions of books. Your user manual and guide are all here by default and whenever you buy books from the store they will be automatically synced. If you have made former purchases with another model of the Nook, your entire library can be imported in with ease. The books have large cover art and tapping on them will open them up. You can then read the books in either landscape or portrait mode. If you close a book and decide to open it up again at a later date it will pick up where you left off. Alternatively because the Nook Tablet has cloud functionality if you left off on Page 33 and pick up your Nook Simple Touch and read the book at work, if you are in a WIFI area it will sync it to the last page you left off on your Tablet.
Magazines
Magazines on the Nook Tablet look amazing and your main shelf allows you to easily call up purchased content or books you loaded on yourself. One of the big things this device has going for it is the length of time its ecosystem has matured. In two years they have major content publishers locked up and offer some of the most extensive libraries in the business. ESPN The Magazine and The Economist to Food & Wine and Us Weekly Esquire, Maxim, Men’s Health, Rolling Stone, Newsweek, Popular Science, PC Magazine, Elle, O, and The Oprah Magazine are some of the publications that are available.
Apps
Barnes and Noble has been running their very successful App Store for at least almost a year now. They have a ton of free and paid ones that are sure to impress. Bundled with the Nook Tablet is Hulu+ and Netflix which allow you to watch streaming video. It also has a few games, email, music player, media, and Nook friends.
I thought it was great for Barnes and Noble to include video streaming services right on the device at launch. This is something that was absent from the original Color and warranted manual downloads.
Kids
This is another new section which makes it easier then ever before to read and buy your kids books. There are two free ones that come with the unit by default; The Elephant Child and Fun Facts about Pets. These are full color editions and have narrated voices that accompany them. These two books really show off the new “Read and Record feature the company has been heavily toting. This gives you the unique ability to record your own voice narrating the book instead of relying in the the default one. I can see this catching on with parents who travel or work and even grandparents that live far away. How cool is it to have your Grandma read a book to you as your going to bed?
Nook Kids has been one of the success stories of the B&N brand. It has hundreds of books available and exclusive content partners locked up to provide unique content all the time. When we chatted with the VP of Product Management Doug Klein he said that 65% of all Nook owners are parents and tap into the Nook Kids ecosystem to share more time with their young ones.
My Stuff
This is the section devoted to browsing your device in a Windows Explorer type format. You can check out directories and click on books to add to your main menu or create collections. This is especially useful if you are loading in your own content lots and want easy access to documents, books, media and more. This is also where you can tap into the Lendme part of Barnes and Noble which allows you to lend purchased ebooks to your friends for 14 days. This has been a very successful program and currently over 30,000 books in their library have been flagged as lending enabled. This has spawned a slew of different websites on the internet popping up that connect users up with each other that have the same taste in books. Websites such as Lendingebook.com give people the ability to meet people with the same taste in books to borrow/lend for free.
Many e-readers and tablets do not let you easily create your own shelves devoted to specific authors or genres. This makes you rely on 3rd party programs such as Calibre in order to do it correctly and takes a bit of advanced knowledge to setup properly. Barnes and Noble makes it fairly easy to set up simple or advance collections. If you share the e-reader with more then one person in the family you can actually make it so each person has their own shelf.
The Store
One of the big changes with the advent of the new Nook Tablet was the refinement and changes in layout to the main store. Many of the changes included a new List View which makes the entire shopping experience optimized for the 7 inch screen so you are not endlessly scrolling up and down to find the sections you want.
The main areas of the store include; Books, Magazines, Newspapers, Kids, Apps, Music+Video Apps. Below that are popular lists such; Top 100, Cool Nook Books, Free Trials, New York Times Bestsellers, Coming Soon, PUBIT Authors and much more! I love the way the main store is designed and makes the interface clean and elegant. The icons for the dedicated sections are much larger and makes it easier to hit when interacting with the touchscreen element.
When you enter a dedicated section such as Books you are created by a List View at the top of the screen that prompts you to refine your search. There are countless genre selections to make it easier then ever before to find your preferred niche. With the original Nook Color it gave you all of the Genres in a big list view on the side of the screen that got very overwhelming. The new way of proving genres via the list view and scrolling up and down within a confined area is for the better.
Below the list views you have scrolling library shelves that you can swipe from left to right to see the latest books. In almost all cases you can get free samples and issues to most books, magazines and newspapers.
One of the best new aspects in the entire shopping experience is the new way the kids section has been done. While the Amazon Kindle Fire recently introduced their own kids store everything is piled into one section. Barnes and Noble has introduced new features to sort books by specific ages! Really you can search by how old your child is to find books designed and geared for that specific age group. In some cases they even have a way to browse by gender to make sure you little boy is not reading “My Little Pony.”
Finally, shopping for applications has undergone a revision and again, makes it simpler to find the content quickly. Most of the popular apps that are free like Angry Birds, Scrabble, Weather and Showtime are available and then you can refine your search to look for more. There are thousands of free and paid apps currently available in the store. The company makes it very easy for developers to submit content and their store is very well developed. It certainly does not have the sheer amount of apps that the Amazon Android Market has and I think the lack of quality apps is a shortcoming.
Reading Experience
Reading is the primarily aspect of this device both to purchase books and also spend quality time reading the books.
The Nook Tablet allows you many options in tailoring your reading experience to your specific tastes. If you single tap the screen while reading a book you will be promoted to select a myriad of options. The main setting you should be concerned about is Text. You can dynamically change your font size 9 options to make it larger or smaller. There is also a number of FONTS to actually change them altogether. It also popular ones such as Ariel, Georgia, Sans, and Dutch.
By default when you read books it is black text on a white screen. With the new theme manager you can customize this so its easier on your eyes. You have many different colors to select to change the background, this is handy late at night when you can turn the white screen to something like “Cream.” Finally, you can change your Linespacing and Margins.
When you are reading the book you have many options to highlight words, associate notes with them and all of this is saved in the cloud. You can press your finger on a specific word(s) and be greeted with a menu to do a number of things. You can add a highlight, take a note with the onscreen keyboard, share it via Facebook and Twitter, and Lookup the word. Normally on devices you are relegated to looking the word up with the built in dictionary. You can do the same thing with the Nook Tablet but it takes it one step further and you can find out meanings via Google and Wikipedia.
Overall, the reading experience on the Nook Tablet is how all tablets being billed as e-readers should function. A deep ecosystem to purchase content and a dedicated reading program that allows you to craft your own individual reading experience. Many companies such as Pandigital and Aluartek can take notice on how to make a tablet and bill it as an e-reader.
Our Thoughts
The Nook Tablet is a solid second offering by Retail book giant Barnes and Noble. It gives you hardware wise a real bang for your buck with the dual-core processor, 1GB of RAM and 16 GB internal storage. All of the main aspects of the shopping experience has been tremendously refined and is a breeze to find anything you want.
This new device is the same cost of the original Nook Color at $249 in the USA. Considering most other tablets are a little bit more or less, I would strongly to implore you to buy this unit if you live outside the USA.
The Amazon Kindle Fire is primarily a USA only device with it locked you out of buying apps, videos, music and most magazines unless you have a USA Credit Card and USA Address. With Barnes and Noble you can easily get ANYTHING by just saying you have a USA billing address and using your own credit card. There is a ton of demand for these multimedia tablets with rich ecosystems in Canada, Australia, UK, and New Zealand. If you do live in those countries your better off getting the Nook Tablet over the Kindle Fire.
In the end, this is a great device and the customization factors are one of the most endearing factors. You can craft your own experience from the way the homescreen is displayed to the way you setup your shelves. Battery life is solid at about 9 hours and the internet experience is rich and deep.
Rating 9/10
Breaking News – Kobo acquired by Japan based Rakuten
Posted by: | Comments
Canadian based Kobo has been sold to Tokyo based e-commence giant Rakuten, Inc. The contracts were signed today and the Japnese company acquires 100% of the stock valued at $315 million dollars.
Kobo was originally financed by Indigo that owned a large percentage of the company and gave the Canadian based start-up critical retail space in all of their bookstores in Canada. Since that time, Kobo has become a fierce competitor in the eBook marketplace, with a family of innovative eReaders, a wide range of eReading apps, one of the largest eBook catalogues, an innovative social platform and retail partners around the globe.
Rakuten is one of the worlds top 3 e-commence websites and will expand on their digital offerings globally. Hiroshi Mikitani, Chairman and CEO of Rakuten, commented on the acquisition, “We are very excited about this next step. Kobo provides one of the world’s most communal eBook reading experiences with its innovative integration of social media, such as Facebook and Twitter; while Rakuten offers Kobo unparalleled opportunities to extend its reach through some of the world’s largest regional e-commerce companies, including Buy.com in the US, Tradoria in Germany, Rakuten Brazil, Rakuten Taiwan, Lekutian in China, TARAD in Thailand, and Rakuten Belanja Online in Indonesia, and of course, Rakuten Ichiba in Japan.”
“From a business and cultural perspective this is a perfect match,” commented Kobo CEO Michael Serbinis. “We share a common vision of creating a content experience that is both global and social. Rakuten is already one of the world’s largest e-commerce platforms, while Kobo is the most social eBook service on the market and one of the world’s largest eBook stores with over 2.5 million titles. This transaction will greatly strengthen our position in our current markets and allow us to diversify quickly into other countries and e-commerce categories.”
Kobo will continue to operate its headquarters in Toronto, Ontario Canada and maintain its current crop of employees. What does this mean for Kobo and the future of the company and how will they continue to play a part in the e-Reader Sphere? We will provide more information on this in the next hour.
Update:
We just got off a conference telephone call with the CEO of Kobo, the CEO of Indigio and the CEO of Rakuten.
The Kobo deal will gain 50 million new customers and the company will expand into Japan, China and Taiwan in the next six months. There will be new versions of its devices and they will be localized further to penetrate the foreign markets. The essence of the deal was to promote foreign expansion into new markets. Rakuten is Japan based and has a huge pipeline in Asia to have a go at e-readers and ebooks.
Indigo in the deal garners 140 million dollars and will use the money to facilitate innovation in their stores to focus on the digital sphere. The company gains a net profit of 300% from its initial investments in Kobo and their subsequent investment rounds it particupated in. Indigo plans on moving more into the lifestyle range and plans on selling more content online then just books.
When the deal was struck Kobo was not seeking to be acquired and did not hire any investment or banking firms to facilitate the transaction. It literary came out of the blue and both Kobo and Indigo thought the time was now to sell the company. Kobo would not say exactly how management and employees would play a roll in the transition and said the entire deal was subject to government approval. Kobo’s goal continues to be high on ebooks and their e-readers. They have a whopping 50% share in Canada and in USA low single digits.
The company will continue its relationship with existing partners so there is no need to be worried yet. They will still maintain the development of their applications and vender partners. WH Smith, Chapters, Indigo and recently expanded markets such as Australia, UK, France, Germany and others.
What does this mean for Canada? Kobo controlled 50% of the entire market and was the only company selling e-readers and selling a copious amount of ebooks. With the cash out by Kobo it leaves a tremendous void in the market.
Kobo Vox Review – Full Hands On
Posted by: | Comments
Kobo will be releasing their first tablet dubbed “Vox” this Friday at Chapters/Indigo locations and from their website in the USA. It will be competitively priced at $199 vs. the Kindle Fire. We just got back from Toronto, where we were at the Kobo HQ and got a full hands on review a few days before it officially comes out!
Hardware
The Kobo Vox features a 7 inch capacitive multi-touchscreen display with a resolution of 1025×600. The colors absolutely pop on this unit and the entire interface of the new apps the company released are optimized to fit the screen. Many of the apps, books, and menus maintained Landscape/Portrait orientations, but the main screen did not switch.
It has 8 GB of internal memory and you can expand it up to 32 GB via the MicroSD card. This seems like a fine amount of space to store your video, audio, and books. Most Kobo devices just have a simple drive that you insert your card into. It does not have a protective clasp made of rubber or anything else so dust does not get into it. I wish they would have thought about that small level of protection, because people frequently take their device out on holidays, exposing it to all different kinds of elements.
Things move fast with the 800 MHZ CPU processor and 512 MB of RAM. Scrolling through various menus was very snappy and apps seemed to load fairly quickly. I did notice graphics intensive books, such as graphic novels, comics, and PDF files sometimes took a while to load up. When they did load, page turn speed was fast.
Let’s take a look at the form factor and the physical buttons on the unit. At the top there is a speaker on the right hand side. It is a single mono speaker and does emit fair quality music or audio books when turned to maximum. You might want to take advantage of the 3.5 mm headphone jack on the bottom. There is a single press down power button and not the slider variant you see packaged with most e-readers and tablets.
On the right hand side of the unit is your volume button to physically adjust it. On the left hand side there is a microSD port and button includes Micro USB to charge the unit and facilitate a data connection.
The front of the unit sports physical home touch panels for the standard Android fair. You have the options for Back, Settings, and Home. I like these sorts of buttons on the unit because frequently tablets are made to be purely software driven. If things start to slow down or crash altogether you have to physically reboot it. Some of the nagging problems are solved with physical buttons to press.
The back of the unit is fairly clean and simplistic. You are greeted with the standard quilted background that is popular with the Kobo Touch and WIFI. The quilt on the Vox honestly looks more polished and does not look cheap. It does not seem to be made of the same material as the ones found on the e-ink variants.
The Kobo Vox feels slick in your hands and really reminded me of the original Samsung Galaxy Tab that was released last year. That is a good thing, it was my favorite Android device of 2010. It quickly went from landscape to portrait mode and the hardware made menus load fairly quick.
Software
The Kobo Vox runs the Google Android 2.3 operating system and the GUI is not as evident as with the Nook Color. The user interface on on the Nook Color is heavily modified and if you were not a huge tech user, you would never even know it was Android. Honestly, I did not really notice any kind of unique GUI or UI at all, so Android users will feel right at home.
Kobo has packaged very unique programs with the Vox and one that stands out is “Kobo Pulse.” Pulse was initially unveiled at the big Facebook Developer conference a few weeks ago. The CEO disclosed the company was working on a new social media tool and briefly described how it worked. There were no visuals or images and the project mainly just sounded good on paper. Now, however, we got a chance to use it, and let us say Kobo Pulse is AMAZING!! It combines elements from Facebook, Youtube, and Twitter. Want to know how it works?
You purchase a book from Kobo and there is a little red pulse at the bottom of the page. The size of the pulse is determinate on how many people have purchased the book. The pulse appearing as you shop for books includes an option to just shut it off, if you don’t care or don’t want to use the feature, but I fail to see why you would. Once you open the pulse you are presented with a really solid one page social media screen.
At the top it shows you how many times the book has been read, the number of user comments, likes and dislikes. This gives you a short list of how popular the book is and how active the community chatting about it is. It also gives you the number of people who are currently reading the book. As an example, I used the new Steve Jobs book and 341 people were currently reading it as part of the internal beta testing team. I can imagine that when this goes live, this number will go into the thousands.
After all of the statistics are presented to you, there are a series of profile pictures. This would be your avatar found in your Facebook or Twitter account. You do have to connect with one of those social media services using the app to be able to comment and partake in the commenting. Speaking of commenting, users are given a very Youtube-esque commenting field. You can write a few brief lines of text and vote up/down peoples replies. This will ensure the best comments are ranked higher then trolls baiting people. Kobo told us that they are trying to get users to police themselves and that the moderation team would be very small. Likely the official Kobo moderators would only check out the most popular books or on a case by case basis if a number of users complain. The company also told us that they are making sure privacy concerns are being adhered to. There will be options to opt your profile out, so you would appear as a generic avatar and people who not have direct access to your social media account.
Pulse feels edgy and is the number one selling point on the Vox. It is the most unique and excellent example of social media found in any e-reader or tablet. Most other readers like the Kindle or Nook only allow you to share particular passages or quotes with Facebook or Twitter. Sure it’s fine to update your status with some profound revelation, but I can honestly say I have NEVER done it. Most of my friends are tired of people waxing philosophical or spamming. The beauty of pulse is that it allows you to be social by reading a book. Often my friends and I do not have the same taste in books, if we do, we often are not reading the same book at the same time. Pulse allows you to connect with other users in real time and chat about the book, its characters, or whatever you want. It brings the community aspect found in Youtube comments and integrates that with reading.
Kobo has told us that pulse will be implemented in their entire product line of readers, such as the Kobo Touch and Kobo WIFI. They are also updating their iOS, Android, Blackberry, and other programs to make this feature compatible across all platforms. They are big on this and it’s something that has been in development for six months.
A core Kobo staple found in their apps and Touch Reader is Reading Life. This was a new program they developed last year that allows you to check out your overall statistics for reading. You can track how long it takes you to read a book to how many books you have read total. They blend in an Xbox version of awards and achievements. There is a myriad of options and they look great in high resolution and in full color.
The main homescreen is a compilation of the last four books you have read with quick links on the bottom to Reading Life, Pulse, the store, and your library.
Your library has a standard shelf that has all of the books you have purchased and bookmarks appear on the ones you are currently reading. When you exit a book you can pick off exactly where you left off. There is also the ability to organize collections and even load in your own books with the MicroSD cable. The device natively reads EPUB files, but you can really load in any format you want with the 10,000 applications found with Getjar.
Applications are easy to install with Getjar. Kobo basically filtered a ton of bad apps or ones that did not look good on a seven inch screen. They organized them in a more intuitive way and gives you options to download and install. When we spoke with the CEO of Kobo he mentioned that it is very important to the company not to have a closed ecosystem. You have the ability to sideload in your own applications or alternative markets. There is no restrictions on what you can load on the device.
Let’s talk content! The main Kobo bookstore received an update for the Vox that allows you to purchase cook books, kids books, graphic novels, and comic books! The kids books are something that parents worldwide will enjoy. There is a ‘read to me’ feature that narrates the book to your kid. You do have the option to turn it off if you don’t want to utilize it, or if it gets old quick.
I checked out a few book that were loaded on the device and it supports full pinching and zooming on all of the kids books. Some of the books had hidden text on the page, so you had to pinch and zoom to find clues. Colors were really vibrant with the high resolution screen and the books looked great in portrait/landscape mode. Some of the books took a while to initially load, but once they did, page turn speed was very quick and there was no lag at all when you zoomed in and out.
Similarly, you have the options to buy comics and graphic novels. There was an Archie comic loaded on the device and it had elements from popular Android Comic Book readers. You could double tap and it would zoom in on a specific panel, hit it again and it would go to the next panel. There were settings to even set the timer on the panel scrolling so you did not even need to touch the screen after the set time had passed. There is no a huge selection of content yet for both comics and kids books, but Kobo said in the coming weeks we should see a drastic increase in books available.
As always, you have full access to all of the 2.3 million books that Kobo offers under their ecosystem. You can find popular bestsellers and on the front page a number of lists with a books that are popular at that time. Obviously, the Steve Jobs book was the number one seller already.
The reading experience overall is excellent! Kobo did a great job utilizing the full color screen for new content not previously offered. It feels like the Nook Color situation where they could present so many more options and really get kids into the reading aspect. I can see the Vox being very popular with parents who want to foster their love of reading with their little ones. Since the entire line of Kobo e-readers are internationally friendly, I think it has more reach with its kids line of books then the Nook Color does. I think this will eventually attract more publishers and independent authors to submit content. There is no word yet on how authors can submit their content directly to Kobo to be in their new sections of the store. Maybe Smashwords will come to the rescue and give new features to submit it.
There are some 3rd party applications installed by default on the device like Zinio, Rdio, and newspapers from Pressreader. Many other Android tablets come with some or all of these programs, but Kobo manages to give you content right away. Zinio is contributing 12 totally free, full featured magazines to get you into their stable of magazines. I use Zinio on my Apple iPad and there were tons of scrolling issues. Some magazines had you swipe down to continue the news item and some you had to scroll. It lacked in consistency which alienated some of the users that found the entire process convoluted. The magazines we checked out with the Zinio app on Kobo felt more refined. The other apps also give you a bunch of free content to get you in the door. If you want to take out subscriptions you can deal directly with them instead of going through Kobo.
The internet experience on this device was average and depending on your local wireless connection could warrant you some high speed. I found webpages loaded up reasonably quickly. I was able to watch embedded Youtube videos and Flash content. There were not a ton of settings with the default web browser other than bookmarking.
In the end, Vox on a pure software side feels like the standard Android 2.3 tablet. This is good in a way that you can easily update the operating system or load in your own applications. It feels familiar, but it’s really the Kobo custom applications that make the unit shine. I am in love with Pulse and Reading Life is consistently a perennial favorite of mine. The home screen is unique and well laid out and gives you options to load in widgets or live wall papers. Internet is fast and robust and watching Youtube Videos and multimedia content is lush.
Our Thoughts
I had the Kobo Vox in my hands for about a solid hour and a half today and it is one of my favorite devices of the year. Kobo is a great company that is doing two things right; branching out internationally and developing social media. Living in Canada, sometimes we get the short end of the stick (same with Australia). Many companies simply focus on the USA market as a means to the end. It is expensive for new companies to compete in the USA market because of the expectations of low cost, high-end devices. Internationally, the quality of e-readers and tablets are overpriced and under performing. Considering Canada is a very high-tech nation, the only e-readers commonly available are Sony, Amazon Keyboard, Kobo, Pandigital, and Aluratek. In many cases, the newest models are not commonly available and most companies do not bother. Kobo is doing the right thing by focusing on markets often neglected by other companies. They have opened up markets in the last year with Australia, New Zealand, UK, France, Germany, and Spain. They find retail partners to carry their devices and buy books directly from Kobo. They have special versions of their store in foreign language markets that puts the emphasis on homegrown authors and also independents.
There are really no e-reader companies that focus on the social media elements like Kobo, and they are in a class of their own. All you need is their official app in most cases to take advantage of it and they don’t mandate you buy their dedicated reader to take part. Reading Life is not only seen on Kobo products, but is a built in element to Samsung’s entire line of tablets and smartphones.
Kobo Pulse continues to expand on the social media approach and makes books less of a solitary activity and more fun. I can see this catching on big time.
What does the company have planned in the near future? We talked about a bunch of things Kobo has in the pipe. One feature being released soon is audio narration in books. If you are listening to the book walking your dog or commuting and pause it, then you can open it on your e-reader and it will automatically be synced to where you left off. They have a ton of content partners lined up, but we can’t talk about it for now. Needless to say, it’s going to really open up the amount of books and other media you can get.
The Kobo Vox is simply a great social experience and that is what separates it from the Pandigital Novels and Aluratek Readers of the world. Most tablets being billed as e-reders often rely on 3rd parties to provide all of the content. They may preload the Amazon Android app and say, “Look! It’s an e-reader!” It really isn’t in almost all cases, it is a thinly veiled attempt to peddle a low quality tablet for the purposes of reading. Normally, people then install Angry Birds and Facebook and that’s all they do.
The Kobo Vox is a dedicated reader first and foremost. The company has the competitive advantage of offering their own hardware and content distribution system. It allows you to freely participate in their ecosystem without locking you into it exclusively. I love the freedom associated with dealing with their hardware because I can use Adobe Digital Editions and just borrow books from the library or buy them via other stores.
Rating: 8/10
Update: Oct 28 2011 - Have a Vox? We compiled a list of the essential applications you will want on it! Adobe Flash, Kindle Reader, Nook Reader, and other app stores. Check it out HERE.
Update 2: Many people have been asking about the new screen Kobo is using on their Vox. It is a AFFS display which is being billed as Anti-Glare! When we were in Toronto it was raining like crazy and we could not test it out in direct light. The one thing I can say is the screen pops, and I found it way better then resistive screens found in lower-end tablets. The big thing I noticed was that the resolution was tremendous and even with lots of overhead light there was little to no glare at all.
iPad Devices Clogging Hotel WIFI Access
Posted by: | Comments
Good e-Reader travels to many conferences and tradeshows every year and if one thing is for sure, Hotel Wi-Fi internet access is getting slower and slower. Hotels have a good answer; multiple iPads and other tablets streaming video and other content in the guests’ rooms. Hotels are straining under the pressure and most people suffer from very slow speeds.
“The iPad is the fastest-selling device in consumer electronics history, and because of it the demand placed on any public place Wi-Fi system has gone up exponentially in the last year and a half,” said David W. Garrison, the chief executive of iBAHN, a provider of systems for the hotel and meetings industries.
Travelers are going to continue to bring their iPad with them on Holiday and access the web and other websites. How are the hotels to cope with the strain on their networks? Hotels are soon going to be implemented with a tiered Wi-Fi access. The lowest version will allow customers to check their email for free and various paid levels depending on how much bandwidth you want to soak up. Some hotels we spoke with are seeing their internet traffic spike up by half during the last two quarters.
Studies conducted for iBAHN indicate that while free internet service remains a big factor in choosing a hotel, nearly two-thirds of business travelers say they have encountered slow Internet downloading in the last 12 months. Over two-thirds said they would “not return to a hotel where they had a poor technology experience,” iBAHN said. Many business travelers end up bringing their tablet, laptop, and smartphone, often accessing the internet with all devices. I know from experience during the normal daytime when we are uploading conference video and writing articles, Wi-Fi slows to a crawl.
Many industry experts are saying the Apple iPad is killing free internet, and it is ruining the public experience for everyone. Soon we may see paid Wi-Fi access or tiered access practically everywhere.
Google and Samsung Launch Ice Cream Sandwich Smartphone Galaxy Nexus
Posted by: | Comments
The newest Samsung smartphone, the cloud-based Galaxy Nexus, was unveiled this evening at a webcast press conference. Engadget’s Tim Stevens‘ live-blog of the launch, complete with photos of the speakers and the devices themselves, as both the LTE and the HSPA+ were released at the event. While various leaders from both Samsung and Google were on hand to talk about the relationship with the new Icecream Sandwich Android phone, the nuts and bolts of the device came a little later.
The obvious opening discussion from Samsung Senior Vice President Kevin Packingham centered around this phone being the fastest on the market, at everything. Video, web surfing, and streaming are all faster, thanks to a 1.2GHz processor. The screen, while still a 4.65” display, is wider and has a contrast ratio of 100,000:1, the highest available, but Samsung stands by their point that the phone won’t actually feel any bigger in the user’s hand.
“It’s hard to believe, but Android was born only three years ago. In that time it has been evolving in an amazingly fast and furious rate,” said Matias Duarte, Senior Director of Android User Experience at Google. “Meet Roboto. It’s a totally new typeface for Android — modern yet approachable. It was built from scratch for high-definition paper density displays…We wanted something relevant, emotional, and we looked to the latest trends in graphics design to inspire us. We took all of the actions that you do every day and brought them front and center.”
Some of those new user action features include app and widgets tabs that keep all of the favorite icons out of the way when not needed, and the ability to make folders on the right-to left sliding touch screens to store everything from icons to contact lists. Making and re-naming the folders is easier than ever.
The updates to the Nexus’s keyboard garnered a lot of attention at the event. Auto-correct features and word suggestions are included, as is voice-recognition messaging, including the ability to speak the punctuation marks and emoticons. This version also has FaceUnlock, which recognizes the user’s face to activate the phone.
The phone’s web browser allows for sixteen tabs to run at once, and swiping the tabs to the side allows the user to discard them. Web pages can be saved for offline use, a great feature for those areas of low connectivity. Of course, it’s not a Google-enhanced phone without Gmail, which has a redesigned inbox. One of the discussed features which drew appreciative looks for the conference attendees was the IceCream Sandwich Offline Search, which allows the user to set a time for the device to cache online items for later use. Of course, the ability to use a browser with that much ease means there needs to be built-in data usage tracking. The Nexus has that, as well as a prediction graph that shows the user how much he might use at this current rate over the course of the month, a great add-on for people who pay for data usage through their carriers.
Of course, the Nexus has the usual features like calendar functions and an installed camera, but the IceCream Sandwich upgrades to the phone’s camera make it one of the best that can be carried at all times. Obviously, the ability to instantly share photos is there, but so is real-time cropping and editing of photos. A panorama mode is also installed, meaning the user can scan a larger image area and incorporate it into one wide-screen photo. Of course the camera on the Nexus has a video mode, but this video feature can actually zoom while recording, much like an actual video camera.
The last new feature to arrive via the fanfare was the Android Beam, an NFC-based information sharing system that lets users swap information between phones, allowing users to share contact information, YouTube, People app information, webpages, and more.
While the device will launch in November in the U.S., who exactly will be the domestic cellular carrier wasn’t made clear, although some attendees speculated that it will be Verizon, although Verizon unveiled its 4G LTE Droid Razr earlier today.
The Loss of a Visionary
Posted by: | Comments
Apple made a startling announcement today that its co-founder and CEO of more than thirty years, Steve Jobs, passed away today from pancreatic cancer at the age of 56. Jobs was the leading visionary force behind some of the most innovative technological concepts to come out of any company in recent history. The effects of his illness were evident in Jobs’s last several appearances, including at his public resignation as the CEO of Apple and at the unveiling of the iPad 2. Jobs was notably absent from the release of the iPhone 4.
Apple’s website has emerged as a humble tribute to Jobs:
We are deeply saddened to announce that Steve Jobs passed away today. Steve’s brilliance, passion and energy were the source of countless innovations that enrich and improve all of our lives. The world is immeasurably better because of Steve. His greatest love was for his wife, Laurene, and his family. Our hearts go out to them and to all who were touched by his extraordinary gifts.
If you would like to share your thoughts, memories, and condolences, please email rememberingsteve@apple.com
TechCrunch Has Seen the New Amazon Tablet, Due in October
Posted by: | Comments
How exactly would a single person go about breaking Twitter? By posting an article declaring that he has seen, held, and used the new Amazon tablet, due out this fall. That’s precisely what happened when TechCrunch’s MG Siegler posted his article only a few hours ago, an article that already has over 2,000 “likes” on Facebook and has been picked up by tech watchers all across the internet, jamming Twitter for a while as the news spread.
Siegler described the tablet in massive detail, a tablet that he refers to simply as Kindle despite the months’-long speculation on names for the anticipated 7” and 10” tablets. He described one the two-finger touch-screen capability, pointing out the superiority of this model of the ten-finger iPad, as well as the final word on the fact that this tablet is not a color e-ink display but instead boasts a backlit screen.
While Siegler compared the new device to a Blackberry Playbook in terms of appearance, squashing a lot of the talk about what Amazon’s tablet might look like, he did put to rest a lot of the discussion swirling about the two tablet model, stating that the original plan was to release both the 10” tablet and its more cost-effective 7” screen younger brother; however, Siegler’s article discussed the fact that Amazon is now going to launch with only the 7” and release the 10” in 2012, depending on the popularity of the first new Kindle tablet. No one wants to see a repeat of the HP TouchPad, so Amazon may be holding out to see how its Android-based tablet fares in a market that is crawling with devices that want to compete with the iPad.
Siegler painted a vivid picture of the device, down to the color scheme and the pin-striping, the included apps and the fact that Google is nowhere to be found on this device that runs a ramped up Amazon-ized version of Android, an Android unlike anything anyone is used to. There were a few other features that he was a little less sure of, but nonetheless make a lot of sense from a consumer standpoint, such as the free subscription to Amazon Prime (a $79 value) to buyers.
Promotion for the device will likely outshine anything that Amazon has done for its other products and services, and as always, when one rumor gets put to bed another takes its place (such as the rumor mentioned in the TechCrunch piece about a touch-screen/e-ink hybrid device from Amazon). Whatever the new Kindle device brings to the table, however, consumers can rest assured that it will be Amazon big. As we’ve seen time and time again, the company doesn’t do much of anything on a small scale.
