Archive for e-reader
Announcement: Good e-Reader Free Kindle Keyboard Giveaway!
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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.
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
UK based ASDA offers Discounted Kobo Touch for £87
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Supermarket retail chain started carrying the Kobo line of e-readers fairly recently and has recently deeply discounted the Kobo Touch. The original launch price was £107 and today they are now offering it for only £87!
The new price was not a random and arbitrary figure they somehow conjured up one night. The main proponent of the price was to offer the device cheaper then their main rival WH Smith whom offers it for £99 at its regular price. Today WH Smith told us they are running a limited time promotion for the Kobo Touch for only £89 and the Vox for £149. WH Smith is Kobo’s official partner in the UK and carries the e-readers at over 300 locations.
The Kobo Touch has received many price reductions as WH Smith and Asda jockey for position to offer customers a reason to come to their stores. Obviously the reader is seeing massive discounts since it was launched and the companies hope to sell accessories to offset the dwindled costs. Screen protectors, cases and custom cables are several ways they influence customers to buy additional peripherals and make a large profit.
The discounts on the Kobo is a reflection of how e-readers are becoming increasingly popular and different retailers are trying to appeal to budget conscious customers.
Introducing the Good e-Reader News APP for Android
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We have just rolled out the first version of our official Android News App today! Get caught up with the latest Good e-Reader News while on the go on your phone or tablet! We have dedicated sections of all of our major categories so if you are just interested in publishing or ebook news, you can read with ease.
We made it very easy to navigate and install the application! Simply download it from our own Good e-Reader APP Store right HERE! In the next few days we will be having it listed in the official Google Android Market for those of you that can connect to it. The main reason we are carrying it in our own APP Store is because we know many tablets like the Kobo Vox, Kindle Fire, and Pandigital Novel can’t access the real Google Market. We like to make things as easy as you can. Remember like always, you can open up our App Store in your tablets internet browser and download any app right to your tablet or e-reader.
This App is in Beta! This means graphically things will drastically change in the near future but in the here and now, it works great. We are proud to be the only e-reader blog in the world offering an app to read our articles.
Koobe Jin Yong Reader the Latest Device to Use Mirasol Display Technology
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We only just reviewed the Kyobo Mirasol e-reader, a South Korean exclusive, last week and it looks like Mirasol has another device up their sleeves, the Koobe Jin Yong Reader.
First of all, this latest e-reader is the spitting image of the Kyobo one recently released in terms of hardware. It uses a Qualcomm’s 1.0 GHz Snapdragon S2 class processor and features a 5.7” XGA format with a resolution of 1024 x 768 pixels. The main differences is the User Interface it uses, which is a heavily customized version of Android 2.3. It is also bundled with 15 ebooks by the popular Chinese writer Jin Yong.
The Jin Yong Reader joins the C18 from China’s Hanvon, the Bambook Sunflower from China’s Shanda Networking Co. and the Kyobo eReader from South Korea’s Kyobo Book Centre. All of these use the new Mirasol technology that took over 2 years of constant development. Surprisingly, the displays are very sound and emulate the virtues of Pixel Qi in the respect that they perform very well outdoors. One of the drawbacks is all of these devices never see the light of day in North America and instead are Asian exclusives.
There is no information on release dates or the price, but I see it being competitive with the other Mirasol devices on the market, at $300 US.
Rumor: Barnes and Noble to partner with Waterstones in the UK
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Last month the VP of Digital Content at Barnes and Noble Theresa Horner announced that they intend on bringing a new Nook to the UK in the spring of this year. The company is seeking to expand its Nook offerings outside of the USA into one of the largest markets, the UK. Over the weekend two different reports were issued that expanded on the potential deal.
Bloomburg has reported that the company intends on partnering with Waterstones for distribution in the UK of a new version of the Nook. The new device will be optimized for international use and be sold in over 300 physical locations. “If they do increase the distribution for the product, it’s obviously a benefit for them,” Michael Souers, an analyst for Standard & Poor’s in New York, said in an interview. “Amazon is still the behemoth in the market, and has the upper hand because they were the first mover in the majority of markets.” Selling it in the retail sphere is tremendously important and really is how the Nook really took off to begin with. Having the weight of every B&N store and many other big box retail outlets hustling your product is a good way to garner some attention.
The second article to touch on the subject was an amazing article featured in the New York Times which everyone should read. The Times basically interviewed a wide array of engineers and industry insiders on the entire B&N business model. They claimed to have first hand knowledge that a new e-ink based device is nearly complete and will be marketed exclusively to the UK.
Obviously in order to compete with Amazon which is embedded in major markets with its line of e-ink devices such as Canada, US, UK, France, Germany, and Spain the book retailer is playing a game of catch up. The Nook does very well in the USA but not the rest of the world. A successful UK launch would mean the company would put a higher priority on expanded markets and would make the Nook a household name.
Sony Releases new Firmware Update for the PRS-T1
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The Sony PRS-T1 is the only active e-reader the company is marketing and has suspended production on all previous models. Since this is their new flagship model they tend to update it more then other companies. A new firmware update 1.0.04 was just released and promises a number of enhancements. Below is the the official log of the new fixes to go into the e-reader. Please note that the update is over 100 MB, so make sure you have enough room on your e-reader. You can download the entire update and step by step instructions via Sony Support.
Improvements over system software version 1.0.03.11140
•Resolves an issue where using a very short page flick to turn a page may accidentally select words and start the dictionary lookup
•Improves touch panel functionality
•Improves stability when searching the dictionary
•Improves Internet connectivity
•Improves Digital Rights Management (DRM) contents compatibility
•Resolves an issue where the Reader is unable to download some e-book files
Digital Book World Wrap Up with Mike Shatzkin
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GoodEReader attended this year’s Digital Book World conference in New York and met up with an amazing crew of attendees from various arms of the publishing world. Agents, editors, and publishing executives were on hand to hear from the many representatives from across the digital publishing spectrum. These experts on ebooks were presenters, panelists, moderators, and exhibitors on everything from children’s app books to digital textbooks, as well as accessories to reading like voice-over narration developers and audio soundtrack creators.
GoodEReader managed to spend a few minutes with the conference chairman, Mike Shatzkin, to get his impressions of the event as a whole, as well as some of his predictions for where digital publishing will be going in the coming year. The video of that interview can be found below.
Top 5 Mainstream eReader Apps for Android
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Google Android continues to enjoy being one of the most heavily used operating systems for tablets and phones. This is a robust operating system that is easy to license and many vendors relish in the constant attention the big G brings to their companies. If you have an Android Tablet, e-reader, or phone, you might find yourself in the position that you have no access to some of the best apps on the platform. Many e-readers, like the Kobo Vox, Pandigital Novel, Velocity Micro Cruz and many others, have limited access to 3rd party downloads. The average user only uses the apps the unit is shipped with and does not know there are tons of choices out there.
There are quite a number of mainstream e-reader apps that allow you to buy books, newspapers, and magazines directly from the apps. Not only can you buy, but you can also read them as they were meant to be seen, making them the perfect all in one solution. Today we are going to take a look at some of the best mainstream e-reader apps out there and tell you a bit about them. You can also download any of these apps directly to your tablet or phone by visiting http://goodereader.com/apps/
Amazon is one of the largest and most successful companies in terms the sheer amount of ebooks that are available. They have a tremendous ecosystem that allows you to buy the latest bestsellers and newspapers at good prices.
The Kindle for Android interface is very clean and gives you many options to browse content from the New York Times Bestseller list to the staffs personal picks. It has its categories developed fairly well, but often works best if you know what you are looking for.
Amazon has released a new library lending program via Overdrive partners. If you have a local branch that participates in digital ebook lending you can borrow books form the library and have them sent directly to your Kindle account. You can then send the books directly to your Android Tablet or e-Reader and read for free. Amazon also has a lending program that allows you borrow select books from other users or from eBook Club websites like Lendingebooks.com
Amazon for Android continues to be one of the better ecosystems out there in terms of mainstream and current books. They have a great indie writer community and you can discover new writers at affordable prices, often at .99. This program is a free download but obviously the content costs money but there is a ton of free books on the service.
Barnes and Noble Nook for Android
Barnes and Noble in the last few years has developed an expansive bookstore with tons of content. If you have a Nook Tablet or Color you know first hand how the store functions and the sheer amount of kids books, cook books and others specifically tailored for the Nook line of devices? What if you just have a Kobo Vox or other tablet? How does the experience rank up against the competition?
Nook for Android only works best if you live in the USA, if you live outside that country you do have some options. Many users claim using a fake address from the USA is all you need to do and then use your real email address and credit card. The company will NEVER send anything to your physical address unless you order non-digital content.
Nook for Android is a great reader program that allows you to lookup words via the dictionary and alter your fonts and margins. You can also augment your linespacing if you want to customize your reading experience.
This bookstore has a ton of new and mainstream books available and also a select amount of other material. The company runs their own indie publishing project called PUBIT which allows writers to submit their own content. Unlike Amazons publishing program physical people actually read the book to make sure its suitable to publish.
Kobo boasts a current library of 2.5 million books and 60% of them are free and open source. This means a fair number are classics and books you might have read when you were a little kid. Kobo is a very internationally friendly company and you can buy and read books in almost any country in the world.
One of the strongest features the company has going for it is ‘Reading Life’ which allows you earn awards and achievements. You can then let your friends know when you have read a book or earned an award via Facebook and Twitter. Speaking of social media you can also send passages of text or select words to those services too.
If you want to load your own books Kobo is one of the only mainstream apps that allow you to do it. Simply upload books that don’t have DRM to your dropbox account or send them as attachments via email and when you open it up the books can be read within the app.
Finally, like most mainstream apps there is a ton of customizations you can make to change up the look and feel of most books. You can change fonts, margins, line spaces and much more.
Android is the first platform that Sony started to market its own fledgling bookstore to phones and tablets. There is actually an optimized version of their app specifically for tablets that is an independent download. Book Prices are a bit higher then some of its competition but they do have a bunch of graphic novels and manga available.
The Sony Reader is one of the least developed mainstream apps and by comparison ranks lower on our list of essential apps. It does not give you as much freedom to change fonts and other aspects of your book experience like Kobo, Amazon and Barnes and Noble.
When you download the app you are greeted by 3 free books that change once in awhile but are often open-source free books that are in the public domain.
If you have a Android Tablet or Phone with full access to the Android Market often this app is installed on your device. Often if you don’t there is no actual way of getting it other then our own app store. It features one of the nicest page turn animations in the business and looks very slick to read even scanned books.
Google is trying very hard to make a go of the entire ebook world and only started its service last year. They are the least mature of all of the other mainstream apps in terms of selection of books and the overall app experience.
The essence of Google Books is it is mainly a cloud based reader, when you buy books they are not stored physically on your e-reader or phone but within the Google Cloud Service.
There are over 3 million books in its ecosystem, but the majority are free and open sourced books the company has tediously scanned over the last five years. If you live in the USA it has an expansive selection of modern bestsellers in the fiction and non-fiction genres. If you live in Canada, Australia, or the UK the selection tends to fall of the cliff fast with an emphasis on local writers. It seems like most publishing companies did not authorize their books to any market outside the USA, which makes finding the latest best sellers an exercise in patience.
Amazon Divulges Some Critical Numbers at Digital Book World
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Most of the big names in electronic reading—Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kobo—like to keep a lid on all information about things like sales figures on devices, numbers of ebooks sold, and more. So when Amazon’s VP of Kindle Content Russ Grandinetti took the main stage at Digital Book World and enlightened the publishing industry crowd about some of that information, everyone paid attention.
Some of the most important info graphs that Grandinetti put up demonstrated a possible connection between titles being listed in the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library and an increase in sales. The explanation for that rested on the user agreement of KOLL that patrons can only borrow the equivalent of one book per month. The numbers might suggest that rather than wait as much as thirty days to check-out another ebook, Kindle users were opting to buy a book. This seemed to especially be the case when users had already read the first book in a series and had therefore become familiar with the author and the story line.
“Some customers may be willing to try authors and series they might not otherwise have discovered,” explained Grandinetti at DBW. He specifically mentioned The Hunger Games trilogy as an example, with graphs demonstrating that the number of people who first borrowed book later were more likely to purchase the second and third books.
Amazon was there also to discuss some of the newer aspects of Kindle Format 8 and its capabilities for children’s content and graphic novels on the Kindle Fire tablet. Both of those genres are making great headway now that there are inexpensive devices on the market that can tackle the screen size and full-color formats. The video below is from Grandinetti’s highlights of the updated capabilities for graphics-intensive ebooks.
Should e-Readers Embrace Social Media More?
Posted 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.