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Archive for Technology
Amazon Releases New Update to App Store – Lets You Try Apps Before You Buy Them
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Amazon has just released a new version of its Android APP store that lets you try an app before you commit to the purchase. This feature is in beta and only works on select phones and tablets. This is a great new enhancement because you don’t have to waste your money on a particular app, only to find out it does not suit your needs. Amazon intends on refining this cloud based feature in the coming months and rolling it out to more devices. For now, it is all about trial and error to see if it works on your particular device. You can download it right now from the Good e-Reader App Store, or better yet, download our Android Client.
Massive Updates for the Good e-Reader Android Client
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The Good e-Reader Android App Store client was officially updated today for both Android and the Blackberry Playbook! We have augmented our existing Android app so there is now an optimized mobile and new Honeycomb version. All of the new versions give you many new enhancements and features.
One of the main new elements of our store is that is now completely now optimized for mobile phones and tablets. We know a ton of people use their Kindle Fire, Kobo Vox and many other tablets. Our mobile version also has been updated that makes it look even better on your smartphones or Android tablets. You will get the best experience with Android 2.1 – 2.3 and 4.0. We have also created a brand new Honeycomb version for people who still have those.
One of the main new features we have introduced are fixes to Popular Apps and New Apps. In the past no matter what version of the client you had, it showed apps from both our Playbook and Android sections. We thought this confused many users and amended it so if you have the Android Client you will only see Android apps. We have also revised the way text is displayed in the App descriptions. It now maintains proper paragraph form and line spacing. Finally, we have added a new Splash screen image and added new enhancements to the auto update feature when an app you have as an update.
The Good e-Reader App Store features over 1500 apps for both Android and the Blackberry Playbook. You think of our app market as a veritable editors choice of the best apps on both platforms. Here at Good e-Reader we put a heavy emphasis on reading and news apps, but we have tons of games and other content too. Whenever a new version of an app is released we always are one of the first app markets to update our apps. Our Playbook App Market is currently rated the #1 store of its kind, as voted by Crackberry.
You can download the Mobile Android Client from Google Play HERE or from our web based store HERE. You can download our Honeycomb version from our App Store HERE and from Google Play HERE. Finally ou can download our official Playbook Client HERE.
Aluratek Partners with Getjar for CinePad line of Tablets
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A few days ago we announced that Aluratek was going to be releasing two new tablets that gives you Android 4.0 and some decent specs. Today the company announced its content distribution platform to get new apps on your device. It seems Getjar will be the platform of choice and will be bundled all on tablets that are shipping now.
Major Playbook Pirate Website is Taken Down
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Research in Motion has had piracy on its radar for a number of months. One of the largest concerns for the company in courting new developers for its BB10 platform has been piracy. The company has publicly stated on many occasions that Piracy is one of the things running rampant on the Android platform and they would do their darnedest to make sure their ecosystem does not turn into a cesspool. It seems that in conjunction with a major announcement that all App World purchases for the Playbook will be encrypted in the near future, a major Playbook pirate website was taken down.
This website has been running for the last four months and specializes in apps and games ripped off from the Playbook App World. Their main priority was popular games such as the entire Angry Birds franchise, but basically had every single paid app available for free download on their website. This website was a thorn in the side of RIM in order to appeal to more mainstream developers to make apps for their own ecosystem. The company has made no public comment if they were the owns serving the DMCA notice to the owner of the website.
RIM intends on implementing a new encryption system on their Playbook App World this July. In essence this will prevent people from pirating any new or exiting content from their store by disallowing anyone, but the purchaser from running in on their tablets. This will effectively nullify 3rd party websites that purvey pirated applications and games.
Many people were blissfully unaware that PBVN.Net even existed but remained a constant source of disdain for RIM in their quest to lure more developers. The Waterloo company now realizes that in order for their market share to return to former glories they need to lure major apps like Skype, Pintrest, Temple Run and many more on their platform. When we talked with representative from RIM they said that many companies they spoke with were unwilling to develop for the platform because of rampant piracy and the ability to sideload in your own apps. RIM has confirmed that they will not disallow the ability to load in your own Android apps but they are working hard on their new encryption system to prevent future cases of piracy.
Aluratek Releases New CinePad Android Tablets
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Aluratek is best known for its extensive line of e-readers that have been available on the market for the last three years. The company has just released two new models of their CinePad line of Android 4.0 tablet computers! They have both a seven and a ten inch model and both have some solid hardware and low prices.
The first model they have out is a seven inch version with a resolution of 800 x 480 and the official name is the AT107F. It features a five-point capacitive multi-touch screen. It is powered by a Boxchip A10 cortex A8 1 GHZ Processor and 512 MB RAM. You have around 4 GB of internal storage for your media, books, and music. You can elect to expand it via the MicroSD Card up to 32 GB.
There are a number of cool hardware features found on this model, such as a Mini-HDMI to give you hi-definition video on your television. It also has a speaker, microphone, WIFI, 3.5 MM headphone jack, and front facing webcam. It has a solid battery life via the 3.7V / 3000mAH battery, which should give you around seven hours of constant use. Finally, it is shipped with Android ICS and fully supports HTML5.
The 10 inch model is dubbed the AT110F and it has a bit better of a processor—the Amlogic cortex A9 1 GHZ edition. This model has a 10 point multi-touch display with a resolution of 1024 x 600 pixels. The RAM is also boosted on this model with a very respectable 1 GB. You can store way more media with the 8 GB of internal memory and support for 32 GB of microSD expandable storage. There is also a ton of ports and extras, such as micro-HDMI, USB, Bluetooth, WIFI, and VGA-Webcam.
The CinePad line of Ice Cream Sandwich tablets has been a long time coming and they finally have a solid line of tablets. The pricing structure is fairly solid, with the seven inch model costing only $149.99 and the ten inch edition is $219.99.
Bridgestone Bows Out of the e-Paper Business
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Bridgestone has been demonstrating its color e-paper technologies for a few years at various conferences and trade-shows. We have caught up with the representatives on many occasions and talked to Bridgestone’s major partners like Delta Electronics. Today Bridgestone announced that they were getting out of the e-paper arena and leaving their partners to fend for themselves.
The company has made this decision after careful consideration of its options and a desire to stay in accordance with its management principal of “selection and concentration,” which Bridgestone is implementing to put an increased focus on its core businesses to provide maximum value to its customers and shareholders. Due to increasing competition and rapidly declining prices in the liquid crystal panel business, the company decided that the best course of action for its overall business is to exit the electronic paper market.
Bridgestone, best known for making tires, had developed QR-LPD (Quick Response Liquid Powder Display) screen technology that was created through a joint partnership by Bridgestone and Vivitek. It’s basically a screen and a logic controller system for electronic readers that promotes a low power consumption while displaying 4096 colors. One of the big new factors in this technology is the .08 second page update and supports different types of page refreshes. It can do partial page updates, full page updates, and supports touch screen and stylus interactions. The screen technology can support from 8 inches all the way to 21 inches and does around 4 levels of gray-scale. Like Pixel Qi, the big selling points to clients wanting to employ QR-LPD is the ability to read it in direct sunlight.
All of the companies involved in this new breed of technology developed e-readers as small as six inches and as large as 21 inches. It really was the 21 inch model with a resolution of 2,560 x 1,920 pixels for the mono panel and 1,280 x 960 for full color that drew the largest amount of industry attention.
None of these devices, after three years of development, really ever saw the light of day, but Delta Electronics did issue the Aerobee e-readers that never saw market penetration. It is a shame that this technology really never took off. It had tons of potential but no one really invested a large amount of capital into consumer releases. When we spoke with Delta and Vivitek, their priorities were never the public but instead focused on niche segments like real estate and education.
Nook Simple Touch with Glowlight Nighttime Reading Tests
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Welcome to another Good e-Reader Exclusive Video Review! Today we check out the brand new Barnes and Noble Simple Touch Reader with Glowlight and conduct a battery of nighttime reading tests!
The Nook Glowlight is the first e-ink reader in the world to utilize LED lights built into the bezel to give you the ability to read in the dark. How does this compare to book lights which have been on the market for a number of years? We compare the Nook Glowlight with the standard LED Book Light. We also compare it to the brand new Solar Focus Kindle case with built in Book Light. Finally, we check out how it rates against the Nook Tablet and iPad 3 for reading at night!
We really put this device through all the paces comparing it to most 3rd party accessories that would give your normal e-reader the ability to read at night. Many people buy tablets because they also allow you to read without depending on having a lamp on or external lights. If you are thinking of buying an e-reader or tablet to read at night, this is the best test to help you make the decision.
How to Load eBooks on the Nook Simple Touch with Glowlight
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Welcome to another Good e-Reader Video Tutorial! Today we teach you how to load ebooks on the new Barnes and Noble Simple Touch with Glowlight! We use three different programs that handle your book loading process quite differently. The ones we focus on today is Calibre, Adobe Digital Editions, and Windows Explorer.
The Nook Simple Touch with Glowlight primarily handles EPUB and PDF books. These are two of the most commonly found digital book formats on the internet. Having the Nook really allows you the freedom to not be locked into any particular ecosystem. You can buy books from other online retailers, as long as their books are in EPUB. Kobo, Smashwords, and many other websites sell books in this popular format.
Calibre is a free open source ebook management software suite. It provides maximum flexibility in handling your book libraries. The essence of this program is using it with DRM-free books, or books you downloaded from the internet that do not have encryption.We show you how to find this program on the internet and the basic functionality of it. The main aspects of this program include being able to edit the title, author name, book series, and add cover art. We show you how to do all of this and then some! Also, when you are done editing your books, you can easily save it directly to your Nook.
Adobe Digital Editions is a free program that you can install on your PC. The essence of this one is to copy books to your device that you have purchased from other bookstores or borrowed from the library. Once you install the program and attach your Nook Glow to your PC, you should see it appear. You can then import your books to your stage and then drag and drop them to your e-reader. Books tend to be copied over super fast and we show you all the steps involved.
The last program we use is good old Windows Explorer! This provides the least flexibility in handling your books, but it is the most commonly used method. We show you the directory structure of your Nook and where exactly to copy the books.
Plastic Logic’s Color Flexible eReader Screen Available for Demo
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Engadget posted a video today of Plastic Logic’s prototype flexible color ereader. The screen, which boasts over 1 million transistors and has over 4,000 hues, can maintain its flexibility and its image integrity at the same time.
This development was possible in part due to the success of Plastic Logic’s basic ereader, the Plastic Logic 100, that made its way into Russian classrooms to deliver digital textbooks to the academic setting. The shaved model, which doesn’t have wi-fi and relies on cable to transfer texts to the device, was funded partly through a large investment from Rusnano; the success of that transaction and resulting device set the stage for the new flexible screen device.
Nate Hoffelder of The Digital Reader had a concise explanation for why Plastic Logic’s screen is able to pull off that level of hue with a plastic screen:
“The color is provided by a filter laying on top of the grayscale screen. The screen underneath the filter has a resolution of 150 ppi, and that gets cut in half because you need 3 pixels to do red, green, and blue. There’s also a 4th pixel which is left alone (it shows the white/black of the underlying screen. The RGBW are arranged in a 2 by 2 grid in the layer on top of the Plastic Logic screen…This is a flexible screen, and so is the filter laying on top. Plastic Logic had to design the filter so it flexes at the same rate as the screen so it wouldn’t get bent out of shape. That is an interesting trick.”
In theory, this would achievement would improve the e-reader display while possibly reducing the cost, once it’s available for mass production of course; neither the price nor the launch date for mass market hasn’t been released yet. However, the scaled down device that Plastic Logic made available in Russian classrooms was still upwards of $400 per unit, so don’t count on a huge savings just yet.
Top 10 Playbook Android APPS for May 2012
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The Blackberry Playbook got a second lease on life when the Android Emulator hit the scene via the OS2 update. In the last four months, our very own Good e-Reader Playbook App Store has attained over 700 fully functional Playbook Apps that have been converted from their native Android. Our top 10 list runs down the most downloaded apps in the last month.
Text Me! – Free Texting + SMS for Playbook – One of the leading free SMS and text messaging apps.
My Baby Piano – A really great piano application designed for kids!
Google Maps – This app is updated a ton and we have the latest version. Check out your neighborhood and discover new ones, fully functional.
VLC Direct - Easy and powerful streaming client and server application.
Google Voice - Make cheap international calls with your Google number. Send free text messages.
Amazon Kindle – Simply one of the best e-reading applications for the Playbook. A great alternative to the native Kobo ecosystem found in the App World.
Dropbox – Access your Cloud from the Playbook! Get access to your documents, music, video, and more!
Words With Friends – Play Words With Friends Free, the #1 mobile word game, with both your Android and iPhone/iPad-toting friends.
Crime City – Want to build a criminal empire and crush your rivals?
Talkdroid: MSN Messenger – One of the best MSN clients on the Playbook!
Public Schools Take on Student Devices for Learning
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Around this time last year, a number of ambitious lawmakers began planning for a future in which public school students in the US went wholly digital, much like initiatives in other parts of the world. But the reaction from a lot of critics came down to a very important factor: money. Who was going to fund purchasing e-readers or tablets for every student in America?
One Alabama public school has found a middle ground solution: let the students use the devices they already own and adapt the curriculum to work with the children’s technology, not against it.
“We’ve always had rules about not bringing cell phones or iPods to school,” remarked seventh grade teacher Angie Kelley from White Plains Middle School in an interview with GoodEReader. “But now we’re experimenting with letting them bring the devices they already have and putting them to use for education.”
The immediate concerns surrounding the school’s Bring Your Own Device initiative focused on very valid things like internet safety, damage to the students’ personal property, and of course, meeting the needs of students whose families couldn’t afford to purchase expensive devices.
“Before starting this, we made sure to have a supply of school laptops in the classroom so that no one was left out,” continued Kelley, explaining why the program only began with one grade level in order to ensure there were enough computers for students to at least work in pairs or small teams.
“We also work hard to teach the students how to be good digital citizens, to help them understand that technology can be a huge asset if you remember that there’s a time for studying and learning and a different time for playing on your iPad.”
The biggest obstacle to the program continues to be the wide variety of devices the students bring with them. The teachers using the program have had to familiarize themselves with iOS devices, Android tablets, laptops and Macbooks. One student might create a website one on machine but cannot utilize the necessary Flash player when presenting it on a different device. Using file sharing services like Dropbox rather than trying to have their students email or print their work has helped the educators adapt to receiving student work from the students’ different systems.
“Overall, I’m thrilled. It’s been very motivating for the students to get to use the devices they already like to use at home in order to get their work done. As for me, I love the fact that we are moving closer and closer to going paperless. I’d like to see our school reach a 70% paperless educational setting next year.”
Barnes and Noble Nook Simple Touch with Glowlight Review
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The Barnes and Noble Simple Touch with Glowlight is a new breed of e-reader that allows you to read in the dark. It maintains the same e-ink display found in previous models of the Nook Simple Touch, which makes it very easy on the eyes during long reading sessions. Unlike LCD screens, it does not burn your eyes when you are reading in the dark. Is this new form of e-reader just a gimmick or does it raise the bar?
Hardware
The Barnes and Noble Simple Touch with Glowlight features a six inch e-ink pearl display. The resolution of 800 x 600 is comparable with most other e-readers on the market, like the Kindle Touch and the Nook Simple Touch released last year. Underneath the hood is a 800 Mhz processor with 2 GB of internal memory. If you need more space to store your books and other media you can expand it up to 32 GB via the Micro SD Card. Most of your daily functions tend to zip along fairly fine with the processor and 256 MB of RAM.
The Nook Simple Touch with Glowlight is a full touchscreen e-reader that is one of the most responsive devices on the market. It features an infrared display that is on the side of the bezel. This allows for pin-point accuracy in terms of interacting with the menus and keyboard.
The big draw on this new e-reader is the Glow function that allows you to read in the dark. Instead of having the light appear from underneath the screen like most tablets on the market, it emits from the same area as the IR display. There are a total of eight LED lights that are spread around the bezel that provide a fair amount of light. In some cases, because they are spread out, I found that some lines of text are darker than others. The glow feature is not always on by default, but you have to hold down the N button for around two seconds to turn on the light. In the settings menu there is an option to change the different levels of luminosity.
Honestly, the glow feature is one of the best new technological advances to hit the e-reader scene in a long time. If you wanted to read your ebook reader in the dark you would have to purchase a bulky aftermarket light or a case with a built in light. This drastically increases the cost and often becomes bulky and cumbersome.
The Nook Simple Touch with Glowlight is noticeably thicker than a Kindle Touch, at 0.47 inches (11.9mm) to the Kindle’s 0.40 inches (10.1mm). It’s a little lighter than the Kindle or the Nook Simple Touch, weighing just shy of 7 ounces. I think its rather impressive that they managed to actually shave off a bit of weight while adding a new light display. In terms of battery life you can get over 1 month with the GlowLight functionality on, based on a half hour of daily reading time, or over 2 months with GlowLight off, based on a half hour of daily reading time. One of the cool things with this model is Barnes and Noble is actually including an AC adapter right in the box. The previous models only had a USB cable to charge your unit on your PC.
Like most other e-readers on the market, this has a dedicated Wi-Fi interact connection. You can easily connect up to your own local network and download new content from the B&N online store. You can also take your e-reader into any Barnes and Noble store location and read books. Many online stores only allow you a small sample of the book if you are downloading it online. When you are actually in a physical store location, you can read the book in its entirety as long as you stay in the store. When you leave, the book simply disappears from your library, but at least you can try before you buy. This is one of the cool aspects of running a physical retail store; they can do little things like this that make a world of difference.
I would take the Nook with Glow over the Kindle Touch any day of the week. The physical page turn buttons really give it the edge because they are slim and optimized for right or left handed people. It may not have all the extra features like “Send to Kindle” or “Instapaper,” but I find on a hardware level it is lighter and gives you a better e-reading experience than any other device currently on the market.
Software
The Barnes and Noble Simple Touch with Glowlight is running Google Android 2.1 as the main operating system. Every single e-reader that the company has ever produced runs this OS, which allows more speed and flexibility then the standard Linux OS that almost all other e-readers on the market use.
Barnes and Noble really makes their e-ink based devices a social reading experience. They have various programs like Nook Friends, LENDME, and social media integration. This is a total advantage, because you can borrow an ebook for up to two weeks from your friend and even browse their entire reading list to see what books they are reading. If you don’t really know anyone that uses the Nook and want to borrow books for free, you can visit various ebook lending sites like Lendingbook. You can also share select passages and quotes via Twitter and Facebook, once you connect your accounts.
Barnes and Noble provides a wide and expansive ecosystem for you to buy and read books. The store is built right into the e-reader and is organized in a very intuitive fashion. It is optimized for swipes and gestures and all of the text is large enough that you won’t often click on something you didn’t intend. The store is divided into many sections with popular categories like the New York Times Best Sellers, Editors Picks, and various genres/sub-genres. You can also download plenty of newspapers from various publishers, such as the New York Times and many local papers. Currently they have over one million books that are both paid or free.
I really like the responsiveness of the Nook Simple Touch with Glow! Navigating menus and settings are super fast and there is little wait time for menus to load. Books tend to open very fast and page turn speeds are out of this world.
e-Reading Experience
There are only a few book formats that the Nook is compatible with, such as EPUB and Adobe PDF. EPUB is really the internet standard for electronic books, and allows you tremendous flexibility in changing the fonts, line spacing, and margins. When you buy the Nook you are not just limited to buying books from Barnes and Noble, but you have the freedom to buy from wherever you want. When you purchase a book from another store, you simply need to download Adobe Digital Editions to transfer it over to your device. The only store you cannot do business with is Amazon, because they use their own proprietary format.
More libraries are starting to use the Overdrive system to facilitate the lending of digital books. This allows you to use your Nook to borrow books from your public library. The only thing you need is a library card and a 4 digit pin number. Check with your local library branch to make sure you can borrow books from them.
If you are the type of person that downloads a ton of books from the internet or dives into the shady underworld to get your content, this e-reader is for you. You can download any book in EPUB format and then use a 3rd party program like Calibre to manage your library. I really like Calibre because it allows you greater control to edit your books. When you download books online, often the title of the book or author’s name is misspelled or the file has the book title, authors name, and series all in the title. With Calibre you can change all of this information and even change the cover art if you want. If you don’t want to use any third party programs, you can simply use Windows Explorer to copy the books into your books or documents folder.
The Nook line of e-readers allows you more flexibility than most other devices on the market to tailor your reading experience the way you want it. There are over eight different fonts you can choose from when you are reading a book. The default options are Caecillia, Malabar, Amasis, Gill Sans, Helvetica, Trebuchet, and a few others. You also have seven different options to physically change the size of the font. This is very useful to optimize the size of the font based on your own personal needs. There are also plenty of options to change your line spacing, margins, or abide by the publisher’s defaults.
Nighttime Reading
The Nook Simple Touch with Glowlight is designed to be read under any circumstance and its priority is reading at night. We ran a battery of tests to compare it against LCD tablets like the iPad 3 and Nook Tablet. We also compared it to the new SolarFocus case with built in LED light and the official Barnes and Noble Booklight.
When you have a dedicated e-reader like the Kindle Touch, or even the 1st generation Barnes and Noble Simple Touch Reader, the only way to read in the dark is with a booklight. We found from our tests that these lights only illuminate the top half of the screen and in many cases give you a LED glare on the screen. In testing the Nook Glowlight against various booklights the new Barnes and Noble e-reader simply blew them all away. If you have a normal e-reader and decide to invest in a booklight, the costs dramatically increase.
LCD based tablets like the iPad 3 and Nook tablet are designed to read in low-light conditions and have many options to change the brightness of the screen. In many cases they also have nighttime reading mode that will change the background to black and the text to white. This is supposed to prevent headaches and not burn your eyes during long reading sessions. There is obviously a fundamental difference between e-ink technology, which mimics real paper, and an LCD screen. In most of our tests the LCD screens performed fairly well at night but lacked outdoors in the sun. The Nook Simple Touch was the clear winner in terms of being a pure e-reader both indoors and outdoors.
Our Thoughts
The Nook Simple Touch with Glowlight really raises the bar on e-reading in 2012. It is the only device on the market that allows you to read comfortably in low-light conditions. Personally I do most of my reading at night when I am going to sleep. In the past, I needed the lamp to be on and be positioned in such as way that the e-reader was facing the light source so I can read without any shadows. When you have a family or are sleeping with a significant other this could cause drama with them wanting the light off. You could obviously bypass this by purchasing a book light or a case with a built in light. I was never a fan of these because it took away from the essence of an e-reader, in that they are supposed very light and portable.
One of my main concerns with this new lighting system is what happens if one of the LED lights burns out? I have yet to find any kind of replacement lights on the market and B&N has been fairly mum on the matter. It also goes without saying that Barnes and Noble does not actively sell their e-readers or tablets outside the USA. If you live in Canada, Australia, Europe, or anywhere else your best option is the premier e-reader store Shop e-Readers, that has plenty in stock.
In the end, this is a great e-reader for the price and the only one with a built in light. It really allows you to read anywhere and anytime. Unlike an LCD tablet, it will not burn your eyes and is the closest experience you will get to reading a real book. Digital content is also way cheaper than buying the physical book. Often a new release in hardcover format will cost $25 to $45, while the ebook often costs $9.99. Any book you buy from Barnes and Noble can be read on their official apps for iOS, Android, and many other operating systems.
Pros
The ability to read in the dark
Expansive ecosystem of books and newspapers
Lots of options to change your reading experience
Fairly affordable
Cons
Most B&N stores are completely out of stock
No internet browser via the Search Menu
Rating 9.5/10
Nokia Launches Reading App and eBookstore in Europe
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Nokia is trying to capitalize on European markets that have not been inundated with e-readers. The company has announced today that they have developed an e-reading application and online bookstore. They intend to actively market it in France, Germany, Italy, Russia, Spain, and the UK.
The reading application will be available on their line of Lumia smartphones, such as the 900, 800, 710, 610. The reading app itself is available in the online marketplace and the books will be provided by Overdrive. Major publishers have signed onto this new project, such as Penguin, Pearson, and Hachette. Thousands of free books will be available and also plenty of paid downloads. Popular books like The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, One Day, and The Adventures Of Sherlock Holmes will be available.
Nokia mentioned that “While e-books are becoming a common sight in countries like the US and the UK, they are still in their infancy—or basically unavailable—in many parts of the world. And this is where the strength of Nokia Reading lies: in local language e-reading content.”
Nokia plans on rolling out new enhancements for its online bookstore in the coming weeks. You will soon be able to download audiobooks and a news stream.
