Wednesday, 23 December 2009

Kindle breaks Amazon sales records

Amazon.com has announced that December has been the best month for sales of its Kindle electronic book reader.





The company did not provide any sales figures or comparisons for its Kindle, but did say it is the most wished for, and most gifted item across all of Amazon.

Amazon said it is now offering free two-day expedited shipping for the Kindle between now and December 22, with shipping for delivery on or before December 24. Amazon's chief rivals in the electronic reader market, Sony and Barnes & Noble have not been able to deliver their products in time for the holidays.

Scribd for Amazon Kindle?

Scribd, the YouTube for print, is working on a new way to get e-books onto your Kindle without buying them from Amazon.




This week Scribd announced that John Wiley and Sons would be selling books through Scribd's store.That gives Scribd access to the "For Dummies" series, as well as "Frommer's" travel guides. It already had Simon and Schuster on board, along with other prominent publishers.

If Scribd can put its books on the Kindle, this number should only grow, especially since it offers publishers a better business deal than Amazon.

Amazon reportedly offers a 50/50 sales split. Scribd only keeps 20% and allows publishers to set their own price.

Christmas gift guide Amazon Kindle

Widely quoted as "the iPod of ebook readers". No big technology leaps here, but what makes this different is that this deviced is linked to a well-stocked store and providing a simple and streamlined consumer experience. Search for a title, author or subject. Within minutes, you’ve made a selection and are reading the first chapter or three for free. Minutes after you decide that you like what you’ve seen, you’ve got the whole book.
Free-for-life 3G connection to the AT&T mobile broadband network and Amazon throws in a web browser. 
The Kindle 2 is thin, light, and comfortable to hold, with big page-turn buttons that support right-handed or left-handed reading.


Amazon still  typically charge less than the competition.

Kindles don’t support ePub. But look out -  the Kindle 2 didn’t support PDF files until Amazon “pushed” that feature to the device wirelessly via a free software update.

Christmas gift guide iPod Touch

 Although it  isn’t a dedicated ebook reader there are multiple ebook reader apps for the iPod Touch. Including ones that can purchase and read books from the Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and eReader.com online stores. You can also read ePub content from every popular source, and there are plenty of apps for the iPod Touch that can slurp down any webpage you’re viewing in your desktop browser or any document on your desktop and convert them into ebooks. There are even apps for downloading and reading comic books. And support for Adobe’s Portable Document Format is baked right into the operating system.




However an iPod Touch is far more power-hungry than a conventional ebook reader. You can expect to get several hours of use between charges, as opposed to more than a week on a conventional reader and that display too small for reading text?

Christmas gift guide Sony Reader Pocket Edition

Sony's reader is supplied in a wide range of sizes, they all support the ePub file format (the most important format for both free and commercial ebooks) and Adobe Digital Editions DRM (the most platform-agnostic standard for selling copy-protected commercial content), and it’s easy to move files onto the device. The Pocket Edition is one of the standouts. It is slightly cheaper than the competition. More significantly, it’s a very convenient size. It’s as big as an ebook reader can possibly be and still fit in a shirt pocket; nearly all other readers are about the size of a hardcover.


Kindle to go lightweight

Prime View International, a Taiwanese company that is the biggest supplier of the screens used in e-readers - and which are currently based on glass - intends to introduce a plastic-based screen in the spring that it would make available to all its customers including Amazon




The lightweight plastic screen is expected to make the products less likely to break and pave the way for their large-scale introduction in schools and colleges.

Wall Street Journal deals with Sony Reader

Wall Street Journal announced an exclusive deal with Sony, Amazon’s top rival in the e-reader business.





Sony’s Daily Edition device will be the first to receive automatic wireless updates of The Wall Street Journal, New York Post, and the MarketWatch Web site.

The Journal available for $15 per month on the Kindle, and Amazon's Kindle does provide daily wireless updates to subscribers of WSJ and other newspapers each morning, and users do not have to manually download that content each morning as this post previously indicated. The ability to update the device with news and analysis after market close is what is being offered exclusively, as is the New York Post.

Esquire for Kindle?

Esquire and GQ have alreadt developed iPhone versions of their magazines and Wired and Sports Illustrated have made mockups of tablet versions of their print editions, is this what will revive magazine subscribtions?

Amazon Kindle exclusive rights on Stephen Covey

The New York Times reports Kindle maker Amazon will have exclusive rights to several of Covey's books, in a move that could set apart its online book store from other competitors'.




Covey is one of the most successful business authors of the last two decades, and several of his books (like "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People" and "Principle-Cantered Leadership") will be sold exclusively though the Amazon e-book store, and also on Kindle devices for a year

Thursday, 17 December 2009

Borders to work with KOBO

Borders Group announced a strategic investment and commercial partnership with Kobo, Inc., a global eReading service that is the newly named spin-off of Toronto-based Indigo Books & Music Inc.'s Shortcovers digital reading initiative. Through the partnership, Borders will launch a new eBook store integrated into Borders.com and powered by Kobo. In addition, Kobo will power a Borders-branded eBook store for multiple mobile devices.




Sales through these Borders-branded eBook stores will be booked by Borders. Kobo's mobile applications are device neutral, which will enable consumers to purchase eBooks from Borders on popular smartphones such as the iPhone, BlackBerry, Palm Pre and Android, as well as other devices. Borders and Kobo plan to launch these new services within the second quarter of 2010.

Kindle comparison to Nook

After months of anticipation Barnes and Noble's Nook has finally arrived. Though touted as the Kindle slayer it ends up being much more like its competition from Amazon. Both electronic book readers, the Kindle and the Nook are very similar in their looks. However, the Nook has a few features that the Kindle does not.

However, the Nook's extra features do not make up for a glaring lack of speed. From opening a book, to turning the pages, the Nook is much slower than the Kindle. When starting Amazon's Kindle 2, their current version, from pushing the power button to the point you can start reading is less than five seconds. In comparison, the Nook after pushing the power button made you wait almost 2 minutes before you could start reading. That huge difference is one that Barnes and Noble will need to address in future software updates for its Nook.

The Nook and the Kindle are very much alike once their up and running. They both have 6-inch black and white displays and both currently use AT&T's 3G Wireless Network for browsing and downloading books, magazines, and newspapers. E-readers will find that both the Nook and the Kindle currently have a $259 retail price tag.




When looking at the Nook and the Kindle side by side the most notable difference between them is that instead of tiny keys and a joystick at the bottom of the Kindle, the Nook uses a color touchscreen. It is this touchscreen that the reader uses to adjust the settings, navigate to their stored library or to go online to the Barnes and Noble bookstore. Many have found the Nooks touchscreen to be more useful than the Kindle's awkward keyboard. However, having a touchscreen gives the Nook a shorter battery life. The Kindle boasts an advertised 14 days between charges, the Nook when its Wi-Fi is turned off will stay up for 10 days.

more at http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/2490621/nook_versus_kindle_which_is_the_better.html

Kindle for Blackberry Mobile and Apple Macintosh


Amazon plans to release a free Kindle for BlackBerry mobile application in near future, according to the company's Kindle Web page. .




Amazon.com says new Kindle software for Macintosh computers is also en route. (PC users can already download an official Kindle program.)

Kindle for BlackBerry won't be the first electronic reader client for BlackBerry. The two most popular comparable applications for BlackBerry are eReader and Mobipocket. But Amazon's Kindle is far more widely used, and neither eReader nor Mobipocket let users read Kindle books, so users must purchase content from those applications' respective online stores.





.Apple's iPhone is currently the only smartphone with an official Kindle client, and RIM's BlackBerry will presumably be the second platform to get a Kindle app.

Original story - www.cio.com/article/511087

Monday, 7 December 2009

Panasonic DMS FS7 A great camera at a great price

Colourful designs with a playful, fashionable look. Cameras that are easy to carry, easy to use, and easy to enjoy. Just press the iA button, aim and shoot. The camera does all the rest, automatically adjusting to the shooting conditions and helping to correct blurring, focus, and brightness problems. iA Mode includes MEGA O.I.S. (Optical Image Stabilizer) to compensate for hand-shake, Intelligent ISO Control to detect subject movement, Face Detection AF/AE to focus on faces in the frame and remove unwanted red-eye, and Intelligent Scene Selector to select the optimal scene mode automatically for you.
The DMC-FS7 features a 33-132mm f/2.8 bright LEICA DC VARIO-ELMARIT lens. This bright, low-distortion lens results in a compact, easy-to-carry camera that delivers beautiful pictures. Equipped with a 4x optical zoom lens (35mm film camera equivalent: 33-132mm) that captures beautiful shots of people or landscapes with 10.1-megapixel full resolution.


With the long battery life of DMC-FS7, you no longer need to worry about your camera running dry during shooting. The DMC-FS7 can deliver 360 images per battery charge, easily fulfilling your needs for a full day of shooting.



The DMC-FS7 hosts a 2.7-inch 230,000 dot high resolution LCD. It features the Intelligent LCD function, which increases the backlight brightness in 11 steps according to the ambient light intensity. At the highest of these 11 steps, the LCD backlight becomes approx. 1.4 times brighter than normal. This makes both shooting and viewing photos easier and more convenient.