Future of ebook reader

If nothing else, this will be a very good ebook reader. The Pixel Qi display is readable under direct sunlight.

e-book reader, game on

I have Sony's PRS 505 for a while now and really enjoy reading with it. BUT I still want one with a larger display, color and ...

My mind was set on Kindle DX, unfortunately, it is not available outside USA and is black and white only. It seems that there will be more choices when DX become available here. I am happy to wait.

Slashgear reports that Qualcomm mirasol color video ebook readers to ship in 2010. Unfortunately, it seems it will be a 5.7-inch screen which I think is too small for me.

Pixel Qi is also on track to deliver laptops which are black/white day-light readable and full color with back lighting. At the moment, I am leaning towards a pixel qi enabled laptop with 10-inch screen as my reading device. But I would like to be able to boot to read within 1 sec or two. That would ultimately swing the final choice I am going to make.

Who Owns eBooks you have paid for? - more

In the original post, I thought Amazon only deleted the archived copies. It turned out that those copies on customers' Kindles were also deleted remotely. That is a complete new can of worms!

Let's suppose I have bought a copy of 1984 on my Kindle and have backed it up on a local offline storage. Will the copy, I later put back on Kindle, automatically disappear as well?

I was thinking of selling my current Sony eBook reader and buy a new Kindle DX. Now I am having second thoughts.

I hoped I would have saved some trees by going digital. But I am more afraid of Big Brother than Global warming. I better keep the dead trees!

Textbook, Learning Opportunities & Kindle

One of my complain of the eBook reader is its display size. They are mostly 6" display, fitting a typical letter size or A4 size document to such a screen means displaying the document in 30% - which is very demanding on the eyes.

Other larger format eBook readers are prohibitively expensive. Amazon's Kindle DX is like a fresh air in this dull market. Is there any cause of excitement for learning?

Granted Amazon has cornered the book's market and have agreements in place with the main textbook publishers, availability of textbook on Kindle (and Kindle DX) is just a matter of time. But we all know that learning is NOT just the availability of textbooks - and the role of owning information is giving way to the skill to manage and use the information. Charging 15 cents per mega byte for wireless downloading of personal information to the Kindle is a bit deep to most students. Of course, students can choose to use the free service and load the content to their Kindle via a networked computer. But that's only a very small fraction of the kind of interactivity eLearning professionals would like.

eBook reader's adjacent competitor is tablets. Scheduled for 2010 OLPC version 2, noting that it will feature a dual-screen in color and readable in daylight, will prove to be a serious competitor to Kindle DX in both price and features.

If Kindle DX has come out before I bought my Sony eBook reader, I would have bought Kindle DX - for its size mainly. For now, I will wait for OLPC OX-2!

More on reading on an ebook reader

Some pdf come formatted in two columns. As the device's screen is small, I read it in landscape mode and need to go up and down to continue reading after the first column.

Recently, I found papercorp [more info here] which converts pdf into image sequence (and then save back as pdf). The software can detect multiple columns and save them in sequential images - I don't need to scroll up and down anymore.

a very nice tool!

eBook Reader

The above image from a TreeHugger showed red letters on a Kindle like reader which send me thinking in light of the potential competition from 2nd generation of OPLC.


Books are dead. Long live the books.