So the iPad is getting all the love and Kindle is being kicked to the curb.

But it doesn’t matter except to a small subset of users. These consumers are concerned with the newest, fastest, shiniest thing they can get their hands on within their budget . . . or beyond, just to have it.

At CES this year I visited about 20 booths that have created e-readers. And of those, nearly half of them had the capability of reading nearly any file type that is currently available. Some of them used proprietary formats, but we all know what will happen to them since they don’t have partnerships with huge publishers.

I’m going to be frank about this.

There is now and will be in the future an e-reader for every consumer that wants one or needs one. They will come in all shapes and sizes. They will also come in with different retail price points.

Yes, some will be lacking the features of the most expensive top end gadgets, but some of the less expensive ones will figure out the tech and produce comparable versions for some of the lowest prices.

So before you kick the Kindle to the curb and declare it dead or say that Sony can’t compete, do us all a favor and be realistic about the hundreds of millions of consumers that going to buy or need an e-reader. It would also be great if you could keep your top X reasons one will kill the other to yourself.

BTW, check the links below for some examples of gems that are better off not being written.

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E-Readers for Every Consumer is a post from: TechStartups.com

9to5Mac claims that they’ve spoken with a few print publishers about the upcoming Apple Tablet iPad reinforcing what most of us already know but with a few extra details. These conversations yielded specs like a 10-inch glass screen slightly smaller than a Kindle DX but similar in weight.

They also indicated that Apple is describing the device to publishers by comparing the shift from Kindle to the Tablet as going from black and white TV to color TV.

Finally, they’ve said that there won’t be much content until “mid-2010 at the very earliest.”

Not so fast, cowboy. What else to do know about this device? Well, how about the fact that it runs a version of the iPhone OS and that most iPhone apps will run on it without many, if any, changes.

If that’s true, then the iPad will have tons of ebooks…thanks to the Kindle app for iPhone. With the application loaded on your Apple gadget, you’ll have access to any and all content sold sold through the Kindle store – and any unprotected (.mobi) files, as well. That means indie ebooks and other content.

Repeat after me, one more time: Amazon doesn’t care if it’s in the hardware business. It wants to sell electronic books, whether they produce the device or not.

[9to5Mac]

Disclosure of Material Connection: http://dsclzr.us/0

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Wait Until Mid-Year for eBooks on The Apple Tablet? Think Different. is a post from: TechStartups.com

Instapaper has been around for awhile now, allowing you to read longer form web content in a context or device that’s usually better suited for the task. Instapaper has a an iPhone app that will let you read it there or, if you’re like me, you can load it onto your Kindle.

Both experiences have been pleasant but to date, I’ve found the iPhone experience much better. That’s really for two reasons. First, I just got a new K2 and the user experience – including the software – is much better than the K1. Second, Instapaper just updated the way it formats it’s .mobi file (the unprotected cousin of Amazon’s DRM protected .azw file).

As you can see if the screenshots iPhone camera snaps below, the new “Section View” provides you with a table of contents for the current Instapaper file. Articles read, well, more like articles from a periodical than as simple text files. Much of the formatting is maintained including (as much as they can be) the images. It appears as though Instapaper reformats the images to a supported grayscale format.

Now that I have my K2 which can charge over USB, I’ll definitely be using Instapaper even more than I did on the iPhone. In fact, why bother with, say, a New York Times subscription when you can select the articles you want to read in Instapaper and download them to your Kindle via USB? (Sssshh. Don’t tell the Times…)

Disclosure of Material Connection: http://dsclzr.us/0

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Instapaper For Kindle Gets An Update For Better Readability is a post from: TechStartups.com

Need more evidence that Amazon is gearing up for the Apple Tablet onslaught? Here you go.

Today, Amazon announced major changes to the royalty program for what it calls its “Kindle Digital Text Platform.” Starting June 30, 2010, publishers and authors will receive 70% of the revenue for each eBook sold.

That’s a big change from the current structure. In fact, that’s probably the inverse of the current structure, if not close to it.

But, like anything else, there are gotchas. You’ve got to play by Amazon’s rules and meet some specific criteria. First, delivery costs will now be paid by the publisher:

Delivery costs will be based on file size and pricing will be $0.15/MB. At today’s median DTP file size of 368KB, delivery costs would be less than $0.06 per unit sold. This new program can thus enable authors and publishers to make more money on every sale. For example, on an $8.99 book an author would make $3.15 with the standard option, and $6.25 with the new 70 percent option.

That’s actually less sticky than the rest of Amazon’s criteria:

• The list price of an ebook must be between $2.99 and $9.99
• This list price must be at least 20 percent below the lowest physical list price for the physical book
• The title is made available for sale in all geographies for which the author or publisher has rights
• The title must allow features such as text-to-speech, among other features, the list of which will grow over time.
• Books must be offered at or below price parity with competition, including physical book prices. (How you determine “parity” on a unique work is another discussion altogether.)

The program will NOT be offered for books that are in the public domain (published before 1923) so all of you folks peddling your digital copies of “Think and Grow Rich” or “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea” are out of luck.

This announcement is big for many reasons:

• It further cements the unofficially-official $9.99 price point for eBooks that has Big Publishings knickers in a bunch. Hopefully they will be satisfied with the new revenue share.
• It dictates the cost of the books physical equivalent. So now, not only is Amazon dictating the floor and ceiling for ebooks, but also for the dead tree editions.
• It ensures that the publisher will secure audio rights for the ebook, no longer allowing publishers to declare that the creepy electronic voice that reads to you a completely new work. Of course, you’ll still want to get the audio book if you intend to listen to the entire book.

I can’t wait to see how Big Publishing reacts.

[BusinessWire]

Disclosure of Material Connection: http://dsclzr.us/0

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Amazon Announces 70 Percent Royalty Program for Kindle Books, Many Strings Attached is a post from: TechStartups.com

According to an exclusive interview with The Business Insider, Scribd CEO and founder Trip Adler indicates that getting Scribd content onto the Kindle will be a “seamless experience” next year.

For those of you who don’t know Scribd, the startup company used to describe itself as the “YouTube of Print” allowing people to upload documents and make them viewable on the web with all of their original formatting intact.

Since it’s launch though, it’s gone from a repository for all types of user-created documents to a seller of ebooks, both from independent authors and major publishers including Simon and Schuster and more recently, John Wiley & Sons, creators of the Dummies series of books.

Currently, getting Scribd PDF content onto a Kindle requires that a customer email the document to their private Kindle address for conversion and delivery to the Kindle. It’s not always reliable, but it works.

The point being, you can do it right now – it’s just not convenient.

So then, this deal is about migrating content to a portable device? That hardly seems newsworthy.

DotMobi to Email

Simple content migration doesn’t even require a deal between Scribd and Amazon. When Amazon bought MobiPocket, they clearly acquired them for their proprietary ebook format (.mobi) and it’s ability to be protected with DRM. However, the MobiPocket Creator software is still available for free and there are even other software applications that can create Mobi files.

Emailing a Mobi file to your Amazon address costs you 15 cents for the privilege. All it would cost Scribd is some backend development work to convert Word or PDF files into Mobi format and their content migration is “seamless.”

No, the deal is probably bigger than that – most likely, Scribd will become a feeder source of indie books into the Amazon Kindle Store. What the revenue model looks like will be anyone’s guess.

[The Business Insider]

Disclosure of Material Connection: http://dsclzr.us/0

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Scribd To Sell Books For The Kindle Next Year? is a post from: TechStartups.com

This last week my wife’s best friend came to town for a visit. Walking into our new small abode, known as a Manhattan apartment, she was welcomed by us, our gadgets and four tight walls.

Not more than 2 minutes inside the door she said, I’ve got my Kindle. She laid it on the table as proud as any geek slinging their gadgetry about for cred.

I asked her if it was “The Kindle”, and she said, “Yes. Oprah made me a geek.” This Kindle, the one on our cheap Ikea table was bestowed to her, like every other audience member for that taping, by Oprah.

After talking with her for a while about the flight, dog, husband and the child she is going to have, I snuck in questions about her new found geekery.

What I was able to ascertain in a brief period of time is that having the Kindle and using has caused her think differently about her life and relationship to technology. She said that she often finds herself thinking about what books she will next put on her Kindle.

She said she finds herself more aware now than ever of the other gadgets in the spaces around her. During her 4 hour flight she was eyeballing the multitaskers with iPhones and laptops open at the same time. She said the iPhone seemed like a great idea for her next gadget. My wife and I were amazed.

I guess I shouldn’t find it so surprising since my wife is no technophile. However, if you tried to take her iPhone away you would regret that the thought even crossed your mind. With our guest now opening up about her device envy my wife jumped right in.

What I realized right the was that the digital culture that has been incubated for decades by dreamers is becoming a reality. These two women right in front of me exist outside the vacuum of nerdery that I participate in daily. My friends or colleagues are slightly responsible for this conversation and behavior.

The control is no longer in the hands of the engineers that produced the devices and groomed this culture. It is now in the wild and all people are now at the mercy of Oprah.

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Oprah Made Me A Geek is a post from: TechStartups.com

With that in mind, I’m not really inclined to write about many of them unless they have truly differentiating features. The Aluratek Libre eBook Reader PRo has two.

First is the price: $179 for a 5-inch eReader makes a nice stocking stuffer this holiday season. Plus, it supports all common formats including Adobe DRM (for both ePUB and PDF) ePUB, PDF, FB2, TXT, Mobi, PRC and RTF, plays MP3 audio and displays BMP, JPG, GIF and Animated GIF (‘cuz you never know when you want to watch a grayscale animated gif).

Second is how they arrived at that price. Instead of the typical pricey e-ink screen, this eReader uses a monochrome reflective light LCD display technology which the company claims offers the same readability and appearance of printed paper. Given that the display has no backlighting, the company also claims 24 hours of battery runtime.

That, my friends, is impressive – and innovative.

To sweeten the deal even further, the Libre comes in white or black with a 2 GB SD card pre-loaded with “100 of the most popular downloaded books of all time.” Er, we’ll have to wait and see what they might be.

It lacks any wireless capabilities, but if you’re looking for an entry-level eReader at an entry-level price, this could be for you.

I haven’t had my hands on the device, but this is one booth I will visit at CES this year to grope the gadgets.

[Source: BusinessWire]

Disclosure of Material Connection: http://dsclzr.us/0

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Aluratek Jumps in with $179 Libre eBook Reader PRO, Reflective LCD Display is a post from: TechStartups.com

It’s a netbook! No, it’s an eReader! Wait, it’s both!

The Entourage eDGe – billed as the world’s first “dualbook” – has been caught on video by our friends at netbooksnews.com, looking even more interesting now that we can see it in action. (Video after the jump)


The left side houses the eReader display, the right side houses a standard LCD display but both are touchscreen. You’ll be able to do things like write in the margins of the book you’re reading, highlight text and of course, do all the things you expect from a netbook, as well – email, web browsing, etc.

Sporting Marvell’s Armada chip, it will bring ‘HD-quality’ video and 3D graphics to the dual-screen wonder along with wifi and support for ‘EVDO and HSPA modems’ (bring your own?).

The video shows a non-working display unit, but also a working prototype. Couple that with the interactive demo that they currently have on the site and you can color me intrigued. IThe company has indicated a February 2010 release date but I hope to see it at CES in January.

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://dsclzr.us/0

Entourage eDGe – Part eReader, Part Netbook, All Gadgety Goodness is a post from: TechStartups.com

Most likely prompted by recent events, it’s Hearst Corporation’s time to go public with their plans.

Skiff, LLC, a division of Hearst Corporation, announced a platform for the publishing and distribution of digital content – specifically newspaper and magazine content.

Skiff is working with “major consumer electronics manufacturers” to integrate Skiff’s service, digital store and client software. One such company is Marvell, makers of the so-called “system-on-a-chip” for eReaders with hopes of easing the production of such devices. Devices like Barnes & Nobles’s nook eReader and Spring Design’s Alex both use the Marvel chip.

Add to that a deal with Sprint to provide the wireless connectivity for Skiff devices and it sounds like Skiff is closer to reality than one might think. The company has confirmed a launch in 2010, but gave no other indication as to when we might expect a little gadgety gem from the company and its partners.

We’ll definitely keep an eye on this one, along with eMagazine initiatives like startup MaggWire.

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cmp.ly/0

The Battle for Electronic Magazines Heats Up – Hearst to Launch Skiff Platform is a post from: TechStartups.com

Information marketers are a group of entrepreneurs that very often produce and sell eBooks on niche subjects that may be overlooked by the traditional publishing industry. These ebooks are usually produced as PDF’s and for the most part, they have to be read on computer screens, printed on desktop printers or sent off somewhere to be printed and bound in order to be more useful and portable.

While the Sony Reader and other eReaders may offer PDF support, they don’t have nearly the popularity and market penetration that the Amazon Kindle does, limiting the portability of self-published works.

With this recent announcement, portability for these works is almost guaranteed providing the document doesn’t have too many illustrations, photos or diagrams that could be difficult to reproduce on the Kindle screen. This portability allows people to treat this works more like, well, books making consumption – and purchase – much more likely.

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cmp.ly/0

InfoMarketers Looking Forward to Amazon Kindle PDF Support is a post from: TechStartups.com

I say mistake because that browser incited geeks and technophiles everywhere to start complaining about the page rendering, the speed and the fact that the iPhone browser was so much better. Many bloggers and even digital media industry insiders decried that the connectivity was poor and really meant it was “only” good for reading your ebooks.

My response to this was twofold. First, it’s an eBook Reader, people! That’s what it was designed to do – not make phone calls, browse the web or make julienne fries. Second, who wants to read eBooks or other long form content on an iPhone? The screen just isn’t optimized for that type of experience. (Nerd Disclosure: I’ve since read some significant portions of some books on my iPhone so that my wife could use my Kindle. It wasn’t terrible, but I still prefer my eReader.)

And the chatter continues: “The Apple iTablet (if it’s ever released) will kill the Kindle and all other eBook readers!” “Netbooks will kill the Kindle!” “The [insert gadget with a screen here] will do everything!”

Today, I saw this post on Gizmodo about the possibility of eBook Readers having gaming capabilities.

Why? Is there a significant subset of the gaming community that loves books or avid readers who love games?

Just because a device can do something, doesn’t necessarily mean it should.

I’m happpy with a certain amount of convergence when convergence make sense, but to integrate features and functions just because you can doesn’t always make market sense.

Damn you, iPhone.

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cmp.ly/0

How the iPhone Changed the Expectations of Gadget Consumers is a post from: TechStartups.com

Tablet PC’s are the topic of discussion for the today. First we mentioned the additional rumors/details on the possible Apple tablet coming as early as December.

Archos and Google are going to be releasing their new tablet PC this month and the feature list is very impressive. As I said with the news of the Apple tablet, more and more tablet PC’s with this type of size and form factor are really going to be putting a dent in the Amazon Kindle sales in my opinion.

Here’s the feature list for the Archos Android tablet as shared by the Boy Genius Report:

• HD video support (H.264, WMV, Mpeg-4 up to 720P)
• Archos AppsLib store with Archos 5-compatible Android applications
• Micro SD Slot (SDHC compatible)
• Wi-Fi (802.11 b/g/n)
• GPS with 3D Maps
• Bluetooth 2.0 (mobile phone tethering capable)
• FM transmitter and FM receiver (RDS)
• Built-in speaker, microphone and leg stand
• support for a wide variety of audio/video codecs and image formats
• additional functionality available via optional accessories (DVR-Station, HDMI Mini-Dock, GPS In-Car Holder, etc)
• Pre-installed Android applications include DroidIn, Ebuddy IM, Twidroid, QuickPedia, and more
• Flash 10 support expected with Android 2.0 in Q1 2010
• 22 hours of Music playback time and 7 hours of Video playback with standard Lithium polymer battery

That’s a full-blown computer and more from where I’m standing. Perhaps a little more than that with a FM transmitter and receiver. If you’re read any of my earlier posts and my opinions on not really caring about having a super-light and portable computer, I’d be willing to slide one of these puppies into my case or coat and be productive a little easier than pulling out the laptop every single time.

Whether or not this tablet or more to come really kill the Amazon Kindle will be what kind of controls and features that Amazon can lock down to their book specific features. I spoke with a Kindle owner and she stated she didn’t want her Kindle to be a computer, it was a digital paperback to her. Set to a specific function and does it well.

Android Tablet from Archos and Google is a post from: TechStartups.com

With the popularity of the iPhone and all the apps available for everything you can imagine, there’s been some logical discussion about the next big thing from Apple being a tablet PC.

The Examiner reported recently that an Apple table may be here as soon as December if some of the latest rumors start to be confirmed across the board. The source for the latest rumors comes from a company that’s been hired to produce 300,000 of the long-lasting batteries that are to be used in Apple tablet.

In addition to long lasting batteries the device is expected to have an almost 10" touch-screen display. I’m sure the functionality of the display will bring some of the same features and motion gesture functionality that’s seen in the iPhone.

With more possible details and features being announced, I’m wondering if an Apple tablet device could be the sound of the overweight vocalist beginning to warm her pipes for the Amazon Kindle. The screen size would be almost identical to the Amazon Kindle DX.

I’m sure the Apple tablet would have a full-featured wi-fi functionality and the ability to do a lot more computer processing with applications than the Amazon Kindle. The biggest difference is more than likely going to be what always comes with an Apple, the higher price tag.

Could A New Apple Tablet Be Here Soon is a post from: TechStartups.com

I’ve been jonesing for an Amazon Kindle for as long as they’ve been around. I still haven’t sacrificed in some other area of my budget yet to make the investment on the portable reading device though. With the Kindle 2 release I’m hankering even more.

Barnes & Noble Booksellers may be doing all they can to get the idea of me purchasing a Kindle. They’re offering an eBook reader of their own. They’re offering to make me turn the devices I already have in my pocket into an eBook reader. Although they will be coming out with a stand alone reader with the Plastic Logic eReader. Until then you can download free software to work on your PC, Mac or iPhone.

The question then remains, are people more interested in just reading books on whatever device they have, or, are they more interested in having a specific device that’s dedicated to serving as their mobile library?

I’m very interested in hearing your opinions on this topic. Do you have an Amazon Kindle  already? What do you think of the device? Is there something about the experience of reading an eBook on the Amazon Kindle  as opposed to on your iPhone or iPod touch or other mobile device?

Is Barnes & Noble Closing the Book on the Amazon Kindle is a post from: TechStartups.com