Slashdot Mirror
Sony Takes Aim At Amazon's Kindle
MojoKid writes "Sony recently announced two new eBook readers and has set its sights on tapping into Amazon's Kindle market share. The Sony Reader Pocket Edition and the Reader Touch Edition will come out at the end of the month and will reportedly cost less or the
same as the older, more established Kindle. The Pocket Edition has a five-inch
display, comes in several colors ('including navy blue, rose and silver') and
fits, as one might expect, in a jacket pocket or a purse. It can store about 350
'standard eBooks' and can last about two weeks on a single charge, Sony claims.
The Touch Edition is a bit larger, with a six-inch display that, as you'd
expect, can be controlled via a touch interface."
That is, unless they have fixed their battery tech.
-- The morphemes of your disquisition are ascertainable, but they have eschewed an ambit of transpicuous exposition.
I was starting to get worried about their eBook commitment with outdated PRS-500/505 models. Don't need Whispernet and don't need a freaking dedicated keyboard on a eBook device. Just give me the text and native PDF support.
I'm a big fan of Amazon but Kindle just rubs me the wrong way. I'm considered to be their target demographic too - a left coast liberal yuppie who loves to read obscure novels by authors who committed suicide. But I never made my peace with the device.
I'm waiting for something with a reasonably decent screen, a decent flash drive, a few buttons. No subscription services, no wireless, no connectivity at all, no note taking or annotation features, no voice or recording... Just a thumbdrive hooked to a screen. That hardware should be WELL under $100. The extra features turn me off more than incentivize me.
Currently, I'm using my DS, and it's adequate. It can scroll text, html, and pdf. Good return on a $7 cartridge, since I already had a DS.
There was a good article in the New Yorker which brings one up to date with the genesis and current state of the kindle, and e-books in general. The author orders one and then proceeds to write an article about his experience. He compares it to paper books, discusses amazons choice of a non free and closed format, and generally reviews it quite well. Having an ad blocker and hating all that is spamazon has kept me out of the loop with these new e-book readers so it was a nice intro to the current scene.
The article is available online at the following link: Kindle and the Future of Reading
As a potential lottery winner, I totally support tax cuts for the wealthy
and via iTunes. Music, movies.... books are just another story telling medium. And figuring digital distribution IS the future, why not?
Too bad about their break with Google over some stupid voice apps... because Google may have been a great partner (ie Google Books) for Apple to catch up to Amazon.
And the upgrade cycle would/is tremendous like the iPods were. Black/white small screen -> B/W big screen -> color screen -> flexible (?) screen -> ???
Right after the 1st generation Kindle, with it's fugly looks, probably would have been the best time to get in. Even now, it wouldn't be bad... the kindle isn't a computer, doesn't have speed, etc. All things Apple could one up for those people that want a book reader and something to browse with and that's it.
Or at least, it is compared to the Kindle. Sony will read PDF files and EPUB files. (EPUB is an open standard; an EPUB file is really a zip file, containing a few XML documents that describe where everything is, and then either XHTML or DAISY/DTBook content).
It's VERY easy to copy content to the Sony readers (shows up like a USB hard drive, or copy content to an SD card and insert). There's no remote-kill like the Kindle.
If you're worried about finding DRM free content, check out Baen's Webscriptions or Fictionwise (look for the "multiformat" books; all DRM free).
Finally, if you REALLY don't want to go with Sony, there are lots of other good readers out there, some of which run Linux, and give you source for the software.
I don't need one to fit in my pocket, I need one that will fit in my briefcase or backpack, and is suitable for showing letter-sized pages at full scale without having to scroll all over the place, not seeing the whole page at any one time. Oh, and it absolutely *HAS* to be able to display user content (pdf's, in particular), not just content that some manufacturer or publisher thinks I might want to use it to read.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Unless they decided to dump the DRM, why would anyone on Slashdot want to buy these?
It looks like you don't follow Sony very well. Recently Sony has so many surprise moves towards open standards. I own a Walkman player and a Sony reader and I have nothing to complain. The Sony PRS-505 Reader I'm owning right now is nothing like the Kindle. It reads txt, *ePub* and PDF natively and even plays MP3 and AAC files, and it even has two memory slots -- one of which is SD-HC -- to put your e-books into the device, on-the-fly. There is a killer software that goes very well with that reader, that is Calibre. The program downloads XKCD, The Register and even Slashdot and puts all of them neatly to my reader every time I connect it to my computer. So just want to let you know that Sony products now, are much better than the popular choices such as the iPod and the Kindle.
You might be joking about the hardware, but ebook readers need more and cheaper content to become popular. People want books where they only pay for the content and delivery costs. Not publishers setting artificially high prices to not compete with paper based books. Not to mention that we need significantly more books in the catalog. Only a small percentage of the books available on Amazon have ebook peers.
"The software also is compatible with both PCs and Apple computers and enable the user to read PDF, Word, BBeB and other text files on the Reader."
- that right there.
When I first made my paperback book available in paperback format in early 2007 Amazon offered to convert it (it was in PDF format) to their kindle format for me, I said sure, and almost immediately found out that the formatting didn't work out. I pulled it from the kindle store and asked if I could do the conversion on my own. They said sure, but their format was html. Because of the charts and imagery and the way the text was done in the book there wasn't any easy way of converting the 162 page PDF into essentially a big ass website. I opted to ignore the kindle and since then haven't suffered for it in anyway.
Now my books are available in PDF format and I'm converting many of the stories into RTF versions for mobile devices. The fact that Sony now has a reader that can view html formated ebooks as well as RTF, Word and PDF files means I soon will have another outlet for my products without me having to do any type of special conversion on my end, which for me means I get another revenue stream, a potentially larger client base and no additional time cost. Win Win.
Ave Molech Setting
If you had used decent grammar, sure. Your points are quite insightful.
It's a Sony Clie SJ22.
Yes, I know it's like six years old.
Yes, I know it's only 320x320.
Don't care. It works better as an eBook reader than anything bigger could, because it's small enough I can take it anywhere.
Plus it plays Alchemy and Bejeweled and Collapse and Seven Seas, and holds all my names and addresses and magic numbers.
And I can use it as an IR remote to freak people out in bars by surreptitiously turning the TV off and on.
Do that on your Kindle.
By jaysonelliot on Aug 6, 2009 (on TFA) "Older, more established Kindle?" The Kindle was released in Nov. 2007 - the Sony Reader was released in September 2006, and was based on the nearly identical Sony Libre which had been on sale in Japan since early 2004. As of December, the Reader had sold 300,000 units in the US alone, while the Kindle was trailing behind at 240,000. I believe you meant to say "â¦the newer, less established Kindle."
Maybe it's time for you to leap into the past. Sony's readers have supported non-DRM media for quite a while. While the stuff in their store may contain DRM, there's nothing stopping you from loading all of the non-DRM files you can get your hands on. You can even import them into Sony's software for easy addition to your various book collections.
The fact that it is capable of accessing DRM-restricted media doesn't make the device inherently evil. There's nothing forcing you to make use of that function. You don't even need to load Sony's software if you're that bent by DRM of if you're worried that Sony will pull an Amazon and remove unauthorized files from your device. Just plug in a USB cable and the device mounts as a removable drive. Drag-n-drop your non-DRM media. Or use a memory stick or SD card. The reader never needs to be "exposed" to the internet or Sony's proprietary software.
Yes, Sony can tend to be very open, as long as the BMG part of Sony doesn't find out about the move.
You see, Sony suffers from a certain dissonance: part of their company manufactures electronics, people want to buy things that are open and don't impose undue restrictions on them, they prefer gadgets they can do what they want with, that allow them to take their media and use it however they like.
The other part of Sony is one of the largest recording companies, a member of the RIAA.
The other half of Sony doesn't want you to be able to do anything with your media at all, except play it once, and then pay them every time you want a copy on a new device of yours. DRM is a must and non-negotiable as far as people with that type of thinking are concerned.
There would be a lot of benefit to consumers, and probably to Sony, if the two parts of Sony would just split and become separate companies...
In the mean time, it's anyone's guess what they'll do as far as DRM for eBooks; politically speaking, I don't see how Sony Music Entertainment could ever be happy with Sony encouraging DRM-free content, even if it's not music...
http://www.tuaw.com/2009/08/05/app-store-rejections-tied-to-third-party-rights-infringements/
Apple recently invited a great deal of criticism after it rejected Google's Google Voice application from App Store. At the same time, it pulled third party GV apps leaving their developers without recourse and forced to swallow refund costs that exceeded their initial per-sale earnings. Today Engadget notes Daring Fireball's story of a simple dictionary being censored. Now it looks as if Apple may be targeting the e-book section of App Store.
I only cut part of the article, feel free to read the rest, but Apple is up to something or maybe not. Considering you can "Kindle" on it through Amazon I am trying to work out why their stance has changed even for people with unquestionable rights to the material they publish
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
What are they smoking? Paperbacks cost less than that, and I'd expect something with zero production cost to be an order of magnitude cheaper.
This is just begging for piracy.
For those of you that already have the Kindle, the Calibre application works extremely nice with it. While it is ugly as sin, it is a very nice book manager and it works with both of our K2s just fine. I see it as a rudimentary iTunes for ebooks.
Pedro
----
The Insomniac Coder
amd it recently had 500,000 epub books added to it's library from Google.
All of which are available for the grand total of nothing.
that's right, free.
there was even a /. article on it.
but why let facts get in the way of the slashtard mentality.
I'll consider getting another eBook device when they make it possible to lend an eBook the way I can lend a physical book.
I want to be able to lend Kindle books... commercial, protected, bestseller-type books... to a person with a Sony reader. I want to be able to replace my Sony reader three years down the road with whatever eBook reading device appeals to me and move all my books to the new device.
And I want to be able to make the transfers just as I can today with a physical book.
I have $300 worth of ebooks I purchased for my Rocket eBook. When I bought them I was assured that if I ever needed to replace the device, I could just give them the new serial number and re-download the books re-coded for the new device. Well, I my eBook device finally bit the dust. I now have $300 worth of eBooks that can be read only on a device that no longer exists, unless I buy a replacement device that doesn't exist, contact a customer service department that no longer exists, and re-download them from a server that no longer exists, operated by a company that no longer exists.
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
The Kindle runs on Linux. Just because a device runs on Linux doesn't mean it's DRM free.
Best Slashdot Co
initdeep wrote:
I agree that PDFs are terrific on the Sony Reader as long as they are sized for the screen. When it comes for formatting my e-books, I prefer to take care of it myself (setting page size and margins, and having it set the page breaks via styles) rather than making the e-book reader do the work.
When it comes to the new e-book readers, one feature I hope Sony (and other e-book reader makers if they haven't already added the feature) adds to their readers is the ability for the user to choose a typeface when displaying RTF files and plain text files. I prefer to read my e-books in a serif typeface, and often the reader displays them in a sans serif typeface regardless of the actual font in the original document. I searched online for help and wasn't able to find any.
This is the main reason that I choose to format my e-books as PDFs. With RTF and plain text files I couldn't control the typeface the text would be shown in. With RTF files, sometimes they would display in the typeface that I chose, and at other times they would display in a different typeface.
When I was using my Palm T/X as an ebook reader, one of the features I liked about the ereader program was I could choose the specific font that I wanted my ebooks to displayed in. I had the option of several different fonts that I could use.
How effective would a solar cell be on an ebook reader like this? A little larger version of the kind found on cheap/free calculators since 1985. I know calc batteries last for like a year vs an eBook reader being 2 weeks, so the power is higher. I'd think, however, in the last 25 years solar has become a little more efficient. Just a thought.
Sony's readers support multiple non-DRM formats. PDFs are included in that.
The purpose of language is communication, If the idea is clear the grammar ain't important
2- Or by a company that has UI know-how, enough money and savvy to build a triple-A network and a willingness to lose money to gain a foothold on the market. (IE: Microsoft)
I'd find the white text on a blue background very off-putting.
Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.
I'll consider getting another eBook device when they make it possible to lend an eBook the way I can lend a physical book.
This was actually what won me over: Amazon's DRMs are strippable (search for "mobidedrm"; of course, it's "illegal", but who's going to prosecute me for keeping personal backups?), and once DRMs are gone, it's just one of the common Mobipocket book format. There are softwares that'll do conversion, e.g. from that book format to HTML.
I guess this may not be good enough for the, er, legally scrupulous, but well, that's the best you can get until we get DMCA repealed—I don't think any publisher will agree to publish its golden eggs in a format that doesn't have DRM, at least not without the kind of pushback we have seen with music.
Seriously? Insightful??
Read the specs - I've owned both the 505 and the 700. Both have both internal memory, memory sticks, and plain SD cards. It takes open format books and really does last the 2 weeks it says.
Sure, Sony aren't always knights in shining armour - but their ebook readers are absolutely fantastic, they let me carry around a whole library, in non-DRM format, to read by the pool, on the tube.
This is a GOOD product
Outside of political science textbooks, the term is so broad of meaning as to be useless, and your right-wing rant on liberal meaning "love government programs and regulation ("tax and spend" and "big government")" proves it. Liberal, simply put, is the opposite of conservative. A person with liberal views is more likely to embrace a change. A conservative on the other hand, by definition, is someone who prefers things to stay as they are, or even pines for a "simpler" time in the past.
In common usage the term liberal has a wide degree of latitude in its definition depending who is using it and where. It usually denotes someone who is a hippie or is in favor of social justice programs and is in favor of taxing the rich and big business.
cat sig >