Cubicgarden.com
Sriram Peruvemba, vice president of marketing at Eink, gives us the latest news from Eink, they announced that they will ship between 25 million and 30 million Eink screens this year, just for the Eink e-readers like the Kindle 4 and Nook Touch. Yup you read right, 30 million of those devices to be sold this year.
Is it only me but does the device he’s playing with look exactly the same as the new touch screen Amazon Kindle? Can’t believe I didn’t spot it before really. Anyway its a interesting little interview, but still odd there not going for the bigger display areas?
So I’ve gotten into this lovely routine where I have Calibre automatically turns my subscriptions into ebooks for me and then I connect my Kindle to the USB to automatically sync the items. Then I sit in a nice coffee/tea shop reading my google reader unread subscriptions, readitlater, instapaper, etc. With the experimental webkit browser any links I want to check out, I can check them out using the cafe’s public wifi. The only issue is I really want some way of bookmarking with delicious or even readitlater the important stuff that I read.
I don’t know if you can add bookmarklets to the experimental webkit browser but that would be ideal.
My other alternative is some kind of note taking app on the kindle its self. I know you can add annotations to books but it seems getting them off isn’t as straight forward as it should be. Although I love just being able to read stuff on the kindle screen, I wouldn’t mind some blogging app. The keyboard is not bad and being able to draft up a blog entry would be great, specially when you google reader on the device its self. I’m also wondering if I can make use of Conduit again to do some transferring of notes, like I had planned for my Sony Ereader.
So in ideally I’d like to see a full blogging app, a browser with bookmarklets and Ideally a evernote client.
Come on say it with me, Evernote on a wireless kindle would be amazing and dare I say a killer app for the kindle3.
I’m going to sell my old Sony PRS-600 Ebook Reader for the Amazon Kindle 3. But why?
Well it kind of centres on a blog post I wrote a while ago when the iPad was unveiled to the world. In the blog post I touch on points which would make my perfect ereader. 2 of the main points are,
- Add Bluetooth for file transfer, dialup, networking, etc.
- Run an open operating system like a cleverly crafted Andriod on it
- Add accelerometers, proximity sensors and some haptic feedback
- Wireless 802.11b/g
Well although not all my requirements are met, the Kindle3 does have wireless and a operating system to support (as such) 3rd party apps.
Android would be great to have on there with a open marketplace so people can really develop for it. I don’t know if Android would work on a e-ink screen but you could imagine it wouldn’t take much to build a custom build just for E-ink screens. Bluetooth, Wifi and Accelerometers would open up a whole bunch of applications which the ipad has demonstrated. But the smaller screen would be much more mobile and friendly.
I assumed slightly wrongly that you would need android to have the ability to add apps, but actually Amazon have decided to go with there own OS and App platform. This might be a good idea because you don’t want apps made for a Lcd mixed up with the eink ones. Its also a good idea if developers are thinking about eink instead of building for Lcd and just converting down to eink. Battery life under ink is amazing, but I’d hate to see that going because some app took liberties with the eink technology. Kindle apps are certainly a new area with a fruitful future. I can think of some clever apps you could build with the eink screen.
I thought good and hard about swapping to the Kindle, specially with the 1984 uproar. But to be frank, I’ve never bought a ebook and won’t really be affected by this thing. I would have also perfected a open market place like Android but its the start, so who knows what may happen…
I also downloaded the kindle app on my android phone in preparation for my new Kindle (which has been ordered but I’m still waiting for stock). In the meantime I’m selling my lovely Sony PRS-600, so if anyone is interested drop me a message.
I no longer like to read on my LCD screen. Its just not the same.
Eink is lovely to read on and for me changing the widths of text is still a dream come true. Its really changing the way I read and I can’t help but pull it out when I got a spare moment or two. What I’ve also got setup is the regular morning syncing. Every morning when I wake up there is a selection of news from places like ars techinca, the guardian, etc on the device ready to be consumed. I then also have it setup so that if that book goes out of date by 7 days, it will be removed from the device automatically. Its all down to a great piece of software called Calibre.
I do kind of wish the Sony Ereader did have wifi or at least bluetooth so it could remotely do what Calibre does but to be fair its not a big deal leaving the ereader synced over night, just a bit pointless because the battery life is weeks at a time.
I’ve got Google Reader working with Calibre but the documents it creates are so big, navigating them on the Sony Ereader is painful. I either need to modify the script so it creates smaller chunks of my whole Google reader account or sort out the massive amount of stuff I don’t read on the account. Maybe a bit of both sounds right. Another reason for the wireless would be to tell Google that I’ve just read a article so I don’t have to read it again on my laptop, but with no actual API for that on Google Reader and no wireless on the Ereader, I guess I’m double out of luck.
Lastly a bit of colour and speed would be great. I’m not suggest the same as LCD or even OLED, in actual fact eink is great but I like the idea of colour eink even better.
After buying the Sony PRS 600, it made sense to sell the old one on Ebay. The new ereader is a better machine in everyway except contrast. As you can see in the photo above the one on the right (old one – PRS 505) is much better in its range of greyscale. The black is black and white very white. While the new one (PRS-600) isn’t so black and white. This means while reading the words are not as sharp. It would be picking up a nice modern hardback and comparing it to a used paperback. Both are perfectly readable but you can see the difference when put together. Obviously I’m not the only one to see this issue.
For me all the other features out way this issue, I’m still looking forward to writing the XSL to convert Tomboy Notes into Sony Notes and back. But if your interested in picking up my old one for cheap, head over to ebay soon.
