The Times reviewed the eBook device from a British company, Borders UK. The verdict is: It is thin, light-weighted, with an enormous battery life. It is sturdier than its rivals (Sony Reader and Amazon Kindle), although not so stylish. Technology-wise, it is also no competitor to the Kindle DX. But overall, this is still a good piece of work, and the price of £189 is £10 cheaper than the Sony Reader PRS505.
Posted in Digital reading.
By Wayne
– July 3, 2009
Bridgestone, a multinational rubber conglomerate founded in Japan, is ready to begin the E-paper business with detailed announcement coming this month or in August. According to the source, the company has been developing e-paper by using its proprietary material called “electron powder and granular material.” This new technology allows the screen to be rewritten in 0.8s on a A4 size dimension. This is 10 times faster than the previous e-paper developed by the company. The faster screen refresh speed is achieved by a new driving method, not by improving the e-paper materials.
Posted in Digital reading.
Tagged with Bridgestone, e-paper.
By Wayne
– July 2, 2009
So you think the Kindle DX is too pricey? If you don’t mind the smaller collection of its online book store, take a look at what Sony offers you:
Sony PRS700BC
The Sony PRS700BC is equipped with a 6 inch touchscreen display. It is not so large as the latest Kindle DX, but still it is able to deliver a comfortable viewing experience. The display, like on Kindle DX, also utilize the
E Ink technology. With the touchscreen, you can slide on the screen to turn the page, just like on a real book. It also features a virtual keyboard, so you can make some marks and annotations on the page. You can also easily search and highlight the text with the virtual keyboard.
The PRS700 support various formats, including PDF, Microsoft Word, BBeB, and other text formats. Unlike Kindle DX, PRS700 can zoom in and out the PDF documents. It is also possible to play audio files, such as MP3 and AAC. The internal storage capacity is 512MB, which can be extended by Memory Stick Duo™ media or SD memory cards.
Sony provides an online store where you can buy new releases, classics, and popular digital book titles. However, PRS700 does not support Wireless download as the opponent Kindle DX does. The book choice, of course, is also inferior to the large collection of the Amazon book store. Despite of this disadvantage, the Sony PRS700 still looks promising as a ebook reading device. The official price is set at $349.99, which is nearly $150 cheaper than the Kindle DX.
Posted in Digital reading.
Tagged with Sony.
By Wayne
– July 1, 2009
It has been confirmed by the founder of the Pirate Bay that the Bay will be sold to a Swedish cooperate (GGF) for $7.8m. The acquisition will be completed very soon. The new Pirate Bay will not host any ‘illegal’ contents. Instead, a new business model will be employed for the Bay that users need to pay for the content they download from the Bay. Piracy is no long an issue for the giant bit-torrent tracker, but how can you still call it the Pirate Bay?
Angers and complaints arose among the Pirate Bay users soon after the news has been officially announced yesterday. It is rather shocking as the whole trading has never been mentioned before, even after the trial of the Bay. Peter Sunde, one of the founders, acclaimed that the Pirate Bay would decentralize its operations to other trackers. People take this as the epic fail of the Pirate Bay, one of the world’s largest torrent trackers, and describe the day as the darkest day of the p2p scene. The acquisition is expected to finish smoothly. However, recently the suspicion of the illegal trading of the Pirate Bay becomes imminent.
Posted in Piracy.
Tagged with bittorrent.
By Wayne
– July 1, 2009
According to this report, the negotiation of the wireless connection price between Amazon and wireless carriers in Germany broke down, which suggests that people in Germany still have to wait for another few months until they can get hands on this hot ebook reading device. It has been said that the carriers asked for a very high connection fee for the Kindle wireless access.
Posted in Digital reading.
Tagged with Kindle.
By Wayne
– June 29, 2009
University cost could easily amount to $20,000 each year for tuition in the United States, and that is quite a lot for most of us. In Europe, for example, in the Great Britain, due to recent fee growth, it could cost more than £3,000 per year. In Germany, some states still hold a free tuition policy, but most universities now require an annual tuition fee of about €1,000. In Asia, the tuition fee is about 500,000 Yen (about US$5000) a year in Japan. In China, the annual tuition fee varies from 5,000 to 20,000 RMB (equivalent to US$800 to 3000). We know that the cost in university education shows a large discrepancy from one district to another. So we would like to know how much your university tuition fee cost you every year.
Posted in Academia.
Tagged with education.
By Wayne
– June 27, 2009
It was reported that two groups representing the interest of the blind sued Arizona State University to stop it from distributing electronic textbooks using the Kindle digital reading device. These two groups, the National Federation of the Blind and American Council of the Blind, said that blind student cannot use the device’s menus to select a book to read, purchase books from Amazon, or activate the text-to-speech feature although the text-to-speech technology seems well-oriented and promising for the blind students.
Posted in Digital reading.
Tagged with Kindle.
By Wayne
– June 26, 2009
R.I.P MJ
This is somehow off-topic, but I can’t help thinking of this. R.I.P, the pop icon.
Explore the Michael Jackson
discography if you have a
Spotify account.
Examiner also gives
a list of books about Michael Jackson.
Posted in Misc.
By Wayne
– June 26, 2009
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