ebook

Apple tablet: l’anti Kindle a colori

di

Via Techcrunch

While there’s a lot of talk about Apple’s rumored tablet device as it relates to new initiatives from the music industry, the device is undoubtedly a lot larger in scope. The music-angle talk is mostly thanks to the Financial Times all-over-the-place first report yesterday. But a second story also released yesterday with much of the same information, clears things up a bit, and adds a few interesting new nuggets of information.

Here’s the best excerpt: “It would be a colour, flat-panel TV to the old-fashioned, black and white TV of the Kindle,” one publishing executive said. Uh oh, Amazon.

Leggi tutto

Ironia della sorte: la strage digitale dei libri di Orwell su Kindle

di

Via David Pogue

1984This morning, hundreds of Amazon Kindle owners awoke to discover that books by a certain famous author had mysteriously disappeared from their e-book readers. These were books that they had bought and paid for—thought they owned.

A screen shot from Amazon.com The MobileReference edition of the novel, “Nineteen Eighty-four,” by George Orwell that was deleted from Kindle e-book readers by Amazon.com.

But no, apparently the publisher changed its mind about offering an electronic edition, and apparently Amazon, whose business lives and dies by publisher happiness, caved. It electronically deleted all books by this author from people’s Kindles and credited their accounts for the price.

Leggi tutto

I Netbook useranno schermi multifunzione anche e-ink per ebook

di

Via PC World

pixel qi laptopNetbook makers will soon play a larger role in the e-reader market if start-up Pixel Qi has anything to say about it.

The company, founded by former One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) CTO Mary Lou Jepsen, will show off engineering samples of its first screen product at Computex Taipei 2009 next week, and IDG News Service was able to catch a first look on Friday.

The first Pixel Qi product, called 3qi, is a 10.1-inch netbook screen designed to work in three modes: a black-and-white e-ink mode for reading text documents and e-books, and two color modes, designed for use indoors or in bright sunlight, that are more suitable for Web surfing and video playback.

E-ink mode extends battery life by shutting off the backlight, and is intended for reading e-books, documents, Web sites or blogs and other text-based material.

Leggi tutto

Senza farsi mancare nulla: il blog su Kindle

di

Incuriositi della iniziativa di Amazon di portare a pagamento la lettura dei blog su Kindle e del grande progetto di self-publishing della Digital Text Platform di Amazon, il bloggante ha smanettato per un po’ per riuscire a portare questo blog , attraverso la piattaforma Kindlepubblishing , direttamente in vendita sul lettore di ebook di Jeff … Leggi tutto

Della dignità totalmente acquisita del giornalismo digitale

di

Mario Calabresi racconta il suo pensiero sui giornali e sul giornalismo in rete. (da ascoltare da 2 ‘ e 30″ a seguire) Per troppo tempo si è pensato che le tecnologie stravolgessero il giornalismo, si metteva in contrappossizione prima internet poi tutte le possibili declinazioni con il modello del giornale, con il giornalismo del giornale. … Leggi tutto

L’era dei lettori di ebook extralarge e il futuro dei giornali tradizionali

di

Maggio parte con notizie relative al lancio di nuovi lettori di ebook extralarge.
Amazon presenterà il suo mercoledì 6 a New York

The last time Amazon held a press conference in New York City was in February, when it introduced the Kindle 2.0. Now the company has scheduled another one for Wednesday morning at Pace University in lower Manhattan.

Expect a new large-format device that’s optimized for reading newspapers and magazines.

Here’s the full text of the invitation that just showed up in my inbox: “We’d like to invite you to an Amazon.com press conference scheduled for Wednesday, May 6 at 10:30 am ET. The press conference is scheduled to take place at the Michael Schimmel Center for the Arts at Pace University, located at 3 Spruce Street, New York City. Doors will open for registration at 9:30 am ET.”

Engadget al solito ha già informazioni e immagini fresche

Leggi tutto

I segreti del super scanner per libri di Google

di

Via NPR

Patent Office Image of Google's Infrared Camera TechnologyThe other day my colleague Kee Malesky turned me on to an incredibly interesting article from the New Scientist website about the granting of patent 7508978. What’s so important about Patent 7508978 you ask? It’s the patent that explains how Google’s proprietary book scanning technology works.

Before Google came on the scene, book scanning was a tedious process that sometimes resulted in the death of a book. The software used to scan books, called Optical Character Recognition software or OCR for short, required each page of the book to be flat. Now anyone who’s ever opened a book knows it’s next to impossible for a book to lie flat without some sort of device. One solution to the problem was to use glass plates that individually flattened each page, but this method wasn’t very efficient. The other solution was to chop off the book’s binding, but that method destroyed the book. How was one to go about scanning a book quickly and efficiently without destroying it? It was a problem that vexed book scanners for years until Google came up with this solution

Leggi tutto