Notion Ink Adam Tablet Pre Order Finally Here!

Some of us have been dreaming about the Notion Ink tablet for over a year. It was one of the reasons I started this website actually. Why? Because the specs make it a powerhouse, the developers are original, innovative and tapped into a very important technology to build the Adam.

The NotionInk.com website has all the details of the Adam tablet, but I want to give a few here. It’s running Android operating system, and in the past 3 days we’ve learned that it will be the most recent Android, 2.3, dubbed by Google as Gingerbread. It’s a faster system  that will support features in newer phone and tablet hardware.  If you haven’t been following, mobile operating systems have been very dominant on current and upcoming tablets because their codebase is lighter than a full blown desktop OS, their touch interface and lower power consumption also make them the right choice for tablets.

From screenshots we’ve seen the Adam sporting a few custom applications designed for it, and part of the GUI skinned over Android to fit those applications. To highlight a couple, there will be an email app as well as a file browser.

The Nvidia Tegra processor in this tablet enables a high resolution video playback, 3D and low power consumption. Unlike many tablets out now and the near future, the Adam even has an HDMI output port for sharing your screen to a larger 1080 screen.

The onboard swiveling camera is one of the most fun and creative features of the Adam. Rather than having no camera like the iPad and compromising with either a front or back, or putting both, this camera is going to suit all the tasks, from doing video chat, recording a movie of yourself or capturing your environment. Along with the camera are also USB ports for extending the device with peripherals. It has a removable battery, SD card slots and will support Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS and 3G if you choose the options.

The biggest issue with tablets and ereaders are choosing the one that will be personally right for your habits. People really like the readability of the ereaders such as the Kindle or the Kobo. They sport e-ink screens that have a look of real paper. Tablets like the iPad or the Samsung Galaxy Tab are more capable computers. They can play back video have more responsiveness and can surf the web better.  They also read ebooks, but the battery consumption and the glowing video screen is off-putting if you’re more of a book reader than a couch surfer.

The great thing about the Notion Ink Adam is the screen because it pulls the worlds of tablets and ebook readers together.  The screen is made by Pixel Qi. It’s a very unique dual-mode technology.  With the backlight on, it’s an LCD with the refresh rate the speed you want. But turn the backlight off and you get a reflective mode that is nearly the experience of epaper.  For me, I’ve been really looking at what is worth the money. The iPad though beautiful was always too expensive and not an ebook reader. Since I stare at computer screens all day, it’s the Adam tablet that seems right for me. You can read it in brighter sunlight or with a lamp and the monochrome image is actually sharper in reflective mode.

Unfortunately, though the day has arrived there is just one problem.  Though there have been plenty of videos of the Adam in prototype form now one has seen it working as a polished system.  The mail app, the browser, the custom skinning all have been presented as screenshots. We don’t know the responsiveness of the touch screen or really how you can interact with it.  This makes buying one give you a twinge. Dropping $400 – $500 without seeing a video demo is a hard one to do. Without a video, you really have to trust. But we might see some videos popup on Youtube soon enough.

Many of us have appreciated the passion of Notion Ink. Rohan Shravan the inventor and developer has led us all the waythrough development on the Notion Ink Blog. Lately he’s been inserting some enticing mysteries to help keep us all in suspense. The preorder date was actually encoded many days ago in binary form on the website, right in front of us all along.  I’m not alone in being captured and fully believing in this device as the right kind of tablet. Good choices appear to have been made in every part of the design.  So the concern is really just the execution. Many of us feel we have a stake in the Adam succeeding, so if the software is shoddy or the hardware unresponsive, it would be a real let down.

At this writing, the actual preordering is still a few hours away at least. It is by invitation as far as we know. And the delivery date has not been confirmed.  More to come.  Take a look at the Notion Ink Website for the full tech specs.  There’s still a mystery feature we don’t’ know about. Many think it’s Near Field Communication (NFC) sensor which is a new capability of the upcoming Android OS.

My feeling is that this will be a very useful flexible and extensible tablet. I have a feeling that the software may need some tweaking in the short term as it gets into the hands of more of us. The community so far is very strong and there is going to be a dedicated developer section and app store called Genesis.  As long as that ball gets rolling, there should be plenty of reasons to be very excited about the Notion Ink Adam.  Let’s just hope we can place our order(s) swiftly and not get crammed at the end of a waiting list.

Nook Color will be popular because…

“Perception, baby.” That should be a line from a cucumber cool advertising executive in a movie who has just fully nailed his latest account. He then does a little wink to his assistant with the pistol gesture and without looking, steps off the sidewalk in front of a bus. Yeah I don’t know where I’m going with that. But the whole perception thing is fascinating. For instance this new Nook Color E-Reader that’s out November 19th. I’m looking at it thinking, it’s probably a decent tablet, not quite as powerful or extensible as others out there. But at the same time my perception is, it’s not trying to be a tablet, it’s an E-Reader that has some nice features added on. I’m absolutely forgiving whatever flaws it might have as a tablet, right from the start.

I’m set on calling the Nook Color a reader so I think of it that way.  I don’t compare it to other tablets because it’s not trying to be a tablet. I don’t feel the pressure to compare them. I see Nook Color as a reading device that delivers more.

Reality says ‘there’s nothing special about another 7″ LCD tablet.’ But perception says, ‘this is a fresh E-Reader and it’s kinda fashionable with that metal loop (my mind considers the feasibility of dangling it from my belt loop and looking posh).’ It looks like a smart item. Even better, Barnes and Noble reminds you that this reader gives you access to a million free ebooks and your favorite periodicals in full color.  At $249, I’m saying yeah that’s attractive. This is a Wi-Fi reader half the price of the iPad, with decent battery life (8 hours with wireless off) and if I’m a fan of reading books, I’m getting all of that plus I can see videos and add apps to it. It’s 8 GB and has a Micro SD slot to add another 32GB. Boom!

This one will be a hit with people. That’s my feeling. Though I’ve got my heart set on another tablet for myself, one that will have a more versatile screen than just LCD, Nook Color might be the one to give as a gift. Helping that idea is that it’s again not trying to be a complicated tablet. It’s the kind of reader you might want to give your mother. Because you can afford it and it has a bit of mystery what more it might do.  So perception will sell it to me and the reality is, it’s likely to serve me well enough.

14 day loan feature for ebooks are a joke

I remember when I was little I used to wonder what it would be like to have everything I ever wanted.  What would the world be like if I could have it all and so could my friends. Would it be boring? Or would we always have something interesting to do? After a lot of thought later in life, I’m certain that at least having access to everything is better than being left wanting.

In the digital content universe, we figured out a way that we could duplicate and share to our hearts content. Duplication is a requirement for our computers to work, during the transfer, memory and storage processes.  But THEN we began to suffer through a period in which people put locks and chains on information after they realized that now that we truly can have everything, that simply can’t be allowed to happen.

Even worse, for those of us who have enjoyed owning books all our lives, and being able to give them away, share them in our own right for as long as they’ve existed, the ebook industry movement, faced with a flexible product has gone and made it LESS flexible than the physical book.

With a lot of feigned fanfare, Amazon, the maker of Kindle has introduced a feature, previously only available through a competitor, the Nook. The Kindle software will now let you loan the ebooks you own to your friends, (as long as the publisher allows it).  Your friend can borrow the ebook from you for up to 14 days, one time only. After 14 days, the book vanishes somehow.

Only the conniving would spin this inherent and built-in weakness as some kind of benefit rather than the big negative embarrassment it actually is.  Sure on the one hand, we want to get those who made the book paid.  But on the other, why do we insist on pretending that these digital files are subject to the physical limitation of real property. Reality says digital files can be copied infinitely at no cost. Reality for ebooks is even better as their storage is so minimal in most cases.

If you agree with this direction and go through the system like the mindless consumer they hope you are, and you’ll buy the Amazon Kindle ebook, you’ll pay near the full price of the paper book despite getting nothing of its benefits. And you can’t REALLY share your book with people.  And you can’t really give it to somebody either.  Because if you could give it to somebody digitally, then they own it and could give it back to you. And that is where the current industry says “whoa whoa, that’s not the kind of behaviors we can really manage or support, so we’ll just not allow it.”

Because we can’t have pesky reality creeping into our ebook sales numbers can we?

The solution to this problem only works when you can in your mind, fully reorganize book publishing as you think you know it.  But even then it’s a messy mess.  Unfortunately, so is the current path we’re on. Readers  have to have the same rights with ebooks as we do with paper books. Anyone preventing this disrespects people and the reality of the world we live in. It disrespects rational thought and is greedy, malicious and unconcerned. Layers of this kind of ignorance that creates systems of digital product commerce are just weak legs holding up a flimsy table top. One that is unsustainable when faced with any kind of disruption. It’s especially sad being within the industry involved in the spreading of knowledge.

Plastic Logic Que Reader – dead

Plastic Logic announced today that their Que reader is dead. They, like us, and like many others knew that nobody is gonna spend over $800 on a Que reader for business, when iPads, netbooks and even the Kindle DX offer similar or much more capabilities for nearly half the price.

“We recognize the market has dramatically changed, and with the product delays we have experienced, it no longer make sense for us to move forward with our first generation electronic reading product,” said Plastic Logic CEO Richard Archuleta. “This was a hard decision, but is the best one for our company, our investors and our customers.”

Read the Full Press Release at Plastic Logic

They took too long to  figure this out or make the announcement.  And too bad for those attendees at D7 who were told they were getting the device for free.  Bummage.  Plastic Logic should probably just continue with the product as is and just drop the price. Nobody said it wasn’t going to work., just the price is wrong. My thoughts lead me to that’s exactly what they’re doing and the Que 2 is really just the Que 1 minimally altered to appease their accounting department standards.

Do Book Covers Matter? NYT Article

In a New York Times article today, they ask if book covers still matter in the age of the ebook?

I assumed they would be talking about attractive graphical content on online store views and whether or not attractive graphics still matter to sell books.  Of course they do.   In fact, book cover graphics matter even more, because you need to capture attention within these online stores often with just a thumbnail. Attractiveness in products always matters.

They brought up an interesting point, it’s more difficult or not possible to know what someone is reading in public. So if you are a curious people-watcher like most of us, you won’t have a visible book cover to read from if somebody is entranced in their ebook. They are staring at a screen and all you can see is the device.  Of course you can always just ask somebody “what are you reading?” or any of the hundred other icebreaking conversation starters and eventually find out what good book might be out there waiting for you.

But both with an ebook and a printed book, of course that person could certainly tell you to buzz off.  Just because somebody’s book cover is visible doesn’t mean they are looking for new like-minded friends or asking to be interrupted. The point was though that a person in public is no longer free advertising for books.

Here’s what I didn’t read in there. We have a fantastic replacement for this book covers in public problem. People have been giving away their “What I’m reading right now” status on their blogs, and on their “slice” of the social websites they belong. Sometimes they do this manually, sometimes automatic.  And here’s the big thing. The reader devices can transmit this information to share it.  If you open a new book, it might ask you, “Would you like your friends to know you are reading this?”

And if you say yes, it can publish it to twitter, Facebook or your blog ALONG with embedding the thumbnail and links to the store. If you’re smart, it will be your store affiliate link so if your friend or a stranger clicks and buys from there, you can get a cut.  If that same transaction happened because of an encounter on a bus bench, you’d never get anything.  Plus as these devices are more popular, there could easily be an app running that can transmit and receive (anonymously and by opt-in only) what people around you are reading.  You don’t even have to ask.  Problem solved… BIG problem solved.

Back to graphics now. In order to win a lot of sales in the ebook market, having author and publisher power will matter, but so will having great supplements, animations, videos, and a microsite. Anything that will pull a potential reader into the story just like and better than a cover graphic would. If it’s a Freakonomics or a Columbine kind of book, you can expect, at least for the interactive versions, to see animated graphs, emotional movie-style trailers and a lot of humor. These things like video trailers and commercials existed already for some books, but you’re going to see a lot more.  Many books will have an interactive team behind them, along with the editing and proofing and sales teams that publishers currently have.

My advice to authors, keep your eyes open for a technical agent e.g. somebody with a website / SEO / SEM background, because your books will need to surf the social channels and exploiting all of them the best way you can.