After the 1st video made the rounds today on the Notion Ink Adam, the Eden interface, a 2nd video was released to the Notion Ink Blog, which we’ve embedded below. Today’s blog posts discusses that though they had hoped to keep it under wrap, it was something they had to release early.
Rohan has been managing 60 developers doing long hours to get the software where it needs to be. Though it might not appear dead to perfection in the demo, it’s definitely great and we know incremental updates will smooth things out. A unique software design such as this isn’t going to appeal to everyone. People have their habits and expectations, BUT many of us are excited about the change of pace and the multi-panel view is something new and may end up being more productive. Time and comparison testing will tell. I’m happy it went this direction.
We’ve also been informed that we can expect a new video every day until CES. That’s on January 6-9. So almost 20 videos before then! If that doesn’t satisfy people like me who have been begging for a view of the real deal, nothing else will. We’ve now seen the on-screen keyboard in this new video and the view of the tablet in Reflexive (no backlight) mode in the Pixel Qi screen. This is essentially the epaper view, though remember that this screen is always a much better refresh rate, it just has the advantage of a sharp epaper mode. That’s the magic of the Pixel Qi screen that people have been so interested in it for. Because it spans the tablet / ereader technology.
What’s left? Well we still want to see some pretty photo browsing, maybe some video chatting, and playing a video. I suggested to Rohan in the blog to grab some demo videos from the Blender Sintel, Big Buck Bunny, or Elephant’s Dream project as they are free to use videos for just this occasion. No reason to risk copyright infringement by playing something from Hollywood. I’d like to see a few documents being opened like Word, Excel, ODF, slideshows, and some flash, maybe an Adobe Air app such as Tweetdeck!
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.
The Nook Color at Barne’s and Noble is definitely still in stock at the stores in case you’re looking to buy one for you or as a very generous holiday gift. It’s becoming pretty well known as a reader and tablet. The Nook Color is a reskinned Android device. Underneath the engine is Android, the hardware supports it, but what you get with the dedicated Barnes and Noble software is a little more limited. Does that matter? Not really. It’s a very capable device. It does more than you need it to out of the box.
What I really like
It’s a very clean device on the outside and inside. Navigation has a good feel for the most part. I’m mixed on the screen size personally. I like the mobility of 7″ screen device (which is the Nook) and I don’t think I’d want something heavier, but at the same time, I sort of want a little bigger picture as I’m staring at it. Part of it is getting used to it though. 7″ clearly works for a lot of people. The rubber backing and corner ring are a plus. The weight is very acceptable. Out of the box, I like that it has a nice browser and touch keyboard. It has folders for things you are storing. Somebody had tried to load a Mac .dmg file in the one I used, so I know it accepts downloads on the net and via USB cable. (Not sure what they were trying to achieve with a .dmg though.)
Searching for books is easy enough on the Nook store. Funny though, you know all the ebook stores boast the number of titles. 2 titles out of 3 that I searched for were not available. That was a bummer. I was looking for Thinking with Type, as it would have been a nice book to preview on the color screen.
A video file loaded in the device in the gallery played beautifully. It was a Nook commercial and it was stunning actually. I was confused by how well that played vs the motion on Youtube. You might first think it was just latency on the Wi-Fi, but I’m only partially agreeing with you there. So clearly there’s an embedded video player that works better than the on board Youtube player. But that was an optimized video so further testing is needed. I couldn’t even tell (because I was in the gallery) what file format that was.
The Nook color has a headphone jack and Pandora was one of the included apps. I also played a game of chess on it and lost horribly. Wow I am terrible these days.
I’ve focused on all these things, when the Nook Color is predominantly an ebook reader. Why? Because I truly think people will be using it for other things mostly. I think they will enjoy reading the books, but they will be more tempted to browse the web and just have fun. And I think that’s great. Because the things we own should support what we like to do.
Book reading was pleasant and it worked. Much of the utility functions while reading is accessed through a simple long press of the finger. I liked the slider to race across the book at the bottom to get to say the end of the book. As you slide it the page counter shows you where you are. I have to leave it there. See more below. As great as reading books are, it’s pretty much status quo for me these days.
Limitations & Minor Issues
The browsing experience isn’t say Android 2.2 so Flash is not installed. That doesn’t matter a whole lot because most pages look beautiful, but it does matter to me. The Android Market is not available, and the touch screen feedback might be suffering a bit, though that part is hard to tell because it’s possible the Nook I used had been on for weeks straight and just needs a reboot. I know that the Nook supports at least 2-finger touch, but browsing does not. There are zoom buttons to handle that. Once you’ve used the double-press to zoom to paragraph on webpages on Android phones, it’s hard to not have that anymore. Nook needs it.
The gallery with Photos was a small problem. It definitely displayed a gallery of photos, that was great. I wish I knew if this was related to the state of the Nook, needing a reboot, but I didn’t like browsing the gallery as much as my Nexus One Android phone. The first iPhones were also so smooth as compared to this Nook Color. If you have an iPhone, you might be a little bummed.
The photos didn’t appear to be large at all. 2-finger pinch didn’t work all that well on it.
Back to reading books. It was a little boring for me to be honest . I had a little trouble finding the text-size menu at first, but I finally got the type and margins the way I liked. I’d like to see an animated page flip. It’s stupid but I actually like having some sort of transition. Doesn’t have to be 3D though. If I was designing the page flip transition, I might actually experiment with it a little more to test what readers like. Till now, they’ve all been kind of artificial and repetitive but I think there’s room for testing and maybe even mixing up the animations, with some random motion. I’d even experiment with randomizing the paper shades. give it an earthy feel. One page being a little more sepia than the next. (I mean subtly here not distracting, but interesting.)
Bookmarking was easy, just press the top right corner and a little flag appears. Oddly, the bookmark persists for multiple pages. I understand if it’s bookmarking based on the real books page, BUT that doesn’t do me any good really. I’m starting to think that a highlight bookmark is really the best way to go with these kinds of devices. Speaking of highlighting, I was annoyed that you could only highlight a word. I wanted to be able to drag a highlight across a paragraph at least.
Let me sum up book reading. Works fine, BUT they haven’t introduced anything new or inventive and that’s too bad. I think they need to be designing the next Nook update and getting on that, so it can be an OTA upgrade. They are at an advantage over phones with Android because all the Nooks are exactly the same.
The original Nook, I ended up taking a crack at again too. I love the way the epaper screens looks and I like the idea of it, fast navigation on the mini screen, with easy-on-the-eyes reading, but the Nook Color has really overshadowed it’s older brother at this point.
What I didn’t cover
There is a lot of information at the Nook website on specs and what it can do. This is a review of my impressions, but at the store I only had so much to go on. I want to put this thing through a lot of tests. I didn’t get to test various video formats to test playback performance, as well as the gallery browsing with my own personal pictures. Importantly I didn’t get to try PDFs or text files on it.
What about buying it? Do I recommend?
I absolutely recommend buying Nook Color. Reviews are difficult because you want to tall about nuances in order to satisfy the little feelings of something you experienced. But at the same time, this is a very cool tablet / reader. Barnes and Noble have really done well in their creation or partnership to make this. I think it suits a lot of people and I think you can exploit it for a lot more than a reader. I stand by what I wrote earlier in that, it is a hit because of the fact that it’s not necessarily trying to be everything, but it does do a lot.
The price is a good reason to buy the Nook Color. At $250 USD, it sure it’s close to the cost of a Netbook, but it’s also a large touch screen. Device specs in terms of processor and RAM aren’t too far off the iPad And we now know that it’s possible to “root” the device, basically hacking it so stock Android can be loaded. This might improve the experience for some or just be a necessity for others. (Hacking a Nook will void the warranty and you can break stuff. Use caution and done do it if you’re not comfortable with the risks.) So both a casual reader AND a tech hacker can make use out of this device.
I think that the price fits. It’s a good gift, as it’s less than an iPad, but offers what you need as a book reader. It’s easier to carry than a Netbook, lighter and simpler to deal with. Battery life, I’m told is rated at 9 hours of use, but apparently it is really low consumption in sleep mode. A shopper told me that hers was in sleep for a week and turned back on was still at 92%.
For the future
I’m going to be generous and say that the Nook color is just fine on it’s own. But I’m also going to say, they better not stop. They need to continue to develop and offer an upgrade. Photo browsing needs improvement. Rotation and touchscreen can be better. I also think they can maybe add more to make owners continue to use it. They actually already are doing that. They have a Nook developer program to make Nook Extras. This is basically it’s own Android Market. It’s exciting and it means that you can extend the device. Just like the iPad is set hardware this makes developers will have an easier time than they would with 50 handsets to deal with.
Bundles – Time for Barnes and Noble to jump into bundling. I’ve said this before. Buying a book for 11.99 isn’t that great of a deal when you can get the real book for that price. But when you bundle, you maybe can offer 3 genre ebooks for the price of 1. Publishers own so many titles that bundling is a natural direction. They introduce new titles, they add a ton of value. They promote things that might otherwise be overlooked. And frankly they probably are what is needed to bridge the price gap for a lot of people. 3 ebooks for 10 makes more sense than just 1.
They need to create a page transition for book reading, add full paragraph highlight and experiment with adding new features to ebook reading, see what people are testing. I also think the add-ons for sharing inside a book are a good idea. Let me give you an example. The Google Nexus One is great for sharing across apps. In Seesmic reading Twitter, I can click, hold and share through a bit list of apps I’ve added on. When I”m in a book, I want to share a pargraph, it needs to highlight, share, tweet, and then pass the truncated quote with a short URL linkin to the book on the bookstore. It might be shared on Twitter, Email, Facebook, a blog, whatever app is loaded. The standard apps are important for sure.
And the nice thing is they already have a short URL to start with… How about Nook.com/b/shortlink. On the social networks, people can see the quote, it’s referenced back to the Nook store. And how about this. Pass the original nook owner an affiliate discount on their next books if people who linked back from that quote actually buy it.
“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.
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 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.”
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.
I haven’t been too friendly about Plastic Logic and their Que Reader. Now Wired reveals there will be more delays making it, giving the Que the embarrassing title of vaporware and in my opinion making even less relevant than ever. They struck me as pioneers of their device at first. They had the large screen and had begun working through media publishing channels and to make it compatible with the most formats. When they announced the price, it was evident that either their product is just too expensive to make after all the refinements or they were fully out of touch. It’s unfortunate but by branding and pricing their Que reader as a business tool, they are up against Apple and Apple’s iPad. Plastic Logic announced their product years in advance and have been surpassed by Apple and a lot of other copycat reader companies who actually shipped.
It’s a good lesson I wouldn’t have wanted to experience as a company first hand. But there are still things that Plastic Logic has going for it. The plastic substrate still sets it apart from the others. But plastic and less breakable doesn’t make it a better choice overall. The flexibility of the screen doesn’t mean it can withstand heat or cold. They also have a nice big screen, which sets it apart from most, but not all readers (KindleDX). Unfortunately a bigger screen doesn’t automatically mean it’s built in every way to best utilize business documents. It’s just one factor. The iPad and any other tablet with good battery life and a decent size are probably better suited. Why? Because people can edit, resize, scroll and markup a document faster on a tablet. A reader with slow refresh is going to be just clunky enough to be annoying when navigating through it when contrasted with a tablet or netbook.
All this wouldn’t matter if they weren’t trying to get $700-$900 out of the device. A Kindle DX is $489 and I can almost guarantee it will also lower in price by the time the Que comes out, or that same day. But the problem is the iPad and any decent tablet coming out in the next six months. Because the 9″ screen size, the ability to add apps, the instantaneous feedback, the editing ability all make a tablet better. And a tablet prices are cheaper for all that you get, even without 3G internet. A tablet will also give you more hard drive space and the operating systems are built to let you add programs that can open more documents. Need to read CAD or UML files? Tablets will do it. An e-reader? Not so much.
I’m not trying to simplify the challenges involved, but it is very simple that being both late expensive don’t help your current and future goals.
I have a few recommendations that can increase appeal. But the chances that Plastic Logic will feel compelled to do this is probably unlikely
Release the product at $450 and get it out ASAP
If it’s software and not hardware causing the final challenges, release and then get busy on firmware updates
Include a large book pack and 3 or 6 month magazine subscriptions for free.
Upgrade the storage to 10 GB to diverge from KindleDX
Make the reader water, temperature and shock resistant out of the box
Consider opening the device to make it a hacker friendly to attract another niche or two
Get the devices in the hands of a few celebrities or celebrity CEOs. (Try to where iPads haven’t dominated)
Sell / License the technology to earn money through other channels to bring prices down
Apple has the brand name and the interest captured already. Amazon has the attached book store and Kindle app proliferation on other platforms. The rest of the e-readers like the Nook, Alex, Kobo and others have a little foothold either with their own stores or simply compete on price. Sony has nice all-around affordable readers and spaces in many retail outlets covered. Plastic Logic has a sleek looking large reader that is overpriced and so far has people waiting entirely too long. A Wi-Fi iPad or a netbook from ASUS or Toshiba is a much better buy for corporate types. At least you can edit docs, skype chat, watch movies and store a lot more on a netbook. Given that iPhone and Blackberry have document viewers, the case is even less for an expensive business reader. E-Ink and similar technology compete on battery life and a better-for-your-eyes reading experience. But that’s pretty much it. They are all underpowered and do a lot less for a power user than a real computer or a smart phone.
Wired has a product review today on the M-Edge Guardian Case for the Amazon Kindle. It looks water tight and absolutely unnecessary. You see the reason for these kinds of hinged plastic cases for digital cameras is that people actually go underwater to snap pictures of family and poisonous jellyfish. Nobody that I know of would be reading a book on sharks or diving safety 3 inches or 30 feet under the sea or at the community pool. Protection from the occasional splash or sudden rainstorm is where a case is needed. The M-Guardian weighs a pound and basically disables the joystick controller on your Kindle. How does this feature or the price tag of $80.00 for this make sense? I’ll tell you where it makes sense. If you tend to set your ebook readers where you might accidentally sit or drop a grenade on them, a case like this would be nice insurance. I suppose reading in bed you might rollover on it or push it off the mattress too.
Weatherproof cases bring the question front and center, why isn’t the Kindle or any other e-reader designed to withstand a little water or a little heat or cold to begin with? Added longevity would seem like a much better upgrade for people than a few extra shades of gray on the their screen. Wouldn’t you love to know your Kindle is just as safe in your steamy hot car on vacation as your car’s factory stereo, or that you could forget the reader on your back deck and the sudden summer rainstorm you didn’t hear coming of won’t kill your chances to read your digital library?
By the way, Wired says that the M-Edge Guardian case is the first waterproof kindle case, but I don’t believe it’s the first and it’s certainly not the only one. The Trendy Digital WaterGuard waterproof Kindle case looks like a much smarter buy at $15 from Amazon and TrendyDigital’s online store.
Do yourself a favor, consider the less expensive and lighter 2.8 oz TrendyDigital WaterGuard case for your Kindle if you’re interested in protecting it from the elements. If the massive savings wasn’t enough to convince you, an added plus is even if you didn’t have your Kindle with you on your float trip weekend, this case is mostly a simple bag and you could protect other items with it such as your wallet, phone, small camera and other thin materials from liquid disaster.
Update: There is a nice compromise called KlearKase that has both the weather and shock protection for a middle-ground price of $40.00 and weight of 6 oz. KlearKase seems to be the right option for watergoers and rough and tumble sit down smashers.
The Kindle is less interesting than a tablet. But it has some very good points to it. Convenience is one, the connection right to the Amazon store is something some people like. It’s light and has a sharp reflective screen that can be read inside or outdoors. On the flipside, though it’s slow and it doesn’t do media or animation. The iPad, which is selling a lot more units per second than the Kindle these days is more useful to people because it gives them abilities to surf, game, and create. Thousands of apps add to it’s feature list. It appeals to young and old. It’s a device you can experiment with, you can add onto it. The 6″ Kindle is half the price of the iPad, but the big Kindle DX is the same price $500 as the lowest iPad with the same size screens. Someone ready to buy either one has to answer the question would they rather read in bright sunlight on something like a paper page, or get something with a lot more sizzle, that you can play with, watch video and produce content too?
The point I’ m making is that if people essentially don’t care about the e-paper screen or the sunlight issue, the iPad makes a lot more sense. You can buy the same books, you’ll get a better view of the photos in color. You can quickly get out of that book and switch tasks in an instant. You can consume AND create. Sure the iPad’s LCD will probably strain your eyes faster, but it might also fill a couple niches in your life. Tablets like the iPad can be the perfect living room device for sharing and playing. (Damnit no camera on this thing?)
So if you were Amazon and you want to continue to sell more Kindles, you need to raise its appeal. Seth Godin wrote today for his Kindle friends that they should get the Kindle priced down to $49.00 and increase the attractiveness of buying ebooks with book-of-the-month club purchases. He added that corporations should be able to buy them for hundreds of their employees and be able to push their own content such as technical manuals or maybe annual reports to everyone in the company. Godin’s ideas make a lot of sense. And if the prices were right, you can turn more people into Kindle users if you can make the ebooks more attractive too.
I have one solution for Amazon that might make a biggest difference though. Amazon really needs to take a very close look at Valve’s Steam store and copy the hell out of it. Steam is a website for downloading PC games (Macs now too). Games are like first cousins to ebooks, both are digital content of an unlimited supply. If you have a desire to play a new game, much like you might feel a desire to read a new book, you can go to Steam and see latest best sellers. But something really obvious on the Steam store are nice shiny buttons to take you to games under $10 and under $5. Something for everyone.
The next great thing Steam has is sales on games on one particular day a week or over a weekend. If you’re visiting the site frequently and paying attention, you can grab a $40 game for $20 for example. Lastly, you can buy packs of games under certain publishers for big discounts too. Valve, the creators of the Steampowered store sell the complete Valve pack. Close to 20 Valve games. Buy the pack, you save a $100. Actually you’re saving a lot more because many of the games are well below their original retail price already. The Valve pack at $99 is enough gameplay online and off to keep you busy for a while. It’s instantly downloadable content too. And you can download it to different locations.
This is the trifecta. This makes Steam a very attractive place to shop for games. Books are a little different yes, and it will take a lot of work with the publishers, but it’s the only forward looking move that you can make with ebooks right now. Amazon has the publisher partnerships, something that Valve had to work really hard to do. Amazon has the advantage of a lot more book titles than games. Publisher book packs could be in many different flavors of collections. For example Penguin Books, who just finally came to an agreement with Amazon on their best seller prices could sell best sellers as a discounted pack of ebooks, or packs under a certain topic, such as a technical area of expertise and make these collections accessible and affordable. Not only that, but publisher packs also help the reader identify the publisher. Readers might look forward to the next Penguin or Wiley book because that pack they bought last time had all the good stuff.
Think how powerful it would be if Amazon could just layout prices of new books at discounts where you really feel fortunate as a Kindle owner. Say 6 months after a hardback book is released, Amazon could have a 24 hour sale on the book pricing it $5.99 rather than $9.99. It’s still a new book and because it’s a one day only, and perhaps a never repeated sale, the lower price doesn’t devalue the normal price or the physical book price. Anyone who missed out, too bad, but it would be consoling to know another sale will come soon enough and they just need to check back often. Sales can be promoted through all kinds of social channels too. Ebook sales are easy. The supply is unlimited. If nobody buys, who cares! Everything that happens or doesn’t happen is a valuable and instant learning opportunity.
Right now on the web page for the Kindle store, they don’t have a bargain bin, though they do have some cheaper books. Finding ebooks at $7.99 and even $2.49 didn’t take long. But it’s not presented in a way that’s good for impulses like a retail store is. If you look at the best sellers category for example, they actually think crossing out the other price is a good way to make the Kindle price look better. Look at the price(s) for the top left book in the photo below. Oops! Funny thing is, I’ve hardly ever buy a book at list price. Do they even use the list price at Borders or Barnes and Noble? Seems like all new books there have a discounted sticker of at least 10%. Amazon fails to entice me with this overused cross-out original price tactic. I’ve never bought a book at full price at Amazon. If that’s what they sold them for, I doubt I would shop there as often.
Next we have a page with best sellers in the Kindle Store. 2 columns. Top 100 paid, and Top 100 Free. Once again we have a problem. The good news for consumers. About 10% of these top 100 were priced under $5. The bad news for Amazon, you have to pay attention to see that. Why don’t they just have the $5 or even the $2.50 category?
I love a top 100 free category, but if they have the free column, there’s no reason not to have top 100 under $5.
Multiple surveys I’ve seen have indicated that people think a reasonable price for an ebook is $5 and under. Why is this category not here and promoted on the front page of the Kindle store? If it was, anyone getting a Kindle will at least know, hey this is cool and there are a bunch of books for only a couple dollars. They know they’ll have plenty to read, they also know they might be rewarded for paying attention to discount days.
Publishers need to get it through their heads, Unlimited supply changes things. They need to help these e-reader stores become attractive through book pricing and big 50% and 75% off sales. And they need to start yesterday. If they’d rather wait, they might as well choose to not do ebooks and face the consequences of being paper only. Ebooks fit the model of selling more at a lesser price. Publisher have repeatedly said that the cost of printed books is negligible, but this is the biggest lie. Because it’s not just printing. It’s shipping, it’s employee and warehouse handling, inventory, real estate, insurance, etc. Ebooks eliminate much of this and allow for more affiliate marketing opportunities.
Looks like a Courier will come to life after all. Well not really. It’s not the Microsoft Courier project recently shelved, it’s actually much larger dual-screen tablet based on a custom Linux variant. The Kno is a lovely and very large tablet device created for reading text books and taking notes. It’s screens are bigger than all tablets and e-readers currently available or in the works. The size of the Kno screens, 14 inches! The creators say that the reason for this large form is so it replicates the students textbook experiences in size, but their aim is to revolutionize learning with it’s functionality. With current technology, it looks to be a heavy device, but that doesn’t mean it would put off students carrying book bags already anyway. The Kno was announced yesterday at the AllThingsDigital conference. CNET was there covering the event and posted Youtube videos talking with the Kno company founders Babur Habib and Osman Rashid which are embedded at the end of this article.
The Kno exists in a working prototype form at this point. It runs embedded Linux with a custom browser-based operating system centered around reading, notetaking and organizing clips of information much like the Microsoft Courier project appeared to specialize in. The Kno interface looks spacious, custom designed and visually organized though the prototype had a few input response issues. Kno is currently posting jobs for several development areas to refine the device and OS. They have partnered with major publishers and expect that rather than having a dedicated app store, apps written for the device will come from many places including the educational institutions, publishers and the students themselves.
According to the Kno website, to develop the device they created a student panel to understand how to build it for their needs. And they observed the way people study to create how the user interface behaves and organizes things. There are a few student reaction videos on the site as well, spoken in a way as if these students already use it, but the device isn’t available yet. Rashid said that they will have their pre-order system in place for this fall with the tablets ready by the holidays.
Things we like:
The large size serves a clear purpose. It has a clear target student market and a custom embedded OS, which means the processing requirements and power consumption could potentially be lower and the startup could be faster.
The blue alternating hinges are a nice fixture
The form is sleek and original
Touchscreen supporting a stylus gives it drawing and sketching potential.
Linux Kernel and a custom interface might break new ground for the future of tablets. Every little bit helps.
Supports Flash Player for video and animations – very useful considering the content on many online course sites include flash components and media.
