sony reader
Latest
Amazon's Kindle gets display transplant, Sony Reader acts as donor
Oh sure, we've seen a limited number of hacks surface for the hotly selling (but still unsightly) Amazon Kindle, but we've yet to see a hardware mod of this magnitude. We've always heard that desperate times call for desperate measures, and evidently said mantra is very true. After having the display in his Kindle smashed around 8 months ago (thanks, kid sister...), blakebevin set out to perform an unprecedented surgery. With an unwanted Sony Reader LCD in hand and a badly broken Kindle on the operating table, he attempted to give the latter unit new life with a few pixels from a cross-town rival. We'll warn you -- this one's not for the rookies in attendance, and even Mr. Bevin (it is Mr. Bevin, right?) had some "nagging button issues" once the thing was sewn back up. Give the read link a look if you ever find yourself in this admittedly peculiar situation.
Sony Reader goes open, will be able to work with other booksellers
While Sony's Reader has never received the enormous press or enjoyed the supposed whirlwind sales of Amazon's Kindle e-book, and is certainly lacking in, erm, EV-DOness, the Reader is about to get one trick the Kindle doesn't have yet: openness. Sony will be shooting out an update on Thursday to allow the Reader to use purchased books in the protected EPUB format from whoever is peddling them, instead of being tied to the Sony's e-book store, or just DRM-free text and PDF documents. That openness should help Sony beef up its selection -- which is lagging behind Amazon's -- and will hopefully mark a bit of a turning point in the e-book market to more standards and, more importantly, more books.
Amazon Kindle is a boon to e-book market, all $0.12 of it
The AP has a story out on the Amazon Kindle's impact on the teensy tiny e-book market. It hasn't been insubstantial, with some reporting double digit increases in e-book sales since the Kindle's release, and it hasn't hurt the competition either -- Sony numbers were apparently doubled or tripled from what they were before the Kindle arrived. Opinions are still torn as to whether the Kindle is really the right device for the job, but the press buzz around the device has certainly impacted the struggling e-book market, which is hovering around $33 million of the $35 billion publishing business. Some analysts are fairly certain e-books will remain a small niche, similar to audiobooks, but we think everybody's missing the big picture here: direct-to-brain downloads. Get on it, people.
Switched On: Rainforest fire (Part 2)
Each week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a column about technology, multimedia, and digital entertainment.
