06:00 AM by Alexander Turcic in Miscellaneous | Week in Review

Have something interesting to say about e-books or mobile computing? Join our forums and share your view on topics like the ones discussed at MobileRead this past week...

E-Book General - News

• USA & Canada: Free ebook each month from Tor.com

Miscellaneous - Announcements

• Network Maintenance July 20th, 4am ET

02:32 AM by Alexander Turcic in Miscellaneous | Announcements

Hi,

Our datacenter will perform some maintenance on its optical network on July 20. The window is from 4am to 6am ET. During that time traffic will be temporarily re-routed which means you may experience brief periods of downtime or latency. Sorry about that!

Alex

02:33 PM by pdurrant in E-Book General | Deals and Resources (No...

If you live in USA or Canada, Tor.com have a great offer starting up - a free ebook every month if you sign up to their mailing list.

See http://ebookclub.tor.com/ for full details.

The first book on offer is The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu.

[Update: The first month's offer is now over. But you can still sign up to their mailing list to get next month's free ebook, although we won't know what that is until next month]

06:00 AM by Alexander Turcic in Miscellaneous | Week in Review

If you've been a bit too busy to keep up, here are a few of our favorite stories from the past week.

E-Book Software - Calibre Companion

• Calibre Companion for iPhone has been started!

08:31 PM by Steve_Haley in E-Book Software | Calibre Companion

Hello everyone,

I'd like to announce that Calibre Companion for iPhone has been started. It's been a long time coming! To reintroduce myself, I worked with Chaley on the original Android version a few years ago.

We're still a way off from making a public iPhone version, but the community here has been so fantastic in helping us test that we'd like to ask again. Who would like to be an alpha tester? Obviously you'll need an iPhone or iPad. Update: we now have enough people for the initial test, thanks to everyone who volunteered.

The plan would be to send a version out in about two weeks. It will contain the basic functions for CC: connecting 'as a wireless device', syncing books, sorting and the grouping drawer, and handing books over to a reader app. Testing the connecting is the main thing we'd like help with, as that took us quite a while to get right last time round.

After that initial version, the timeline is a bit more vague. It took chaley and me a few months to get the original CC Android version ready. This time round will be a bit quicker, but it will still take at least a month. So please don't get too excited, even though we do realise you've waited a long time for this. (This time, it will be nice to skip some of the errors we made with the first version. For example, we originally thought people would only want to have 10 to 50 books on their devices at one time. That clearly turned out to be wrong as people now routinely have thousands of books!)

Thanks,
Steve

06:00 AM by Alexander Turcic in Miscellaneous | Week in Review

If you've been too busy to check out MobileRead this week, check out our usual roundup:

E-Book General - News

• eBook settlement credit is on the way
• New Basic Kindle from Amazon

E-Book General - Reading Recommendations

• July 2016 Book Club Nominations

E-Book Software - Marvin

• Marvin 3.0 is out

05:48 AM by kguil in E-Book Software | Marvin

Hello Everyone. Marvin 3 is out and available now. You can get it for free + 20% off premium upgrade for a limited time. Marvin Side-by-Side (SxS) is also available now at 20% off for a limited time as well.

You can download Marvin 3 for free from here.

App Store propagation may be a bit slow, so M3 might not show up right away in searches. Your best bet it to get it from Marvin's website.

I hope you enjoy it!

Have a lovely week.

09:54 AM by pdurrant in E-Book General | News

Amazon have just announced a new Basic Kindle model. Release date is 7th July in the US and 20th July in the UK.

Press release link
Amazon US Link
Amazon UK Link

"The all-new Kindle is 11% thinner and 16% lighter than the previous-generation Kindle, making it easy and comfortable to hold in one hand"

It's now available in black and white, but otherwise much the same: 167ppi eInk Pearl screen, no frontlight, 6" screen.

old basic Kindle: 169 mm x 119 mm x 10.2 mm, 191 grams
new basic Kindle: 160 mm x 115 mm x 9.1 mm, 161 grams

Instead of being a bit bigger than the PW3, it's now smaller.

There is one other big difference:
"Built-in Bluetooth audio for accessibility—The first Kindle with built-in Bluetooth audio support, Kindle makes it possible for visually impaired users to use the VoiceView screen reader on Kindle to read the content of the screen—including reading books and other Kindle content—without the need for an adaptor. This is enabled through a new out-of-box experience specifically for visually-impaired customers that allows them to pair their Kindle with Bluetooth headphones or a speaker. For other recent updates in accessibility, visit our Amazon blog."