09:26 AM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book General | Deals and Resources (No...

Alright, follow me on this one. iAnnotate is one of the most popular PDF viewing and annotation iPad apps in existence, and it's on sale for $1.99 right now to "celebrate" the back to school season. That's 80% off its regular price ($9.99). The deal is only good until September 13 (12pm CDT).

iAnnotate bills itself as "the most powerful PDF annotation application for the iPad" that includes an "intuitive interface" and a "comprehensive set of features" for taking notes and annotating documents.

Download link: iAnnotate PDF

08:03 AM by simplyparticular in E-Book Readers | Sony Reader

I visited the Sony store in Niagara Falls, Ontario this afternoon and they had the T3 in stock. They also had an open box T1 for $90 with extended warranty, and the T2 on clearance for $80, so I could compare all three. The store associates would not let me take pictures, and I chose not to buy the T3 for various reasons, so this will strictly be a written impression. I spent about 15 minute playing with the T3 and comparing it with its predecessors.

PRS-T3 Reader
The stock T3 with integrated cover felt nice in hand in book mode, but the with the integrated case flipped around to the back (how I usually read), the cover slides around, and made feel like I didn't have a good grip on it. But the back itself is a smooth touch rubbery plastic, similar to the T1/T2.

The bezel felt a bit narrow, but that could also be because I've gotten used to the T2 lighted case cover - it has the battery compartment which makes a nice grip. I did really like the rounded edges being totally exposed by the flap cover - very comfortable in hand compared to the snap in case edge n the T1/T2, but still not as nice as the clip system used by the 3/6/950 series.

The text is sharper than both the T1 and T2, but it's less obvious compared to the T2 because they are both using the same "Original" font, where the T1 used a different one. Brightness of the background was identical to my T1 and the display T2. I was hoping for a lighter background.

Software was basically identical. I knew my way around better than the 2 sales people who tried REALLY hard to sell me a T3. I meant to check out the dictionary options, but forgot.

In both the stock and the lighted cover, the T3 has a very slim profile. I would guess it is about the same size as the 350 in its lighted cover, perhaps a bit slimmer. So definitely very portable, and really light.

The lighted case:
This was a surprise, in both positive and negative ways. The integrated case popped off easily - they both use the same back plastic that snaps into place, and they both have a microfiber lining.

The lighted cover is powered by the T3, and has a super slim light that slides up out of the back.

The lighted cover has big negatives for me:
1. The light level is not adjustable. It was hard to judge in the bright store, but it appeared that the top was overlit and the bottom was underlit.

2. The light only engages when fully extended - so no way to adjust position. It comes straight up and over, and that's it.

3. The lighted case had a difficult time making contact with the power nodules on the back of the T3. Three of us fiddled with two different lighted covers cases and had this problem. So the only way I could get the light to turn on was to squeeze the left side of the device/case to force the case and nodules to make contact. I gave up, since I wasn't so thrilled with the first two problems.

Given the very small space involved in the lighted cover design, it doesn't take much to throw alignment off track - those power nodules are VERY tiny - there are two that are about the size of a ballpoint pen tip. I hope for Sony's sake this isn't a design flaw, just two faulty cases, or maybe an alignment problem with the display model. But I would suggest if you buy a T3 lighted cover - test it with YOUR device in store to make sure everything aligns properly!

So the T3 stayed at the store. I didn't feel the sharper screen was enough to justify moving up for the T2, and the lighted cover (and the fact that you HAVE to use a cover) is a negative for me.

YMMV. Happy shopping for your perfect reader!

05:10 PM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book General | News

This one is still very much unconfirmed, but a "trusted source" provided the folks over at BGR with photos of Amazon's forthcoming Kindle Fire HD 2. The partially blacked out photos were made of the 7-inch version, which, according to the source, is nearly identical to its 8.9-inch sibling. Overall, if the photo are to believed, the next-gen Fire HD will receive a complete redesign, with an angular look that could almost be considered old-school Thinkpad style. The position of the buttons has improved, with the power and volume buttons being more easily accessible, and the stereo speakers have been moved to the top of the device.

What do you think about the new look? Feel free to join the ongoing discussion.

If you are interested in the specs and if you don't mind them being just unconfirmed leaks, check out these related threads:

• Rumor: Next-gen Kindle Fire HD tables - specs are in!
• Rumor: Next-gen Kindle Fire HD 8.9" aka KFAPWA benchmark leak
• Kindle Fire HD: More leaked benchmarks; codenamed Soho, Thor and Apollo

Thanks to Mobilereader daffy4u for the heads-up!

04:17 PM by chaley in E-Book Software | Calibre Companion

CC prerelease 3.1.1b is available to people who are members of the CC prerelease program.

This prerelease has the following changes:

• Shorten standard labels in book details to reduce space taken by the first column
• Fix boolean rows being cut in half in book details when large fonts are being used
• Fix rare crash when changing the folders where CC is to put books.
• Support wireless device and content server connections to a local computer when tethering and the phone/tablet is hub. The phone/tablet is acting as the wireless hub.
• Improvement in connecting as a wireless device in certain more complex network setups, in particular those that use both IPv6 and IPV4.

Related: Changelog and FAQ

08:53 AM by fjtorres in E-Book General | News

Barnes & Noble Chairman Len Riggio grilled by shareholders, answers some questions, evades others:

• New B&N.com pbook storefront due April 2014
• They're considering options...
• Decision not to buy the storefronts is a "private" decision

About selling Nook:

After more questions along the line of “how long before a decision and how much loss is too much,” from shareholders, an affable Gregory Maffei, CEO of Liberty Media, a major shareholder that owns about 17% of B&N, took the stage. “Look, no one is happy with Nook, we know we need a new e-reader strategy but it’s not easy when you look at [the competitors] we’re up against.” Maffei said, “It’s not like Liberty Media is against split-offs but it would be difficult to do at this time.”

Source: Publishers Weekly

Translation: you can't sell if no one is buying.

Odd to see the shareholder fixation on dividends: the company is (maybe) six months from Chapter 11 and they want to drain cash from it?

Related: B&N reports $87m loss for Q1 2014, NOOK business plunges 20%

(image: Mike Kalasnik / Flickr)

08:10 AM by Sydney's Mom in E-Book General | General Discussions

I have really bad insomnia. It is due to my clock being different than most other people. I would be perfectly happy going to bed at 3 and getting up at 10. But I can't find a job with those hours.

Anyway, since I was a kid, I read before bed. I remember telling my daughter I felt sorry for her, not being able to enjoy a book, and drift off to sleep. When I got my kindle, it was even better!

About a year ago, I got a big Kindle Fire because I wanted to read some Walking Dead graphic novels. Anyway, I found the white letters on black background setting, and put my PW aside. My insomnia got worse, but I attributed it to working from home. Instead of getting up at 7:30 in order to get to the office for a 9:00 call, I can get up at 8:45.

Two days ago, I was having trouble with my fire, and wanted to finish the book I had started (Argo), so I picked up my PW. I read for about half hour, and I was sleepy. Last night, same thing happened. I really think the people talking about the backlit screens keeping you up are right. I have been taking an Ambien if I wanted to get to sleep quicker than 2 hours after I got in bed. This week, haven't had to think about taking a pill.

Has anyone else noticed a difference reading in bed with a fire versus a PW? I ordered the new PW this morning.

Image by Justin Pickard via Flickr

09:19 AM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book General | News

As Kobo's newest e-reader proceeds down the review gauntlet, it appears CNET Australia is the latest to be impressed by the Kobo Aura, between its "sleek" and "lightweight" form factor, the built-in front light, the 6-inch 1014x758 pixels display, and long battery life.

We had a few issues with the Kobo Glo in terms of bugginess and response time, and we're overjoyed to report that the Aura seems to have ironed those issues out. What we found with the Glo was that it was laggy, slow to respond to taps, sometimes not responding at all.

The Aura couldn't be more different. Even an image-heavy MOBI file responded smartly to page turns, and resizing a PDF using pinch to zoom was about as smooth as we've seen on an E Ink display. Input is also pretty snappy; in fact, it responds a little faster than the screen, so playing chess and Sudoku, as well as entering search terms or other text, is a lot better than the Glo. [...]

The Kobo Aura does have some very minor foibles. However, the work Kobo has done to the software has improved it substantially on last year's Kobo Glo. Also, once you factor in that if you want a light for Sony's upcoming PRS-T3, you'll have to pay extra beyond its AU$149 SRP, the Aura comes in at a pretty competitive price.

Link to the review: here

Related: Kobo Reader

08:43 AM by MarekGibek in Kobo Reader | Kobo Developer's Corner

Sorry for the delay - I was on vacation

It's fantastic that you guys were able to solve most of your problems yourself and even managed to run my sample image on a Kobo Mini (fixing bootloader)!!

Now I'm back with the necessary kernel changes needed to install Debian on your Kobos:

https://github.com/marek-g/kobo-kernel-2.6.35.3-marek

The only changes needed to run X11 are related to the eInk display driver and keyboard driver. Inside !Marek/framebuffer-utils folder there are the files to enable and disable eInk's autoupdate mode.

You can undo changes for touch driver because:

• the changes enable multitouch in the kernel but I still didn't find a working driver for X11 (I started implementing a custom X11 driver but it supports single touch only for now and no right button) - maybe it's because I left single touch events for compatibility with original software
• according to other posts I probably hardcoded 800x600 resolution somewhere so that needs to be fixed

If you stay with the original touch driver you can use the evdev driver for X11 and still have a working touch and even configure the right mouse button emulation.

I was playing with the image posted here and I've found it's nice to:

• install nautilus to navigate through your files
• install okular (with extensions) to view PDF files
• install calibre - it has great ePub reader (ebook-viewer command) - it needs path to ebook as a parameter so you can use zenity command to open file selector and pass the selected path to ebook-viewer (you can use this command: ebook-viewer `zenity --file-selector`)
• install gtk-theme-switch to change font sizes and look of gtk apps
• modify gtk theme to increase slider size
• modify Firefox's chrome.css file to increase tab sizes etc. - it would be nice to have custom Firefox theme for Kobo

You can add new software to the menu by editing the awesome.lua config file in the ~/.config folder.

I hope that together we will be able to do things like:

• better screen updates (automatic full screen refresh from time to time)
• support for screen rotation at any time
• enable multitouch
• port existing / write new software
• ... ?

Have a good fun,
Marek

Related: Sample Kobo Debian firmware image