If you bought the iPad just for its book readin’ capabilities, then Pandigital’s upcoming Novel may have you wishing Apple had a better return policy. The upcoming $200 e-reader isn’t the prettiest or fastest, but it will hold its own for its low price. With its 7-inch full-color LCD display, Wi-Fi and the ability to run apps, the look and feel of the Novel may have you thinking of Barnes & Noble’s Nook. There’s more to that similarity, in fact — the Novel uses the Barnes & Noble e-book store, too. What the Novel doesn’t have is the cellular [...]

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One of the biggest draws of the iPad is the support for all existing iPhone apps. There are a few of those, after all, and having support for them guarantees the iPad will have a healthy app base from day one. Many developers have indicated they will be producing “big screen” versions of their iPhone apps when it makes sense to do so. I have given some thought to which ones would make the biggest difference for me personally, so here is my list of the top 10 iPhone apps I hope to see ported to the iPad. I admit it is a selfish list, as it is focused on the way I work and my own needs. [...]

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When Spring Design’s Alex ebook reader first arrived on the scene, it made waves for looking very similar to Barnes and Noble’s Nook, and Spring Design even took the bookseller to court over that resemblance. Now, with an official release of April 14th set in stone and being available for pre-order, one would think that the Alex reader’s stiffest competition would be its old nemesis, the Nook. Heck, it’s even going to show up at Borders and Books-A-Million in June, laying down the gauntlet with the Nook. But is the Nook really what Alex needs to worry about? Compared to [...]

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If you’re a book lover who wants to take your relationship to another level entirely, you’re in luck! It looks like Barnes and Noble has finally kicked production of the Nook in high gear, just in time for Valentine’s Day. And when you do take hold of your e-reader (which should start appearing in stores this week), the company has plenty for you in the way of its all new, exclusive “More In Store” content, including: A short story by Adriana Trigiani (who you love), a Valentine’s Day recipe for red velvet cupcakes from Anne Byrn, the Cake Mix Doctor, and something [...]

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“One defends when his strength is inadequate, he attacks when it is abundant.”—Sun Tzu, The Art of War The Apple iPad isn’t even available yet, but already it is forcing Amazon to respond in a variety of ways to protect its competing Kindle eBook business. Amazon just snapped up a touchscreen technology startup, presumably to update the already ancient-looking Kindle. Emboldened book publishers are pushing back on Amazon’s $9.99 pricing now that they can sell the same eBooks on the iPad for $14.99, and Amazon is capitulating. And the Kindle team at Amazon, which once [...]

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“Millions of people now own Kindles,” said Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon.com yesterday. That surprised analysts, who thought that Amazon would sell 2.5 million or so of the devices by the end of 2010, nearly a year from now. We’ve checked with our sources, who have been amazingly accurate on the number of Kindle’s sold over the last couple of years. The total number of all types of Kindles out there in users hands hit 3 million sometime in December, says a source close to Amazon. And that was before the new model with worldwide data hit. And before Amazon started offering [...]

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Mobile data devices are a boon for AT&T.  The company reported strong earnings this morning, seeing a 26 percent rise in fourth-quarter profit.  AT&T sold 3.1 million iPhones in the fourth quarter, with the device being called out as one of the key drivers of the success for the telecommunications company. Quarterly earnings increased to $3.01 billion from $2.40 billion from the previous year, matching Wall Street expectation. Revenue from wireless services was strong, rising 9.2 percent with the addition of 2.7 million net subscribers during the fourth quarter. But another area of [...]

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The suspense is over! Today, Apple unveiled its new tablet computer, aptly called the iPad, here in San Francisco. Steve Jobs positions the tablet as a third computing device between a laptop and a smartphone geared towards the “key tasks” of Web browsing, email, sharing photos, watching videos, playing games, and reading digital books. All current iPhone apps will run on the device, as well as new games and digital books designed specifically for it. Here’s a list of all our recent coverage from before, during and after the event. Video: The iPad In Action (link) The iPad: our take (link) Apple [...]

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The last person you’d expect to speak out against the Google Book settlement with the Authors Guild which will make available the contents of millions of orphan books in digital form is Harvard law professor and free-culture advocate Lawrence Lessig. In a lengthy essay in The New Republic he calls the settlement a “path to insanity” that will be “culturally asphyxiating,” but not for the reasons you might think. Lessig believes the problem lies not so much with the settlement itself or Google, as it does with copyright law.  But after pouring over the complex language [...]

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It is common to describe the well-worn Apple rumour mill as reaching ‘fever pitch’ or some other similar cliché the day before the company stages a high profile product launch, as it plans to do in San Francisco tomorrow. Yet these iTablet/iPad/iSlate rumours continue to come in thick and fast. Despite its widely-reported penchant for secrecy, it seems Apple is capable of managing the hype cycle in the run-up to a launch almost perfectly. The latest rumour that suggests Apple is set to inject some much-needed cash into book publishing. This in addition to deals that are being put [...]

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