Posts Tagged ‘ebook readers’
Are B&N Nook Downloads Failing the Xmas Rush? [Ebooks]
Posted by: Gadget Boy in Gadget News, Technology on December 26th, 2009
I've got a bunch of complaints coming in about the Nook's e-book purchase servers being robust enough to take your money but the downloads are not going so well since new xmas owners came online. Any info, Nookers?
Nook Firmware 1.1 Is Out, And It’s No Miracle [Nook]
Posted by: Gadget Boy in Gadget News, Technology on December 21st, 2009
According to those lucky enough to have a Nook, firmware 1.1 is live now. Forums are full of sporadic claims like faster page turns and tweaked file handling. Have you noticed anything special? Updated
Because in the words of our own Wilson Rothman, "It feels like not much has changed." The only thing he notices off the bat is that returning to the book you're reading, after going to the main menu, is quicker, though it's still just as slow to load a new book up. As for page turns, he's still seeing the 1-2 second page turns he saw before, and the highlights-and-notes bug he uncovered during his review seems to be unrepaired.
It seems the Nook—a beautiful piece of hardware in its own right—is still in need of one heck of a firmware update. [Teleread Thanks JP!]
Update: According to B&N spokespeople:
This week, we are conducting our first over-the-air update with version 1.1 software. Nook 1.1 enables seamless connection of a customer's Nook in Barnes & Noble stores, providing exclusive content and promotions over our free Wi-Fi connection. This update also begins to provide some core speed and performance improvements and enhances the customer's reading experience by enabling them to begin reading their content sooner. Information can be found at www.nook.com/support. As with any new software, we will continue to optimize and expand Nook's capabilities using seamless over-air-updates which don't require any action by the Nook customer. We expect to conduct a larger Nook software update early next year.
Borders and Kobo Team Up to Develop a New Reader [Readers]
Posted by: Gadget Boy in Gadget News, Technology on December 16th, 2009
Borders is teaming up with a company called Kobo and making some grand plans. They apparently intend on developing a new ebook reader, a new ebook service, and having all the content be "device neutral." Pretty big task there, fallas.
The Kobo service is already live and will apparently allow downloading of "content to the most popular smartphones, including the Apple iPhone, Research in Motion BlackBerry, Palm Pre and Google Android devices."
Everything sounds quite lovely, right down to the point of Borders and Kobo wanting to make everything an open platform, but I'm just curious to see what sort of device the partnership will produce and when we'll actually see it on the market. [NY Times]
Wary Book Publishers Are Fighting the Future [Books]
Posted by: Gadget Boy in Gadget News, Technology on December 16th, 2009
Last week, a host of book publishers, led by Simon & Schuster, said they will delay publication of e-reader versions of many books because they were afraid the electronic copies were cannibalizing sales of more expensive hardcover editions.
As Carolyn Reidy, chief executive of Simon & Schuster, told The Associated Press, "We believe that a large portion of the people who have bought e-readers are from the most devoted reading population. And if they like the e-readers, they are naturally going to convert because the e-books are so significantly less expensive."
I own both an Amazon Kindle and a Sony Reader, and I can tell you that I didn't buy them to save money. I know a lot of other avid bookworms, and I can't recall a single one citing "to save money on books" as their reason to purchase one of these fancy new devices.
How can e-books represent saving money when an person spends between $250 to $300 on a device and about $10 for each book?
No, these are people who love books so much that they want to carry a collection of them around on a single device and want to interact more deeply with them (such as looking up words in a built-in dictionary, sharing content with others and taking notes about what they're reading).
Most importantly, e-reader users want instant access to books—if you hear about a new book that sounds interesting, you can start reading it a couple of minutes later.
Publishers are understandably worried about their changing business model, as they face new pressures from authors as well as readers. But do they really believe that they will boost their bottom lines by making it harder for these devoted readers to buy books?
Let's say you unwrap your holiday presents and see a fancy Kindle, Sony Reader or Barnes & Noble Nook. Just what you've always wanted! You turn on your new device, navigate to a wireless bookstore and search for Don DeLillo's new novel. Instead of a simple click and download right from your armchair, you're told it's only available in hardcover for the next four months.
Are you really going to put down your new book reader, get in your car, drive to the store and buy the hardcover? Probably not. Instead, you'll click the ‘back' button and search for something else to read in the digital bookstore.
The consumer understands that digital means immediate and infinite, and the limits imposed by paper no longer exist. As Amazon's chief executive, Jeffrey Bezos, noted in a recent interview with The New York Times, "For every 100 copies of a physical book we sell, where we have the Kindle edition, we will sell 48 copies of the Kindle edition. It won't be too long before we're selling more electronic books than we are physical books."
Yet some publishers are trying to do everything they can to look the other way and pretend the new products and delivery pathways haven't changed old business models.
There's one other important factor to swirl into this discussion: The next generation of book buyers won't understand why they can't access any information they want in a digital format. They have grown up in a world where everything, from movies to magazines, is basically just a collection of digital bytes.
And the economics of bytes aren't the same as the economics of atoms. Infinite digital bits don't have to deal with the supply-and-demand business models that once existed. You create one version and can disseminate it everywhere, instantly, at virtually no distribution cost. (Can you imagine if the digital camera you just purchased gave you this warning: "We're sorry. You won't be able to e-mail this photo to your friend for another four months. Instead, why don't you print a copy and mail it through or on-demand printing service!")
The publishers seem to be picking a fight with the wrong team: their customer. They are punishing the people who buy their content instead of making it simple for those customers to hand over their money, instantly, from any location in the world.
I can tell you one thing: When I'm looking for a new book on my Kindle and told I have to wait four months for the e-book version, I won't be heading to the bookstore. Instead, I'll click the back button and buy one of the 360,000 other e-books available now.
Reprinted with permission from the NY Times.
Ereaders Are a Nazi Scheme, and More Bizarre Theories From Ebooks’ Sworn Enemies [Ebooks]
Posted by: Gadget Boy in Gadget News on December 8th, 2009
There is a discussion to be had about whether or not ebooks are bad for writing, reading, and bookselling. There is also, apparently, a discussion to be had about whether or not ebook proponents are just like the Nazis.
Let's start with Sherman Alexie, author of a fair number of popular (and quite good!) books, including Reservation Blues and Flight. He's known for his sense of humor, but he's dead serious about ebooks—specifically, about how they will destroy literature, forever, or something:
1. Ebook readers are a threat to privacy
2. Jeff Bezos makes cryptic comments about "changing how people read," which is sinister, even though it's fairly obvious that he's speaking literally
3. The music industry was crippled by piracy; therefore the book industry will be crippled by piracy
4. Once books are digitized by publishers, they will be stolen (this part is true)
5. The "open source" culture destroys the concept of ownership
The way he throws around the term "open source" seemingly without knowing what it means, the way he cites unease with how much personal information is stored on the Kindle (does he have nightmares about cellphones, too?), and his apparent lack of understanding about the mechanics of piracy makes me think he's just a bit misinformed about the details of his case, which he obviously feels very strongly about. If he had his facts straight, I'm not sure his case would change, and I think he'd still be able to make good points—this is zeal, not malice.
Which brings me to Alan Kaufman, poet, novelist, and maker of unfortunate analogies:
When I hear the term Kindle I think not of imaginations fired but of crematoria lit. And when I hear the term "hi-tech" I think not of helpful androids efficiently performing household chores or light-speed rockets gliding seamlessly through space but of the fact that between 1933-45, modern technology was used to perform in ever more efficient ways the mass murder of six million of my people.
That's right, people. Ebook readers are like war criminals. It's uncanny!
Today's hi-tech propagandists tell us that the book is a tree-murdering, space-devouring, inferior form that society would be better off without. In its place, they want us to carry around the Uber-Kindle.
The hi-tech campaign to relocate books to Google and replace books with Kindles is, in its essence, a deportation of the literary culture to a kind of easily monitored concentration camp of ideas, where every examination of a text leaves behind a trail, a record, so that curiosity is also tinged with a sense of disquieting fear that some day someone in authority will know that one had read a particular book or essay.
Crematoria lit? Seriously? What's especially vexing here is that buried underneath all the Godwin's Law-ing, there's a real point: It's scary that Amazon can reach into your pocket and delete a book that you've purchased, and, though to a much lesser degree, that they know what you're reading. (I mean, so does the dude behind the counter at your totally not-genocidal local book store, right? Your library?) Plus, Kaufman fails to make a distinction between a regime that would have like to have control over all books so it could censor them, and companies that happen to be gaining more control over books because they want to make money.
And seriously, do I really have to point this out? Nazis didn't burn books because they though paper was wasteful and dumb—they burned books to destroy ideas.
Tune in next week, when I'll be explaining why Steve Jobs is nothing like Pol Pot, and how it would be in poor taste to invoke the Rwandan Genocide to explain why MiniDisc didn't succeed. It's possible to talk about consumer electronics without exploiting our century's greatest human tragedies. Try it! [HuffPo via TechDirt]
Barnes & Noble Nook Review [Ebook Readers]
Posted by: Gadget Boy in Gadget News on December 7th, 2009
It's a relief to finally lay hands on the Nook. The dual-screen reader was just a prop at its unveiling so I'm happy to report it works (pretty) well. It can't kill Kindle yet, but it's an alternative worth considering.
A Two-Horse Race
Do this now: Disregard all other ebook readers on the market besides Nook and Kindle. Unless you plan to get all of your books from back-alley torrents, or stick to self-published and out-of-copyright PDFs, you are going to need a reader with a good content-delivery system, one it connects to directly via wide-area network. And as long as you're set on e-ink as your preferred means of digital reading—and it's still the choice that's easiest on the eyes and the battery—you're going to need a reader that isn't crapped up with gimmicks that supposedly compensate for the slow display.
Sony messed up by putting a glare-inducing film over its screen to provide questionably beneficial touch controls; iRex avoided that, but made a "touch" interface that requires a stylus. Kindle plays it straight, developing a user interface that works well enough with physical buttons and e-ink (as long as you don't use the "experimental" browser). Nook preserves the same pleasurable reading experience, but tucks in the capacitive-touch LCD screen for added control. In its 1.0 implementation, Nook is not as fast or as smooth as it should be, but already it's showing that the second screen is not a gimmick.
Still, I need to get this out of the way: The second screen is not a sudden and miraculous cure for what ails ebook readers. It may prove to be, but B&N's current implementation is conservative. As yet, there are too few occasions on the Nook when I notice an LCD feature and say "Kindle can't do that." In fact, the Kindle development team hasn't been sitting on their asses—the latest firmware makes Kindle more sprightly than ever, with subtle but awesome user-interface improvements. But Barnes & Noble is itself promising round-the-clock enhancing, optimizing and debugging over the next few months, and I wouldn't be surprised if there were three or four updates pushed through the Nook by March—the first possibly before Christmas.
Does that mean it's not ready now? Let me put it this way: If you are lucky enough to have pre-ordered one in the first wave for the Dec. 7 shipping, or patient enough to wait until mid-January for the next wave, you are going to get a gadget worth being excited about.
And when Barnes & Noble gets its in-store offers and book-lending operation underway, Amazon will have to step up, or sit down.
Big Screen, Little Screen
The first thing I noticed about the LCD was that it was too bright. E-ink is all about eyeball comfort, and I hadn't really thought about how the LCD underneath would compromise that. Because you don't want your eyes to have to adjust every time you look down and back up again, it turns out you want that thing a lot dimmer than you might if it was a standalone device. The automatic brightness adjuster isn't really up to the job, but I found that by dialing it all the way down when reading in bed, and bumping it up a tad, like to 20%, when reading in sunlight, my eyes could look up and down without any annoyance.
The second thing I noticed about the LCD was how nice its keyboard was. Unlike the Kindle, the Nook's keyboard is only visible when you need it, and as an iPhone user, I found it natural and accurate. The capacitive touch is a real boon, especially on a screen so small.
Besides the keyboard and assorted lists of settings and files, the little screen can display a directional pad for moving around text when highlighting or looking up words in the dictionary; it can give you a search box and a place to type notations; it can pop up the music player without leaving the page; it flows book covers in your library and in the store. And when the screen goes dark, you can make horizontal swipe gestures to turn the pages of the e-ink screen above.
Between the LCD and the e-ink screens is a little upside-down U, actually an "N" from the Nook's logo. This is covered with a capacitive-touch layer too, and serves as the "home" button, which wakes up the LCD with a tap, and takes you to the home screen with a double-tap. (There are physical buttons, too: Two page-turn buttons on each side, and a power button on the top, which work as billed and have no hidden features.)
I found the capacitive interface to be handy, but it also revealed the bugginess of the early software. Scrolling could be sticky, tapping the home button or the screen occasionally did nothing, and using the directional pad to navigate text made me yearn for the Kindle's physical mini-joystick. The biggest disappointment was the page-turning swipe gesture. It failed to work half the time I tried it, and when it did work, I noticed that it responded slower than pressing the physical page-turn buttons.
I raised all of these issues with Barnes & Noble, and fortunately they are on top of this. Fixing bugs and speeding up the UI are the primary goals for the first software revision, and I have no doubt that they will achieve their goals in due time, probably before most people can even buy their Nooks.
While U Read
The Nook won't beat the Kindle if all that LCD is for is facilitating navigation—the interface isn't a bad one, but in its current implementation, it's just an alternative, not an upgrade. The way B&N will beat Amazon is by making that damn screen do crazy stuff. It should start by targeting people who read while doing 12 other things.
Me, I require concentration to get through a page, and even music is a distraction. But for some people, it's not hard to read a book while jamming to tunes, periodically glancing at news tickers, and responding to email or text messages. This is the promise of Nook's second screen.
It already does this to some extent. The music player isn't much yet—and has a few kinks B&N is still working out, like automatically and unpleasantly alphabetizing all your songs—but it's a real applet, unlike the Kindle's. On the Kindle, you type Alt-Space to get a song to play, and you click F to advance to the next song. That's about it. With the Nook, you can load up songs and then scroll through them all, picking one you want to hear, or shuffling the tracks. There's no physical volume button, but you can pull up a slider to adjust it, and another slider to jump around a song. And you can do all of this without leaving the page of your book.
But when you look up a word in the dictionary, the definition pops up on the e-ink screen, not the LCD. When you get an error message, again, the pop-up is on the e-ink. Barnes & Noble designated the e-ink as the place where all "reading" would be done, and that includes messages and sidebar content. I disagree with this, if only because the second screen seems tailor-made for alerts and other pop-up info.
The second screen is also a place for third-party developers to create fun and unexpected applets. Barnes & Noble loves to remind reviewers and customers alike that this baby is powered by Android: In other words, Nook may not look like a Motorola Droid, but developers could write apps for it just as easily.
Right now, the integrated Wi-Fi doesn't feel like much of a bonus. (Though it offers certain benefits when abroad, it only works with Wi-Fi networks that don't require a pop-up webpage. Free or not, those are few and far between.) But Wi-Fi means that developers could write internet apps without fearing a crackdown by AT&T, which provides the no-fee wireless connectivity. Paging Pandora!
Built on Bricks and Mortar
When it comes to shopping for books (and reading them), the Nook is the Kindle's equal, and may soon leverage Barnes & Noble's 800 physical locations to knock it out of first place. I was not able to test these features, because they are only starting to roll out this week, but when you take a Nook to a B&N, it will automatically jump on the store's Wi-Fi network, and offer you free goodies—not just downloads but cookies from the café and other treats. Soon, there will be a way to skim an entire ebook while you're in the store, too. You might say, "Big deal, if I'm in the store, I'll just look at the real book." But that's just the point: How nice will it be to compare real and ebook editions before you buy? I asked B&N about bundles of real book and digital download, and they said discussions with publishers are underway.
Needless to say, one of the biggest advantages the Nook has over the Kindle is the chance for people to touch it before buying it. B&N will start showing off Nooks this week, and will add a few more ebook readers to its lineup, too. People who were afraid of taking the plunge will see the benefits and buy.
(My pet theory as to why Sony and others have sold any ebook readers at all in the US is that they appear in retail locations, unlike Kindle. Because if anything but the Nook was showcased side-by-side with the Kindle in a showroom, the decision to go with Amazon would be easy.)
Barnes & Noble has adopted a more natural attitude toward the books they sell, too, allowing you to access what you buy via ebook readers on Macs and PCs, iPhones and BlackBerrys (and in a few months, Android phones) as well as the Nook. Amazon has an iPhone app but as yet there's no way to read your Kindle book purchases on your own computer, and is now (finally) rolling out PC and Mac Kindle clients, as well as a BlackBerry app.
Speaking of Kindle downloads, some noise has been made about Kindle books being cheaper than B&N ebooks, but Barnes & Noble says that they are in the process of correcting their prices, basically evening them all out so that they're no higher than Amazon's. In my own experience, I found David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest for $10 and George RR Martin's A Game of Thrones for just $7. I was pretty pleased, though I was a tad annoyed that sales tax wasn't included in the base price. Be warned there.
Lending is another non-Kindle function rolling out this week that I'll be following up on. You select a book from your collection, lend it to someone listed in your Nook contacts, and they receive a message via email and on their Nook's "Daily" screen, where periodicals, offers and other notices show up. When they accept, they can read the book for two weeks. During that time, you can't read it, and when it reverts back to you, they get a notice to buy. You can't lend the same book to the same person twice.
You can also lend books to someone who doesn't have a Nook, to read on their computer or iPhone or BlackBerry, though the notification only comes from email. (Expect a radically redesigned iPhone client in January with lending and other features.) The new readers from iRex and Plastic Logic will include the Barnes & Noble store, and all your purchases will be accessible on those devices. However, at this point, those two devices won't have the lending capability.
Work in Progress
If I haven't said much about reading books on the Nook itself, it's because it feels very much like a Kindle, right down to the page-turn buttons. The screen is the same—there's no discernible difference whatsoever.
Aesthetically, the Nook is better looking, less busy, with a more proportionate bezel (and a wee bit more girth). I like the gray rubber backing as much as I loved in on the original Kindle—I still don't know why Amazon abandoned that.
The only hardware bummer was the sound of the integrated speakers—Kindle beats Nook here (soundly?), but since both have a 3.5mm jack for headphones, it's mostly a moot point.
The hardware is fully baked, but as I have mentioned the software isn't. Aside from the stickiness of the interface and the flaws in the music player, I found a definite bug in the highlights-and-notes system. I have already listed a what feels like a hundred tiny gripes, but I still have more, like why isn't there AAC playback? And why do I have to get to the home screen to see the clock? (Kindle now shows the time with a single tap of the Menu button, no matter where you are.) I do know why there's no Audible DRM support—because even the devices that supposedly support Audible files don't support the ones most people buy from iTunes, so it's a confusing mess for customers. But I'd still expect the nation's biggest bookstore chain to get serious about audiobooks.
The great thing is that the fixes will come fast and steady, and like the iPhone, this thing will grow. For those of you who took the plunge already, I don't need to tell you to be careful with 1.0 software, because as early adopters you are prepared. And for those of you who missed out on the first batch, guess what? That just means you can wait for the key bugglies to get fixed before you pony up $259. And for those who went for the Kindle this season instead? Congratulations, you have a very nice ebook reader too—for exactly the same price.
In fact, if you have to pick one right now, stick with the Kindle. It's a tough call, because I see a lot of potential in Nook that might not be in Kindle, but damn if the Kindle hasn't grown to comfortably inhabit its e-ink skin. As long as you don't expect apps and extras on a Kindle, it delivers the best ebook experience there is at this moment. And it just went international. But while the limitations of a Kindle are clear, the limitations of the Nook are hazier, presumably further out.
For now, no one will laugh at you for owning either, though you will now surely be ridiculed for spending $400 on a Sony with glare issues, or—pardon me, iRex—anything that requires a stylus. And since many third-party readers are going with the Barnes & Noble store, you'd be dumb to buy any of them instead of the Nook. That may change in the future (can you believe I made it this far without mentioning Apple Tablet?) but for now, in the ebook department, there's just these two big dogs surrounded by a bunch of poodles.
In Brief
Great all-around ebook reader
Second screen serves useful purpose
Expansion and evolution possibilities of this very device are great, especially with touchscreen and Android OS
Lending and in-store Barnes & Noble action will be huge
A little thicker than Kindle, but as a tradeoff, it's a little smaller footprint
Wi-Fi doesn't seem to matter now—hopefully it will prove to be an advantage later
LCD and other features mean less battery life than Kindle, but still adequate, "measured in days"
Many of the Kindle killer functions, like lending and in-store perks, weren't tested, as they are rolling out this week
Current software is buggy and sluggish in spots; hopefully fixes and optimization will come soon
Second-screen possibilities are great, but current implementation is cautious and conservative
Update 1: Unboxing Pics, that I wanted to include because the packaging is just so classy:
Update 2: A word on PDF viewing, which was brought up in comments. Although PDFs are supported natively and use Adobe's mobile PDF system, I can't say I was terribly impressed. Page layout is easily mussed up, and instead of zooming, your only option is to change the font size, in so doing, re-flowing the text and adjusting the picture size. In some ways this is better than on the Kindle, which appears to only offer a screen rotation option. (Tap the font size button and you'll see what I mean.) In all truth, PDFs containing anything but text look pretty grim on either device, but for text-only ones, Nook seems to be a wiser pick.
Update 3: Re: discussions of who has the better catalog, B&N's is being overhauled this week, so expect to see a lot of new pricing and perhaps some newly available titles. We'll do some spot checking later on, but in the meantime, don't be surprised if you see a lot of sudden changes to the lineup.
Spring Design’s Injunction to Stop Barnes & Noble’s Nook Sales Denied [Spring Design]
Posted by: Gadget Boy in Gadget News on December 2nd, 2009
While waiting for a court date over an intellectual property dispute, Spring Design wanted to stop Barnes & Noble from selling the Nook. Their injunction for that's been denied today, but they shouldn't really worry much over that anyway.
While the injunction's been denied, Spring Design has been granted an expedited pre-trial process to push the entire mess into court a bit faster, but at the rate Barnes & Noble will be making the Nook available, there's hardly any rush. [Engadget]
Barnes & Noble Ruins Nerd Christmas (For Good PR) [EReaders]
Posted by: Gadget Boy in Gadget News on November 20th, 2009
Nobody has any idea if the Nook is actually any good yet, but no matter: It's a well-placed holiday gift, in theory! Or at least it was, until Barnes & Noble ran out of them.
Granted, it's a little worrisome that Barnes & Noble was taking preorders before letting reviewers have their say, so this enforced waiting period—which was probably a planned PR stunt, like the ones that pretty much every other hardware manufacturer ever does ever time they have a new product—is a good thing. At any rate, it'll be January—well after we'll have run B&N's Android-powered ereader through its paces—before anyone who hasn't already placed their order can get one.
UPDATE: Some mild reprieve, from B&N themselves:
Barnes & Noble expects to have a limited stock of devices available in its highest-volume stores during the holiday season.
So, go, if you dare! (In a few weeks.) [B&N via Bits]
More Courier details leaked
Posted by: Gadget Boy in Gadget News on November 7th, 2009
More details have emerged about the operating systems and applications that power Microsoft's new Courier Tablet PC.
Details about Microsoft’s alleged bookish tablet PC are beginning to surface, and with every bit leaked, the anticipation rises. Courier, the dual screen tablet which we reported about here a few months back, looks more like a book reader should look, but also enables a “cliff notes” representation of the data files saved on it, but also contains a searchable “journal overview” which enables users to search by subject, keyword, or other criteria.
Organizing data files is the “Library” interface browser. A favorites tray sits on the left hand screen for saving often used files for quick access, and there’s a digital version of the old school library card file for flipping through data files and their histories.
Users of Evernote will recognize a feature in “Browser” that allows clipping web content and saving to the journal application for further use.
Aside from choosing the favorites dock for often used files, users can also save files in a very interesting fashion, but dragging the file to the spine, which closes and saves the file – very cool idea.
Agenda is more than a calendar, it’s more like a daily journal which keeps track not only of appointments, but allows for taking notes and sketches by date and subject. Collaborate is a project based application no doubt to serve as a wireless connection with other Courier users in order to accomplish some project.
Fiinally, the digital stylus is more than just a handwriting interface, as it has two programmable buttons, a digital eraser, and activation of an artistitc drawing mode with the flick of the wrist.
Now many people may roll their eyes at a Software company making a hardware interface, but iCourier isn’t Microsoft’s first rodeo. With success of the XBox and XBox 360, UltimateTV (we still use this DVR and it’s excellent), Surface, and even the struggling Zune, Microsoft can easily develop a serious tablet computer for release and could challenge Apple as a hardware company to boot. But chances are, Redmond will simply license the design to other manufacturers. But we’ll certainly be keeping an eye on Courier, hoping it’ll be under our Christmas Tree someday!
Tech Cult – We cover the latest tech news, but always with a funny twist.
[ More Courier details leaked copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]
Barnes & Noble’s Nook May Violate Spring Design’s Alex Reader Intellectual Property [Ebook Readers]
Posted by: Gadget Boy in Gadget News on November 3rd, 2009
Spring Design's Alex reader seemed very similar to Barnes & Noble's Nook. I thought that Spring Design was the copycat, but based on the lawsuit they filed for violation of intellectual property, it may be the other way around.
Based on the press release, the claim is that Barnes & Noble used information, including design details, gained from meetings with Spring Design which were intended to end in a joint product. Apparently the Spring Design camp was caught just a little bit off guard when the Nook announcements started coming out:
Spring Design Files Lawsuit against Barnes & Noble : Nook Violates Alex Intellectual Property
CUPERTINO, CA - November 2, 2009 - Spring Design today filed a lawsuit to protect its Alex™ e-book intellectual property. The lawsuit asserts Barnes & Noble misappropriated trade secrets and violated the parties' non-disclosure agreement when it copied Alex' features into its recently announced Nook e-book.
"Spring Design unfortunately had to take the appropriate action to protect its intellectual property rights," said Spring Design Vice President of Sales and Marketing, Eric Kmiec. "We showed the Alex e-book design to Barnes & Noble in good faith with the intention of working together to provide a superior dual screen e-book to the market."
Spring Design first developed and began filing patents on its Alex e-book, an innovative dual screen, Android-based e-book back in 2006. Since the beginning of 2009 Spring and Barnes & Noble worked within a non-disclosure agreement, including many meetings, emails and conference calls with executives ranging up to the president of Barnes and Noble.com, discussing confidential information regarding the features, functionality and capabilities of Alex. Throughout, Barnes & Noble's marketing and technical executives extolled Alex's "innovative" features, never mentioning their use of those features until the public disclosure of the Nook.
Alex, with its unique Duet Navigator™, provides the capability for interaction and navigation techniques of the two screens and furthermore utilizes the capabilities of Android to enhance the reader's experience by supporting interactive access to the Internet for references and links. As the first in the market to offer an e-book with full Internet browsing while reading and with easy navigational control via its touch screen, Alex is well-positioned to offer the most dynamic and powerful reading device in the market.
Spring Design is focused at working strategically with book store partners to jointly develop the market and revolutionize e-book with interactive multi-media open Internet access. "It is our desire to resolve this matter so that we can move forward together to expand and grow this e-book market with enriched user experience, bringing readers to a new level of reading enjoyment," said Eric Kmiec.
About Spring Design:
Spring Design, founded in 2006, delivers innovative e-reader solutions and products to the e-book market, offering overall "Link Notes", a content authoring and multi-media publishing tool as add on editions to original text. Spring Design is located in Cupertino, California with engineering offices in Taiwan and China. Spring Design pioneered its patent-pending dual screen design with Duet Navigator™ capability in 2006, and has been working with major book stores, newspapers and publishers over the last two years, sharing the vision and the capabilities of the dual screen device. Spring Design's innovative patented technologies incorporate the seamless interaction of dual display and multi-online access in a single device, benefiting and leveraging the technology and resources of the Web to enhance the reading experience with open Internet access.
