My take on Spring Design’s Alex e-reader, recorded in Cambridge, Mass., on May 4, 2010. With comparison’s to the Barnes & Noble nook and Amazon’s Kindle.
One thing I did not mention in this video is that the nook is running the new 1.3 operating software, which added web browsing and other features.
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Social media evangelist Bryan Person did Part 2 of our conversation about the iPad on Thursday April 15, 2010. This gave me a chance to revisit my expectations on how good a reading device the iPad would be compared with the Kindle.
We spoke 12 days after I had bought my 16GB WiFi-only iPad at the Apple Store at the Cherry Creek Mall in Denver. (Click here for video of my memorable entrance into the store.) In that time, my fascination with the device kept growing.
In this interview, Bryan and I discuss the issue of “serious readers” and whether they will be drawn more to the Kindle than the iPad. I have to confess that since our conversation, I am less inclined to make this distinction. I have read too many accounts like this one of people using the iPad for very serious reading, and my own experience has shown me that I am perfectly at home reading on the iPad for up to an hour. Yes, I sense some discomfort in my eyes from the LCD screen, but the ability to turn down the brightness from within most of the iPad reading apps I use–iBooks, Kindle, Kobo, and Stanza, but not Barnes & Noble–makes it manageable.
I remain in love with my Kindle and am quite sure that reports of its demise are exaggerations, as Mark Twain would have put it. I don’t see this as an either-or proposition. The iPad’s arrival is wondrous, for many reasons beyond the realm of reading books. The Kindle owns the outdoors, and any time I go with Darlene to read outside at a cafe, the iPad stays at home. At home, sometimes I pick up the Kindle, and sometimes I pick up the iPad. I haven’t figured out which situation is which, but I’m having lots of fun experimenting.
And tomorrow, I’ll have another device to explore–the Alex by Spring Design. Stay tuned!
CORRECTION: The monthly price of The Wall Street Journal iPad app is $17.29, which is $2.30 more than The Financial Times US edition on Kindle at $14.99. In the interview, I guessed that the Journal is $5 more.
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On my first iPad session at a local Starbucks in Denver, I realize that overhead lights can be a challenge as reflections in the iPad’s screen. Some horsing around with a Gorilla tripod solved the problem. For a relatively simple project this morning, involving email, Safari, and Apple’s Pages word processor, I was able to leave my MacBook Air in the bag and work exclusively with the iPad.
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Kat Meyer is the new community manager for O’Reilly Media‘s Tools of Change (TOC) conferences. Kat knows social media AND publishing.
You can follow her on Twitter here.
We talked about Digital Rights Management (DRM), Facebook, and her ideas for building on the success of the Tools of Change publishing conference.
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Andrew Malkin is Vice President – Book Content at zinio, a privately held company that calls itself the largest online newstand in the world, with more than 50,000 digital magazines and books and e-stores in 15 languages.
I interviewed Andrew on March 14, 2010, in Austin, Texas, during the South by Southwest Interactive conference.
His varied experiences in the publishing world give him deep background in an industry headed for massive change through initiatives like the ones zinio is championing.
You can get a taste for the rich magazine content zinio is offering by checking out their Read Green Initiative and signing up for a free one-year subscription. I tried the National Geographic, and it’s fantastic.
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On February 17, 2010, I visited in person with Andrew Savikas, vice president for digital initiatives at O’Reilly Media. Andrew is based at O’Reilly’s office in Cambridge, Mass., where Tim O’Reilly started the business in 1978.
We spoke of many things, including the ePub format (Andrew recently ran for and was elected to the Board of the International Digital Publishing Forum), how O’Reilly’s eBook publishing business is thriving without using Digital Rights Management, and why the Kindle and other e Ink-based readers do not represent disruptive technology in relation to the book since Gutenberg. What does? The answer is probably closer than you think – at this very moment. Andrew mentioned The Strategy Paradox as a way to gain insight into Amazon’s eBooks strategy. To learn more about Harvard Business School Professor Clayton Christensen’s theory of disruptive and sustaining technologies, you might want to check out his The Strategy Paradox. The Innovator’s Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail.
Andrew also runs O’Reilly’s Tools of Change conference Feb. 22-24 in New York City, which just reached sold-out status. More than 1,000 attendees will have a chance to explore the changing world of publishing, and much of the content will be available online soon. If you can’t wait, you can check out some of the presentations made at the 2009 TOC conference.
NOTE: Andrew just emailed me to say the keynotes for the 2010 Tools of Change conference will be live-streamed. Check here for details.
Click here for Tim O’Reilly’s seminal 2002 essay titled “Piracy is Progressive Taxation, and Other Thoughts on the Evolution of Online Distribution,” which Andrew mentions in the interview.
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This is the conclusion of my January 27, 2010, interview with New York Times technology reporter Brad Stone. For the first part of the interview, please check out Episode 80 of my other podcast, The Kindle Chronicles. We spoke the evening after Brad had attended Apple’s unveiling of the iPad.
In this segment, Brad looks ahead at Amazon’s next moves and comments. He’s found 46 new jobs posted at Amazon’s Lab126, the group that makes and advances the Kindle. Brad says at one point, “The Kindle tablet may be right around the corner.”
Following the interview, I’ve included a fair-use excerpt of audio from Steve Jobs’s comments about the Kindle and the new iBooks app which will come on the iPad, setting up a high-stakes strategic battle between Apple and Amazon. Does Steve sound as if he’s got his heart in this fight? Listen, and decide.
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Regina Sergiyenko of Pocketbook USA
This episode contains three more interviews from the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas earlier this month.
First up is Laura Wu, a product manager for Netronix, Inc., the Taiwan-based maker of eReaders for Interead, Bookeen, and Pocketbook USA, among others. Laura confirmed reports that Netronix plans to sell a million eReaders in 2010.
Phil Wood, marketing director at Interead, said the U.K.-based company relies on Netronix for some of its products, but not all of them.
Regina Sergiyenko, regional director in the US for the Ukraine-based Pocketbook, emphasized the fact that her company’s product is available in many languages.
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Paul Miller, Senior Associate Editor at Engadget and a regular on the weekly Engadget podcast, had a chance to see something at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) that we missed – the very enticing Mirasol screen by Qualcomm. Rumor had it that this will be the screen on the next Kindle, perhaps later this year.
In a Skype-to-Skype call on January 19, 2010, we talked about eReaders, screens, and the nearly and mercifully to-be-ended speculation leading up to the unveiling of Apple’s “latest creation” in San Francisco on January 27. Paul and the rest of the Engadget gang will be liveblogging the spectacle, and they’re whom I’ll be following for every last “one more thing.”
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