The Amazon Kindle is one of the coolest gadgets out there right now. If you have one that you carry with you on the road frequently, you will want a case to keep the device safe. I have talked about the M-Edge line of Kindle cases before, the company offers a plethora of styles for the Kindle.
The flip-side of having a well-publicised and successful ebook business is that you end up the prime target of criticism when anybody disagrees with how it’s being run, and Amazon has certainly been subject to some controversy recently. After the company’s CEO, Jeff Bezos, apologized for the 1984 ebook debacle, Amazon have now offered any affected customer either their original copy – complete with annotations – redelivered, or $30 in the form of an e-gift certificate or check. Meanwhile the Authors Guild has been redoubling its critique of the company, claiming “Amazon’s hypocrisy is breathtaking”.
We’re still waiting to see a real, working model of Sony’s new Reader Daily Edition, announced earlier this week, but until then we’ll make do with a video review of another of the company’s recent ebook devices. MobileTechReview have been running through the functionality of the touchscreen PRS-600, and as we’ve already heard hint of it’s a blend of decent new functionality but middling text quality compared to its predecessor.
Video review after the cut
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Many print publications are having one of their most difficult years ever. The poor economy has meant that advertisers are not buying ads like they used to at the same time that subscriber numbers are dropping and production costs are up.
I haven’t bit the bullet and bought myself an Amazon Kindle yet, but I have a serious jones for the gadget. Amazon is certainly selling a lot of the Kindle DX devices and more than one user has found that to keep the reader pristine requires some sort of protection for the device.
Dell are tipped to be working with Intel on a 5-inch touchscreen tablet, which will be provided free of charge to users who sign up to one or more digital content subscriptions. The unnamed device, expected to hit the market in around six months time, will be positioned as a direct competitor to Amazon’s Kindle ebook reader, and offer would-be users turned off by that device’s high initial purchase price an alternative way of accessing regular digital content.
After Amazon deleted ebook copies of George Orwell novels from users Kindle ebook readers last week, in a PR nightmare that seemed almost too good to be true for headline writers, CEO Jeff Bezos has posted an apology to customers. Describing the Amazon “solution” as “stupid, thoughtless, and painfully out of line with our principles”, Bezos promised that the company would use the ferocious customer feedback to make better decisions in future.
Full statement after the cut
Amazon is reportedly close to setting a release date for the Kindle in the UK, with “advanced negotiations” underway with a carrier for providing the wireless connection via which the device downloads ebooks. According to Mobile Today, Amazon have called upon Qualcomm to manage not only the manufacturing of the GSM Kindle, but to “securing connectivity” for the UK device.
You have to admire Peking University’s Founder Group: when asked about any connection between their ebook device, shown here, and Amazon’s Kindle 2, they bravely told those at the Digital Publishing Fair in Tokyo that “it has nothing to do with the Kindle.” Unfortunately they also seem a little confused about their own hardware specifications; asked about the E Ink panel size, and they said it was “unclear”. Happily Tech-On!’s Takuya Otani had brought a ruler, and found it to be a Kindle-like 6-inches.
This has been a busy week here at SlashGear and lots of new items have appeared this week to stoke our geek lust. If you were on vacation or just didn’t get around to reading much this week here is our week in review. We heard rumors this week that Apple had purchased a huge order of cameras for its new iPod models. The rumor was supported by shots of new cases for the 5G iPod nano that surfaced with a cut out for a camera lens. Intel is also rumored to have penalized Lenovo and Samsung over cramming the popular Intel Atom processor inside a netbook with screens over the size limit that the parts are supposed to be used in. I guess Intel is still afraid of net books cannibalizing notebook sales.
SlashGear Japan
