AllThingsD » e-reader

Plastic Logic Exits E-Reader Business It Never Really Managed to Enter

John Paczkowski — Thu, 17 May 2012 18:54:14 +0000

After two stumbling runs at the e-reader market, Plastic Logic has finally given up on the business altogether.

The company, which first debuted its touchscreen e-reader at D7, is shuttering its U.S. operations in Mountain View, Calif., and scrapping entirely its latest e-reader plan, which saw it peddling its devices in the Russian education market. Rather than continue to develop hardware, Plastic Logic will focus on licensing its flexible display technology to other companies.

So what will come of that $700 million factory Plastic Logic had planned for Zelenograd, Russia? Evidently, plans for that facility have been scaled back — substantially. Rather than a manufacturing plant, that operation will now be an “R&D center of excellence.”

A wise move for Plastic Logic, exiting a market it really never had a chance in. The company’s $800 Que was far too pricey for a stand-alone e-reader, even one targeted at enterprise. And Plastic Logic wasn’t nearly nimble enough to negotiate the rapidly changing e-reader market.

But there are others who are, and who might put Plastic Logic’s flexible, but rugged, screen technology to good use. And according to Plastic Logic CEO Indro Mukerjee, the company is already in talks with several potential customers. He says the first products using the company’s technology could arrive at market by the end of this year. Though given the company’s history, that window’s probably as flexible as one of its displays.

Below, Plastic Logic shows off a Que prototype at D7.

[ See post to watch video ]

The Wait for Plastic Logic’s Que E-Reader Will Last Forever

Que? That’s Spanish for “Where the Hell Is My E-Reader,” Right?

You Still Can’t Buy Plastic Logic’s Que E-Reader. Want to Buy Plastic Logic?

Plastic Logic (Finally) Shows Off The Que, Its (Very Expensive) Kindle Competitor

Plastic Logic Offers a (Quick) Look at Its Kindle Killer: Meet the Que

Plastic Logic: The Full D7 Demo

A Massive Beat for Amazon

John Paczkowski — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 20:31:38 +0000

Amazon was expected to report another period of big sales growth and slim profits for its latest quarter, but it did far better than that Thursday afternoon.

After market close, the e-commerce giant turned a massive beat: Earnings of 28 cents on revenue of $13.2 billion. Operating income fell 40 percent to $192 million, suggesting an operating margin of about 1.5 percent for the quarter.

Analysts had expected the e-commerce giant to report earnings of 6 cents per share on revenue of $12.9 billion.

A big beat, and Amazon shares are spiking in after-hours trading.

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos was typically ebullient in the company’s earnings release, rejoicing over Kindle Store exclusives and the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library. But, also typically, neither he nor the company offered hard numbers on Kindle sales for the quarter.

“Kindle is the bestselling e-reader in the world by far,” Bezos said. “I assure you we’ll keep working hard so that the Kindle Store remains yet another reason to buy a Kindle!”

Look, if it’s “the bestselling e-reader in the world by far,” then how about showing us some numbers?

Anyway …

Looking ahead, the company said it expects second quarter revenue of $11.9 billion to $13.3 billion.

A couple details worth noting:

Kindle Fire remains the #1 bestselling, most gifted, and most wished for product Amazon offers.
9 out of 10 top sellers on Amazon.com were digital products, I.E.: Kindle, Kindle books, movies, music and apps
Worldwide Media sales grew 19 percent to $4.71 billion.
North American sales were $7.43 billion, up 36 percent from the year prior.
International sales hit $5.76 billion, up 31 percent from first quarter 2011.

Barnes & Noble Wants to Be Amazing in Bed, With New GlowLight Nook

Lauren Goode — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 20:45:46 +0000

There are E-Ink devices that are great for the beach but not great at night, and there are tablet screens that shine brightly in dark rooms but aren’t ideal in sunlight.

So Barnes & Noble is combining E-Ink with a backlit screen in its newest Nook, the Nook Simple Touch with GlowLight.

The 6.5-inch device comes with a glare-free e-reading screen, and text appears in E-Ink, but the Nook’s “N” button at the bottom of the device activates GlowLight and lights up the screen.

The new Nook, which costs $139, also claims faster page-turning and longer battery life than the original Nook Touch — up to 60 hours of continuous reading with the GlowLight turned on to around 18 percent, which sounds a lot dimmer than it is. At 6.95 ounces, it also weighs 5 percent less than its predecessor.

At a New York press event today, Barnes & Noble executives invited journalists to literally hop into bed with them in a dimly-lit room in a Manhattan hotel, where the new device was propped up against Amazon’s Kindle Touch and Apple’s new iPad. The company said internal research shows that two-thirds of U.S. adults say they read in bed, and that 42 percent get annoyed when a partner reads in bed with the light on.

The iPad and Kindle Fire tablet were also displayed alongside the hotel’s outdoor rooftop pool, in direct sunlight. (When asked what the contingency plan was if it rained today, a Barnes & Noble exec said, “Lots of lighting.”)

Barnes & Noble is clearly taking aim at its competitors and looking to stand out in the e-reader category, following disappointing sales of the first Nook Touch.

As AllThingsD’s Peter Kafka reported, in January the company said Nook sales overall were up 70 percent over the holidays, driven by the new Nook Tablet, which competes with the Kindle Fire and iPad. Barnes & Noble also said at the time it was exploring a spinoff of the Nook e-reader unit.

While this device might appeal to an audience serious about e-reading, it’s not for tablet-seekers. While it is Wi-Fi enabled, it doesn’t come with apps, aside from the option to purchase and download e-books from the Barnes & Noble online bookstore, and it doesn’t offer a Web browser. Consumers who buy Barnes & Noble e-books, however, can read that content on apps across other devices.

At $139, the Nook with GlowLight is more expensive than the $99 Kindle Touch Wi-Fi e-reader and costs slightly less than the Kindle Touch with 3G.

The device is available for preorder today, will ship in early May and is expected to hit Barnes & Noble stores in late April.

Two Screens Aren't Better Than One for Sony Tablet P

Walter S. Mossberg — Wed, 21 Mar 2012 01:03:11 +0000

One way to stand out in a crowded category of devices is to employ a novel hardware design. Last year, Sony got decent marks from many reviewers, including me, for an Android tablet called the Tablet S, crafted to look like a magazine, with one thick, rounded vertical edge that made it more comfortable to hold than many other tablets. Now, the company has brought out another Android tablet with an even more radical design, and this one shows the limits of novelty.

[ See post to watch video ]

The new Tablet P, sold in AT&T stores, is a 7-inch long, narrow, hinged device with no exposed display at all. When you open it, twin small screens are revealed. Content can appear on one of the two screens, or be spread across both. It can operate over either a Wi-Fi or a cellular-data connection.

It sounds cool, but the Tablet P has some crucial drawbacks. The most important one is that, to take advantage of its full viewing area by using both screens as a single display, you must put up with a thick, black, plastic bar across the center of whatever you’re viewing. That disruptive scar is the inside of the hinge, where the dual screens meet.

Some apps avoid that absurd situation by cramming all their content into just one screen. But these screens are small, just 5.5 inches diagonally, closer to the area of a large smartphone than Sony’s Tablet S or the iPad, whose screens are about 10 inches. When content is spread across both screens, as it is in the Web browser, the combined display is about 7 inches, but that black bar is present.

To be fair, Sony has modified or created some apps so they take intelligent advantage of the dual screens, without the black bar to annoy you. For instance, the email app uses the bottom screen to list your messages and the top one to show whichever message you’re reading. Similarly, the stock video player, and many games, use the bottom screen for control buttons and the top for the content.

But at launch, there are only about 40 such specially adapted apps out of the hundreds of thousands of Android apps the Tablet P can run. Sony says more will be coming, but I suspect that will depend on how many of these foldout tablets it can sell. And I can’t recommend this one.

Sony has built-in on-screen buttons that can switch some apps from single-screen to combined-screen mode. But this isn’t available in some common, crucial apps, like the Web browser and Google Maps, which must be run in combined-screen mode, with the bar in the middle. You can’t run different apps in each screen, only separate parts of the same app.

Because it folds up, the Tablet P is much more portable than iPad-size tablets, or even 7-inch tablets like the Amazon Kindle Fire. It fits in a pants or jacket pocket or a modest-size purse. But when closed, its surfaces are rounded and have an overall thickness of a whopping 1.03 inches — much thicker than a typical smartphone or tablet — and so created a bulge.

There are other downsides. The Tablet P is relatively costly for a small tablet. Sony sells it online for $550, more than the base iPad and much more than the $199, 7-inch Fire. AT&T sells it for $400, but that price requires a two-year contract costing either $35 or $50 a month, depending on how much data you want.

This new tablet comes with a paltry amount of memory. It is packaged with a 2 gigabyte removable memory card and 4 gigabytes of internal storage, of which just 1.8 gigabytes is available to the user. That is a total of less than 4GB, versus 16GB for the base iPad. You can buy a larger memory card, up to 32GB, but that adds about $30 in cost.

Battery life also is weak. In my standard battery test, where I play videos back to back with the screen at 75 percent brightness and both Wi-Fi and cellular connections turned on, the Tablet P lasted just 5 hours and 16 minutes, about half the battery life of an iPad. The battery is removable and a spare can be bought for $70.

And the cellular-data connection isn’t the fastest type. While it is labeled as 4G, it doesn’t use the best 4G technology, called LTE. In my tests, in the Washington, D.C., area, the Tablet P averaged just 3.7 megabits per second over cellular, versus more than 12 mbps for a new iPad running on AT&T’s LTE network.

Finally, there is the hardware. I found the screens and cameras were OK, but the speaker was very weak. And, in the few days I was using it, a little door covering the USB port fell off and the top cover, which I had removed to insert a cellular SIM card, kept coming loose.

Portability is a virtue, and some companies are working on flexible screens that could bend without exposing a hinge. But in my view, the Tablet P doesn’t cut it.

Write to Walt at walt.mossberg@wsj.com

Walt Mossberg and Lauren Goode Talk New iPad on WSJ Digits

Walt Mossberg — Thu, 15 Mar 2012 19:27:55 +0000

On WSJ Digits today, Walt Mossberg joined Simon Constable and Lauren Goode to follow up on his review of the new iPad. They cover the spectacular Retina Display, the fast LTE cellular connection, the voice dictation feature, and the long-running battery life.

Check out Walt and Lauren on Digits below:

[ See post to watch video ]

New iPad: A Million More Pixels Than HDTV

Walter S. Mossberg — Thu, 15 Mar 2012 01:02:47 +0000

Apple’s iPad could be described as a personal display through which you see and manipulate text, graphics, photos and videos often delivered via the Internet. So, how has the company chosen to improve its wildly popular tablet? By making that display dramatically better and making the delivery of content dramatically faster.

[ See post to watch video ]

There are other changes in the new, third-generation iPad — called simply “iPad,” with no number, which goes on sale on Friday at the same base price as its predecessor, $499. But the key upgrades are to those core features — the 9.7-inch screen and the data speed over cellular networks. These upgrades are massive. Using the new display is like getting a new eyeglasses prescription — you suddenly realize what you thought looked sharp before wasn’t nearly as sharp as it could be.

Boosting those particular features — the screen and the cellular speed — usually has a negative impact on battery life in a digital device. But Apple has managed to crank them up them while maintaining the long battery life between charges that has helped give the iPad such an edge over other tablets.

Objects, like the trees in this photo of Glacier National Park in Montana that Walt made his screen wallpaper, look sharper on the new iPad.

That doesn’t mean there aren’t other trade-offs. Mostly to make room for a larger battery, the new iPad weighs about 8% more and is about 7% thicker than the prior model. That means the company can’t claim to have the thinnest and lightest tablet, as it boasted last year with the iPad 2. (It’s still thinner and lighter than the original iPad.)

I’ve been testing the new iPad, and despite these trade-offs, its key improvements strengthen its position as the best tablet on the market. Apple hasn’t totally revamped the iPad or added loads of new features. But it has improved it significantly, at the same price.

It has the most spectacular display I have ever seen in a mobile device. The company squeezed four times the pixels into the same physical space as on the iPad 2 and claims the new iPad’s screen has a million more pixels than an HDTV. All I know is that text is much sharper, and photos look richer.

If you already own an iPad 2, and like it, you shouldn’t feel like you have to rush out to buy the new one. However, for those who use their iPads as their main e-readers, and those who use it frequently while away from Wi-Fi coverage, this new model could make a big difference.

The optional, extra-cost, 4G LTE cellular-data capability made it feel like I was always on a fast Wi-Fi connection. I loved the photos and videos I took with the greatly improved rear camera. And the battery life degraded by just 11 minutes, a figure that is still much better than on any tablet I’ve tested.

Letters that seemed sharp on the iPad 2, far left, suddenly felt fuzzier when compared with the new iPad’s ‘retina’ display, left. (It’s hard to reproduce on a web page.)

Along with the unmatched collection of 200,000 third-party programs designed for its large screen, and the large catalogs of music, books, periodicals and video content available for it, I can recommend the new iPad to consumers as their best choice in a general-purpose tablet.

The exceptions would be people who prefer a smaller size for one-handed use, or those who find the weight a burden. While the weight gain was noticeable, I didn’t find it a problem even for long reading or video-watching sessions. The extra thickness was barely discernible.

For the weight conscious, and for those who can’t swing the $499 entry cost, there is an out. Apple for the first time is making and selling the prior iPad model at a reduced price. The iPad 2 will now be available starting at $399, with just one choice of storage capacity — 16 gigabytes. The new iPad can be bought in 16, 32 or 64 GB capacities, at prices up to $829. The optional cellular capability costs the same as the slower 3G capability, both up front and in monthly fees from Verizon and AT&T.

The Display

It’s not as if people are complaining about the screens on their iPads, a device so attractive and useful that Apple sold about 55 million of them in two years. But this display is a big leap forward.

It’s hard to illustrate on a Web page or in print how brilliant this new display is. You have to see it. Apple calls it a “retina” display because, at normal viewing distance, there are so many pixels per inch, the human eye can’t pick them out individually. This display packs 264 pixels into every inch, twice as many as on iPad 2. Overall, the resolution is 2048 x 1536, versus 1024 x 768 for the iPad 2.

My epiphany came when I placed my iPad 2 next to the new model, with the same text on the screen. Letters and words that had seemed sharp on the older model five minutes earlier suddenly looked fuzzier.

As I tested the new model over five days, I found I was able to use smaller font sizes to read books and email. The same photos I had enjoyed on the older model looked much better on the new one, not only because of the increased resolution, but because Apple claims it increased color saturation by 44%. One thing Apple hasn’t fixed: like all glossy, LCD color displays, this one still does poorly in direct sunlight.

The new iPad’s 4G LTE cellular speeds are faster than many home Internet connections, as seen in this speed test showing how fast it would take to download data.

The Speed

The new iPad is hardly the first device to use 4G LTE cellular technology, but it marks a huge difference from the iPad 2. On Verizon’s network in Washington and Austin, Texas, I averaged LTE download speeds of over 17 megabits per second, faster than most home wired networks. A colleague using a new iPad on AT&T’s LTE network averaged over 12 mbps. My iPad 2 running Verizon’s 3G network averaged just over 1 mbps. Of course, you can get a Wi-Fi only model, at $130 less. The base $499 model is Wi-Fi only.

There is another dimension to speed: the overall responsiveness of the device. The new iPad is just as buttery smooth to use as the iPad 2. Apple beefed up the processor, especially its graphics capabilities.

The Battery

Apple claims up to 10 hours of battery life between charges, and up to nine hours if you are relying strictly on cellular connectivity. In my standard battery test, where I play videos back to back with both cellular and Wi-Fi on, and the screen at 75% brightness, the new iPad logged 9 hours and 58 minutes, compared with 10 hours and 9 minutes for the iPad 2. Other tablets died hours sooner in the same test. In more normal use, the new iPad lasted more than a full day, though not as long as the iPad 2 did.

The Rear Camera

Like the iPad 2, the third-generation iPad has front and rear cameras. The front camera, meant mainly for video chats, hasn’t changed. But the rear camera, which was awful for photos on the iPad 2, and was estimated at less than a single megapixel of resolution, has greatly improved. It’s now a 5-megapixel shooter with improved optics. I loved the photos and videos it took, indoors and out.

Other features

The new iPad is the first that can be used, like many smartphones, as a personal hot spot — a base station to connect laptops and other devices to the Internet. In my tests, this worked fine.

It also allows you to dictate, rather than type, emails and other text. I found this surprisingly accurate. And Apple now has a brilliant new version of its iPhoto software that has been rewritten for the iPad, reviewed this week by Katie Boehret.

Bottom Line

Since it launched in 2010, the iPad has been the best tablet on the planet. With the new, third-generation model, it still holds that crown.

Write to Walt at mossberg@wsj.com.

So Maybe the Kindle Fire Wasn't Quite That Hot

Peter Kafka — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 17:18:50 +0000

Amazon has sold a lot of Kindle Fires, but not as many as Anthony DiClemente once thought.

The Barclays analyst now thinks Amazon moved five million units in the last few months of 2011. That’s down from his earlier estimate of 5.5 million, which was up from an even earlier estimate of 4.5 million.

Of course, Amazon could clear all this up by simply telling investors how many devices it sells. But if you held your breath waiting for that to happen, you would need really, really strong lungs.

If you like tracking analyst prognostications, you should also note that DiClemente has lowered his 2012 Kindle Fire and e-reader estimates, in part because he now thinks Amazon may not release new models until the second half of the year.

Amazon and Apple: Two Tablet Makers, Two Drastically Different Fourth Quarters

Tricia Duryee — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 01:00:21 +0000

The Amazon Fire is selling really, really well.

So well, in fact, that the tablet market is often characterized as being a two-horse race between the tricked-out Amazon e-reader and Apple’s iPad.

But when it comes down to the numbers, the two companies couldn’t be more different, like comparing Apples to oranges.

Tomorrow, Amazon is expected to report a giant fourth quarter, but it’s guaranteed not to look anything like Apple’s monstrous results reported last week for the same period.

Here’s one data point: For the holiday period, Apple’s gross margin was an impressive 44.7 percent, up from 38.5 percent a year earlier. Meanwhile, analysts are estimating that Amazon’s operating margin will fall to 1.3 percent from 3.6 percent last year.

The specifications of the two tablets can be compared side by side, but a completely different vocabulary is needed to speak intelligently about the two businesses. Simply put, Apple is a hardware maker and Amazon is a retailer.

One has very high margins and the other doesn’t, resulting in two drastically different financial outcomes today. But over time, the idea is for that to change.

Rather than making money from hardware sales, Amazon’s approach to the Fire is to generate incremental sales from other goods and services on the device. Some analysts feel that, over time, that play can create a reliable and recurring revenue stream – and ultimately higher margins.

Tomorrow, Amazon is expected to report sales of $18.3 billion in the fourth quarter, up more than 40 percent from the same period in 2010, according to FactSet Research. Q4 earnings are expected to fall notably to 17 cents a share from 91 cents a year ago.

While revenue growth is impressive, the company’s profitability is being weighed down by losses from the $199 Kindle (which is not quite a break-even proposition), the construction of more warehouses across the globe (17 were added in 2011 for a total of 69) and other investments in infrastructure, like its cloud-computing services and media services, like video, music and e-books.

In contrast, Apple has a rich markup on its iDevices and doesn’t have much of the same overhead as Amazon.

Still, the number of consumers Amazon touches in just one quarter is staggering, and it continues to take share from brick and mortar retailers.

As J.P. Morgan analyst Douglas Anmuth points out in a report, e-commerce grew about 15 percent in Q4 in the U.S. due to strong holiday sales, but he expects Amazon’s growth rate to more than double that to 47 percent year over year.

Anmuth is also bullish that while the fourth quarter could represent a “low point for margins,” Amazon could start seeing an uptick in margin as soon as the first quarter, now that a number of services and some key infrastructure are set in place.

However, don’t expect much insight tomorrow into the company’s long-range plans. The Seattle-based company is typically short on details during its earnings release and call.

If it follows standard protocol, it could provide an update on warehouses being built next year, number of employees and other infrastructure investments, but will likely dodge answers about how many Kindles it shipped during the quarter, or how much Kindle Fire owners are purchasing on the devices.

For now, we’ll have to settle for analyst estimates.

On Sunday evening, Stifel Nicolaus analyst Jordan Rohan raised his estimate for fourth-quarter Fire sales to six million units from five million.

While only on the market for a limited time, that’s still a lot less than Apple, which sold 15.43 million iPads, up 111 percent year over year.

Amazon’s stock dropped 1.65 percent, or $3.22, today to close at $192.15 a share.

App Makes Readers' Thoughts an Open Book

Katherine Boehret — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 23:26:09 +0000

Even the shyest airplane passengers are hard-pressed to remain mum when a seatmate pulls out a book with a familiar cover. Now, thanks to the popularity of e-books, these once visible book covers are shrouded in the nondescript cases of Kindles, Nooks and iPads.

[ See post to watch video ]

This week, I tried Subtext, a free iPad app designed to enable and encourage conversations based on e-books—not necessarily with fellow plane passengers, but among readers within digital books themselves. A revamped version of Subtext, originally released in October, is available in Apple’s App Store Tuesday.

On the Subtext iPad app, a reader’s profile page, with her shelf of books.

Like Amazon’s Kindle already does, Subtext gives anyone who reads an e-book the ability to make notes, highlight passages and to keep private or share those notes or highlights with other users. But this app goes much further: It also lets readers post questions, polls, quizzes or even Web links that are noted in the margins of the book. Other users respond to these posts and start mini book discussions that can continue indefinitely. Subtext content can be kept private, made visible to all users or made visible only to a user’s friends. Along with comments from fellow readers, Subtext users can see comments marked in blue that are made by a book’s author or other experts.

Unfortunately, Subtext smacks of immaturity when compared with other reading apps like Amazon’s Kindle app and Barnes & Noble’s Nook app. While those work on several devices and operating systems, Subtext works only on Apple’s iPad. It only runs with books from Google Books or those in Adobe’s ePub format, and the process for getting the latter—emailing the book to oneself or downloading the file from a website to the iPad—is clumsy and not intuitive. Co-founder Rachel Thomas said Subtext is actively developing for other platforms.

Another issue is that Subtext is only as good as its users’ involvement. The more people comment and create discussions, the more interesting it will be for others. For this to happen, the app has to lure readers away from the devices and apps they’re already comfortable with, like the Kindle or Nook, or the Kindle, Nook and Apple iBooks apps on the iPad.

I got an early look at the new version of Subtext and found it more self-explanatory than its predecessor. I signed in using my Google account, though users can sign in using a Facebook account or explore the app as a guest. By signing into my Google Account, my shelves were populated with the Google e-books I already purchased. Previews of books give users a sense of what the app does.

A Discussions section neatly organizes all social interactions about books in one place.

Users can tap on any book cover to see all content and social information related to that book. Likewise, tapping on any user profile image lets you visit that person’s shelf. A Featured Shelves section suggests different categories of books like Critics Picks 2011 and 2011′s Most Social Books.

As I used Subtext for the first time, small hint windows floated onto the iPad screen at certain points to demonstrate how things worked. One encouraged me to tap and hold my finger on the screen at a favorite book passage to see options for adding notes to that passage. I tried this a few times, including while reading a line in Tina Fey’s “Bossypants” about working moms with kids. I highlighted this passage and posed a question to all Subtext users: How many kids does Tina Fey have? Someone, who I later found out was Subtext’s co-founder Andrew Goldman, answered about an hour later, saying Ms. Fey has two daughters—a 6-year-old and a 6-month-old.

The Discussions section of the app neatly organizes all social interactions in one place, so people don’t have to skip back through books to see the continued conversations surrounding a question.

I like the way Subtext subtly notifies readers that notes exist: by showing a tiny thumbnail image of the user who posted the note in the margin of a book. Tapping on that image opens the note. I commented on some existing discussions by tapping the Reply button.

I created a note for one book passage using a related Web link, and the steps for doing this were clear and understandable. I kept this visible only to myself; other times, I made notes about passages and shared them only with my friends who I could invite to use Subtext via Facebook or email.

But what’s to stop someone from posting something inaccurate or abusive? Users can flag any note as inappropriate or as a spoiler, and the note is reviewed by the company. Users can vote on others’ comments, and over time, comments with more votes will be more broadly distributed.

As of now, authors and experts have enhanced just 18 books in Subtext, though users have left thousands of notes across books. The few books enhanced by authors or experts were fun to read. Steven Levy remarked on a line in his book, “In the Plex,” that described his travels from San Francisco to Tokyo, Beijing, Bangalore and Tel Aviv: “Newsweek paid for my trip, shelling out over $10,000 for my expenses. Kind of ironic because a couple of years later, Newsweek itself sold for $1.”

Apple Unveils iPad Textbook Plan

Peter Kafka — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 14:25:18 +0000

Greetings! We’re here at New York’s iconic Guggenheim Museum, awaiting the start of Apple’s “Education Announcement.” The expectation is that we’ll hear about new publishing tools that allow educators and others to create their own iPad-friendly textbooks, but we should know soon enough. The event is slated to kick off at 10 am ET, but we’ll start chatting live now:

9:34 am: We’ve arrived. Here’s the scene outside the Guggenheim Museum.

9:43 am: As we wait for the event to get started, here are some “CliffsNotes” on what we might see from Apple today.

9:45 am: Hi there, from Peter! Lauren Goode and I, along with a couple hundred other people, are still stuck in the stairwell of the museum, waiting to be seated.

9:50 am: Line is moving slowly now.

9:52 am: Hello there. Apple has let us into the Guggenheim’s basement auditorium.

Just spotted McGraw-Hill CEO Terry McGraw in the audience. Not sure if he’s sitting with us, or will be popping up onstage.

9:54 am: Ah. I see that the American corporate mandate to play Adele at every event has continued into 2012. So we are still rolling in the deep.

We could have had it all, you know.

9:57 am: Lights down. Adele still belting.

9:58 am: First up: Apple marketing head Phil Schiller.

“Education is deep in our DNA, and it has been from the very beginning.”

Apple has a unique understanding of learning, student achievement. “We’re so proud to take part in anything we can do to help students learn.”

New change in schools via iPad is “profound and remarkable.”

Shot of toddler watching Dora on iPad, which looks very familiar.

But education has challenges, “which are pretty profound.”

Life is tough for high school kids in the U.S. Freshmen have a 70 percent chance of graduating. In “hard-hit urban areas,” that’s 60 percent.

Even if you do graduate, you probably won’t be prepared to compete internationally. List of poor showing by U.S. in world education rankings.

Now a video reel of teachers bemoaning the state of affairs, backed up by swelling music track.

Basic message: Schools are in lousy shape. “We need a reset. We need a way to find out what’s wrong, and fix it,” says last teacher, in a nice sweater.

Schiller is back. “No one person or company can try to fix it all.” But Apple can help. Specifically with “student engagement.”

Of course, kids like iPads, Schiller says. Extolls virtues of iPad, which we don’t need to tell you about here. “Affordable, not only for families but for schools.”

20,000+ education apps built specifically for iPad.

And lots of iBooks would work very nicely in schools, too.

1.5 million iPads in use in “education institutions.” We want to accelerate that. So we’re announcing two initiatives:

10:06 am: 1) “Reinventing textbooks.”

Books are awesome. They’ve transformed society and will always be with us. But they’re not an ideal learning tool for kids. Cumbersome, get dog-eared, “written-in, worn, just not the ideal teaching tool.” Image of badly-beaten book.

Books aren’t portable enough. Not durable enough. Not interactive. Not searchable. Can’t be updated. “The content is great,” though.

10:07 am: But the iPad? That’s awesome. It’s all of those things that a lowly book is not.

But “can you get amazing content turned into a new generation of digital books?”

10:08 am: So here is iBooks 2 — a “new textbook experience for the iPad.”

“These are beautiful books.” Here’s a demo, with Roger Rosner, who has helped build the new product.

Biologist E.O. Wilson introduces a new digital textbook, which features multitouch, video, navigation via thumbnails, etc. “These are gorgeous, gorgeous books. They’re really in a class by themselves.”

“Clearly, no printed textbook could compete with this.”

Lots of pinchy-zoomy. “Again, nothing like that on the printed page.”

So here I will point out that the most obvious issue is the same one that magazine publishers faced during the initial iPad launch — someone needs to figure out how to pay for a system where you can build all this new cool digital stuff, while you continue to publish your old paper-and-ink products. After some initial experiments, most magazine guys have retreated to more or less republishing the existing product, with a few bells and whistles.

Okay, back to Rosner, still demoing cool stuff like interactive text that lets you access a glossary by highlighting a word. “That is so much better than a paper glossary could ever hope to be.”

10:14 am: Hopefully, the pictures that Lauren Goode is taking give you a good idea of what Rosner is showing off. This stuff does look gorgeous, of course.

Half the crowd applauds.

10:15 am: Still demoing. Quizzes and review questions built into book. “The bottom line is immediate feedback.”

Can highlight text with finger, change color, etc. Add notes.

10:17 am: Turn notes into study cards. Can turn glossary terms into study cards. “No more ever having to make paper flash cards, right?”

More applause for card demo. “I don’t think there’s a textbook that’s ever made it this easy to be a good student.”

New textbook category in iBookstore.

10:20 am: Demo over, Schiller back up. Summarizes selling points.

10:20 am: Now on to creation. “That’s just as important.”

iBooks Author (i.e., what people have been calling “GarageBand for books”).

“Easy to use, feature-rich,” will work for any kind of book, not just textbooks. But “focused most of all” on textbooks.

10:21 am: Rosner back up. “Traditionally, creating electronic interactive books has been really hard.” We can fix that.

Uses some familiar iWork workflow. Drag and drop. Can type into editor or bring in Word files, etc.

More applause after program reformats and flows Word doc.

This looks very slick and easy. No surprise there.

Ah. I can now see that McGraw-Hill CEO Terry McGraw is in the audience, soaking it in with the rest of us.

Can integrate Keynote into text. More applause for that.

Rosner still demoing. If you’ve ever been involved in making e-books before, “you know that this is a total miracle in terms of time savings.”

More applause for fast turnaround between creation and working book showing up on iPad. “I just think that’s totally awesome, right? In just five minutes flat, we created a totally interactive book.”

More applause, and some excited hoots.

10:29 am: Schiller back. “Anyone can create stunning, interactive books.”

Authoring tools “often cost hundreds to thousands of dollars.” But we want to make sure that anyone can use this — even teachers. New iBooks Author will be free.

Available today on Mac App Store. More applause.

Reminder that iBookstore will have new textbooks category.

Partners (this is key part).

High school textbooks. Will launch at $14.99 or less.

Names of publishers? Have yet to hear from Schiller.

Here we go: “We have had some phenomenal companies really work with us”: Pearson, McGraw-Hill, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. “They have been great partners with us.”

McGraw-Hill, for instance, wil be providing algebra, biology, chemistry books, etc. “They are incredible.”

“Can’t overemphasize” how important it is for publishers to work with us.

Also working with DK Publishing. Four new kids’ books.

Another partner: E.O Wilson Biodiversity Foundation. “If you don’t know E.O. Wilson, you should.” More applause.

First chapters of “Life on Earth” are available now, for free. Future chapters will be available at low price.

And now, a video. “We couldn’t help ourselves … I hope you enjoy it.”

More hopeful teachers and music this time out.

So while video is rolling, let’s review: By far the most important announcement today is that Apple has partnered with three of the big textbook publishers. Don’t have details on that, but the fact that this isn’t a flat-out end run around the textbook industry is crucial. Obvious parallel here is iTunes music launch in 2003, when Apple worked with the big labels instead.

Eddy Cue, who many of us thought would be at event, shows up in video, instead.

And Terry McGraw is in the video, as well.

So is Pearson CEO Marjorie Scardino.

John Deasy, superintendent for Los Angeles Unified School District.

10:44 am: Video over, more applause. Ah. Schiller has more. Here comes Eddy Cue.

10:45 am: As John Paczkowski noted early this month, Apple is overhauling iTunes U.

700 million downloads of iTunes U content in the last four years. So far, mostly used to download college lectures. (I’m responsible for one of them! A Robert Shiller talk I keep meaning to listen to.)

“We want to let teachers do a whole lot more.” Create entire classes online. Via all-new iTunes U app.

Jeff Robbin, VP of iTunes, for demo.

Not just books, but “new complete, online courses.” Here’s a chemistry course from Duke University.

Some of this is gunning at Blackboard, the college standard for online education software, which lots of people (users and would-be competitors) would like to disrupt.

Ability for teachers to post notes for students, download videos to iPad or stream, etc.

Demo over, more applause. Hard to explain/see how this will work unless you’re actively using it within the context of school, I think.

Cue rattles off list of colleges using iTunes U already. Six of them have used the new software — Duke, Stanford, Yale — and have created more than 100 courses already. “All of it for free.”

So far, mostly used for higher education. But now available for K-12. More applause.

10:54 am: Cue off, Schiller back.

Love of education “has been instilled in Apple since the very beginning. And it’s as true today as it ever was before.”

“We hope that educators will look back on today’s announcements just as fondly” as past Apple education initiatives.

“I hope you’re as excited about these announcements as we are.” Schiller finishes up, event over.

Thanks for tuning in. We’ll now get a chance to play with some of this stuff hands-on, and I’m going to talk to at least one of the publisher partners Apple talked about today. More in a bit.

There Better Be Some Cool Stuff at CES, Because CE Holiday Sales Data Bytes!

Kara Swisher — Sun, 08 Jan 2012 19:26:06 +0000

Just as the annual Consumer Electronics Show kicks off this week, according to a report from the NPD Group: Consumer electronics sales during this past holiday period dropped six percent from last year.

That should be some not-so-welcome news for the vendors at the Las Vegas gadget confab, which is seeking to show off new wares to excite said consumers.

Those offerings had better step it up, from a look at the NPD Weekly Tracking Service, which noted that the decline was coming off another decline from a year ago.

While 2011′s drop was not as bad as 2010′s, it’s not the right direction, although the tally did not include some of the more explosive device categories being prominently featured at CES, such as tablets.

Said NPD: “Total consumer technology sales (excluding cell phones, tablets, e-readers, and video games) fell 5.9 percent to around $9.5 billion for the 5 weeks ending December 24, a slight improvement over the 6.2 percent decline in 2010.”

Sales of personal computers and televisions fell 4 percent, with flat unit volumes.

“2010 was the first year in quite awhile where the real drags on the core CE marketplace were not TVs and PCs,” said Stephen Baker, VP of industry analysis at NPD, in a press release. “Revenue for those two segments outperformed while the rest of the market dropped by more than 7 percent. The accelerated rate of decline in older technology categories such as DVD, GPS and MP3 players put a ceiling on how well the industry could perform during the holiday.”

Consumers did snap up flat-panel TVs, with screen sizes of 50 inches and higher rising by 32 percent in unit sales.

And the rocky 3-D TV business also grew by more than 100 percent, with TVs with “3D capability accounting for more than one in every five dollars spent on TVs during the holiday.”

Also up: Home theater systems (10 percent) and stand-alone streaming devices (65 percent).

But those increases did not stem the overall negative tide.

For other sectors, here’s the damage to holiday revenue in percentage change from 2011 dollars spent:

Blu-ray players: Down 17 percent.

Camcorders: Down 42.5 percent.

Digital picture frames: Down 37.5 percent.

GPS: Down 32.6 percent.

HDD: Down 25.1 percent.

Mice and keyboards: Down 7.1 percent.

MP3 players: Down 20.5 percent.

Multifunction printers: Down 9.9 percent.

Point-and-shoot cameras: Down 20.8 percent.

MORE CES NEWS:

Complete coverage

HP’s Former CTO: Ultrabooks Are Nothing New, webOS Still Has Life Yet

Walt Shows Off CES Gadgets for Fox Business News (Video)

What Kind of Web Video Plans Does Sony Have? (Video)

Fujitsu Seeking Way Into Crowded U.S. Smartphone Market

Why Rhapsody Is (Probably) Bigger Than Spotify — In the U.S.

Microsoft Beefing Up CeBit Presence Even as It Pulls Back on CES

Inside the CES Lost & Found

FCC Chairman Has New Tablet, but Same Script: More Spectrum!

Verizon Wireless: We Want to Connect Five Devices for Every Subscriber

Ultrabooks From HP and Lenovo That Are (Kinda, Sorta) Different

Walt and Katie Take a Tour of CES (Video)

Schmidt-Storm Alert: The Google Chairman Didn’t Like Your Question

T-Mobile Expands Bobsled Messaging Service

Intel Shows Just How It Plans to Get Into Phones (Video)

Motorola CEO: We’re Going to Release Fewer Phones This Year

Kinect Helps Keep Aging Xbox at the Top of Its Game

More From T-Mobile CEO: On Pricing, LTE and That Ever-Elusive iPhone

Exclusive: New Boss Acknowledges Windows Phone Still Has “Awareness Problem”

And You Thought Jawbone UP Was Going to Miss the CES Party!

Interview: T-Mobile CEO Says No Second AT&T Deal Out There

Grover Is at CES and I Am Missing It

BlueStacks Bringing Android Apps to Windows 8

Why the Future of TV Won’t Be Here Soon

Nvidia’s Tegra 3 Tries to Save Battery in All Sorts of Different Ways

Dynamic Dual Coverage: Ballmer’s Last Act in Vegas and the BCS Championship in 3-D

Microsoft Phoning In Its Last CES Keynote

Myspace — Yes, Myspace — Says It’s Going to Sell You Web TV

Samsung Unveils “Super” 55-Inch OLED TV

Nokia Unveils That LTE Windows Phone It’s Been Dying to Share

Steve Ballmer Gives Ralph De La Vega a Very … Vigorous Greeting (Video)

Interview: AT&T’s De La Vega on LTE, Tablets and Life After T-Mobile

AT&T’s De La Vega: Shared Data Plans Still in the Works

LG: 55-Inch Glasses-Free 3-D Screen Is on the Way

LG Pushes 4G Smartphone Through Verizon: The LG Spectrum

Live: AT&T’s Vegas Act Stars LTE and, Making Her Return to the Stage, Nokia

CES Notebook: The Constant Search for Power and Vegas’ Worst-kept Secret

Belkin Bringing Mobile TV to Lots of Cellphones, Will Anyone Tune In?

Acer Introduces “World’s Thinnest” Ultrabook and a “Me-Too” Cloud Service

There Better Be Some Cool Stuff at CES, Because CE Holiday Sales Data Bytes!

CES 2012: Snooki and Bieber Are In, Gaga Is Out!

Coming to a Smartphone Near You: Gorilla Glass 2

RIM Hopes Next PlayBook OS Will Impress at CES

Ultrabooks, the Ultra-Fancy New Name for Laptops

At CES, Expect More Gadgets Telling You to Get Off the Couch

Intel to Detail Its Phone Plans at CES Next Month

Microsoft Pulling Out of CES After Upcoming Show

Intel to Detail Its Phone Plans at CES Next Month

Dell Will Drop the Flashy Vegas Act for CES This Year

Ultrabook Conga Line Preps for CES 2012

Some Kindle Owners Upset After Receiving Cryptic Subscription Offer From Amazon

Tricia Duryee — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 04:02:09 +0000

Amazon has issued an apology tonight after upsetting Kindle owners, who learned this morning that they were selected to receive a publication they didn’t sign up for — and could be charged for in the future.

The problems kicked off this morning when Amazon started sending emails to select Kindle owners, alerting them to a free trial of “The Kindle Compass.”

In the email, Amazon failed to explain what “The Kindle Compass” was, and worse, implied that customers would be charged for it going forward.

An Amazon spokesperson said a second letter has been sent this evening, explaining that “The Kindle Compass” is a pilot project, and apologizing for any confusion over the price. “We built it to always be free for customers, and you will never be charged for it,” the company told its customers.

Still, the response comes hours after much of the damage had already been done.

Angry customers flooded Kindle forums, posting more than 100 complaints to topics called “Where is Kindle Compass Magazine?” and “Auto-Subscription to the Kindle Compass??”

The confusion was understandable.

In the original message, Amazon misled consumers about the terms: “If you enjoy your free trial, do nothing and your subscription will automatically continue at the monthly subscription rate.”

However, no rate was ever mentioned.

Even worse, those who contacted Amazon customer service said the reps weren’t familiar with the publication, so the best they could do was help them to unsubscribe to ensure they would not be charged. At this point, people are still confused as to what “The Kindle Compass” is all about.

A spokesperson did not return emails asking for more clarity on what the publication is, and it’s unclear how many customers were affected (not all Kindle owners received the email).

In the forums, the complaints centered on two concerns: That Amazon would sign them up for something they did not knowingly subscribe to, and that they may be charged for it.

One consumer, who used the name “Susabelle”, wrote: “I am absolutely APPALLED. Amazon, you should be completely ashamed of yourself!! An auto-subscription to a publication I’ve NEVER heard of, that you will be auto-billing me for after 14 days? HAVE YOU LOST YOUR MIND??”

Here is the apology Amazon sent to consumers this evening:

This morning we sent you an email regarding The Kindle Compass, a new free publication built by the Kindle editorial team that we’re piloting to a small number of Kindle customers.

This email incorrectly referred to The Kindle Compass as a subscription with a free trial. We built it to always be free for customers, and you will never be charged for it. We apologize for any confusion.

If you wish to unsubscribe from the pilot for The Kindle Compass you can do so from a link in the last section of the magazine, or from the Manage Your Kindle Subscriptions page at www.amazon.com/manageyourkindlesubscriptions.

Barnes & Noble Shops Publisher

Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 08:00:24 +0000

Barnes & Noble Inc. has put its Sterling Publishing business up for sale, say people familiar with the situation, signaling a likely end to its decades-long involvement in the publishing of its own books.

The book retailer has been in publishing since the 1970s and expanded the effort in 2003, when it acquired Sterling for about $115 million.

Now, however, Barnes & Noble, facing intense competition from Amazon.com Inc., is recasting itself as a technology company with emphasis on its Nook e-reading devices and its Nook tablet. The sale of Sterling would allow Barnes & Noble to focus on its core businesses.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

Year of the Talking Phone and a Cloud That Got Hot

Walter S. Mossberg — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 02:04:22 +0000

While other industries struggled, consumer technology seemed to march ahead as always in 2011, with important new products and services continuing to roll out. Sure, some tech companies, like BlackBerry maker Research In Motion, suffered reverses. And some products, like Hewlett-Packard’s TouchPad, flopped. But many shone.

[ See post to watch video ]

So here is a look at a few of the biggest tech products of the past year, with some analysis of what they signified and what issues they raise for 2012. As with all my columns, this one is focused only on products and services provided to consumers. Also, as usual, this column isn’t meant to offer investment advice or to evaluate the management skills or financial condition of companies.

The iDevices

Siri, right, the voice-controlled artificial-intelligence system, made the iPhone 4S stand out even though it looked like its predecessor.

Even in a year when its iconic leader, Steve Jobs, resigned as CEO and then passed away, Apple kept going from success to success. In March, it introduced the iPad 2, a thinner, lighter, faster version of its groundbreaking tablet and sold tens of millions of them. In October, it brought out the iPhone 4S, which proved popular even though it looked identical to the prior model. One reason: The phone introduced a voice-controlled artificial-intelligence system called Siri that answers questions and performs tasks without requiring typing or searching. Siri, while still rudimentary, could herald a revolution in practical artificial intelligence for consumers.

The lesson here is that Apple is driving the industry toward simpler, more reliable digital experiences tied into ecosystems of content and cloud services. It is expected to bring out radically new iPhones and iPads in 2012. But can it fend off challenges from popular, rapidly improving rivals using Google’s Android operating system? And, in the absence of Mr. Jobs, can it keep churning out game-changing hits?

With its ultralow price and Amazon connection, the Kindle Fire may be the first tablet to gain significant traction against the iPad.

The Kindle Fire

Despite some initial software flaws and its chunky, plain hardware, the diminutive Fire appeared to be the first color tablet to gain significant traction against the iPad. The biggest reasons are its ultralow $199 price and its tie-in to Amazon’s huge content library. But the Fire may have started a trend that could be a problem for Google: It demotes the Android operating system to an under-the-covers piece of plumbing, ignoring Google’s user interface and apps marketplace.

In 2012, Amazon is expected to bring out a larger, possibly sleeker Fire, and, if it continues to prove popular, it could attract larger numbers of apps designed for the Fire and sold only through Amazon. But despite its success with simple e-readers, Amazon has little experience as a maker of general-purpose computing devices, and it will have to be nimble and creative to keep up with Apple and more-traditional Android rivals.

LTE

Though several cellular technologies claim the moniker “4G” to indicate fast data speeds and greater capacity, only one, LTE (Long Term Evolution), delivers true broadband speeds consistently. This past year, it finally spread significantly in the U.S., both in terms of geography and in the number of devices supporting it. The LTE leader by far is Verizon Wireless and it has the potential to make the wireless Web, and wireless streaming of video, the equal of their wired counterparts. AT&T is racing to catch up and Sprint, which uses a different 4G system, says it will join the LTE parade.

But at this stage, LTE still consumes too much battery power. And LTE networks, if they become the norm, could get overwhelmed. To fend off this prospect, the biggest carriers in 2011 began charging more for greater data usage, a move that could curb the spread of innovative services that rely on large data downloads, such as video streaming and sharing of music and high-resolution photos.

More companies took advantage of cloud computing, with Google introducing the Chromebook, which relies almost entirely on the cloud.

The Cloud

Many players began offering consumers the opportunity to both store their data on, and run apps from, remote servers on the Internet, a system called cloud computing. Google even introduced a new kind of laptop, the Chromebook, that has almost no internal storage and relies almost entirely on the cloud. An example of a cloud service: music “lockers” that store all your songs on multiple devices. Cloud services are sure to expand in 2012, but questions remain on their reliability, security and privacy. And while most now cost little or nothing, these offerings could become another monthly fee burden for consumers.

Android became easier to use with the release of the Ice Cream Sandwich version, used in the Samsung Galaxy Nexus.

The Android Army

In 2011, Android overtook Apple’s iPhone and iPad operating system, called iOS, in users. Though no single Android device is as popular as the iPhone or iPad, Android is now the collective leader, with hundreds of devices using it. Samsung, in particular, had success with its Android-based Galaxy devices. And a new version, called Ice Cream Sandwich, continued Android’s steady improvement by making it easier to use. However, Google may be losing control of Android, as hardware makers and cellular carriers redefine it to suit their own needs, and fail to offer consumers updates in a timely fashion. Except for the Kindle Fire, the operating system hasn’t caught on in tablets.

Windows

Microsoft has been way behind in the new areas of super-smartphones and tablets. In 2011, the software giant began to try to reverse that situation. It introduced the first competitive version of its sleek, sophisticated Windows Phone software, called Mango, though so far without much uptake by consumers. And it previewed a bold new version of main Windows, called Windows 8, with a multitouch interface that, unlike Apple’s approach, is a single operating system meant for both PCs and tablets. It will start shipping in 2012.

Following in the Apple MacBook Air’s footsteps, a crop of thin and speedy ultrabooks, such as the Toshiba Portege Z835, pictured, became the new standard for laptops, with Windows PC makers coming up with their own versions of the machines.

Still, Windows Phone must somehow attract many more users. And Windows 8 is a gamble, because it includes two interfaces: the new tabletlike face and the old, familiar Windows look, which could confuse consumers.

Ultrabooks

In 2011, Apple’s MacBook Air, previously a niche product, became the new standard for laptops—thin, light, speedy, with long battery life and solid-state memory for storage instead of a hard disk. Now, Windows PC makers are following suit with similar machines called Ultrabooks.

Ultrabooks may recharge the Windows laptop scene in 2012. However, they will have to become less costly—they now hover at around $1,000—and their solid-state drives don’t offer the capacity of hard disks at an affordable price.

The Lenovo IdeaPad U300

Television

The reinvention of television picked up steam in 2011, albeit in a small way. Despite some miscues, Netflix streaming of TV shows to many devices grew in popularity. Set-top boxes that bring Internet video to TVs, like the Roku box and Apple TV, got better and more popular, though Google’s competing effort was a dud. Microsoft’s Xbox is set to compete strongly, using its Kinect add-on to find and play media apps with gestures and voice commands.

The big test may come in 2012, when Apple is believed to plan to ship a whole new type of Internet-connected TV, which the company hasn’t confirmed. A big obstacle: Cable and media companies will have a huge say in this potential revolution, and the current system serves them well.

So, 2011 was an exciting year in consumer technology. I can’t wait for 2012.

Email Walt at mossberg@wsj.com.

In Your Hands, Just What You Want to Read

Katherine Boehret — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 05:05:09 +0000

Personalized-reading apps save you from pawing through the Web for news and bring you more of what you want to read. Until now, these have been mostly found on tablets like the iPad, but Wednesday, the first of those apps moves to the smartphone for reading on the go.

[ See post to watch video ]

A new personalized-reading app for the iPhone is being launched by Flipboard, the design-centric company that led the customized-news charge with its app for iPad. News can be rapidly browsed with a thumb flick from the hand holding the iPhone, like a digital Rolodex. It’s the kind of thing you’ll want to show off to friends.

Flipboard’s iPad rivals aren’t far behind in the jump to phones, though each take a unique approach in how to a user personalizes content. Zite is an algorithm-generated personalized-magazine app for the iPad that plans to release an iPhone app very soon, perhaps even this week. A phone version is planned for AOL Editions, a personalized news magazine delivered to the iPad once a day. Yahoo’s Livestand app for iPad will expand next year to additional platforms, including Android tablets and possibly phones, according to a spokesman.

Flipboard for iPhone app

Google has been working on a personalized-reading app that individuals close to the company say will run on Android tablets and phones, the iPad and the iPhone. It will be released this month with the ability to use multiple accounts, offline reading and over 100 partners, according to the individuals.

For the past week, I’ve been testing a pre-release version of Flipboard for iPhone. I’ve also revisited Zite, AOL Editions, Yahoo Livestand and Flipboard on the iPad to check out some updated features in these apps. You may like one more than another depending on how much tweaking you want to do to the app’s settings. Most allow for users to take an active role in helping the app decide what kinds of things they want to read. Others, like Zite and AOL Editions, add an automated method to the process.

Flipboard for iPhone is enhanced by Flipboard Accounts, which was added to the iPad app last month. The feature lets families sharing iPads give each person an account that saves personalized settings and account information—including from Facebook and Twitter. The first time I signed into my Flipboard account on the iPhone made my phone feel a lot more useful. As I waited in line at Starbucks, I flipped through dozens of news bits and images from Flipboard partners like Bon Appetit and ProPublica, Facebook updates from my friends and tweets I follow. The bottom of each screen looked like a page flapping in the breeze—Flipboard’s playful way of reminding you to page forward for more content.

Zite’s iPad app

A lot is packed into each Flipboard nibble, though I never felt a screen was too crowded. A tap on each tweet pulled up a cartoon word bubble from which I could opt to mute tweets from someone, re-share content or star it as a favorite. Facebook updates displayed who else “liked” a status and let me add comments. A mini version of the red Flipboard ribbon, which opens settings on the iPad app, appears on the iPhone.

The Zite app for iPad curates its magazine content by studying a user’s reading behavior, though readers also can make manual tweaks. Zite can study who users follow on Twitter to generate a magazine filled with similar content. I’ve used Zite almost every morning for months without having to make any adjustments.

Starting this week, Zite has its first branded channel: Lululemon Athletica, which offers health articles and fitness tips. Zite also has multiple accounts for those who share an iPad.

AOL Editions

AOL’s Editions iPad app is a digital magazine that publishes once a day and has a beginning and an end. This means you can read the entire thing each day—a rarity in the online world of continuous updates. But it also means content can feel outdated at the end of the day. AOL Editions takes an algorithmic approach that can be helped manually. It incorporates Facebook and iCal calendars, so the first page shows calendar events and birthdays. As of October, it can now be read in landscape or portrait view.

Yahoo’s Livestand feels sluggish, with spinning circles appearing on the screen almost every time I tapped on something. The home screen is clearly focused on Yahoo content, according to the large Featured on Livestand section that takes up most of each screen. Even when I selected content I wanted in my Livestand, it was buried in a book labeled Personal Mix, and then I had to dig through sections within this book.

This month, Yahoo will add Twitter sharing (users can currently share to only Facebook or via email), and early next year Livestand will incorporate personal Twitter and Facebook feeds as topics. A subscription model is planned for certain publications.

Yahoo Livestand

Personalized-reading apps can change the way you consume information on the iPad—and they’ll soon start changing the way you consume information on smartphones.

Write to Katherine Boehret at katherine.boehret@wsj.com.

iPad Magazine Readers to Publishers: More, Please

Peter Kafka — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 02:00:46 +0000

After an initial wave of excitement about iPad magazines, some publishers have dialed back their enthusiasm. But the readers who have actually downloaded them like them quite a bit.

So says a survey commissioned by a publishers’ trade group: It finds that two-thirds of people who read magazines on tablets and e-readers think they’ll be spending more time with digital issues over the next year. Many of them — 46 percent — are consuming more magazines — both in print and digital form — than they did before they got their hands on an iPad.* And 63 percent of them want more digital stuff to read.

Overall, the survey has generally sunny news for the magazine business, though it’s fair to wonder if the Association of Magazine Media would release a survey that had glum news.

The report does offer some guidance for the industry: 89 percent of readers want publishers to adopt a uniform way of navigating magazines, and 69 percent like watching in-app videos that run less than minute.

The other point worth noting about the report is that it exists, period. The survey, conducted earlier this month, was completed by 1,009 people “pre-screened for their ownership of mobile devices and their use of magazine-branded apps.” Up until now, pollsters couldn’t have been able to find enough respondents to make that kind of poll possible, says Chris Kevorkian, the trade group’s executive vice president for digital: “We’ve been wanting to do this research for some time, but didn’t have the critical mass to query.”

*The survey isn’t explicitly about iPad magazine editions — in theory, it covers all tablet magazine apps, as well as magazines consumed on e-readers like the Kindle and the Nook. But the majority of these things are being read on Apple’s device.

Are We All Online Criminals?

Eric Felten — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 08:00:12 +0000

Ours is the age of fine print.

Consider how often we enter into legal agreements these days — and for nothing more than our entertainments. Once upon a time if you wanted a book you walked into a bookstore, paid your money and walked out with the book. Copyright law put some limits on what you could do with it, but you didn’t have to sign any special agreement. Now, according to the Amazon.com Conditions of Use, “If you visit or shop at Amazon.com, you accept these conditions.” The conditions follow and follow and follow — more than 2,000 words’ worth. It’s even worse if you choose to do your book reading on an e-reader. Amazon advises that if you’re not willing to sign an agreement running north of 2,500 words, “then you may not use the Kindle, any Reading Application, any Digital Content, or the Service.”

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

Kindle Fire, A Grown-Up E-Reader With Tablet Spark

Walter S. Mossberg — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 23:28:03 +0000

It’s often said that there isn’t really a tablet market, just an Apple iPad market with a bunch of other contenders fighting over the remnants. But, starting this week, that is likely to change, because Amazon is adding a multifunction color tablet to its popular Kindle line that costs less than half as much as an iPad 2.

[ See post to watch video ]

This new $199 device is called the Kindle Fire, and after testing it for a week, I think it’s a good—though not a great—product and a very good value. It doesn’t just add color to the Kindle, it adds a robust ability to store and stream music, TV shows and movies—and a weaker ability to store and display color photos. And it offers about 8,500 apps at launch, including Netflix, Angry Birds and QuickOffice.

To be clear, the Kindle Fire is much less capable and versatile than the entry-level $499 iPad 2. It has a fraction of the apps, a smaller screen, much weaker battery life, a slower Web browser, half the internal storage and no cameras or microphone. It also has a rigid and somewhat frustrating user interface far less fluid than Apple’s.

Kindle Fire

But the Fire has some big things going for it. First, the $199 price, though the Fire’s seven-inch screen is less than half the surface area of the iPad’s display. Second, the Amazon and Kindle brands, already known and loved for e-readers and more. Third, Amazon is the only major tablet maker other than Apple with a large, famous, easy-to-use content ecosystem that sells music, video, books and periodicals. The Fire can be thought of as a hardware front end to all that cloud content.

Finally, while the Fire, like many other tablets, is based on Google’s Android operating system, Amazon has taken the bold step of hiding Android. It shuns its user interface and nearly all of Google’s apps and services, including Google’s app store. The Fire’s software is all about the content and apps Amazon has sold you and the easy purchase of more.

When compared to the iPad 2, I suspect the Fire will appeal to people on a budget and to those who envision using the iPad mainly to consume content, as opposed to those who see the larger tablet as a partial laptop replacement. For instance, while the Fire has a decent Web browser and a rudimentary email program, it lacks basic built-in apps, such as a calendar, notepad or maps. However, for people primarily interested in reading books and periodicals, the Fire may seem too heavy and costly when compared with a low-end Kindle or Nook.

Barnes & Noble’s Nook Tablet

The Fire isn’t only competing with the iPad and other general-purpose tablets. It has to contend with a new, low-price, similar-size color tablet out this week from e-reader rival, Barnes & Noble. This device, the Nook Tablet, is B&N’s second-generation color slate and costs $249, still less than an iPad. I’ve also been trying it out for a few days and found it has some pluses and minuses compared with the Fire.

The Nook Tablet boasts double the internal storage and a slot to expand it. It has better battery life and a more interactive approach to children’s books. But beyond books and magazines, it lacks either Amazon’s or Apple’s large, simple, built-in ecosystem for other kinds of content, such as music, movies and TV shows.

Instead, Barnes & Noble boasts it offers choice, by including video apps like Netflix and music apps like Pandora. However, these same apps also appear on the Fire and the iPad, along with the Amazon and Apple stores.

And it appears to offer even fewer apps than Amazon does (Barnes & Noble doesn’t provide a number). Also, while its screen is the same size as the Fire’s, the Nook is larger overall, though a bit lighter.

Hardware

The Fire’s hardware is plain and clunky. It’s a thick black box with zero style. There isn’t even a volume control or a physical home button, and the on/off button is a small thing hidden inconveniently on the bottom edge.

In the quest to meet the $199 price point, Amazon omitted many features common on other tablets. There are no cameras or microphone, no GPS for determining your location, no Bluetooth for headsets or wireless speakers and no included earbuds. The Fire is Wi-Fi only—it has no built-in cellular connectivity. There isn’t even an included cable for connecting to a computer, something you may want to do to get photos into the Fire, since Amazon lacks an online photo service.

There is just 8 gigabytes of memory, half the total of the base iPad or the Nook Tablet, and only about 6 gigabytes of that is available to store content. If you want to download movies, you won’t be able to fit many into the Fire.

User Interface

When I first saw it, I really liked the Fire’s user interface. Instead of screens full of icons or folders, it presents virtual shelves filled with the books, magazines, music, TV shows, movies, apps and websites you’ve used. A large one has the most recent items, with smaller shelves below it. These are for your favorite items. Across the top is a search bar and a list of categories, like Books, Music, Videos, Apps.

But I became frustrated with the interface. There’s something off with the touch calibration on the top shelf, or Carousel, which scrolls through a seemingly endless stream of items. It can be difficult to get it to stop on the item you want and it takes more pressure than it should to open the selection.

Also, you can’t configure the main screen much. You can’t reorder the top shelf, and while you can place items on the favorites shelves, they are in the order you added them, not how you like them.

On the Nook Tablet, the user interface is a jumble of different approaches, which I consider confusing. There’s a main screen where you can place favorite icons but also see a scrolling row of items, a drop-down list of other items and a bottom row of tiny icons representing categories. But there’s also a separate interface called the library, with categories and shelves.

Browser

A big selling point for the Fire is a supposedly speedy Web browser called Silk, which splits the task of fetching Web pages between the tablet and Amazon’s super-fast cloud computers. The latter can cache common, static page elements and learn which sites and pages people most often use, so they are pre-fetched and ready to go when needed.

However, in my tests, the Fire’s Silk browser was noticeably slower than the iPad 2′s browser.

This pattern was consistent over scores of Web pages, and on four Wi-Fi networks and two different Fire devices. Amazon’s explanation is that its split-browser system requires lots of user data to achieve its speed advantages, and only a small number of people are using it, so it will get faster over time.

Content

I found it easy to buy, stream, download and use content on the Fire. Reading books was a pleasure, as on any Kindle. Movies and TV shows looked good, and music played quickly and well, despite weak speakers. In general, I found magazines and newspapers looked better on the iPad, mostly due to the larger screen.

Recognizing this, Amazon offers a “text view” of magazines, which makes them easier to read but loses the original formatting.

Screen

After years of suggesting the gray-scale, E-Ink screen on the Kindle was better for reading than a color LCD screen, Amazon now has a Kindle with the latter display. If anything, it struck me as glossier than the iPad screen. It’s vivid and sharp, but not high definition. When I asked an Amazon executive about the reading issue and the company’s past position, he suggested people who prefer E-Ink buy one of each Kindle and use the older style for reading, pointing out the pair would cost less than an iPad. I said, while that was true, such people would be carrying two devices, not one.

Battery Life

In my standard tablet battery test, playing back to back videos with the wireless turned on and the screen at 75% brightness, the Fire lasted 5 hours, 47 minutes, or less than 60% of the iPad 2′s performance on the same test, and about an hour less than the Nook Tablet’s performance. In more general use, I didn’t find myself worrying about the battery. But the Fire requires charging much more often than the traditional Kindle.

Bottom Line

At $199, and with Amazon’s content ecosystem behind it, the Fire is an attractive alternative for many people who might otherwise have bought an iPad or another Android device, especially if their principal interest is content consumption.

The Nook Tablet also is worth considering, though it lacks a music and video ecosystem.

Email Walt at mossberg@wsj.com.

A Kindle Swipes Fine, but Still Hooked on a Nook

Katherine Boehret — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 23:23:22 +0000

Despite the advantages of full-featured touchscreen tablets like the iPad, plenty of people opt for e-readers like Amazon’s Kindle, finding them more comfortable in the hand and easier on the eyes.

[ See post to watch video ]

This week, I tested the new Kindle Touch in a head-to-head comparison with Barnes & Noble’s Nook Simple Touch. The Kindle Touch includes several features that Kindle fans have been waiting for, particularly better navigation. The Nook Simple Touch, which came out last summer, dropped in price to $99 and received a software update last week.

Navigating these touchscreens is a breeze, and you’ll be happy reading with either the Kindle Touch or Nook Simple Touch. Both feature E-Ink, nonreflective screens without backlights—great for long stretches of reading. These smaller devices are also lighter than a tablet.

Overall, I prefer the Nook for its better price and usability.

The Nook

Each e-reader costs $99, but the Kindle Touch comes pre-loaded with so-called special offers—ads that take over the device’s screen when it’s in sleep mode and appear whenever you touch its Menu button. A Kindle Touch without on-screen ads is $139, or $40 more than the ad-free Nook. A Kindle Touch with a 3G Internet connection costs $149; Barnes & Noble doesn’t offer a 3G Nook Simple Touch.

Physically, the Kindle Touch is a bit taller, while the Nook is slightly wider with a contoured back that’s easier to hold. The Kindle Touch relies solely on tapping or swiping on the left or right of the device’s touchscreen to turn pages. Nook users can turn pages using these methods or physical buttons on the left and right sides of the screen.

I prefer the option of physical buttons so I can hold the device and not move my hand each time I want to turn the page. These buttons are also handy at times when touching the screen isn’t ideal, like after using suntan lotion at the beach.

Though the Kindle does a lot of the same things the Nook does, Amazon’s clever terms make these same actions sound more whimsical. When using the cloud to sync content and page location across devices, Amazon calls this Whispersync. Amazon’s community-generated encyclopedia is named Shelfari.

Three notable new features work with Amazon’s Kindle Touch.

X-Ray is a feature that displays book-report-like data points when someone taps the screen at any point while reading one of “thousands” (Amazon wouldn’t give a more specific number) of titles.

The Kindle

This could be a real boon for non-fiction readers, but since I don’t read a lot of non-fiction, X-Ray wasn’t too useful in my books. While reading John Grisham’s “The Litigators,” I used X-Ray to read Wikipedia descriptions of Chicago and Big Pharma. This data can also come from Shelfari.

The Kindle Owners’ Lending Library is available to Amazon Prime members—Prime costs $79 a year—and lets users borrow from over 5,000 titles. People who use this can borrow one book each month with no due date. I tried this and found books in the Kindle store listed with “borrow for free” icons where a price would normally display. I tapped this option beside “The Hunger Games” by Suzanne Collins, and the book was sent to my Kindle. An on-screen message notified me that I couldn’t borrow again until Dec. 1.

Finally, Kindle users can borrow books from their public library via easy, wireless downloads, though these are bound by the same lending rules as physical library books. I borrowed a book from my Washington, D.C., public library by browsing available Kindle books on the library’s website and virtually checking out a book after entering my library card number. I followed a link from there to Amazon.com, where I selected the “Get Library Book” box, which appeared where “Add to Cart” is normally found. Your Kindle must be using a Wi-Fi connection—not 3G—to get these books.

The Nook can only load library books via a clumsy USB cord transferring process. A Barnes & Noble spokeswoman said the company plans to offer Wi-Fi downloading of library books early next year.

If you’d rather lend books to fellow e-reader users, Kindle and Nook can do this. Books can be lent to friends for 14 days, during which time the book’s owner can’t read them.

The latest Nook software update makes improvements like the ability to turn pages faster. Both devices enable highlighting passages, though the Nook doesn’t allow public highlighting like the Kindle, which shares highlights with other readers. Both can send book details to friends via Facebook and Twitter. Kindle offers a text-to-speech function for books, which Nook lacks.

The Kindle Touch is a huge improvement on Amazon’s last Kindle, but Barnes & Noble’s Nook Simple Touch maintains its lead in this category.

Write to Katie at katie.boehret@wsj.com.

Amazon's Kindles Shipping Early, but Keep Waiting for Sales Figures

Tricia Duryee — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 16:24:20 +0000

The Kindle Fire will ship to customers today — one day early — and the company’s new lineup of E-ink devices will ship tomorrow — a full six days early. But how many of them have been sold? Amazon declines to say, as usual. In press releases, Amazon Kindle VP Dave Limp goes so far as to say that the Fire is Amazon’s bestselling item across the site, and that it is building millions more than planned. Meanwhile, sales of E-ink Kindles are “more than double any previous Kindle launch,” Limp added.

Barnes & Noble Rolls Out New Nook in New York

Peter Kafka — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 14:52:12 +0000

Score one for the Web: Last week, it got all the details of today’s Nook tablet launch correct, via leaked documents. The big ones: The new device will sell for $249; it will boast a faster processor and more memory than Amazon’s Kindle Fire, but will cost $50 more. Explaining why the machine commands that premium may prove a challenge for the bookseller, but we’ll have more on that later.

EARLIER:

Welcome to the Barnes & Noble at New York’s Union Square, where the bookseller is scheduled to roll out the new Nook, its answer to Amazon’s Kindle Fire (and every other tablet in a market dominated by the iPad).

Thanks to last week’s Web leaks, we know — or we think we know — all the relevant specs and prices, so a lot of my interest in this morning’s event will come from the way Barnes & Noble positions its $249 machine against the competition. And what it says — or doesn’t say — about its lack of an Amazon-style cloud platform.

Onward!

9:52 am: Good morning, all. I’ll be vamping here for a few minutes before the event kicks off at 10 am. So if you need coffee, etc., please take a couple minutes to prep.

9:55 am: Gotta confess I can’t identify the preshow music they’re playing. Basically the male analog of Adele, I guess.

Consulting SoundHound … (McRib is back, btw).

No luck so far. Trying again.

Okay. So … “The Temper Trap”? News to me.

9:59 am: Dimming those lights.

A little more uptempo now, with a backbeat.

10 am: Tragedy of the commons here with the Wi-Fi, so please bear with me if this is a little pokier than it ought to be.

10 am: Here’s B&N CEO William Lynch.

Superlatives for B&N, claims 20 percent of e-book (titles) market.

Reminding us how smart and pioneering B&N is. Remember when we introduced the Nook Color? That was awesome.

Nook Color is “No. 2 selling tablet in the U.S., behind only the iPad.”

Photo courtesy of The Verge

Really. The Nook Tablet will hurt your ears, if this intro is indicative.

(Ugh. AT&T/B&N free Wi-Fi is sluggoslow.)

Photo courtesy of The Verge

10:05 am: Okay, let’s try the intro again.

10:06 am: Running through specs you’ve already read about. “Ripping” 1GHz processor, etc.

10:07 am: “Free Wi-Fi.” But of course every tablet has “free Wi-Fi.”

“Revolutionary” battery life. “Up to nine hours of video … five HD movies on a single charge.” Weighs less than a pound. “Half the battery size of the iPad. Incredible.”

Plays up Netflix connection — recommendations “pushed right to your tablet.”

More content superlatives: Largest, biggest, bestest collection of magazines, comics, etc. “Unrivaled portable content machine.”

10:10 am: “Read and Record” feature — built-in microphone lets you “record favorite reading of any interactive children’s book.” “Winnie the Pooh” demo. Hrm. Flash poll of one dad with two kids finds this sorta interesting.

And there’s a newsstand! Interactive magazine selection includes Time Inc. (not yet available on Kindle Fire).

Photo courtesy of The Verge

10:12 am: Apps: Angry Birds, Fandango, Smurfs, Pandora, Pulse, Epicurious, etc. — supposedly designed for seven-inch screen.

10:13 am: No cloud? “People aren’t always connected to the cloud,” and they want to store stuff on machine — hence 16GB capacity. But! We do have a Nook Cloud service.

But let’s remind you that many Cloud services are unreliable. Except for ours, of course. So: Cloud is not important except we have a Cloud except Clouds are often not great.

10:15 am: Face-off versus unnamed Kindle Fire. Ah. There, he said “Kindle Fire.” Nook has better screen, more memory, etc. “Kindle Fire is deficient” media tablet.

10:16 am: And here again are B&N’s mixed feelings about the cloud: “Cloud is important, but people don’t always want to be connected to Wi-Fi to get their content.”

Lynch reminds us that the Kindle Fire is in many ways the same machine as the BlackBerry Playbook. Nook is “hand-designed.”

More face slaps for the Fire: Don’t try playing golf game and consuming media at the same time! Things will get “choppy.”

By the way, did we mention that Amazon doesn’t have stores? We have stores. Where are you going to get support for the Kindle — “Amazon’s headquarters in Seattle”?

10:26 am: Peter’s having some Wi-Fi connectivity problems at the moment.

Nook Digital Product President Jamie Iannone is on stage talking about the Nook Color and the Nook Simple Touch product updates.

Photo courtesy of The Verge

10:30 am: Sorry, folks, tech problems on my end. What you missed was an extended point-by-point comparison of Nook versus Fire.

Followed by point-by-point comparison of other Nook models versus other Kindles.

Key takeaway: Kindle with ads will cost a premium. Also, very important: We’re going to be able to go play with the Nooks now.

And … we’re done.

Q&A coming up.

10:34 am: B&N now handing out promotional bookbags with endorsements from: Dean Koontz, Danielle Steel, Mike Lupica, Stephen King, and …

Jane Lynch!

Media Q&A now:

10:35 am: Hey, what’s up with downloads versus streaming? Seems like lots of stuff you talked about in promo was streaming.

10:36 am: Hrm. Lynch talking about “sideloading.” That doesn’t seem promising. Then he mentions that apps like Netflix, etc., are streaming. “Netflix integration is really, really cool.”

So, again: Nook isn’t a streaming-dependent device like Kindle Fire, unless you want to watch movies like Netflix, and you’ll want to stream those. (See the problem here?)

10:37 am: Question about HD capacity. Missed it.

10:37 am: Question about extra $50 versus Kindle Fire. “Is it aiming at the same consumer as the Kindle Fire?” Who is target audience?

(BTW, Mashable’s Lance Ulanoff is dying to ask a question here. He’s really quite agitated about not getting his hand on a microphone.)

Lynch: We pioneered a lot of stuff with reading. “All of those things will be better on our device.” When it comes to other media, “the Kindle Fire is a vending machine for Amazon services. They’ve said it themselves.” We’ve chosen to be much more open. “We’re going to partner with the world’s most popular media services,” like Netflix (which will be available on Kindle) and Pandora (ditto, I believe — will double-check).

10:41 am: Okay, sorry about repeated tech problems. Back to liveblog: No Bluetooth in Nook. Lynch getting some mildly aggressive questions from tech press here, about Nook specs versus rivals.

10:42 am: Iannone plays up ability to “watch Flash videos on YouTube.”

(UPDATE: Lance has a mike! He’s coiled, ready to strike. Exciting!)

Okay, here’s Lance: Which version of Android are you running? And do consumers have full access to Android marketplace?

Lynch: It’s Gingerbread, and the “answer is no — we do not provide full access to the marketplace.”

10:45 am: More defense of the $50 price gap. Lynch is prepared to roll this off his tongue. “We feel very comfortable” with comparison. “We’re trying to lead, not follow, here.”

10:47 am: Q: How will you grow market share?

A: “Hopefully you’ve seen some of what we have planned today.” Did I mention that our base e-reader is better than Kindle’s base e-reader?

Q: (Translating a bit) When will all this be profitable for you?

A: Lynch: This is a revolution in paid digital content. “If you look at our model, last year our gross margins at BarnesandNoble.com were low single digits … last quarter, gross margins were 21 percent. We’re exhibiting the scaling model … Nook will be $1.87 billion in revenue” this year. Was a power point two years ago.

10:50 am: Q: You’re outsourcing so much of your digital media business to outsiders. What up with that?

A: [Basically] a $65 billion to $70 billion market for digitized print media. “We’re not going to launch something where we don’t think we can add material value just to get into the game.”

10:52 am: Q: Will Nook tablet support all codecs that Gingerbread supports?

A: Iannone: Yes.

(Meanwhile — just double-checked — Kindle Fire will indeed also feature Pandora, one of the four big media apps they played up at launch.

10:53 am: Q: About opening up access to full app store.

A: Lynch: Not anytime soon. Our top developers were making a ton of money. “We’re scaling that — we’re adding several hundred a month … we’re looking at it.”

Okay folks, that’s it for Q&A.

Thanks for your patience, thanks to The Verge for sharing photos with us, and thanks to Adam Tow for tech support from San Francisco.

I’m off to touch and feel a Nook now; will post more on that later.

Amazon to Deliver Daily Deals Via Kindle Screen Saver

John Murrell — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 18:31:48 +0000

Owners of Amazon’s advertising-subsidized Kindle with Special Offers models will soon be getting even more special offers when the company starts sending AmazonLocal daily deals to the e-reader’s screen saver during idle moments. The offers will begin in New York City and spread from there (and with any luck, the targeting will improve).

Sony Designs Tablet That's Not an iPad Wannabe

Walter S. Mossberg — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 01:03:00 +0000

One reason Apple’s iPad continues to dominate the tablet market after 17 months may be that all the main competitors look like imitations but don’t deliver as good an experience. They are typically flat slabs, like the iPad, priced about the same or more, but with many fewer apps, shorter battery life, usually greater weight and thickness and a weaker ecosystem for music, video, books and magazines. Whatever advantages they have—like added ports or the ability to play Flash video—haven’t been enough to sway consumers or developers.

[ See post to watch video ]

Now, Sony, whose brand and reputation for design have long resonated with consumers, is trying something different. On Friday, it is launching a handsome tablet with an unusual, asymmetrical design and some software tweaks and content services it hopes can set it apart from the pack.

I’ve been testing this device, called the Sony Tablet S, and I generally like it, despite some weaknesses and some features that aren’t yet fleshed out because they won’t be fully rolled out at launch. The Tablet S will appeal to buyers who would like a distinctive tablet from a trusted company that doesn’t look like an iPad wannabe.

Like dozens of other tablets, Sony’s new entry uses Google’s Android operating system. And it costs the same as the Wi-Fi-only iPads—$500 for a 16 gigabyte model and $600 for a 32 gigabyte model. The Tablet S has no cellular-data option. It’s also late to the game, and, in my tests, had significantly weaker battery life than the iPad 2.

However, the Tablet S looks nothing like the iPad 2 or any other current competitor. One of the long sides of its rectangular, plastic body has a thick, rounded edge that makes the device look like a folded-back magazine. In fact, Sony has carried this effect over onto the back, continuing the black curve with a molded black plastic sheet that looks like the rest of the magazine cover laying over a flat, gray surface.

Laying the Tablet S, left, in landscape, or horizontal, mode, creates a natural angle for typing. Coming this fall, the Tablet P, right, which unfolds to reveal twin 5.5-inch displays.

While this design makes the Tablet S much thicker than many competitors, it has several advantages. When you hold the device one-handed in portrait, or vertical, mode, it feels much more comfortable and balanced than any other tablet I’ve tested. When you lay it on a flat surface in landscape, or horizontal, mode, the rounded edge creates a natural angle for typing, without a case or stand.

This clever design makes the Tablet S feel lighter than the iPad when you hold it vertically, because more of the weight is in your palm—even though the two tablets are almost exactly the same weight.

At 9.4 inches, the bright, vivid screen on the Tablet S is smaller than the iPad’s 9.7 inch display or the 10.1-inch screen of Samsung’s comparable Galaxy Tab model. But I found it plenty generous, and it didn’t feel cramped. The Sony is about the same length as the iPad 2, but is narrower, and I found this proportion pleasing.

This clever design makes the Tablet S feel lighter than the iPad.

There are some trade-offs to this design. While it is beautifully balanced in vertical mode, it feels top-heavy in horizontal mode, especially because Sony forces you in that mode to hold it by the thin, lower edge. You can’t rotate the screen in horizontal mode so the thicker edge is at the bottom. Performance was snappy, and the front and back cameras took acceptable still photos and videos.

Sony is planning a second, even more radical tablet for later this fall, called the Tablet P. It’s a much smaller and lighter device that has no visible screen until you unfold it to reveal twin 5.5-inch displays that can either be used as one large screen or can have separate content in each. I have played briefly with this coming device, but haven’t been able to test it.

Unlike the iPad 2, the Tablet S has an SD memory-card slot, which I used to move movies, photos, music and documents to the Tablet S from a Mac. It worked fine, though the plastic hinge for the little door that covers the slot sometimes got stuck.

While Sony, like Apple, has long been praised for hardware design, it has never been able to match Apple in software and services, except on its PlayStation game consoles. The company is hoping the Tablet S changes that perception.

The Tablet S starts with the same software disadvantages as its Android brethren. While Android has a healthy selection of over 250,000 third-party apps (versus 425,000 total for Apple’s mobile devices), it has pathetically few tablet-optimized apps—estimated to be just a small fraction of the 100,000 tailored for the iPad.

But Sony has added some nice software features to the Tablet S. Some make navigation easier, but many aim to build on Sony’s strengths as a media and gaming company. Unlike Apple, which takes a broader view of the tablet’s potential, Sony sees its tablet as primarily an entertainment-consumption device.

For instance, Sony has added a small, customizable row of frequently used app icons at the upper left. At the upper right of the screen is a handsome, easy-to-use feature called Favorites, which highlight recently accessed or added songs, videos, pictures, books and Web bookmarks.

Sony also has tweaked the Android browser so it loads pages faster. In my tests, pages loaded slightly faster than on the iPad.

There is also a universal remote-control app that works with a built-in infrared transmitter to control TVs and other home-entertainment devices, even if they aren’t made by Sony. In my tests, I easily configured it to control my Pioneer TV and my TiVo, though it was unable to mate with my Apple TV.

Sony also is bundling services for buying music, TV shows and movies, e-books and games to create a content ecosystem like Apple’s. Unfortunately, these weren’t available for me to test.

The music service won’t be available until later this month, but it will be a subscription service with two monthly tiers, one for $3.99 and one for $9.99. The video service will be available with a very limited selection at launch, but the full service won’t appear until next month. It allows you to rent videos starting at $2.99 each. The games service will come along later this year, and Sony couldn’t provide details, except that it will offer PlayStation games meant for portable devices. The Tablet S will come with a trial membership to the music service and a free movie and e-book. It also comes preloaded with two simple games.

The Tablet S fell far short of the iPad 2 in my battery tests, where I play videos back to back with the network connection on and the screen brightness set at 75%. It died after 6 hours, 38 minutes, which is a whopping 3½ hours less than the iPad 2 lasted.

Still, Sony deserves credit for creating a novel design with real advantages and for building in some useful software. The Tablet S is worth considering when shopping for a tablet.

Write to Walt at walt.mossberg@wsj.com

A Tablet Children Can Grow Into

Katherine Boehret — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 22:13:52 +0000

The crowded tablet market now offers a number of devices in various weights, screen sizes and operating systems. But are there any tablets built to withstand tough treatment from kids?

This week, I tested a tablet aimed at ages 4 through 9: the $100 LeapPad Explorer from LeapFrog Enterprises Inc., a company known for its educational children’s toys. This tablet, which is available in green or pink, has a built-in microphone, camera, video recorder and kid-size stylus for writing and drawing on its five-inch touch screen (a finger also works).

It was designed with tough plastics, a sheet of Mylar over its glass screen and an extra metal frame around the screen to withstand physical abuse. This tablet can be used for reading e-books, playing games and running through digital flashcards.

The LeapPad Explorer is the latest in LeapFrog’s gadget lineup, which started with the original LeapPad educational toy in the late 1990s and more recently continued with the Leapster Explorer hand-held game in July 2010.

[ See post to watch video ]

The Explorer tablet for kids works with over 40 downloadable apps and has a topside slot for running older game cartridges. A spokeswoman said the company expects to offer more than 70 apps by the end of this year, and has no plans to stop selling cartridges. Cartridges cost $25 each and downloadable activities—including games, apps, flash cards, videos and eBooks—range from $5 to $20 each.

While using the LeapPad Explorer, I discovered plenty of features that would appeal to young kids like fun sounds, on-screen graphics and a sense of accomplishment while progressing through books, games and activities.

The main appeal of the LeapFrog products is the company’s focus on personalized education. When children set up the Explorer, they enter their grades, ranging from prekindergarten to sixth grade. The device’s activities then automatically tune to a child’s capabilities. This means that if a third-grader is performing at a higher level than is expected for that age, the Explorer adjusts to a slightly higher level, and the child is notified and congratulated. However, if a child is progressing at a lower level, the system adjusts to a slightly lower level without notifying the child.

A feature called the LeapFrog Learning Path lets parents digitally track their child’s progress. Whenever the Explorer is plugged into a computer, details about the child’s time on the device are transferred to the PC so a parent knows how the child is performing and can get tips on how to help the child improve.

LeapPad Explorer comes with three apps and a free app of choice.

The activities address spelling, phonics, math, creativity, science, music and geography. And because of LeapFrog’s partnership with Disney-Pixar, kids will likely recognize characters from movies in the Explorer’s games and books.

My favorite app was the Ultra eBook, “Cars 2: Project Undercover.” LeapFrog’s ultra eBooks are like eBooks on steroids. They let kids record themselves reading an entire book and play it back. They’re animated and have six built-in comprehension activities and three games. They offer stories written at three text levels and they use a visual dictionary for vocabulary development. “Cars 2: Project Undercover” is the only Ultra eBook currently available, but LeapFrog plans to add six more to its app store before the end of the year.

LeapFrog designed the Explorer tablet with certain features that keep its cost down, and some also solve child-safety concerns. For instance, the Explorer lacks a wireless connection, so kids can’t get online without plugging the tablet into a Windows PC or Mac. Downloading apps also requires a parent’s password.

Another example is that the LeapPad Explorer runs on four AA batteries rather than the rechargeable lithium ion batteries found in most regular tablets.

LeapFrog’s spokeswoman said this keeps the cost low and noted that Li-Ion batteries can leak, making them unsafe for kids’ toys. Kids can plug the Explorer into the wall with a $10 AC adapter.

The Explorer is a far cry from popular tablets. The device’s one-inch thickness makes it chunkier than most grown-up tablets and its screen is of a lower quality than that of iPads and Android tablets. Its built-in camera has resolution of less than one megapixel. I found the tablet’s response time to be a bit sluggish, but doubt most kids under 9 would.

Each Explorer tablet comes loaded with three apps and a free app of choice (eBook, game or video) from the LeapFrog Connect app store, accessible via computer once the tablet is plugged in via USB cord. Preloaded apps include a pet game, which gives kids a pet to care for, Story Studio for creating stories with photos, voice-overs and art, and Art Studio for drawing and painting with various colors and stamped images.

Though the LeapPad Explorer looks a bit chubby compared with regular tablets, its features will be adequate for kids. Its ability to grow over time with more downloaded apps makes it a smart investment for parents.

Write to Katherine Boehret at katherine.boehret@wsj.com

A Mac on Windows?

Walter S. Mossberg — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 01:02:29 +0000

My goal is to watch video from Netflix and Amazon on my TV. Which of the set-top boxes you recently reviewed will allow me to do that?

Of the three I tested, only the Roku 2 player will deliver both of these particular services, plus others, to your TV. It starts at $60, plus the cost of a subscription to Netflix or downloads from Amazon. The other two—Apple TV and Boxee Box—do provide Netflix, plus some services the Roku lacks, such as iTunes for Apple TV and Vudu for Boxee.

In your column last week, you noted that the latest version of Parallels Desktop for Mac can run a second copy of the Mac operating system inside a virtual computer on a Mac. Will it also allow people to run the Mac OS on a Windows PC?

No, according to both Apple and Parallels. First of all, the new Parallels product, which is mainly meant to run a virtual or faux Windows computer on a Mac, can run only on Mac hardware.

The company does make a similar product that runs on PC hardware, but Apple says its Mac operating system is designed to only boot up on Mac hardware, even if it is installed in a virtual computer.

I know that some techies and engineers have been able to get around this and run the Mac OS on PC hardware, but it often doesn’t run perfectly normally, and I don’t believe average users can pull this off in any case.

I am interested in a tablet for reading books, newspapers and magazines, email and light Web surfing. Which tablet do you recommend?

Assuming that, by “tablet,” you are excluding simple monochrome e-readers like the current Amazon Kindle, I’d recommend the iPad. It’s the best overall tablet I’ve tested, with the best battery life and the greatest variety of apps. All of the tablet contenders can do email and Web surfing adequately, but the iPad has a greater selection of newspaper and magazine apps.

However, there are two caveats. One is that the iPad cannot display Flash video, so if that is of prime importance, look elsewhere. The other is that Amazon is widely expected to soon offer a more limited, but less expensive, color tablet that—given Amazon’s business—might well be very good for books, newspapers and magazines. So you might want to wait to evaluate that product.

Email Walt at mossberg@wsj.com.