When Apple launched subscriptions for iPad publications back in February, it effectively became a digital newsstand. With iOS 5, it will formalize the process with an official Newsstand app, exec Scott Forstall announced today at Apple’s WWDC today.
Much like its iBooks app is a store for digital books, Newsstand will be an online magazine rack where you can keep and organize all of your newspaper and magazine app subscriptions. The latest cover will be shown in the app, and new issues will be downloaded in the background. It is a clean, well-lit place where you can place all of your digital magazine subscriptions. (No doubt, it could also be a good place to try out new iPad publications, although no word on how promotions will be run in the app). → Read More
With all the flaws that e-book readers have, they don’t seem to be going away anytime soon. VTech, makers of fine educational electronics, are rolling out the Flip animated e-book reader, so now, your kids can get in on the action too. → Read More
The US e-reader market is about to get one more player when Dulin’s Books brings its Boox 60 reader to the States in the middle of January. But even though it packs a lot of tech into its shell like W-Fi, Wacom technology, and a Webkit browser, chances are it won’t ever make it mainstream thanks to the Kindle, Nook, and Reader. → Read More
This is cutting it close. Sony had previously promised to make the 3G-equipped Reader Daily Edition available before Christmas and the company just announced it’s shipping out pre-orders placed before December 20th. The rest? Well, you’re SOL like some folks that ordered the Nook. → Read More
The Amazon Kindle costs $260. The Barnes and Noble Nook costs $260. The Sony reader is $300. Clearly there’s an established price point for what we call an e-book reader. Jumping into the e-book fray comes the Intel Reader, for fifteen hundred U.S. dollars. No WiFi, no associated book store, but it does include a 5 megapixel camera, and a host of features designed to make it the best choice for vision impaired people. → Read More
Oh, the wonders of our Internet. J&R apparently posted product pages of the new, and also unannounced, Sony Readers which were then of course pulled, but not before Google cached ‘em. (hehe) There really isn’t any tantalizing details that the wasn’t in the prevous leak. There still isn’t any mention of wireless connectivity like WiFi or WWAN though. If said product pages are indeed correct, the small, 5-inch PRS-300 should sell for $199 while the larger, 6-inch PRS-600 will fetch $300. → Read More
Sony’s got a new Reader in the PRS-700 and that Reader, it’s got a touchscreen. Simply slide your dirty, smudge-inducing finger across the six-inch screen and watch as the e-inked pages magically turn, just like a real book. Or use that same finger to enter notes and/or highlight text. There’s also a stylus for people like me who have weird issues with touchscreens. And for those of you who like to read in the dark, the PRS-700 sports LED illumination emanating from either side of the screen. Total weight is 10 ounces, battery life’s good for more than eight hours, and storage should top out at around 350 books (plus anything else you can fit into the SD card or Memory Stick expansion slots). The Reader will set you back around $400 sometime in November. [via DVICE] → Read More
Google yesterday announced a few updates to Google Reader. The company tried to throw in some cool lingo to make the announcement sound better than it was, but let’s face it — how excited can you really get about putting your feeds in alphabetical order?
According to the company, sharing is now available to friends across the globe. Prior to this announcement, it was only available in the US. To improve Notes, Google also added tagging to help you organize your posts. To round out the improvements, Google will now let you put your feeds in alphabetical order if dragging and dropping isn’t for you via an “Options” menu at the bottom of the window and has information in the “details” section to let you know when it last crawled a feed.
All these features are available now in Google Reader. → Read More
Even as Google grows bigger and bigger, its developers continue to slip little Easter eggs into their applications. It’s never anything huge – just little inside jokes which serve as a reminder that there are living, breathing people behind the otherwise faceless applications. As Blogoscoped points out, one of these people has infused a bit of gamer lore into Google Reader. Log in, make sure you’re at the “Home” page in reader, and punch in the oft-celebrated Konami code: Up Up Down Down Left Right Left Right B A I won’t ruin the fun for the folks who want to check it out for themselves – but for the lazy or Google account-less, here’s a screenshot. (There are actually two changes to be noticed – bonus points if you can spot’em both.) → Read More
In what appears to be a last ditch effort by Sony to thwart the onslaught that the Amazon Kindle is bringing in the realm of eBooks, they’ll be giving away 100 Connect eBooks Classic titles with the purchase of the Reader Digital Book. That’s not too shabby considering each title is $1.99. A few of the titles included are Beowulf, The Time Machine and 20,000 Leagues under the Sea. Just be sure to purchase your Reader by 1/31/2008 to qualify. That’s a sweet deal. Free books → Read More
Samsung, our favorite tech company ending in “sung,” has revealed a compact and complete RFID reader, which they’ve managed to compress onto a single chip. It’s small enough (6.5mm square) to be embedded in clothes, posters, and probably babies as well – at least, if they wanted babies to be able to read RFID tags. Its low power consumption rate means we’ll probably be seeing these things included standard in Samsung phones, gadgets, and so on as soon as they can get them there. Samsung Develops Single-Chip RFID Reader for Mobile Devices [Korea Newswire] → Read More
Call me Mr. Crazypants — it’s a Hungarian name, I think — but aren’t we done with eBook readers? I could see eBooks on the iPhone or eBooks on our laptops, but a standalone reader is just too esoteric and niche to really go far. I want this stuff to work but it’s just not in the cards. That said, Sony just announced their new Sony Reader. It will cost $300 and will be available in the U.S. later this month. It can hold 160 eBooks and loads in USB mass storage mode, bypassing crappy sideloading software. It also supports SD and Memory Stick. Meh. Press Release → Read More
Hey readers. How are you? We love what you did with your hair. You smell nice, would you like a hug? All you beautiful people should shoot us an email at commenter at crunchgear dot com with your name, password, and email address in the subject line so that we can set you up with your very own commenting account. Yes, yes, the responsibility is great but we think you’re up to it. Also, we’re a top 100 blog on Technorati now. Thanks everyone! So without further ado, here are your top 3 comments for today. Ezekiel landed first after schooling Vince on WWII history. Vince, Heineken is from Holland, not Germany. → Read More
Hey kids, time to pick out another trio of our most awesome readers. The comments are getting better and better, thanks everyone! Sascha seems to be a newcomer on the commenting circuit and a welcomed one at that. Grammatically correct, interesting comments always deserve the first spot. This sucks. → Read More
You know damn well ever since that genius implanted himself with an RFID chip, you’ve been wanting to do it to. Not that we’re condoning surgical practices, but if you want to become more familiar with RFID and how it works, ThinkGeek was selling a kit with lots of RFID tags and a USB RFID reader for your tinkering pleasure, but is currently sold out. From the product description: Depending on who you ask, RFID technology is either the “Mark of the Beast”, or a global panacea destined to rescue the grocery stores and Walmarts of the world from shoplifting. But any good geek knows that RFID is nothing more than tiny microchips powered by RF induction that store and broadcast a small bit of data. Want to learn more? Rather than rip apart your passport you can pick up this nifty RFID Experimentation Kit with over a dozen types of RFID tags, a USB based RFID reader and instructions for tons of insidious RFID projects. You even get a cool bio-implantable type of RFID Tag which you should never ever load into a blowgun and implant in any of your coworkers because it’s not surgically sterilized. They include some projects you can do, such as logging into Windows XP with RFID, an RFID door lock (sweet), and an RFID-enabled safe. More kits will be available come late March, so pre-order now to guarantee one. RFID Experimentation Kit [ThinkGeek] → Read More
If you’re too cheap to buy a Sony eReader and too lazy to flip a real book by yourself, there’s the Japanese automatic book reader. All you have to do is plop down your book, set the page turning interval (automatic, or timed at X minutes), and voila, a machine turns the pages so you don’t have to. Of course, your eventual blindness from lack of exercise and diabetes will prevent you from enjoying books of any kind, be it “e” or otherwise, so you may want to move around a little bit instead of being a lazy sack. Three thousand dollars gets you one of these. So we suppose and eReader may be the better solution after all. → Read More
