Amazon has modestly cut the price its Kindle E-Book reader.  Barely released late last year, the white hand-held reader is now 10% off at $359 and buyers will also receive free two-day shipping.  Amazon hasn’t released an official statement about the price cut (at least not yet), but this should provide a decent boost in sales for anyone sitting on the fence. [via tgdaily]

Since 2003, eReader platform has been favorite digital content solution for books due to the solid software that runs on practically any device. To celebrate this milestone, the eReader store is offering a 25% storewide sale through June 1st. That means you’ve got 10 days of savings on all purchases. Just use the promo code HUGESALE when you checkout and you’ll save a bundle! [via jkontherun]

A beta version of eReader.com’s eBook software is now available for S60 3rd Edition. eReader is a long standing eBook store which provides some of the current best sellers in eBook form, protected via its own form of DRM. They provides a version of their reader for multiple platforms. However a few years ago they seemed to lose interest in support Symbian OS handsets, but under the new ownership of Fictionwise this seems to be changing.
The S60 3rd Edition version of eReader will be most attractive for those who have already bought books using eReader. If you’re looking at buying an eBook for the first time you may also want to investigate the Amazon backed Mobipocket which provides both reading software and eBook store.

Both Mobipocket and eReader povide similar features in their software (full screen mode, the ability too look up words, bookmarks, autoscroll, font and text settings). Both can also be used to read standard .pdb file (non-DRM) which is useful for reading public domain content from sites such as Memoware.

Mobipocket is currently the more mature reader (and is also available for UIQ handsets), but hopefully the eReader software will progress during the course of its beta.

eReader is owned by Fictionwise, another eBook store, which has the notable positive feature of providing many of its books in multiple formats including both eReader and Mobipocket. Books bought from Fictionwise are therefore less susceptible to being left behind by changes in DRM. [via allaboutsymbian]

Seiko Epson just unveiled a 13.4-inch, A4-sized screen at SID 2008.  That’s almost twice as large as the company’s previous display, which measured in at a mere 7.1-inches.

Epson are describing the new screen as being the final stage of actually replacing traditional paper with an electronic version.  It has a 3104 × 4128 resolution and definition as high as 385ppi.  Contrast comes in at 10:1 while reflectance is at 40-percent.

Seiko Epson considers that the company entered the final stage of replacing traditional papers with electronic papers. [via slashgear]

Wacom (Booth 1129) and E Ink (Booth 913) will be showcasing their technologies at the International Society for Information Display exhibition, May 20 to 22, 2008 in Los Angeles, California.

Electronic paper with pen input is ideal for reviewing documents on a portable device. E Ink Vizplex displays enable slimmer devices to have bigger screens that are easy on the eyes, even in ambient light. The intuitive nature of pen input makes it easy to navigate, write down ideas, highlight points of interest, as well as sketch or draw. Together the technologies achieve the ultimate vision of an interactive piece of paper.

“e-Paper is opening up a number of new products for displays, including eBooks, Mobile Internet Devices, Smart Labels and Digital Signage,” said Barry Young, Senior Advisor for DisplaySearch. He added that “the partnership between E Ink and Wacom in the application of pen input should increase the breadth of ePaper capabilities and accelerate the growth rate.”

“The marriage of Wacom’s input technology with E Ink’s Vizplex electronic paper displays offer manufacturers unmatched flexibility and creativity when it comes to the design of e-paper based products,” said Stephen Sedaker, Director of Component Sales for Wacom. “Whether giving the user a way to digitally jot notes in the column of a book, or circle an interesting entry in the daily newspaper, people now have the option to interact freely with electronic paper.” [via earthtimes]

Polymer Vision will exhibit the first prototype of the rollable display with full color at the Society for Information Display (SID) conference in Los Angeles. This is the company’s next step in the world’s transition from rigid to rollable displays.

 “2008 is an exciting year for both Polymer Vision and the mobile industry as a whole”, says Edzer Huitema, CTO of the company. “This year we will launch our first commercial product, Readius®, while at the same time our revolutionary prototypes bring the future closer where mobile devices will be equipped with large rollable displays.”
 
What distinguishes the Polymer Vision displays from all other displays is that they are as thin as paper with the ability to be rolled up to the diameter of a pen. Both prototypes at SID exhibit a record breaking roll radius of only 6mm. The 65k color display has a resolution of 127ppi, while the monochrome display has a resolution of 254ppi, which is the highest resolution e-paper display ever shown.
 
Although these exciting new prototype displays clearly demonstrate the future possibilities of Polymer Vision’s rollable display technology, 2008 is the year of the market launch of the revolutionary Readius® device, marking the first step in the transition from rigid to rollable displays. With a large 5” rollable e-paper display, the pocket size e-reader merges the ‘reading friendly’ strengths of traditional e-readers such as Amazon’s Kindle or Sony’s Reader with the small form factor and world wide connectivity of mobile devices. [via polymervision]

Fujitsu has developed a prototype electronic paper screen that tackles one of the technology’s biggest weaknesses: the amount of time it takes to refresh the image.

On electronic paper, screens like those used in Amazon.com’s Kindle or Sony’s Reader for electronic books, it typically takes a second or more to redraw the image on the screen. Sometimes the screen flickers a few times as the new image appears or, as in the case of Fujitsu’s cholesteric LCD technology, the image is slowly revealed in a long sweep across the screen — but it’s a long way from the milliseconds required on other display screens.

To tackle this problem Fujitsu has tried to confine the refresh to just the parts of the screen that need to be changed.

It works best in applications where touch-sensitive e-paper displays are used for things like electronic forms, as the company demonstrated at its Fujitsu Forum event in Tokyo on Thursday.

When a user checks a box or writes in a space on the form, only those rows or columns of the display that have changed are refreshed. Those areas are refreshed at the same speed as before, but because a much smaller area is changed, the user perceives an improvement in performance.

The working prototype was a 12-inch display (about the same size as an A4 sheet of paper) with 768 pixels by 1,024 pixels (XGA) resolution. [via pcworld]

How many Kindles are out there? To date we’ve only heard the vaguest of anecdotes. Now some theoretical numbers: According to Asian tech pub Digitimes, the Taiwanese company that makes the display module for the Kindle and other e-readers is shipping 60,000-80,000 of them monthly and expects that number to hit 120,000 by the second half of the year. [via indiekindle]

Prime View International, which manufactures the Kindle’s 6-inch electrophoretic display (EPD), says 60% of those displays go to Amazon. That means Jeff Bezos is ordering up to 48,000 per month–and the number could approach 72,000 by year’s end, if PVI’s forecast is accurate.

 Also, the Kindle could contribute 3% of Amazon’s overall revenue in two years, argues Citi analyst Mark Mahaney, who has a born-again relationship with the device. Combining device and book sales in an iPod/iTunes-like model, Mark says, the Kindle could add $750 million to Amazon’s top line in 2010. [via alleyinsider]

After six weeks without product because of booming demand, BooksonBoard now once again has Cybooks available, this time with increased on-board memory (easily allowing for the storage of up to 500 eBooks) and longer battery life.

BooksonBoard (www.BooksOnBoard.com), a leading provider of eBooks and audio books, shipped the first back-orders today and has enough units to fill new demand for a short time.

At a new reduced priced of $379 (including $25 worth of new eBooks for free from BooksOnBoard), the Cybook Gen 3 Ultralight is 30% lighter than the Sony Reader and 50% lighter than the Kindle.

“Weight is very important when you’re trying to hold a piece of hardware for hours at a time while you read,” says Bob LiVolsi, CEO of BooksOnBoard, “Plus the Cybook uses the Mobipocket format which is generally available and an industry standard.”

The Ultralight North American bundle includes $25 toward eBooks or downloadable Audiobooks, premium leather case, USB charger, and USB cable.

Ezra Klein discusses Amazon’s Kindle in print and video

The current issue of the Columbia Review of Journalism focuses on the future of writing and reading, offering up a spate of interesting writers examining various threads of that theme. Of particular note is The American Prospect associate editor Ezra Klein’s look at the Kindle, Amazon’s new digital book reader. Books may be in decline, he surmises, but people are still reading all the time – we’re glued to our computer screens. So surely the Kindle is onto something?

This may, ultimately, prove to be Amazon’s truly crucial role—not driving the future of reading so much as the future of writing. E-reading technology will push forward even without Amazon’s involvement. The Kindle will soon face stiff competition from a bevy of able competitors. […] But if the Kindle’s successor or competitors are to succeed, it will be because Amazon used its status as the world’s largest online bookseller to force authors to think seriously about creating content that works better than the book, that goes where the book cannot, that’s interactive and cooperative and open in ways that printed text will never be. [via cjr]

Charlotte marketing firm Lawrimore Communications Inc. has launched a new online ebook store, Ebookloads.com, selling low-cost ebooks on a wide variety of topics. Ebook authors are also invited to submit their works. “Ebooks are in great demand because they allow people who are searching for information to download them immediately, versus waiting several days for the books to arrive by mail or express,” said Lawrimore Communications president Buck Lawrimore.

“As the author of several ebooks sold on different websites, I wanted one central location to sell my ebooks as well as those of others. We’ve also started adding ebooks written by several freelance writers we know, and welcome submissions by other writers, even if they have written only one ebook.” Ebookloads.com, on the web at http://www.ebookloads.com, features over 100 ebooks in categories such as Business & Strategy, Foods and Drinks (including cookbooks), Health, Internet Marketing, Web Developing, Money Making, Occasion, Blogging and more. Other categories will be added depending on what authors submit. Visitors to the site can also download several free ebooks, available at the bottom of different pages on the site.

Plastic Logic, the Cambridge company developing a revolutionary new technology for printing electronic devices, is gearing up for product launch and a share of a multi-billion dollar windfall. And it is following a world-class commercialisation model.

Just as Cambridge chip superstar ARM cashed in by having its microprocessors in the iPod which didn’t hit the market until well after the first MP3 players were launched - so Plastic Logic is content purring in the slipstream of fellow electronic reader pioneers.

A senior source revealed to Business Weekly: “The Amazon Kindle, Sony LIBRIe and IRex iLiad are opening up the market for us.

“They are all glass-based and we will be the first plastic-based eReader, giving a much better experience because the display is larger and a lot lighter, so it can be held in one hand.

“It will also be cheaper. Do not forget there were lots of MP3 players before the iPod came out.”

CEO Richard Archuleta added: “The first application of the company’s core plastic electronics technology in revolutionary flexible displays has very exciting market potential. Plastic Logic has made amazing progress and has the backing of a first class investor base.”

Plastic Logic hasn’t revised is opinion that it will be the first to ap ply the new technology to a fully commercial application - flexible active-matrix displays.

The company’s first target market is flexible active-matrix displays for electronic readers. In January 2007 Plastic Logic raised $100m of equity finance to create the first fully commercial plastic electronics production facility which will start to produce display modules soon this year.

A video comparing LCDs with Plastic Logic’s  [via businessweekly]

There’s no final price yet, but Astak’s eBook reader with five-inch display might be the reader for folks on a budget. Rumors are that the device will arrive in the U.S. next month and could cost as low at $150, which if true, gets this type of device more in line with the consumer electronics market. That’s not suggesting that a $399 Kindle won’t sell; obviously it can and does. But most folks I speak with that show an interest in the Kindle really balk at the price.

Supported formats: TXT, PDF, RTF, HTML/CHM. May an FBReader ports appear for the Astaks, so people can at least enjoy nonDRMed Mobipocket, as well as ePub, the standard of the future! And who knows? I wonder if old editions of Mobipocket’s own software might run on the six-inch and ten-inch Astaks (WIN CE5.0), even now. Unlikely but you never know. The five-incher runs Linux (QT environment). Any FBReader possibilities for that one even now?

Given all this competition, combined with the dearth of titles available to load on them, it might be worth sticking with pulp for awhile to see if prices go even lower. [via astak]

E Ink Corporation, the company developing and marketing electronic paper display technology, has announced to make its next generation segmented display cells (SDC) available. The SDC products are simple digit, icon and alpha-numeric displays and offer commendable readability in a paper-thin form factor utilizing minimal battery power.

The new SDCs are 40 percent thinner, can perform within a wider operational temperature range, and are more flexible for repetitive 3-D bends or 2-D conformable solutions. They can be used to enhance consumer electronics, PC-accessory, display smartcards, capacity indicators, electronic shelf labels, signage and communications applications.

Russ Wilcox, president and CEO, E Ink Corporation, said that the E Ink SDC display lets the user see any vital information quickly and clearly from any angle, and designers can go beyond their imaginations to design innovative product with this paper-thin and flexible plastic display that can be cut to any shape.

The SDCs are available in organic non-rectangular unique shapes, including holes, curves, and other non-standard designs. Apart from it, E Ink’s SDC platform can be viewed under a variety of lighting conditions from direct sun to low-level ambient light, and provides viewable angle of nearly 180 degrees. E Ink’s Vizplex-based electronic paper solutions are bistable, reflective displays which enable the image to remain for over a year with zero power. [via e-ink]