Productive Organizer

We talked about a fair bit at Productive Organizer that this tablet war have actually become an IPad war. Specifically iPad versus the rest. Android tablets, HP Touchpad and Blackberry Playbook all refused to take off.

What took off? Cheap readers or tablets sold by Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Amazon have a really successful business here with the Kindle.

Amazon understands the tablet business model

I am  really impress that Jeff Bezos of Amazon really gets this game

1. Its not about the hardware. It is a services game.
2. Loss Leader: Sell the hardware cheap like the xBox or Printers. That acts as the channel for people to easily buy your products.
3. It is essentially similar to the iTunes. They are a retail operating system.
4. Leverage on the cloud to increase users switching cost and greater tie in to your network.
5. Conversion to Amazon Prime: When they convert consumers to Amazon Prime, consumers get addicted to the ease and way to purchase things off amazon.
6. It gets tablets in the hands of a lot of folks who otherwise wouldn’t be able to afford an iPad. It’s an offering for the mainstream – which is a great thing.

Game changer price

You can say all you want about this device not having 3G but at the price of $199 this will really change how the competitors compete.

One of the best device currently is the Galaxy Tab 7 inch at $350. That’s almost 75% more than this Kindle.

This product is in a really sweet spot because

• it is cheap enough that high bracket consumers who have an iPad is able to get one of these.
• people who don’t like Apple can get one of these
• for people who want to try out the Android ecosystem this is a massive undercut to Motorola, Samsung and the others.

Game theory will see that the price of the rest of the tablets will come down.

The importance of hardware and software integration

The hardware is mixed

• TI OMAP4 800 MHZ Dual Core Processor. Not sure how good this is. We will have to do an actual usage review to know. I don’t really trust OMAP processors.
• 7 Inch IPS Screen. With the Kindle Fire we have a 7″ IPS panel with a 1024 x 600 resolution that features great colors and exceptional viewing angles.The IPS display truly has an amazing set of viewing angles thanks to the IPS panel and can be seen at 178° and more.
• Physical dimensions are 7.5 x 4.7 x 0.45 inches (190 x 120 x 11.5mm)
• Gorilla Glass
• Only Registers 2 points on Multi Touch (iPad have 11).
• No 3G, GPS, Microphone
• WIFI 802.11n
• Android Based
• A 3.5mm headphone jack is naturally included as is a pair of top-mounted stereo speakers.
• 8 GB of storage. With only 8GB of solid-state-storage space on the Kindle Fire, there is plenty of room for e-books, and maybe a few other document types, but not much else. Even then, we’d want to know how much of that 8GB is left over after operating system and app overhead. Note that the 64GB 11-inch MacBook Air, for example, leaves you with only 49GB of usable space right out of the box.

Make no mistake, the hardware means jack and only the integration of software, cloud services and hardware matters. The major downside is no camera, microphone and expansion slots for additional storage.

Clearly Amazon wants this to be used as a reader and not anything else.

Waiting for the hackers at XDA Developer to root this and custom rom it.

Another big driver in the overseas market is when XDA Developers have hacked and custom rom this kindle. Just like the Nook, it took off because for a low price you get a reasonable hardware to do many stuff.

So what do you think? Will you get the Kindle fire? The Kindle Touch at $79 dollars look great as well!

 

As human beings we all have opinions on which device or platform is better than the other and how bad my service provider is.

What I love about twitter is that it is a fun app first and foremost.But, at the same time you can really leverage on crowd sourcing to know what the general trend is for certain things:

1. hot songs
2. hot movies
3. iPad or Galaxy Tab
4. Toyota or Honda cars

Here is a good write-up on the results of a twitter trend study conducted by Crimson Hexagon.

[Twitter Stats Reveal How the iPad, Kindle, and Nook Stack Up >>]

Here is a good review should readers be interested in how the Galaxy Tab measures up as a reading device.

When I went to the beach yesterday, I had to choose between my Galaxy Tab and my Kindle, both of which are roughly the same size. The Galaxy Tab was handy for blogging on WordPress – something I could theoretically have done on my smaller Galaxy S smartphone, but without the extra real estate.

I’ve spent most of today indoors finishing off Unbroken on my Galaxy Tab, simply because it was closer at hand when I wanted to start reading it, and I found the LCD screen and display size perfectly adequate. One good thing about reading Kindle eBooks on the Galaxy Tab is that you can see any graphics much better, and many of the biographies and autobiographies that I’ve been reading lately include them. The Kindle is simply ‘okay’ at it. I ended up switching to the Kindle when I put the Galaxy Tab on charge, though, and once again the difference between e-ink and LCD really came to the fore. It’s something you need to experience first-hand to understand the difference – best way I can describe it is my eyes were a lot more ‘relaxed’ when I switched to the e-ink screen.

[Full article @ Gadget Monkey >>]

Barnes and Noble really sparked off this price war with the eBook Reader and Amazon and the rest are currently engaged in a race to the bottom Nash Equilibrium scenario.

I have stated that my value point where I will buy one of these readers is when it reaches SGD 150. That will be around USD 100.

I don’t really need 3G, although the Kindle at USD189 looks more value compare to a 50 dollar cheaper device. But think I will still get the WIFI only one.

From Engadget:

The new handheld — slated to be released on August 27th — is 21 percent smaller and 15 percent lighter than the previous model, has a 20 percent faster refresh rate on its E Ink (yep, still E Ink) screen, and will now come in two colors (graphite, like its big brother the DX, and the original white).

In addition to the color changes, there will be two radio configurations available: a $139 WiFi only version, and a $189 3G version (utilizing AT&T’s network, just like the last model). The screen will remain the same 6-inch size as the last two Kindles, though the company claims page turns are faster and contrast is improved. The internal storage on the device has been cranked to 4GB, and the battery life is now rated at a month with no wireless, and 10 days with wireless switched on.

The company also announced plans for a UK-localized version at £109 and £149, respectively, as well as a UK e-book store.

Along with the big changes, there have been minor tweaks as well — the keyboard and five-way controls have been streamlined and altered slightly. The rocker is now more compact and flush with the device, and the side buttons have been modified in length to emphasize the forward paddles, while the back buttons have been downsized. Software wise, there are some interesting new features, the most notable being the inclusion of an “experimental” Webkit-based browser.

So will you get one of these eBook Reader now?

Introduction

Given the screen size of 3.5 inch for the iPhone, the question on alot of people’s minds are: other than music and playing games, does the iPhone make a good reading device?

For that matter, it is hard to come to a conclusion. I may say that 3.5 inch is good enough for me, but the criteria of buying an iPhone and making reading a big part of how you use an iPhone must be determined most of the time by

1. Pleasure of reading on a 3.5 inch screen
2. Ability to support existing ebook formats

For (1) it comes down to how well the application in iPhone renders the eBook and intangible things such as page turning, bookmarks, last read location and search capability.

The folks who have numerous ebooks that they read on the desktop,windows mobile and palm will need to know (2)

This article will try its best to answer these questions

To read or access Amazon Kindle on your iPhone

Cost:App is FREE. Books need to purchase

There is a Kindle Application for iPhone that would allow an iPhone user to

1. read Kindle format books
2. Shop for hundreds of thousands of books at  www.amazon.com/kindlestore
3. wireless transfer your books to the iPhone or iPod Touch
4. read the beginning of any Kindle books before you buy
5. download the Kindle books you already own for free
6. tap and hold to create highlight. these will be backup and synchronize through Whispersync with your other Kindle device
7. read in portrait or landscape

I am not a big fan of Kindle but if you have an Amazon account with tons of ebooks based on Kindle format, you can read them on the iPhone.

The advantage here is that your last read bookmark is sync via Whispersync so that wherever you read you will know where it is.

This will be great when you have access to Kindle App across iPhone, tablet and ebook readers next time (although i really am questioning why you would need so many devices)

To read or access Barnes and Noble from iPhone

Cost:Apps are FREE.Books to Purchase

There are 2 apps provided by Barnes and Noble here. The B&N Bookstore is a store front that enables you to

1. Search for books
2. Find your closest Barnes & Noble,get maps and directions and see which stores offer cafes and free AT&T wireless access
3. Take a picture and find out more about that book you have just taken.

The B&N eReader enables you to

1. Read books purchased off Barnes and Noble
2. Adjustable Text Sizes
3. Multiple Font choices
4. Online backup of your library of books.

You will need a Barnes and Noble account to have these service. Its a free sign up but this i feel is more for US users.

the thing i like about Barnes and Noble is that at least their format is ePub format which is quite open and universal.

So if you have an IPhone and a Nook, which is Barnes and Noble ebook reader, then you are pretty much covered here.

To Read Portable Format or PDF books on your iPhone

This is the most prevalent format and many of you have

1. Work documents
2. Books
3. Magazines
4. Financial Reports
5. Brochures

In this format. This is a very inefficient format and it is more for printing rather than reading. Nevertheless many people can find full books in PDF format.

One of the best softwares out there that enables reading large PDF books is GoodReader

Cost:App cost 99 cents. books are your own PDF,TXT books.

It enables you to read TXT,DOC,HTML and PDF format well on it. It is not free but cost 99cents (the best 99 cents you will ever spend on the App Store)

You can wirelessly transfer your books from your computer over to the iPhone or iPod Touch.

I written an extensive guide on GoodReader and how you can use it to read PDF books. Do take a look. Its one of my star articles.

To Read PDB, EPUB, PRC, LIT,PDF,TXT,RTF,AZW on your iPhone

So what about reading EPUB, LIT,PRC  which are the prevalent alternative ebook format?

STANZA will do the trick.

Cost: App is FREE! Books provided by you

In a nutshell, STANZA is the best free reading app for iPhone. Take a look at this section to see how many format it is able to support.

List of supported formats

Amazingly it supports EPUB, Kindle DRM free, Microsoft LIT, Mobipocket and PDF formats!

it is such a good reader that Amazon bought over Lexcycle, the company behind STANZA. I dunno what they plan to do with it but they better not destroy this great app.

Basically with this you will be able to read any books you find on the internet. Well most of them

Take a look at this video how STANZA works:

How do you transfer your book?

You need to download and install a desktop application. [Download here >>]

Once you have installed the desktop application, you can open your book on the desktop. Go to the options to enable sharing. This will make your desktop stanza searchable to the iPhone

Go to your iPhone Stanza app and go to Get Books.There you will see a section called Computers Sharing Books you would see the name of your Desktop computer.

You can then download the book. its that easy. Watch the video above for further detail.

Conclusion

On a 3.5 inch device with awesome reading apps like STANZA and GoodReader, you are able to cover all format of books and be able to get them to your iPhone and start reading easily.