With apps planned soon for the iPhone and PCs, Blio's cross-platform functionality makes it a natural fit for something like the Apple iSlate, which along with other tablet devices should be perfect for reading cookbooks, children's books, and any other illustrated tome. It marks a natural evolution away from the current stock of ebook readers, which are bound by the drab black and white of e-ink.

E-ink has manifold problems, but maybe the greatest of those is that it's just for text, rendering it essentially useless for any book that requires rich illustration. Blio seems to solve that issue, while at the same time offering text-to-speech capabilities that turn your ebook into an audio book.

Blio will also likely be offering over a million books at launch. While that probably includes a lot public domain filler from Project Gutenberg and Google Books, there are at least a few best-sellers (Twilight, In Defense of Food, John Adams, etc.) on the list as well. Better still, the app is going to be free.

Kurzweil has spent a lot of his time envisioning the future, with mixed degrees of success. But he's also a highly respected inventor with a multitude of patents under his belt, meaning we should pay attention when he makes a move like this. Especially with tablets in line to potentially hit the mainstream next year, this is a product that fills a clear and present need, and fills it right now. Let's hope it lives up to the vision.

The Price:

$180

The Verdict:

Relatively cheap, compared to the major ereader brands, but it's probably the worst ebook reader we've tested.

Instead of going for an e-ink screen like the Kindle or the Nook, Aluratek went with a monochrome LCD screen. This is fine, in theory, because it keeps costs low and actually improves refresh rates, it also sacrifices battery life. For example, I could only make it through 80% of the 7th Harry Potter book before it demanded to be charged. You're looking at a day or two's worth of reading at best, and by that I mean reading on and off and not for 24 hours straight.

Performance is pretty horrible as well. Aluratek seems to have only put in a processor strong enough to turn the pages at a decent speed, because startup times, navigation and book loading times were atrociously bad. Granted, this won't be an issue when you're actually reading books, which is most of the time.

The worst thing about the reader is probably the button placement. There are three ways you can turn a page: using the page turn buttons on the bottom left, the arrow keys on the bottom right or the page toggle on the left edge of the screen. They're all pretty clumsy. The bottom left and bottom right methods are too far down the reader for you to hold your hand in that position while you're reading, so you'll have to move it down every time you want to advance. As for the left hand slider toggle, those traction edges that they placed in there to make it easier to grip and scroll is actually too rough for my delicate hands, so I avoided using it when possible. Basically, they've got an ebook reader that's difficult to turn the pages with.

Even if you go beyond the lousy controls, the sub-par performance and the LCD screen that's not all that readable, you've still got yourself a fairly cheap ereader, and it's somewhat compact as well. If you're someone who actually doesn't mind reading books on their computers, this is one—albeit tiny—step higher. [Aluratek]

Screen refreshes faster than e-ink readers

It's cheap (relatively)

Slow

Awkward button placement

Lousy battery life

Because in the words of our own Wilson Rothman, "It feels like not much has changed." The only thing he notices off the bat is that returning to the book you're reading, after going to the main menu, is quicker, though it's still just as slow to load a new book up. As for page turns, he's still seeing the 1-2 second page turns he saw before, and the highlights-and-notes bug he uncovered during his review seems to be unrepaired.

It seems the Nook—a beautiful piece of hardware in its own right—is still in need of one heck of a firmware update. [Teleread Thanks JP!]

Update: According to B&N spokespeople:

This week, we are conducting our first over-the-air update with version 1.1 software. Nook 1.1 enables seamless connection of a customer's Nook in Barnes & Noble stores, providing exclusive content and promotions over our free Wi-Fi connection. This update also begins to provide some core speed and performance improvements and enhances the customer's reading experience by enabling them to begin reading their content sooner. Information can be found at www.nook.com/support. As with any new software, we will continue to optimize and expand Nook's capabilities using seamless over-air-updates which don't require any action by the Nook customer. We expect to conduct a larger Nook software update early next year.

Right now, to get one of the tens of millions of Scribd documents has — books, papers, and other content — off the web and into a Kindle, a user has to email the document to his or her Kindle email address.

Trip Adler, the company's CEO and founder tells us it will be a "seamless" experience next year.

Trip couldn't tell us if his plan was part of an official Scribd-Amazon partnership or not. He just said, "I can tell you that we talk to Amazon a lot."

Will Scribd-To-Kindle be a threat to Amazon?

For now, Scribd's store is no threat to Amazon. It's a smaller selection more heavily favoring obscure documents Amazon doesn't sell. Down the road, it represents a possible threat.

That's because Scribd is quietly developing a strong e-book storefront to match its hoard of user generated content.

This week Scribd announced that John Wiley and Sons would be selling books through Scribd's store.That gives Scribd access to the "For Dummies" series, as well as "Frommer's" travel guides. It already had Simon and Schuster on board, along with other prominent publishers.

If Scribd can put its books on the Kindle, this number should only grow, especially since it offers publishers a better business deal than Amazon.

Amazon reportedly offers a 50/50 sales split. Scribd only keeps 20% and allows publishers to set their own price.

Is this a Hail Mary for Scribd?

No. Regardless of what happens, Scribd will keep chugging along. It plans on rolling out mobile applications next year for the iPhone and Android.

Adler declined to give us a revenue number, but he said the company was profitable in the second quarter this year, but decided to hire more employees to focus on growth. It has about 40 employees.

Our back of the envelop calculations put revenue in the range of $7 to $10 million. Adler says revenue is growing 10-12% month over month.

image: Flickr/Jamesjyu

The Kobo service is already live and will apparently allow downloading of "content to the most popular smartphones, including the Apple iPhone, Research in Motion BlackBerry, Palm Pre and Google Android devices."

Everything sounds quite lovely, right down to the point of Borders and Kobo wanting to make everything an open platform, but I'm just curious to see what sort of device the partnership will produce and when we'll actually see it on the market. [NY Times]

There's a battle raging (okay, it's actually being handled rather quietly through proper legal channels) right now between publishers and authors over who owns the digital publishing rights of older books. In one corner, you have the authors claiming that because ebook rights were not set explicitly, they retain the right to publish. In the other corner, you have the publishers claiming that ebooks fall under the category of "books" and as such they own the rights.

You can see how this gets messy. In 2002 a Manhattan judge ruled in favor of the authors. saying that ebooks are separate from books. But that's just one case, and there's sure to be more legal action to follow.

You can read more at the link. It's yet another interesting conflict over who owns what, brought about by the gadgets we create. [NY Times]

Simon & Schuster sees what's happening: Real people are buying ebooks now, and the market, in its infancy, is forming habits and expectations. Like bestsellers for just 10 bucks—bestsellers that sell for 30 dollars in their hardcover form. Or should, anyway, but the devaluation of verbiage has been trickling over to real books too, since nobody fucks with Walmart, and they've been aggressively price matching, resulting in all out price war.

It's the worst of all possible scenarios: Publishers aren't just making less money on ebooks, but on the paper ones too. And people will get the crazy idea in their head that that's what books are worth, the same way we all think a song is worth 99 cents. (Or, um, nothing to the unscrupulous.)

So Simon and Schuster's plan is to plug ebooks into their own special place in the publishing cycle: Four months after hardcovers. Meaning you'll have to wait 1/3 of a year after a book's published to read it on a Kindle or Nook or tablet or whatever. It establishes a value hierarchy, that looks, as the WSJ points out a lot like the theatrical release cycle for movies. It's true, the movie industry has fared better than the music industry in preserving the perception of value of their content. But if you look, digital movies have slowly crept up to be same-day as DVD. They're just really damn expensive—15 bucks.

It's hard for the publishing industry to do the same thing—charge a premium for the digital version—since they're trying to get this whole ebook thing off the ground, not to mention the experience just isn't as good as a real book, at least not yet. They're still trying to hook people. It's not an easy place to be, at least not until the ebook experience stacks up more definitively with the real book one. Making people wait 4 months to buy books on their Kindle will, at best, simply hurt ebooks, because no one wants to wait for new stuff, least of all, words. At worst, it'll put people off of buying those books entirely—they'll wait for them to hit nook at $10, but'll have lost interest by the time it comes out. And then the publisher's still screwed. More to the point, like the music industry found out, and as the movie and TV business is struggling with, the new model is going to break the old one, and arbitrary limitations, will fall like the dead trees they print things on.

I do not envy you, Mr. Publisher Man. [WSJ]

The reader has 24 hours of continuous use (not too shabby for an LCD, even if it is monochrome), and supports MP3 and photos. It's 5 inches big, reads ePub and PDF as well as TXT, Mobi, PRC and RTF formats. Those of you who like downloading books from "non-official" sources know that they usually come in one of those formats. But the Libre comes with 100 "free" books, which are most likely public domain books you could get for free.

We'll see how it stacks up to e-ink type readers when we test it, but on paper, this seems like a pretty decent (cheap) alternative. Especially because it promises a faster page-turn refresh rate than e-ink. It comes in black and white. [Aluratek]

Aluratek, Inc., a leading creator of sophisticated yet user-friendly computer peripherals and consumer electronic devices, announces Libre – the new eBook Reader with exclusive LCD technology. Libre provides the most affordable product in the category, featuring superior battery life with up to 24 hours of continuous use, auto-off and page advance features, MP3 and photo support.

Utilizing the latest monochrome reflective light LCD display technology, the Libre eBook Reader PRO provides a crisp black and white 5-inch screen with the same appearance and readability of printed paper. There is no backlighting, so reading on the Libre is as soft on the eyes as reading a book, while also preserving battery power.

The Libre supports Adobe's Digital Edition software allowing Digital Rights Management (DRM) support for ePUB and PDF formats. This allows users to purchase new book releases from a variety of eBook content providers including eBooks.com, one of Aluratek's content partners.

With an MSRP of $179, the Libre is a cost-effective solution for anyone looking to experience the next generation of digital technology related to books. The Libre connects to any Mac or PC with an Internet connection for easy access to the newest book releases as well as timeless classics. It also comes loaded with 100 free eBooks on the included 2GB SD card.

"Unlike e-Ink displays which require multiple flashes for each page advance, I believe the reflective LCD technology the Libre offers will be a welcome change compared to other eBooks currently on the market" said John Wolikow, VP Sales and Marketing for Aluratek. "The ability to store thousands of your favorite books in the Libre is not only convenient but it's also good for the environment by saving trees."

Libre comes with a 2GB SD card, and supports SD and SDHC cards up to 32GB. The audio player feature lets users also listen to their favorite MP3s, and the picture viewer supports BMP, JPG, GIF and animated GIF. Versatile for any user, Libre offers five font size options and also supports Adobe DRM, ePUB, PDF, FB2, TXT, Mobi, PRC and RTF formats.

Other key features of the Libre include: table of contents, bookmark list and page, content search, jump to page, zoom, auto page turn, background music, multiple language formats, auto power off and a help menu.

The Libre eBook Reader PRO is available in either black or white with an MSRP of $179. For more information about the Libre eBook Reader PRO, or any of Aluratek's other innovative products, please visit www.aluratek.com.

While PC Pro praises the use of ePub format (it's not tied so closely to one store like the Kindle), they put its build and display quality below the Kindle. They say it's a lot like the Sony Reader PRS-505...but far more expensive for no justifiable reason. (The Story costs the equivalent of $380, while that Reader is but $300.) Sounds like a price drop will straighten out most of these qualms. [PC Pro via Engadget]

While the injunction's been denied, Spring Design has been granted an expedited pre-trial process to push the entire mess into court a bit faster, but at the rate Barnes & Noble will be making the Nook available, there's hardly any rush. [Engadget]

Remember, if you ordered a Nook before November 20th, B&N promises it'll make it by Christmas—but if you waited until after the 20th, your only options are to wait until the backordered Nooks start shipping on January 11th, or fight your way through the likely crowds at the few high-traffic retail stores that'll have them on December 7th. We're also hearing about more general shifting of ship dates—anybody pre-order one and have their estimated time of arrival changed? [Barnes & Noble via Engadget]

Here's the rundown:

Kindle (Global Wireless) and Kindle (U.S. Wireless)

* Longer battery life for Kindle (Global Wireless): You can now read for up to 1 week on a single charge with wireless on. Turn wireless off and read for up to 2 weeks.
* Built-in PDF reader: Your Kindle can now display PDF documents without losing the formatting of the original file. Send PDF documents directly to your Kindle (via your @Kindle address) or drag and drop PDF files from your computer to your Kindle (when connected via USB). Learn more.
* Manual screen rotation: The Kindle screen can now manually rotate between portrait and landscape views so you can see the entire width of a web page or magnify the page of a PDF file. The page-turn buttons work the same in either orientation, and the 5-way controller movements are switched to match the orientation. Learn more.
* Option to convert PDF files to Kindle format. If you prefer to have your personal PDF documents converted to the Kindle format (so that they can reflow), type "Convert" in the subject of the e-mail when you submit your personal document to your @kindle.com address.

Kindle (U.S. Wireless) and Kindle (Global Wireless) users can go to Archived Items on their Kindle and download the Kindle User's Guide, 4th Ed., which now documents all the features of Kindle Software 2.3.

Kindle DX

* Better cropping of PDF files: In landscape orientation, white margins of PDF documents are automatically cropped to maximize the amount of content shown on the screen.
* Option to convert PDF files to Kindle format. If you prefer to have your personal PDF documents converted to the Kindle format (so that they can reflow), type "Convert" in the subject of the e-mail when you submit your personal document to your @kindle.com address.
* View pages longer: We've extended the time before Kindle DX switches into screensaver mode - from 5 minutes to 20 minutes - giving you more time for reviewing your content.

You should get the update automatically via your wireless connection, so you don't need to do anything special to get this stuff. [Amazon]

Analysts Talk Apple Tablet, Make Ever More Predictions

CNN Money rounded up a bunch of analysts to basically talk about how great the Apple Tablet is, how it's going to cure cancer and save the publishing industry and keep your girlfriend from leaving you, and it's mostly a rehash of what we've already heard before with a dash of a few inane statements that are almost certainly not true. Check this one:

The device will come in several different models that offer varieties of Internet connections, such as Wi-Fi or 3G, perhaps through a contract with AT&T.

Oh, really? Several different models, with varying internet connections? That sure sounds like Apple—they love confusing lineups that differ by virtue of technical specifications that only tech dorks like you and I understand.

Otherwise, nothing to see here, just more analyst talk. When something solid on the Apple Tablet leaks out, you'll know—and it ain't to be found in this article, which is why it lands, with a distinct PLOOP sound, into Remainders. [CNN]

Mad Catz Brings Cheaper Xbox 360 Wi-Fi Adapter, Still About $50 Too Expensive

I just got an Xbox 360 this weekend, and somehow did not realize that not only does the console not ship with included Wi-Fi, but an external Wi-Fi adapter costs about as much as my drinking budget for the month—in other words, way too much money. Luckily Microsoft's first-party adapter isn't the only game in town anymore: Mad Catz is entering the ring with an adapter of their own. Great news, right? Except not really, because while the Mad Catz adapter is $20 cheaper than Microsoft's that's still an $80 pricetag on an item that should be included in the first place. This thing should cost $30 at the most, not half the price of the console. It's in Remainders for that very reason: Yeah, it's a price cut, but it's still way too damned expensive. [Engadget]

Sony Reader Firmware Upgrade Is Surprisingly Difficult

The Sony Reader PRS-500 may not have the cachet of the Kindles and Nooks of the world, but Sony did just release an upgraded firmware supporting the soon-to-be-standard ePub format. Except I guess the upgrade is seriously difficult, because instead of, you know, pressing a button, like every other firmware upgrade for every other gadget in the history of the world, you have to mail the Reader back to Sony to get this one updated. What? Well, Sony's got an offer in case you find that as silly as I do: A trade-in program that gives you either $50 or $75 off the purchase of one of Sony's brand-new readers! Eesh, Sony. At least take us out to dinner before trying to screw us with our pants on. [Engadget]

B&N Giftcards Will Work for Nook Ebook Purchases, Soon

Remember when we reported that Barnes & Noble's popular giftcards would, for some unknown reason, not be allowed to be spent on ebook purchases? Well, our reporting did its job, and B&N has decided to change its ways and allow ebook giftcard purchases starting in mid-December. We did it, people! High fives and ass-slaps all around! [Barnes & Noble]

Maximum PC got their hands on one, and liked it very much, from the capacitative screen—running Android—that can play video to the onscreen keyboard. The only thing they didn't like is that it is thicker than Kindle. Who cares about a few millimeters when you get more usability in return? I don't. And I like them curvy. [Maximum PC]

Based on the press release, the claim is that Barnes & Noble used information, including design details, gained from meetings with Spring Design which were intended to end in a joint product. Apparently the Spring Design camp was caught just a little bit off guard when the Nook announcements started coming out:

Spring Design Files Lawsuit against Barnes & Noble : Nook Violates Alex Intellectual Property

CUPERTINO, CA - November 2, 2009 - Spring Design today filed a lawsuit to protect its Alex™ e-book intellectual property. The lawsuit asserts Barnes & Noble misappropriated trade secrets and violated the parties' non-disclosure agreement when it copied Alex' features into its recently announced Nook e-book.

"Spring Design unfortunately had to take the appropriate action to protect its intellectual property rights," said Spring Design Vice President of Sales and Marketing, Eric Kmiec. "We showed the Alex e-book design to Barnes & Noble in good faith with the intention of working together to provide a superior dual screen e-book to the market."

Spring Design first developed and began filing patents on its Alex e-book, an innovative dual screen, Android-based e-book back in 2006. Since the beginning of 2009 Spring and Barnes & Noble worked within a non-disclosure agreement, including many meetings, emails and conference calls with executives ranging up to the president of Barnes and Noble.com, discussing confidential information regarding the features, functionality and capabilities of Alex. Throughout, Barnes & Noble's marketing and technical executives extolled Alex's "innovative" features, never mentioning their use of those features until the public disclosure of the Nook.

Alex, with its unique Duet Navigator™, provides the capability for interaction and navigation techniques of the two screens and furthermore utilizes the capabilities of Android to enhance the reader's experience by supporting interactive access to the Internet for references and links. As the first in the market to offer an e-book with full Internet browsing while reading and with easy navigational control via its touch screen, Alex is well-positioned to offer the most dynamic and powerful reading device in the market.

Spring Design is focused at working strategically with book store partners to jointly develop the market and revolutionize e-book with interactive multi-media open Internet access. "It is our desire to resolve this matter so that we can move forward together to expand and grow this e-book market with enriched user experience, bringing readers to a new level of reading enjoyment," said Eric Kmiec.

About Spring Design:
Spring Design, founded in 2006, delivers innovative e-reader solutions and products to the e-book market, offering overall "Link Notes", a content authoring and multi-media publishing tool as add on editions to original text. Spring Design is located in Cupertino, California with engineering offices in Taiwan and China. Spring Design pioneered its patent-pending dual screen design with Duet Navigator™ capability in 2006, and has been working with major book stores, newspapers and publishers over the last two years, sharing the vision and the capabilities of the dual screen device. Spring Design's innovative patented technologies incorporate the seamless interaction of dual display and multi-online access in a single device, benefiting and leveraging the technology and resources of the Web to enhance the reading experience with open Internet access.

The reader is definitely slender as it's almost half as thin as a Kindle 2. It's said that it can be "bent to some extent since the circuit board and the electronic paper are flexible," but no one is saying how much "to some extent" is. No matter. While the lack of too many details about it or any plans for a commercial product put a damper onto Bridgestone's device, the good news is that other companies might adapt the technology in their products. The countdown to being able to toss our readers into bags without worrying about destroyed displays is on. [Crunchgear]

In a strategy that seems needlessly drawn-out, BN is pushing the sales of Nook to be mostly online, and the stores that don't have the hardware in stock will instead order it for you online, to be shipped to your home. Each store will have one demo unit, but in many stores, you'll have to wait for online shipping after trying it out. Why they've chosen to go this route is a mystery to me—why would they want to add an extra step for consumers? We're not sure yet exactly which stores will be getting Nooks (or why—maybe a supply issue?); it's not a huge deal but it can't help the Nook's chances.

Update: Barnes and Noble responds:

While it's always difficult to predict demand on a new product, and early from response from consumers is strong, Barnes & Noble expects to have nook eBook readers in stock in the majority of its stores by the peak holiday season and plans to have nook devices in stock in all of its stores by early next year. If the product is out of stock or not available in a particular store, our booksellers can help facilitate an in-store order that will be shipped to the customer's home.

Guess we'll see what the rollout looks like when it actually happens.[Paid Content]

Lending seemed too good to be true: Sure, we knew about the 14-day lending period, but we wondered if it'd work like a library, where you can renew a book before its due date. No such luck. As it turns out, publishers have the right to allow or not allow lending (and book publishers are at least as uptight as record labels) in the first place, so who knows if you'll ever even get to try it. Besides that, you can lend each book one time only, forever. When you lend it, it's unavailable for you to read, which admittedly is what happens when you lend a physical book—but THESE AREN'T PHYSICAL BOOKS. For god's sake, let us enjoy the benefits of digital text!

I'm a little pissed off by this, especially since I was so excited about the Nook, but not entirely surprised. It's like when Microsoft introduced the Zune's sharing feature. They understood that people share physical media and want to share digital media, but still forced (probably at the record labels' behest, but whatever) a 3-play, 3-day restriction that was so strict nobody ever used the feature. And now Barnes & Noble is following in Microsoft's footsteps. Balls. [MobileRead, thanks Gideon!]