E-Reader Feeder

As in life, when you start something you never realize where you are going to end up or how long it will take to get there. The site is now over one hundred pages which I never thought would happen so quickly. I also did not foresee how quickly the industry would change in three months.

I have yet to really start the "HOW TO" section of the website. At some point, it would be nice to have helpful hints and guides on dozens of the most popular gadgets. My free e-book section will continue to grow  to five hundred  suggestions as I come up with new titles. News never stops so it is possible I might add five to eight pages each month. There is over thirty Tablet computers and several new e-Readers I want to feature. And of course an reviews submitted will be published as they come.

Lots to do so let's get busy.

Looks like there is a bandwagon all the electronics manufacturers are jumping onto and since January 1st, it's been on the e-Reader market. Since the CES in early January 2010, it seems that every major and obscure gadget company has announced a new e-Reader, almost each and every day. Before Christmas there was twenty to twenty five major e-Readers (depending on your criteria) and  today, there will be over sixty devices either on the market or arriving sometime this year.

It's now getting annoying because the more that come out, the more they all seem the same. Small websites like mine can't keep up with all the changes. When I reported on Copia's line, I was interested, Hearst's Skiff - great, Samsung's E6 and E101, - cool. The RCA brought out Lexi, BeBook introduced the Neo. Asus the DR-950, Lenovo has the iBook, by the time I found out about the Bookeen Orizon and Delta Electronic's Reader - they became a blur of one e-Reader after another with nothing unique to separate them.

Everybody and their cousin is introducing an e-Reader in 2010 and that is good. More choice. But why is every company rushing to send press releases this time of the year, just because their competitors are making their announcements right now? If I find all this too much, maybe consumers will find all this information overwhelming as well?

 My complaint to the marketing departments of these e-Readers is because you all rushed to announce your devices in January, your e-Reader lost some of it's luster and intrigue and the ones who were late  got the least bang for their buck in the press.  When your gadget does make it to market, you will have lost the surprise element and it won't be as exciting as the unexpected discoveries that jome out of nowhere.  Of course I don't work in marketing, so I could be wrong.

January 2010 has come and gone and left us with dozens of announcements of pending e-Readers and new tablet PC's including the Que, Alex, Skiff, iBook, iPad, HP Slate and many more. None of the new devices released in 2010 are smaller than six inches in size (screen display wise).  Compared to last year, at least four e-Readers that came out in 2009 had five inch screens.

Several of the new e-Readers due in 2010 are larger than any of the offerings in 2009 including the DX, 13.1" is the largest size reported so far.  It would be interesting to see the sales figures for last year but I am betting that the smallest e-Readers were not nearly as popular as the six inch displays. Have we seen the last of the five inch e-Reader? Are e-Readers going to grow in size until ten inches is the new standard or will six inches continue to be the popular size?

We are lucky enough to get a (professional) reviewer who reviews e-Readers for the Huffington Post to help us out with our website. Stephanie (aka Geekgirl) is a computer consultant who has access to the latest and best e-Readers and already has written reviews on the Kindle 2 and Sony Pocket Reader.  She is one of the privileged few who actually gets loaner units to review from the manufacturers.  We have added three of her latest articles already.

Next up on her list is reviews on the Kindle DX, Sony Touch Reader and after that,  articles on the Spring Design Alex and Plastic Logic Que (to be confirmed). We are happy to print her reviews when she completes them for the Huffington Post . Hopefully, this is the start of great things to come.

Apple's iPad is a fantastic device and most Tablet Computer makers should be worried. How can HP, Sony, Toshiba, Dell and others compete against this marketing giant?  Should Amazon and other e-Reader sellers worry?

I don't think so. The iPad has a super sharp, user friendly platform with over 140,000 apps including video games, movie & tv playback, mp3 & other music format playback. It's a web browser, an email and messaging system. You can use it for GPS & road maps, to research topics, find recipes and  you can even read on it with the iBook app.

It does so many wonderful things but what it does not do is use e-ink and imitate read ink on real paper. E-Readers are safe because they are much better devices for reading books. Their screens will not make your eyes get tired like iPad's LCD screen. Their batteries will last many, many more hours than the iPad.  They cost much less and are more affordable.

Hardcore book lovers will still line up to buy e-Readers like the Kindle, Nook & Sony Readers but casual readers may pause and decide to go for Apple's computer. I think the iPad may affect Kindle DX, Skiff & Que sales because they are of comparable prices and  are one dimensional but the smaller e-Readers should continue to sell well.

What a difference, a year makes. At the beginning of 2009, Amazon's Kindle 1, the original, was THE e-Reader and Sony's 505 and 700 Readers were the main competitors.

Almost every e-Reader on this page, with the exception of the iRex models, has been released since March 2009 and I think the change came about with the spring release of the Kindle 2 with most of the flood of e-Readers coming since August 2009, namely the Sony Pocket Reader & Sony Touch Reader and the Kindle DX

The news became very interesting around October, when Barnes & Noble unveiled the Nook & Spring Design sued, claiming that it's a imitation of their Alex e-Reader. Interead, Bookeen, Ectaco, Endless Ideas, and Pocketbooks came out with their own e-Readers this year.  And the Kindle went international bring wireless e-Readers to  over 100 countries.

Now more e-Reader manufacturers are coming on in 2010. Look for models from Asus, maybe Samsung & Fujitsu. Plastic Logic & iRiver will release their own devices in the USA in 2010 & more Android Smartphones will be able to copy the Apple iPhone & Palm Pixi/Pre with their own e-Reader applications. But with the new Tablet computers from Microsoft & Apple, the next decade could be a whole new ballgame.

That's right. I don't like blogging all that much. You have to consistently create all these interesting daily blogs and I don't need that pressure. I even wrote an article at a ezine article site why blogging is such hard work and why most people will fail to keep it up.

I only blog once a week because I am so busy building this site up. Right now I am adding a section on e-Readers and Tablet computers at the Consumer Electronics Show, which is held every January in Las Vegas and that should take two days or so. Blogging is great if you make it your main focus but this website is growing so fast, with the addition of one hundred free classic ebooks section and over a dozen how to videos on the Kindle, Sony & Nook,  blogging  has become a low priority this month.

I am still not sure what all this blogging is about or even if anyone reads this. I treat this page like an a twice a week journal to announce things or to just keep a history of what I have done to this site.

As much as I like gadgets (enough to make a webpage), I really like books, especially free ones.  So I am compiling a list of one hundred classic titles on this site, all of which are free in eBook form (ePub seems the most popular) In the next few weeks, you can find all the classics like Homer, The iLiad, The Tale of Two Cities, Emma, Dracula and so on here on seven pages at eReader Feeder.

While I don't have the space or time to put the actual files here, I am creating links to places where you can download it like BeBook.com, CoolerBooks.com, Kobobooks.com, Barnes and Noble & the Gutenberg Project.org. This week, I put the first thirty five books  up and will put up the other sixty five within the next two weeks.

Any day now Spring Design and Plastic Logic will release their own e-Readers & we will have even more to cover. But all eyes are on Apple as they unveil their tablet computer (a larger 7" or 10" version of the iPhone). If the new tablet computers do a decent job of presenting e-Books on a sharp contrast screen,  be comfortable to read and have low battery drain then all the current e-Readers could actually become obsolete within two years.

Naw, I don't believe that!  e-ink display is far easier to use and is more likely to replace real paper books than color LCD or plasma screens.  What may happen is tablet computers may pressure e-Reader makers to slash prices to under $150.00 US to compete.  
Either way, I predict we are going to be flooded with new portable reading devices, whether in tablet form,  as e-Reader devices or inside smartphones as applications. 2010 should be a very interesting year.

E-readers have been around for about a decade but their popularity has been held back by both technology and other competing media players like PDA's and MP3 players.

With the wide release of affordable e-ink display screens which imitates real print and improved memory storage (3,500 books on a Kindle) not to mention very long battery life (2 weeks or 8,000 page turns), finally the largest bookstores and electronics manufacturers have embraced and are heavily promoting all these new 2009 models.

As the first wave of buyers were gadget enthusiasts who love the buttons, power and capabilities of the first decade of e-Readers, the marketers are now focusing on the second group of consumers, book lovers who enjoy reading on both traditional paperbacks and electronic formats.

I believe that in 2010 and beyond, students from grade school to postgraduate degrees will embrace e-Readers as a tool to help them study. Employees and business people will also begin to purchase e-Readers in greater numbers to carry around documents and share reports & memos. Even people who read only a few books a year will consider changing from paper to digital as the average price drops in all categories.

Most current information about e-Readers are to be found in electronics blogs or computer magazines but those articles are often too technically oriented and aimed at specific type of reader. We need a place for e-book readers, of all types, to get all the information about e-readers without wading through hours of search engine research or going to the manufacturers websites. "E-reader Feeder" aims to provide as much news and views about our little hobby as possible and invites your input.