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Early analysis of Amazon's Kindle DX: E-textbooks

This is the third part to my early analysis of the new Kindle DX large-format e-book reader. In the first post ("Early analysis of Amazon's Kindle DX: Overview") I discussed the physical and software features of the new device. In the second post, "Early analysis of Amazon's Kindle DX: E-news", I described the limitations of the DX for news reading.

The textbook market represents an even greater challenge for the Kindle DX. There's a lot of variety among textbooks. Some textbooks will work well enough on the DX's display, but most, I … Read more

Early analysis of Amazon's Kindle DX: E-news

This is the second part to my early analysis of the new Kindle DX large-format e-book reader. In the first post ("Early analysis of Amazon's Kindle DX: Overview") I discussed the physical and software features of the new device. In the third post, "Early analysis of Amazon's Kindle DX: E-textbooks", I'll talk about how the DX will fit into the educational market.

But here, let's talk about the DX's suitability for reading electronic newspapers.

Newspapers are about text, and there's only a moderate need for interactivity. For each story, the … Read more

Early analysis of Amazon's Kindle DX: Overview

As expected, Amazon rolled out its new large-screen e-book reader, the Kindle DX. See Caroline McCarthy's coverage of the announcement here on CNET: "Amazon's big-screen Kindle DX makes its debut." I've spent much of the day reviewing the available information, and here are my first thoughts on the announcement.

Inevitably, the DX isn't exactly what I expected when I wrote my predictions earlier this week ("What to expect from Amazon and Apple"), but I got most of the major points right.

Here are the basic facts:

It's 7.2" wide … Read more

What to expect from Amazon and Apple

The New York Times reported this weekend, in an article titled "Looking to Big-Screen E-Readers to Help Save the Daily Press," that Amazon.com is on the verge of introducing a new larger-screen Kindle e-book reader.

A blog post from CNET's David Carnoy ("Amazon to introduce larger Kindle this week?") says that Amazon has scheduled a press event for Wednesday that may be the venue for this announcement.

The larger Kindle (which I think of as a "Kindle Pro," although I really have no idea what Amazon might call it) should be about … Read more

DoInk lets you draw, animate in your browser

DoInk is a free online drawing and animation tool that runs right in your browser. You can treat it like Microsoft Paint and use it to do just a quick doodle, or take advantage of its layer cloning and vector-based designs to create relatively advanced animations.

I chose the latter, and put together a pretty slick looking animation in just a few minutes. Adding additional frames is simple and intuitive, and the app saves everything you're working on in the background (and in the cloud) so there are no local files to worry about. You can also hop between … Read more

See how GreenPrint can help save paper

GreenPrint World scans print jobs before they hit the page to make them as tree-friendly as possible. It creates a print filter, intercepting your print jobs before they reach the spooler and checking them against a list of preset but adjustable criteria. You can have it grab by the number of lines on a page, for example.

In this First Look video, we'll show you how the program can help you prevent wasteful print jobs--and how it could be even better.

Pixel Qi talks up low-power displays

I got an e-mail from the folks over at O'Reilly Media mentioning that keynotes and other presentations from the company's ETech 2009 conference, held earlier this month, were now online at the ETech 2009 site. I missed that show, but I was interested in one of the keynotes, so I surfed on over to take a look.

The keynote I was looking for was indeed online: Mary Lou Jepsen, CEO of Pixel Qi and formerly CTO of the One Laptop Per Child organization, talking about "Low-Cost, Low-Power Computing." You can watch a video of the presentation … Read more

Fujitsu e-book reader makes Kindle look cheap

We've had a lot of CNET readers tell us they're waiting for a little color before they jump onto the e-book reader bandwagon. Well, as one might expect, a little color is going to cost you a lot of dough, as Fujitsu gets set to release its Flepia color e-book reader in Japan with a $1,000 price tag.

In the works for several years, the Flepia has a bigger display than does Amazon's Kindle 2--it has an 8-inch 1,024x768-pixel XGA touch screen that can display 260,000 colors (Fujitsu refers to its e-ink technology … Read more

Dell Wasabi adds spice to portable printing

Sure, Polaroid might be 6 feet under (or is it?), but casual photo enthusiasts can still enjoy instant gratification with Dell's Dell Wasabi PZ310 Mobile Printer, just announced today.

The Wasabi uses Zero-Ink (ZINK) technology that replaces cumbersome print cartridges with dye crystals embedded right into the proprietary ZINK paper. The crystals are heated as the paper passes through the printer, rendering clear, sharp images in less than a minute for each 2-inch by 3-inch photo.

ZINK also licenses its technology to other companies for their own unique products. For example, look for cameras and ZINK printers to converge … Read more