2:00 PM, Friday, March 19th, 2010 - Posted by John Wilson
AT&T today trumpeted its green credentials through the ZERO Charger. The Superior Communications-made device powers most low-power USB devices, including the iPhone, and is purportedly the
world's first charger to avoid "vampire" power draw. When a device is full, the ZERO automatically stops charging and therefore avoids a trickle of energy when a device is left plugged in. The
interchangeable "block" design also reduces the obsolescence of the charger once owners replace their devices.
The packaging itself helps and is made entirely of recycled paper.
Both features make AT&T one of the earliest adoptees of the philosophy behind the new universal cellphone charger standard, which was originally created to reduce both power consumption and
waste. AT&T's solution isn't a direct reflection of the standard as the ITU and involved partners haven't settled on the connectors, but the iPhone and most modern cellphones often include
adapter cables that connect to USB.
No pricing has been given, but AT&T expects the ZERO Charger to cost as much as a regular power adapter. It will ship sometime in May.
12:00 PM, Monday, March 15th, 2010 - Posted by John Wilson
If you think the coming wave of tablets is about to make e-book readers obsolete, guess again.
Although dozens of tablets are scheduled to hit the market this year — from companies like Apple, HP and Dell, as well as upstarts like JooJoo — executives in the e-reader industry aren't particularly worried.
Instead, they say, tablets and E Ink-based reading devices are likely to co-exist, targeting different groups of consumers based on their purchasing power, the extent of interactivity they need and their reading patterns.
"In the short term, every company is likely to have two lines of products," says Robert Brunner, founder of Ammunition, a design firm that worked with Barnes & Noble to design the Nook e-reader. "If you think of a paperback-like reader, E Ink does a fantastic job. But color will definitely happen and it is likely to be LCD or OLED. It seems logical."
Think of this strategy as something similar to the one employed by the print publishing industry. There are more expensive, better-designed hardcovers for consumers who value presentation — while the same books are often available in cheaper, but still functional, paperback editions.
In the digital world, that's likely to translate into two sets of products: Full-featured tablets with color displays and lots of features that cost $400 or more, and inexpensive black-and-white E Ink-powered e-readers that will be available for $150 or less.
The launch of Amazon's Kindle in 2007 kickstarted the market for electronic book readers. Last year, an estimated 5 million e-readers were sold and sales are expected to double this year. Meanwhile, companies like Apple and HP are promoting their tablets as devices that can be used to read digital books — although, as mini computers, these tablets can also do a lot more. Apple has already planned an iTunes-like iPad book store, called iBooks, that will compete with Amazon in selling electronic books.
The resurgence of tablets has given rise to chatter that tablets could mean the end of the road for e-readers. After all, who would want to buy a black-and-white Kindle that is basically good only for reading, when for only slightly more money, they could get a slick iPad that also does e-mail, shows movies, displays your photos and lets you edit documents?
That line of reasoning is moot, say executives in the e-reader industry.
"If reading is your primary entertainment activity, you are more likely to buy an e-reader," says Glen Burchers, director of marketing for Freescale. "So this is a person who will pick up a book when they have the spare time instead of turning on the TV or opening up the computer." Freescale's processors power nearly 90 percent of the e-readers available currently.
Recent research commissioned by Freescale showed an e-reader buyer, on average, is 43 years old, earns $72,000 and buys two e-books a month.
Those who say they're interested in buying a tablet tend to be much younger, Freescale's research showed. Tablets will be more attractive to people who want to use them for reading but also for keeping up with their Facebook pages and Twitter feeds.
An e-book designed for tablets could have interactive elements, color photos and video embeds, making it perfect for textbooks or cookbooks. Narrative non-fiction or fiction books need that kind of multimedia enhancement less, so they are more likely to be targeted at black-and-white e-readers, says Brunner.
E Ink screens aren't particularly good at anything other than books, leaving newspapers and magazines out in the cold. That's where tablets could step in, says James McQuivey, an analyst with Forrester Research. Indeed, many magazines — including Wired — have already announced plans to develop electronic magazines that will work on tablets. But it will be a battle that could take a toll on e-paper based displays, he says.
"For people who read more of those media than they do books, tablets will be an ideal device and can easily take some wind out of E Ink sales, once we get beyond the fourth of the population that really enjoys reading books," says McQuivey.
4:00 PM, Sunday, March 14th, 2010 - Posted by John Wilson
When it began taking pre-orders for the iPad this morning, Apple also published some new details about how the tablet device will function as an e-book reader.
It turns out the iPad will read books out loud to you with audio dictation, a controversial feature that caused some trouble for Amazon's Kindle last year. Also, Apple indicated that you'll be able to use the iPad to read EPUB titles from sources outside of the iBooks store.
The new features are described in the iBooks overview page on Apple's website. In the section titled "Change your reading habits," Apple says its VoiceOver functionality — an accessibility tool that works in other parts of the iPad's interface to help visually impaired users — will also work to dictate e-books.
"IBooks works with VoiceOver, the screen reader in iPad, so it can read you the contents of any page," Apple's description reads.
And for EPUB titles that are not offered through the iBooks store, you can manually add them to iTunes and then sync them to the iPad:
"The iBooks app uses the EPUB format — the most popular open book format in the world," Apple's site reads. "That makes it easy for publishers to create iBooks versions of your favorite reads. And you can add free EPUB titles to iTunes and sync them to the iBooks app on your iPad.
That's good news for iPad customers, because that means bookworms won't be limited to the offerings in the iBooks store, which are based on partnerships that Apple inked with publishers.
The new detail about audio dictation should raise more questions. Amazon's Kindle 2 reader shipped with a function to read e-books out loud, and the Authors Guild made a fuss alleging copyright violations that would cut into sales of audiobooks.
"They don't have the right to read a book out loud," said Paul Aiken, executive director of the Authors Guild, in an interview with The Wall Street Journal. "That's an audio right, which is derivative under copyright law."
The guild contended that authors should be awarded audio-licensing fees for e-books. Responding to the criticism, Amazon said "no copy is made, no derivative work is created and no performance is being given." Nonetheless, Amazon in late February 2009 gave rights-owners the choice to enable or disable the audio function title by title.
There's no word on whether the Author's Guild will pursue a similar complaint against Apple.
The National Federation of the Blind has already applauded Apple for including VoiceOver in the iPad.
5:00 PM, Monday, March 8th, 2010 - Posted by Chuck Moore
Creator's Edge Press has officially signed a contract with the digital content platform company Graphic.ly. Graphic.ly will present all of Creator's Edge properties to the online comic enthusiast as soon as their books are released. "While we as a company are firm believers in producing comics the classic way, we realize it is not a sound strategy to omit digital comics from our gameplan. Instead we are embracing the technology through our partnership with Graphic.ly and will strive to present all of our material online soon after the release of our books" said Chuck Messinger, Marketing Director and founder of Creator's Edge Press. The company will have their first three books available at Emerald City Comicon, and more than 30 other properties scheduled to hit the shelves in 2010.
Graphic.ly is a cutting-edge digital content delivery system and community platform for the publishing world. Graphic.ly's first product focuses on comic publishers, creators and enthusiasts, and provides an immersive social experience and marketplace around digital comics and associated merchandise. The company is looking to expand its community and content platform and become the de facto solution for print media. Graphic.ly recently made headlines by acquiring iFanboy, best known as one of the leading online communities for comic book and graphic novel enthusiasts. With the acquisition, iFanboy becomes a division of Graphic.ly, and will be integrated into the Graphic.ly Web site, as well as into the various platforms and applications Graphic.ly runs on, such as Windows 7, Adobe Air and the iPhone.
12:45 PM, Sunday, March 7th, 2010 - Posted by Chuck Moore
Apple has announced today they will be taking pre-orders for the first round of iPads at the Apple Online Store (along with reservations for pickup at your local Apple Retail Store) starting March 12th with an expected street date of April 3rd.
This will most likely be the basic, non-3G models, but it will represent the first chance for customers to experiment with reading CBR, CBZ or PDF based comics on a handheld reader in a full page format. Start with the iPad, mix it with the host of digital comics currently on sale via sites like ComicsXP and DriveThruComics and marry it up with existing readers within the iTunes store like MyComics (for CBR and CBZ) or GoodReader (PDF) and, if the stars align, we could very well be reading comics (full screen and in color) on the device in a very short time.
2:00 PM, Saturday, March 6th, 2010 - Posted by John Wilson
We've been dying to know more about Microsoft's Courier tablet / e-book device ever since we first caught wind of it last September, and while our entreaties to Mr. Ballmer went unanswered, we just learned some very interesting information from an extremely trusted source. We're told Courier will function as a "digital journal," and it's designed to be seriously portable: it's under an inch thick, weighs a little over a pound, and isn't much bigger than a 5x7 photo when closed. That's a lot smaller than we expected -- this new picture really puts it into perspective -- and the internals apparently reflect that emphasis on mobility: rather than Windows 7, we're told the Courier is built on Tegra 2 and runs on the same OS as the Zune HD, Pink, and Windows Mobile 7 Series, which we're taking to mean Windows CE 6.
As we've heard, the interface appears to be pen-based and centered around drawing and writing, with built-in handwriting recognition and a corresponding web site that allows access to everything entered into the device in a blog-like format complete with comments. We're also hearing that there will be a built-in camera, and there's a headphone jack for media playback. Most interestingly, it looks like the Courier will also serve as Microsoft's e-book device, with a dedicated ecosystem centered around reading. It all sounds spectacular, but all we have for a launch date is "Q3 / Q4", and we have no idea how much it's going to cost, so we're trying to maintain a healthy skepticism until any of this gets official -- call us any time, Microsoft. One more pic showing the interface after the break.
12:00 PM, Friday, March 5th, 2010 - Posted by Brant Fowler
According to Digital Spy, Rob Liefeld has signed with digital comics firm Comixology, giving them exclusive digital rights to his creator-owned works. So this means, through Comixology's iPhone app, fans will be able to read Youngblood and other works from Liefeld on your handhelds.
"I wanted to launch Youngblood with an exclusive relationship with comiXology because I believe that they can provide the extra push that a launch like this requires," Liefeld told Newsarama.
"Everyone at comiXology has been very supportive and enthusiastic about getting Youngblood as well as the rest of the Awesome/Extreme catalog online. Hopes are high that this relationship leads to more online comics."
The remastered Youngblood #1 is available for free, and additional issues of the series can be purchased for $.99.
Liefeld will also be launching a new comic exclusively through Comixology (digital only) in the near future.
10:00 AM, Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010 - Posted by Chuck Moore
ASUS is entering the e-reader game and we here at CR keep our radar up for comic possibilities. Thought this one is monotone a limited in its digital comic viability, it's always good to take a look.
ASUS first e-reader will be the DR-900. It's reported to be a 9-inch slab that boasts Wi-Fi with a 3G option, a battery that will carry you through 10,000 pages and should support PDF, TXT, MP3 and ePUB files right out of the gate.
1:00 PM, Saturday, February 27th, 2010 - Posted by Chuck Moore
Following the global success of the Wallace & Gromit iPhone comic app, Titan Publishing is proud to announce the arrival of its first TRANSFORMERS iPhone comic. Launching yesterday, 26 February, and based on Hasbro's TRANSFORMERS brand, each TRANSFORMERS comic download includes an awesome action packed story and is bursting with fun facts and trivia about the characters, movies and comics!
The digital comic is free and can be downloaded for iPhone by visiting www.titanpublishing.com/digital or the app store (comics are available in the UK and EIRE only.) The first download includes OPTIMUS PRIME, a story written by TRANSFORMERS legend Simon Furman and featuring artwork by fan favourite Geoff Senior (Judge Dredd, 2000AD, Dr Who and Dragons Claws).
TRANSFORMERS Comic writer, Simon Furman said "TRANSFORMERS on your iPhone - wow! It's a simply incredible chance for fans of the warring ROBOTS IN DISGUSE to experience incredible stories that expand upon and underpin the incredible movie universe. The stories, written by me and drawn by a host of old and new TRANSFORMERS artists, bring the movie characters to life as never before, and now they can be seen as never before! So get ready for tales of CYBERTRON and Earth that spotlight your favourite characters... and probably a few you know only by name... beamed direct to your iPhone."
TRANSFORMERS Comic #1 is available to download for FREE on iPhone via www.titanpublishing.com/digital. There'll be more TRANSFORMERS comic stories released over the coming weeks so check back soon!
12:00 PM, Sunday, February 21st, 2010 - Posted by John Wilson
Over the last few days we've been tracking Apple's recent decision to remove all sexual content from the App Store. It's an alarming move on Apple's part, if only because it shows that the company is willing to throw developers (and their livelihoods) under the bus without any notice at all. Now developers are left wondering: just what exactly is allowed on the App Store? As it turns out, the new policy may be even more restrictive than it first appeared.
Earlier this week, when Apple notified developers that their applications were being removed, it said that it was removing applications with "overtly sexual content". That sounds like the ban only extends to apps that are little more than soft core porn. But we're hearing from multiple developers that it actually means anything that could be even the slightest bit titillating in any way — including swimsuits and fitness outfits. In short, if your app has skin, it will probably be rejected.
One developer, who wished to remain anonymous, spoke to multiple App Store reviewers about the new policy. He was told, "there will be no more applications that are for any purpose of excitement or titillation". He was told this included swimsuits — both bikinis and one-piece suits. Along with having dozens of his "sexy" apps removed, Apple also removed one that featured a popular fitness model in her workout clothes (the app was a marketing vehicle for the athlete's line of protein powder). When he asked if the ban would also affect apps like Sports Illustrated's swimsuit application, the Apple employee wouldn't give a clear answer, but it was implied that the SI app would probably be removed as well.
Developer Jon Atherton, who is behind the popular application Wobble (which doesn't actually include any sexual photos), also spoke to an Apple employee, and posted this list of rules to his blog based on what he learned:
1. No images of women in bikinis (Ice skating tights are not OK either)
2. No images of men in bikinis! (I didn't ask about Ice Skating tights for men)
3. No skin (he seriously said this) (I asked if a Burqa was OK, and the Apple guy got angry)
4. No silhouettes that indicate that Wobble can be used for wobbling boobs (yes - I am serious, we have to remove the silhouette in this pic)
5. No sexual connotations or innuendo: boobs, babes, booty, sex - all banned
6. Nothing that can be sexually arousing!! (I doubt many people could get aroused with the pic above but those puritanical guys at Apple must get off on pretty mundane things to find Wobble "overtly sexual!)
7. No apps will be approved that in any way imply sexual content (not sure how Playboy is still in the store, but ...)
"In the short term, every company is likely to have two lines of products," says Robert Brunner, founder of Ammunition, a design firm that worked with Barnes & Noble to design the Nook e-reader. "If you think of a paperback-like reader, E Ink does a fantastic job. But color will definitely happen and it is likely to be LCD or OLED. It seems logical."
"IBooks works with VoiceOver, the screen reader in iPad, so it can read you the contents of any page," Apple's description reads.
We've been dying to know more about Microsoft's Courier tablet / e-book device ever since we first caught wind of it last September, and while our entreaties to Mr. Ballmer went unanswered, we just learned some very interesting information from an extremely trusted source. We're told Courier will function as a "digital journal," and it's designed to be seriously portable: it's under an inch thick, weighs a little over a pound, and isn't much bigger than a 5x7 photo when closed. That's a lot smaller than we expected -- this new picture really puts it into perspective -- and the internals apparently reflect that emphasis on mobility: rather than Windows 7, we're told the Courier is built on Tegra 2 and runs on the same OS as the Zune HD, Pink, and Windows Mobile 7 Series, which we're taking to mean Windows CE 6.
"I wanted to launch Youngblood with an exclusive relationship with comiXology because I believe that they can provide the extra push that a launch like this requires," Liefeld told Newsarama. 
removing applications with "overtly sexual content". That sounds like the ban only extends to apps that are little more than soft core porn. But we're hearing from multiple developers that it actually means anything that could be even the slightest bit titillating in any way — including swimsuits and fitness outfits. In short, if your app has skin, it will probably be rejected.
