The Gadgets Page

E-book readers, like Amazon’s Kindle and Sony’s Reader, had a huge amount of sales this last Christmas season—in fact, our smackdown between the two recently became our most popular post, and the Kindle was Amazon’s best-selling single item. We saw about 20 new entrants into this market at CES. Nonetheless, I think the current generation of e-book readers won’t be flying off the shelves by next Christmas.

Yes, the Apple iPad is probably one reason. But I think e-book readers have been flawed from the beginning. Here’s why.

They use black-and-white e-ink displays.

The Sony Reader was the first popular gadget to make use of e-ink technology, an alternative to LCD displays that looks more like paper, has longer battery life, and doesn’t require a backlight. This was seen as innovative, and copied by the Kindle and Barnes and Noble’s new Nook. But I think it’s time we started wondering why anyone would buy a device with a black-and-white display in 2010.

The phone in your pocket probably has a nice color LCD display that can display perfectly readable text. The Amazon Kindle app certainly looks great on my iPhone. Why buy a book reader that’s stuck in Gutenberg-era black-and-white? Paper books have had colorful illustrations since about 1890. Why can’t electronic books?

E-ink advocates talk about better contrast and better battery life, but I like the contrast on the iPhone screen better than the grey-on-light-grey displays of the e-book readers. And only the most devoted of readers will stare at a Kindle’s screen long enough to notice the supposed benefits to the eyes, or to take advantage of the long battery life. Most of us don’t read for more than 1-2 hours at a time.

And don’t say “but you can read in bright sunlight!”. Who the heck does that? People who enjoy sunlight have better things to do than read, and nerds like me who read for hours on end rarely see sunlight.

They aren’t good Web browsers.

While I still read books regularly, I do far more reading on the Web. Why would I want a reading device that can’t also read Web pages? The Kindle has a very limited Web browser on a black-and-white screen, and the Sony Reader has none at all. Neither one has Wi-fi access.

This is the 21st century. The Web should be as readable as a book, and when an e-book mentions a URL I should be able to click on it and see that page.

They can’t show video.

You can watch videos on a Sony PSP, on a phone, or even on a watch. Why on earth would a device that gives me access to books not also include video? Or even audio? Or even color pictures?

I’m as much of a literary elitist as anyone. I enjoy reading Shakespeare and Dickens, and I certainly don’t want books to be replaced with video. I don’t even want the cheesy “bonus video content” that e-novels of the future will undoubtedly be bundled with. But think about non-fiction books—what if a computer book could include a video to show you how to use software? What if a book on how to play the guitar could include audio examples? Old-fashioned paper books already have this feature, thanks to the high-tech approach of sticking a CD inside the front cover. Why can’t 21st century e-books do the same thing?

And anyway, it’s a device with a screen. Let me watch a TV show when I’m done reading my book.

Maybe they’re not really doomed yet.

There’s one reason I think people will still be buying Kindles and Readers next Christmas. Someone (probably Apple) will introduce a device that does all of the things I’m asking for. But given the current cost of things like 10″ color LCD screens, that device will be expensive. Maybe the Kindle, Reader, and Nook will survive for a few years as low-cost alternatives for people who don’t want to spend $900 on a “real” e-book reader.

I hope I’m right about that. I really want an e-book reader myself, but I don’t want the limited, monochrome, low-cost alternative. I want the real thing, and I’m willing to pay for it.

Apple has a special announcement planned for this Wednesday, January 27th, and the rumors are that they will release a tablet device of some sort. At these times it is customary for gadget blogs to make fools of themselves by predicting what Apple will announce, so here’s my attempt.

• The tablet will run iPhone OS, and will essentially be a giant iPod Touch. Probably with more memory than the current iPhones and Touches, but no hard drive.
• Steve Jobs will focus on three areas of use for the new device: reading books, watching videos, and running any app from the existing App Store. He’ll show off some new games that use the full screen.
• The tablet will cost $1000 and every single technology blog and media outlet will complain about this, saying that netbooks are cheaper, that you can buy a “real” computer for the same price, and that Apple won’t sell many tablets. They’ll be hilariously wrong.
• There will be no keyboard, and initially no external one to attach. The virtual keyboard will resemble the iPhone’s. Everyone will complain about this, but Apple won’t care because they designed the device primarily for consuming media, not creating it.
• It will have a backlit color LCD screen (probably 10″). Steve will make fun of e-ink devices on stage.
• A new iPhone OS and SDK will be announced, and support for the tablet’s big screen will be the biggest change. They might also support multitasking, since running multiple iPhone-sized apps on the tablet’s big screen makes sense.
• Apple will announce deals with publishers for e-books. I suspect they’ll emphasize newspapers, magazines, and college textbooks. The New York Times will be shown as an example, followed by a novel with an embedded video interview with the author to show off how much better it is than a Kindle.
• I wouldn’t be surprised if the “regular” book support comes from a licensing agreement with Amazon. You might think the Kindle is the tablet’s competition, but I think Amazon wants to sell books, not hardware platforms.
• I think cell-phone data access will be built in. I hope it’s optional and doesn’t cost $30 a month.
• The name: When Apple changed their baseline notebook computer’s name from “iBook” to “Macbook”, my theory at the time was that they wanted to eventually use “iBook” for an e-book reader. While I doubt the tablet will be just for reading books, I still think “iBook” is a great name for it, and it will fit their new naming scheme: the Macbook runs MacOS and the iBook runs the iPhone OS.

Please note that my predictions are not based on “confidential sources”. I just made them up, and most of them are probably wrong. But whatever the outcome, I hope Apple does something insanely great.

If you ride your bike often, the Cy-Fi Wireless Speaker might be a good option for you. You can connect your iPod or iPhone to it and it will play your music and act as a hands-free speakerphone. Here is a video from CES showcasing it.

It comes in both Black and Silver designs:

• Cy-Fi Wireless Sports Speaker for iPod (Black) at Amazon.com
• Cy-Fi Wireless Sports Speaker for iPod (Silver) at Amazon.com

Here is the commercial for it:

When I was riding my bike to work everyday, this would have been a godsend for me. I used to listen to my MP3 player with earbuds, but that made it so I couldn’t hear around me as well. Something like the Cy-Fi wireless speaker would have let me hear the cars around me AND my music.

• Very cool found footage of VHS tapes that were sent to Apple dealers. http://tinyurl.com/ybmqrwn #

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Optical image stabilization (O.I.S.) has come a long way over the last few years and the best showcase of that is this exhibit at the Sony booth this year at CES. They had two cameras sitting on a moving platform, one with Optical SteadyShot and the other without.

Even though both cameras were on the same jiggling platform, the picture on the left is jumping all over the place, while the one on the right is smooth as silk.

This feature of their video cameras was of special interest to me because I film and sell Walking DVDs at Starling Fitness. I’m actually in the market for a new video camera and the Sony HDR-CX550V is looking really appealing to me.

Too bad it’s retailing at almost $1300. I’ll have to wait until the price drops a bit.

Polaroid did an excellent job of playing off its rich photographic past in its booth at CES this year.

They had a display honoring the great Dr. Edwin Land, inventor of polarization.

They showed some artwork made with Polaroids.

They even brought some favorite retro gadgets out of the Polaroid Museum for some nostalgic appeal.

You can see all the photos here:

It’s amazing how ingrained certain habits can be in all of us. Take the action of shaking a Polaroid picture. I saw my parents do it. I did it. Outkast even wrote a song about it. Sadly, Polaroid and their iconic film were destined to be relegated to a footnote in our gadget history when they stopped making the film.

Fortunately, they came out with the Poloroid PoGo Instant Camera to replace it. They actually showcased the PoGo camera last year at CES, but this year, they had them out and available for people to play with.

They come equipped with ink on the paper, so all you have to do is load the paper and start clicking. They even come with cute frames for your photos. Here is the Polaroid of Mike and I that they took of us at the show.

With a little more centering, it would have been perfect. You can do that sort of editing on the camera, so when you know it’s ready, then you print.

The photos are substantially smaller than the Polaroids of yesteryear (2″ X 3″), but they are a good enough size for sharing with friends.

Here is a video from last year’s CES showing how the PoGo works.

In the end, you get a cute little photograph and with the new technology, no shaking is required. Outkast will be so disappointed…

When I owned a Palm, there were literally dozens of keyboards that I could purchase for use with it. It’s surprising to me that the iPhone doesn’t have that option. If you have a jailbroken iPhone, you can use it with any Bluetooth keyboard, but if you don’t want to break your user license agreement, then you are kind of out of luck.

It looks like ION is trying to rectify that problem. At CES this year, they were showing a prototype of a new keyboard called iType, which works with your iPhone.

The iPhone docks into the keyboard for typing.

It’s a pretty nice sized keyboard that is light and easy to type on.

Unfortunately, you need to use their app to type with it. It doesn’t take the place of the onscreen keyboard in all applications. You have to type in their application and then you can copy and paste to email or any other writing intensive app you use.

Here is a video showing how the keyboard acts with their application.

I would love a full-sized keyboard that works with my iPhone, but the iType won’t work for me. Unless I can type with the keyboard in any app, it’s useless.

The creators of tough phones, Sonim Technologies, challenged Dan Simmons of the BBC to see if he could break their phone.

I love the look of shock on their faces when the LCD screen actually breaks. Unbreakable is a mighty big claim, so it’s no surprise that Dan was able to prove them wrong. In the end, Sonim phones are tougher than normal phones, but the moniker of unbreakable is a little bit of a stretch.

Here is a quick clip from the CES 2010 keynote where Steve Ballmer of Microsoft shows off three “Slate PC” gadgets.

With all the rumors of an Apple device coming out soon, it looks like Microsoft is trying to get the jump on that market. One of the rumors suggested that this supposed Apple device might be called an iSlate, so it’s no coincidence that Steve rushed to claim the Slate PC name.

Wouldn’t it be funny if all of those rumors were just a misinformation feed from Apple to distract everyone from their upcoming secret? What if they were only trying to negotiate a publishing contract with magazines and book publishers and were merely announcing that this January instead of a slate/tablet/ebook reader/giant iPod Touch?

All I know is that those Slate PCs that Ballmer was so proud of look an awful lot like the Photoshopped mock ups that have been floating around with Apple logos on them.

Microsoft might think they have a jump on Apple, but I suspect Steve Jobs has far more in the hopper than they realize.