360 DEGREES Weblog

At this point, you probably know a lot about the new Kindle. But it’s this little hardware addition on the underside of the device that’s caught our attention:

What’s that in the middle? Why, yes — it’s a microphone!

According to the new Kindle User’s Guide, “the microphone is not currently enabled but is provided for future use.“ Some folks think it’s for voice navigation, which could give Kindle a major accessibility advantage over its competitors. (E-readers and tablets still remain way behind PCs on this front.) David Rothman thinks Amazon/AT&T might stick a phone in there, which seems pretty unlikely given how intent Bezos and Amazon seem on refining the reading experience rather than competing with Apple and general-purpose tablets on all things multimedia.

But voice annotations and memos don’t seem too far-fetched; and if the apps developed using the Kindle Development Kit get off the ground sometime soon, I suppose the more hardware goodies third-parties have to play with, the better.

Andrys Basten identified the microphone in a short roundup at TeleRead, “Unheralded new features in the Kindle 3,” focusing on subtle but sharp software tweaks. For instance, the web browser now has an “article view” mode, similar to the new Reader function in Safari or the popular iOS app Instapaper.

Likewise, PDF reading has been improved: the viewer now lets you highlight and copy-and-paste text, and adjust the contrast for better readability (a major problem in the past for scanned/photocopied docs). There are even workarounds for avoiding document delivery charges over 3G, by either syncing with your computer or sending your documents to an email address that waits until you’re in wi-fi to send them along. Saving bandwidth is saving money, especially if you’re not using it to buy something from Amazon.

All this points to Amazon trying to strengthen and reposition the Kindle as a general text document reader, not just a portal for e-books. And it makes it pretty unlikely that Amazon/Sprint would just drop a whole new data stream in there, even if they could try to introduce a new monthly fee — something that could make Kindle users, having been promised free 3G for the life of their devices, to totally lose it.

Thanks WIRED

The Wall Street Journal is running a piece that focuses on ad sales for the iPad. Pretty boring stuff except for a few nuggets related to the actual content we crave. Rupert Murdoch already confirmed that his monument to main stream media was coming to the iPad. Hell, they’ve even been treated to a rare, in-house device to assist with the development of the iPad version of the Wall Street Journal. Now it’s quoting “a person familiar with the matter” (wink) who says that The Journal plans to charge subscribers $17.99 per month for iPad subscriptions — for comparison, the print version of the WSJ costs $349 for 52 weeks or about $29 per month. Not bad, but you can’t roll up an iPad to swat the dog.

Conversely, magazines appear set to offer weekly or monthly editions out of the gate, not annual subscriptions. Sources told the WSJ that the April issue of Hearst’s Esquire magazine (no stranger to new media) will arrive in downloadable format without advertisements for $2.99, $2 less than the newsstand price, and will include five music videos (each containing the phrase “somewhere in Mississippi,” oddly enough) to take advantage of the device’s multimedia capabilities. On the other hand, a full iPad issue of Men’s Health with match the glossy’s $4.99 price. Of course, as we heard earlier, publishers will be experimenting with advertising and pricing models to see what works so expect things to be fluid for quite some time after the April 3rd launch.

It must be getting close to April 3rd because the iPad news is hotting up. Today we get our first glimpse at Amazon’s free Kindle app for the iPad. We’ve also got a Barnes & Noble app on the way courtesy of a report in in the New York Times. The Kindle app has been completely redesigned by a team of 14 developers working since January to redefine the core screen and reading experience to allow for custom fonts in multiple colors, slow page turns, and new ways to view your eBook library. One view, pictured above, presents your books as large icons against a silhouetted figure under a tree — the sun changes position in accordance to the time of day. Of course, the app also gives you access to the Kindle bookstore (assuming Apple approves) and saves your reading position so that you can pick up any Kindle app (or device) and continue reading right where you left off.

The VIV digital magazine concept, created by Alexx Henry and Andrew Grant, is “an all digital magazine, which would allow us to create content that will be able to live on the iPad and other tablet devices where digital magazines can live.” Who’s next?

Mmm, digital magazines. They are the little bites of paid-for content that all the publishers believe we should be deeply enthralled with. Hoping to show us why exactly it is that we should all care (and pay) for prepackaged digital content is Wired’s latest and most comprehensive demo of its tablet app. Setting aside hopefuls like the Joojoo and Adam for a moment, it is clear that this is intended for Apple’s iPad — the device that stands by far the biggest chance of making the digimag concept a commercial success. Interesting choice of development partner, then, as Condé Nast has opted to use Adobe’s AIR platform for the underlying mechanics. Adobe promises its Packager for iPhone will allow devs to easily port AIR apps to run natively on the iPad, but until Apple gives its official ascent to the final code, nothing is guaranteed. As far as the app goes, it’ll come with Twitter and Facebook integration, and navigation is geared toward the touching and swiping model so prevalent today.

Not content to let traditional books have all the digital distribution fun, Panelfly (Free; App Store Link) lets you purchase, download, and read digital comics right from your iPhone or iPod touch. With hundreds of titles available from some of the biggest names in comics — including Marvel — Panelfly’s slick, well-designed interface makes reading each issue as easy as possible, and in case you’re thinking the iPhone/iPod touch screen is too small, have patience — Panelfly for the iPad will launch alongside the device in March.

Asus leaked some information recently about their upcoming e-reader, the DR-570. Not content to be a “me too” with the standard black and white e-ink product, it looks like they are going to be coming out with an OLED offering that might just kick the rest of the e-readers to the curb.

Details are still a little sketchy, but here’s what we do know. The new reader is currently called the DR-570, it’s a 6 inch OLED color screen that’ll run for 122 hours on one charge, and is capable of running Flash video over a wifi or 3G connection. That sounds like a borderline tablet product to me, but with some incredible battery life. What we don’t know is when exactly it’ll come out or what it’ll cost. The buzz is that we should expect it around the end of 2010

E-readers are likely to get hotter with the next generation of devices sporting color screens and large displays expected to launch through the year.

One of the first products to announce its arrival is the Skiff e-reader, a lightweight device with a 11.5-inch full flexible touchscreen that makes it the largest e-reader on the market, beating the 9.7-inch display Kindle DX.

Unlike other e-readers designed for reading mainly books and PDF files, the Skiff is optimized for newspaper and magazine content and will use Sprint’s 3G network to offer wireless connectivity. The device will debut at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas later this week. The company hasn’t announced availability and pricing for it yet.

Amazon’s Kindle for iPhone application is now available internationally, in “over 60 countries”. The catch is that it it still only localized in English.

When the Kindle e-reader was launched internationally back in October, one of the many aspects that Amazon left out in the rush to make some Christmas money was the iPhone application which allows Kindle owners to continue reading on their iPhones. We posted a workaround to get the app from outside the US, but as it involved creating a US account at the iTunes Store it was far from ideal. Now Amazon has fixed things with the long-awaited international launch of Kindle for iPhone.

Amazon doesn’t show much love for its overseas customers (shipping the Kindle with a US power-cord adapter, for example), but we suspect that Amazon’s xenophobia isn’t the only aspect to this delay. Its more likely that Apple’s long-winded (read “broken”) App Store approval process was a major culprit. The release notes for this version show nothing more than the addition of worldwide support. Given that the US version works fine in Europe with a Spanish Kindle account, we doubt that Amazon did much ore than re-submit the app to Apple.

Still, it’s here at last. Maybe now Amazon can concentrate on adding some non-English-language books to the Kindle store.

Print magazines may soon be on their way out, which leaves tablet-based devices to fill their void, like this device by Time Inc. Basically, publishers will be able to offer digitized versions of their “magazines that would be accessible to PCs and phantom Apple tablets alike.”