eNews

Princeton University says they are testing the Kindle DX for the same reason that many publishers bought Sony Readers for staff: to save on printing and photocopying. At a site to explain the pilot, the university says, “A driving factor in the launch of this pilot was the patterns of printing on campus. Statistics show that students are not reading digital articles and book selections on their computer screens, but rather downloading the same files again and again, and printing them multiple times in the course of a semester…. Since the inception of digital document delivery on campus, printing has […]

A few details following yesterday’s press conference. Pace University has joined the five other universities in Amazon’s higher education pilot program for SuperKindle–and their provost underscored that about 50 students are involved. (That’s thought to be the comparable number at the five other schools.) But that’s almost $150,000 in sales right there. Pace expects to split the cost of the devices with the students. Meanwhile, Dallas Morning News ceo James Moroney explained why so few newspapers (just 37) are available on Kindle and why SuperKindle certainly won’t save them. “Amazon wanted 70 per cent of any subscription revenues his paper […]

Today’s SuperKindle press conference unfolded essentially along the planned/leaked script. (Except that we were amused to note Jeff Bezos had to read his expansive “mission statement” for Kindle from the monitor.) It’s better than a piece of plain paper, it studies better than a textbook, and starting this summer it swoops in to try and save three newspapers–except that it lists for $489. The new model, now positioned as the second member of the Kindle “family,” is–a bigger version of the current Kindle. The actual news that was not already leaked is that this summer, the New York Times, Washington […]

Yes we’re jumping ahead to name the new oversized Kindle that everyone is presuming Amazon will introduce at tomorrow morning’s press conference (and I already like our name better than the Kindle DX moniker Engadget floats. After we reminded folks yesterday that the first wave of media hype focused on the SK’s potential for newspapers and magazines and forgot that the early rumor was it’s aimed at the textbook market, the second wave has washed ashore via Bloomberg and then the WSJ. Sources for the two accounts agree that Princeton, Reed College, part of the University of Virginia, Arizona State […]

With the extended deadline for filing objections to the proposed settlement of lawsuits over Google Book Search, you can expect a long line of dissent in days to come. The most recent filing is “comments” from the American Library Association and the Association of College and Research Libraries. The larger problem here is that no solution–legal (via approval, rejection, or suggested modification of the settlement), legislative, or even business-driven–will make all parties happy. The original project, audacious as it was (and remains), appalled some and left others disappointed, and that will remain irreconcilable. As the libraries make clear in their […]

Amazon will hold a press conference on Wednesday morning at a PaceUniversity building (on the site of old NYT offices), presumably todebut a version of Kindle with a larger screen. At one point the mediahad decided the rumored bigger Kindle would be aimed at theeducational/textbook market, but now they’ve decided it’s focused ondisplaying magazines and newspapers, trying to beat Plastic Logic andother devices in development to market. “People briefed on the plans”tell the NYT that the New York Times is “expected to be involved in theintroduction of the device,” but a spokesperson for the New York Timesdeclines to comment. Meanwhile, […]