Amazon’s March books of the month were posted over the weekend, with Phil Klay’s Redeployment as their Spotlight pick, and Nickolas Butler’s Shotgun Lovesons as the featured debut. Their selections include Atavist Books launch title, the digital-only novella by Karen Russell, Sleep Donation (it releases towards the end of the month, on …
A source within Amazon has disclosed to Good e-Reader that the upcoming Kindle Paperwhite 3 will use new screen technology. The entire e-reader will be lighter than previous models, have higher resolution and incorporate a flexible display.
The Kindle Paperwhite 3 will be using screen technology that was developed by e Ink and Sony called Mobius. Mobius uses a TFT technology that will enable the development of much lighter and rugged products. Mobius displays can weigh less than 50% of an equivalent glass based TFT. This is particularly important for mobile products requiring larger display areas.
The only commercially viable product to use Mobius screen technology was the Sony 13.3 inch e-reader. When I had the first exclusive hands on of it was the lightest device I have ever played with in the history of e-readers. The 13.3 inch screen is beguiling to behold and you would figure from looking at it that it would weigh significantly more than the Kindle DX. In truth it weighs only 12.6 oz, compared to the Kindle DX, which weighs a hefty 18.9 oz. The e-paper screen glides like a feather when dropped, as I found out.
e Ink Mobius e-Paper can be cut to a customers specific requirements, and still maintain the long battery life, lightweight nature and high resolution. This will insure that the new Kindle Paperwhite 3 will have all of the main benefits of the Sony 13.3 e-reader, but in a small, lightweight six inch screen.
Michael Kozlowski is the Editor in Chief of Good e-Reader. He has been writing about electronic readers and technology for the last four years. His articles have been picked up by major and local news sources and websites such as the Huffington Post, CNET and more. Michael frequently travels to international events such as IFA, Computex, CES, Book Expo and a myriad of others. If you have any questions about any of his articles, please send Michael Kozlowski an email to michael@goodereader.com
Welcome to Feedback Loop, a weekly roundup of the most interesting discussions happening within the Engadget community. There’s so much technology to talk about and so little time to enjoy it, but you have a lot of great ideas and opinions that need to be shared! Join us every Saturday as we highlight some of the most interesting discussions that happened during the past week.
This week, we discussed our favorite messaging apps, rooting Amazonian tablets, the games we’re playing and whether 3D movies are coming to next-gen consoles. Head on past the break and join the conversation.
Facebook’s recent acquisition of WhatsApp highlighted how popular and valuable (evidently) messaging applications are. Assuming your friends and family haven’t made the choice for you: How do you pick which service to use? Head over to the Engadget forums and let us know how you keep in contact with the loved and loathed ones in your life.
The Kindle Fire HD is quite a capable slate, and it’s cheap too. Engadget reader bkowalski3000 isn’t so fond of being restricted to the Amazon ecosystem however, and wants to know how to root it. Got the knowledge to help him out? Head on over to the forums and let him know what you do.
Engadget’s product database wizard Kris is on a mission to finish all the games. Every single one of them. In her most recent post in the Engadget forums, she gives us an update on her progress. Check it out and let us know which games you’ve been playing recently.
With the abundance of 3D televisions and Blu-ray content on the market, CAThornhill is wondering why next-gen consoles don’t let us watch movies in three dee . What do you think the issue is? Our forums are the perfect place to indulge in speculation as to whether we’ll ever be able to watch films in the third dimension on our gaming consoles.
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Summary: A great tablet can be made even better by augmenting it with some carefully chosen accessories, and if you know what to look for you will find some awesome add-ons for Amazon’s flagship tablet.
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As I predicted, Amazon’s new Kindle Fire HDX tablets were a big hit over the holidays, and in my mind is a better tablet than the iPad. Not only is it far cheaper than the iPad – starting at an insanely cheap $ 229 – but they also comes in 7-inch and 8.9-inch varieties and are packed with high-end parts. Unless you’re already invested in the iOS ecosystem, then the Kindle Fire HDX is a tablet worth looking at. And even if you are already an iPhone or iPad user, or own an Android-powered smartphone or tablet, the Kindle Fire HDX makes an awesome second tablet for browsing and content consumption
But a great tablet can be made even better by augmenting it with accessories, and there are some awesome add-ons for Amazon’s flagship tablet.
Note: Some of these accessories are specific for the Kindle Fire HDX while other will work with any tablet or smartphone.
(Image: Amazon)
This is Amazon’s official fast charger for the Kindle tablets. The PowerFast charger pumps out 9W/1.8A of power, and is far beefier than the standard 5W charger.
Price : $ 19.99.
(Image: Amazon)
Adrian Kingsley-Hughes is an internationally published technology author who has devoted over a decade to helping users get the most from technology.
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If you prefer reading on a Kindle to your iPhone or iPad, today’s Instapaper for iOS app update should suit quite nicely. Provided you have an active Instapaper subscription, you can now send your saved article to a Kindle device from inside the iOS app. Betaworks asks that you register your Kindle email address first with Instapaper, but otherwise it’s smooth sailing.
Version 5.1.5 of the iOS app also introduces Instapaper Daily, which we first spotted on the Web in December last year. The service highlights the most widely read stories on Instapaper and you can now access it from inside the Browse section of the iPhone and iPad app. It’s not as powerful as Pocket’s discovery features, but it’s still an effective way to track important stories.
Instapaper for iOS now supports AirPlay streaming too and features new gestures so you can quickly jump back to your saved items after finishing a paginated article. Finally, Betaworks has implemented renewable subscriptions so that premium users no longer have to submit new payments manually. Bliss.
? Instapaper | App Store
Image Credit: Shutterstock
The good news, though, is that it’s possible to find an enormous number of Kindle books without paying a penny. And canny users are cottoning on – indeed, a recent survey by Ofcom and Kantar Media found that in the UK 61 percent of e-books are read for free.
Even better, you don’t even need to own a Kindle device to get these free titles – there are Kindle applications available here to download free for all major smartphones, computers and tablets.
So, once you’re all Kindled up, where are the best places to browse the virtual shelves?
Amazon
The first and most obvious place to look for free books is Amazon itself. However, clicking on the ‘free books’ tab on the right-hand side only brings up a list of the most popular free titles of the day. This link, though, leads to the full list of free books by searching on ‘£ 0 – £ 0′ as a price.
And what a list it is. There are an astonishing 40,157 titles available right now of every type and genre – although there’s a bias towards classics which are out of copyright and self-published novels. It’s worth remembering, though, that the classics are classics for a reason – they’re good.
Books are classified by genre, and some categories are huge: but to avoid having to plough randomly through the list, customers can sort by popularity, date of publication and average customer review score. Around 1,000 new books are added every month. Children’s books are particularly well-represented, with over 1,000 titles from The Ugly Duckling to The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, as well as plenty of new books.
Some of these titles are available free indefinitely, others only as a time limited offer – these books can be found in a separate listing here. Most, though, are self-help titles and technical guides.
The Kindle Owners’ Lending Library
Amazon runs its own lending library – but only for users of Amazon Prime. This service, which offers free one-day delivery for more than seven million items from the Amazon store, also gives customers access to more than 350,000 Kindle books for free. Amazon Prime itself is free for the first month and costs £ 49 per year thereafter – soon to go up to £ 79.
Titles include, of course, all the usual out-of-copyright classics – but also many more. The complete list of Harry Potter books is there, for example, along with the Hunger Games trilogy and many others of Amazon’s top sellers. Customers can borrow one book a month and keep it as long as they like – though they’re restricted to one at a time.
Project Gutenberg
The other huge source for free Kindle books is Project Gutenberg, founded as a volunteer project in 1971 to encourage the take-up of electronic books. It now offers nearly 45,000 free books, again with a preponderance of classics.
Right now, the top 100 titles include The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle, The Jungle Book and the Kama Sutra, and more than 50 new titles are added every week. Project Gutenberg is still run by volunteers, and donations are welcomed.
DailyFreeBooks
If you’ve already browsed the main free lists from Amazon, Gutenberg et al, you may only be interested in new additions. DailyFreeBooks searches Amazon and US site Smashwords to find new free books as they’re addded, updating its list once an hour. The company also sends out daily emails with a list of the highest-rated books.
British users, though, may find that not all the books listed are free in practice, as the site’s set up using US sources . Special offers can vary by country, and differing copyright laws mean that publishers can’t always release a book in every country.
Your local library
Yup, as long as your library has signed up for Amazon’s OverDrive service and you have a library card, you can borrow Kindle books without even leaving home. Around half of public libraries in the UK are members; check your local library website for more information.
There’s a central catalogue of over a million books, videos and audio books, with individual libraries offering their own selection from this list. Depending on the terms set by the publisher, some books can only be downloaded by one person at a time, whereas others are available for an unlimited number of users simultaneously.
The big problem for OverDrive in the UK, though, is that the document format used isn’t compatible with all Kindle devices. Only the Kindle Fire is supported at the moment, although anyone can access the books on a PC or mobile device using the Kindle software mentioned above.
Happy reading!
Do you read books? Ones made out of paper? What are you? A troglodyte? Do you also light your house with paraffin lamps and sleep in a bed full of polio with a pan full of urine under it? Get with the programme! Everyone’s reading electronic books now!
Of course, there’s a variety of tablets and eBook readers on the market, but one that stands out are the Kindle Fire range. And we’ve spied an ace deal for the Kindle Fire HD where you can land a 7-inch 8GB one for £ 95.20 or a 16GB one for £ 111.20. Have a nosey at the offer here.
EVEN MORE CRACKING DEALS OF THE DAY!
– PS Plus 365 Subscription. Instantly yours for £ 31.49
– Super Mario 3D World now £ 24.99
– Megathread: Best of Nintendo – Zelda / Mario & Luigi / Pokemon Nintendo 2DS/3DS/Wii/Wii U
– Rayman Legends PS4 and Xbox One, delivered, for £ 22.00
– Seagate 4TB Internal Hard Drive now £ 111.92
– The Room 2 for iOS reduced to 99p in the App Store
– TP-Link TL-PA251KIT AV200 + Multi-Streaming Powerline Starter Kit with AC Pass Through now £ 22.98
– Gigabyte G1.SNIPER Z87 Motherboard (Socket 1150, Z87 Express, DDR3, S-ATA 600, ATX) for £ 99.98
– Playstation Store “Blockbuster” Sale including Dead Space 3 for £ 5.99 & Mass Effect 3 DLC from £ 3.99-£ 5.49
– Kingston 32GB DataTraveler SE9 USB Flash Drive for £ 10.60
– Edimax 500Mbps Nano PowerLine Adapter Kit with Integrated Power Socket now £ 26.96
Dealzmodo is brought to you with HUKD, a community of deal vikings who hunt down and vote up the UK’s best deals, codes and consumer tips.
