This year at CES, there were so many companies showing off their new eBook readers. With Amazon, Sony and Barnes and Noble in the eBook race, it seemed silly that these companies were trying to compete. These are only a few of the companies showing off their eBook readers.
Now that Apple is coming out with the iPad, these all look like toys now.
M-Edge had a small booth at CES, but it had lots of cases for eBook readers. CES was before the Apple iPad announcement, so I just kind of took a few pictures of these cases because I liked their design. Now that I plan on buying an iPad, I’m MUCH more interested in eBook reader cases.
In fact, M-Edge is gearing up to provide you with a case for your iPad soon. You can see what they are planning here:
Their booth had many beautiful eBook reader cases to choose from.
I’m so grateful that all of these companies are preparing to make cases for my iPad when it finally becomes available.
Trendy Digital had a small booth at CES, but it had lots of cases for eBook readers. CES was before the Apple iPad announcement, so I just kind of took a few pictures of these cases because I liked their design. Now that I plan on buying an iPad, I’m MUCH more interested in eBook reader cases.
I really like the brown and orange flowery case in the upper left.
I really liked the color of this blue one.
These cases keep your eBook readers safe from water.
Here is a review of the waterproof cases from Digital Product Review:
If you are thinking of buying an iPad when they come out, keep an eye on Trendy Digital. They probably will have a case for you as well. Can’t wait to see them!
We have finally reached the point where we can send a movie in a greeting card. Euri has created ring boxes and LCD greeting cards that can display video and audio.
You can see how they look here:
They have teamed up with American Greetings and Target Stores, so you’ll be able to buy a greeting card with video and audio that you choose yourself soon!
You know it’s a slow year at CES when a company like Cyber Clean can afford a booth on the main floor. Despite the cheesiness of their presentation, it looked like a really cool product.
Cyber Clean is a gooey compound very much like my childhood toy, Slime, except the texture is thicker and less runny. You press it onto your keyboard, cell phone or other difficult to clean gadget and it picks up debris, food and dust. They were demonstrating it with some sand-like material on an older Apple keyboard.
At the show, they were showing this commercial on huge screens to attract your attention.
I prefer this commercial, however, because it makes Cyber Clean look like a tiny little superhero!
They gave us a free sample of Cyber Clean to try out at home. I keep my electronics very clean, so I couldn’t think of a way to test it, but I remembered the old iMac in Kristen’s room. I decided to try it out on her keyboard. Here is what it looked like before I used Cyber Clean.
I really crammed the goo into the keyboard. I figured it’s an old computer and it doesn’t matter if it gets a little gummed up. All the Cyber Clean came out, however, so I didn’t need to worry about hurting the keyboard. If you look closely, you can see a little dirt that came off the keyboard.
In this picture, it’s easier to see how much hair, dirt and even feathers (Where’d the heck those come from?!) it picked up off the keyboard.
In the end, it didn’t really do all that much. The keyboard was still a little dusty after I thoroughly squished it into all the crevices. I could have done just as well with a paper towel dampened by Windex. Here’s how the keyboard looked after the cleaning.
It DOES smell good, which is something I didn’t expect, and when I opened the package, I felt like a little kid playing with Slime all over again. It really had that nostalgic feel to it. I wasn’t impressed with its cleaning abilities enough to forgo my usual paper towel and Windex techniques, but if you have to clean a lot of keyboards, Cyber Clean might be a way to make your day a little brighter.
You can buy Cyber Clean at Amazon:
I liked the idea of Cyber Clean and it did a pretty good job of cleaning up Kristen’s keyboard, but I think I’ll stick with a paper towel and Windex.
Kevin Rose, of Digg Fame, has jumped into the credit card payment fray with his investment in Square. Here he is, showing it off:
With a Square device and an iPhone, you can accept credit card payments just like any merchant. It’s pretty impressive, actually.
I can accept credit card payments using PayPal, but they don’t have an easy way for me to process a transaction on the go. If I want to accept credit card payments, I need to have a laptop AND wi-fi. They do have a PayPal iPhone App [iTunes Link], but it doesn’t allow me to accept payments with it. It would be nice if they included that feature in a future update.
There are applications at iTunes that let you accept credit card payments, like Swipe Credit Card Terminal [iTunes Link], but you have to type in all the information by hand instead of being able to easily swipe their card. Additionally, they require you to sign up for a merchant account. How Square will handle that issue hasn’t been revealed.
Square looks like a really good idea, but until we know the details, like what fees they will charge, I’m holding off my judgment.
As a young adult, I dreamed of having a telescope of my own and I loved the inexpensive microscope my mom bought me for Christmas one year.
This year at CES, Bresser showcased their microscopes and telescopes with cameras.
You can see a video of Bresser showing off the abilities of their cameras here:
These are the sorts of tools that I could only dream about as a kid. Of course, I was the weird kind of kid who would have taken microscopic pictures of scabs and squished bugs, so I dreamed about this kind of thing a lot. I kind of wish I could take one of these puppies back into time to eleven-year-old me.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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:
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.
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