Damn! The Cool-er may die before we  learn how to pronounce its name. Martin Daniels on the Bookseller Association blog says the “Cooler reader looks to be another casualty of the squeeze that is inevitable in the ‘lookie likie’ E Ink reader market. They follow iRex in what may be a growing queue of dead technology failures.” Don’t forget Skiff, which dropped out of the e-device market a few weeks ago.

What’s going on?  The front-running e-readers – Kindle, Nook and Sony – all sit on large bodies of content, whereas many of the upstart gadgets have been counting on succeeding strictly on the merits of such competitive qualities as thinner, cheaper, lighter, brighter, more colorful etc. But they also have to beg, borrow or scrounge content. The only outsider holding its own is Apple’s iPad, and one good reason why is that it aggregated a lot of content soon after launching.

So – what went wrong with the Cool-er? Daniels says that it “entered the market in full color with a spectrum of cases, but forgot to make the screen color too. They also misjudged their launch with a stand and presentation more geared to a car show than a book show and their one trick pony was just a color case.”

And of course there was the dumb name. Daniels calls it the “Cooler” but it was introduced as the “Cool-er”.  “Aren’t consumers going to be confused by a b&w reader that sounds like “Col-or”?” we asked (See Another E-Book Reader with a Dumb Name)  “Or is it supposed to suggest the device is cool. Do you pronounce the word like the refrigerated water dispenser commonly found in business offices? Or do you come to a full glottal stop, thus: Cool. Er. No matter how you say it, it’s awkward, cacophonous and meaningless.”

Now it looks like we may never know. Same goes for the Plastic Logic device which, after tormenting us endlessly by withholding the name, finally announced the “Que”.  Is that pronounced “Cue?” “Kwee”? Or is it “Que” as in “Que pasa?”  However you say it, the Que’s release is seriously delayed and it too could be an also-ran in the e-reader sweepstakes. In fact Daniels says “We doubt we will see E Ink readers as we know them today in 2012…The only stay of execution will be a drop to $99 a unit.”

Richard Curtis

NOOK FROM BARNES & NOBLE, $259
SONY READER TOUCH PRS-600, $300, AND DAILY READER, $400
QUE, FROM PLASTIC LOGIC (NO PRICE: DEBUTS JANUARY 7)
IREX DR800SG, $399
COOL-ER, FROM INTEREAD, $249
DISNEY DIGITAL BOOKS, $8.95 A MONTH

Every Blogger owes a debt of gratitude to newspapers and magazines. This posting relies on original research and reporting performed by The New York Times.

A year ago we wondered whether Philips’s iRex Reader might be a Kindle killer. The question has resurfaced with a vengeance with the announcement that Best Buy will begin selling the new $399 8.1-inch touchscreen iRex reader.

And Verizon will provide wireless delivery of iRex’s e-books and newspapers in direct competition with Amazon’s Kindle DX (10 inch screen, $499) and and Sony’s Reader Daily Edition (7-inch screen, $399). The New York Times‘s Brad Stone says that “Best Buy is training thousands of its employees in how to talk about and demonstrate devices like the Sony Reader and iRex, and adding a new area to its 1,048 stores to showcase the devices.”

Though the iRex is far less familiar to Americans than it is to Europeans, Stone points out two significant advantages for the Dutch device. The first is that iRex accepts the ePub file format, a universal, open e-book industry standard that allows users to download e-books from a variety of retailers, as opposed to Kindle’s closed, proprietary system that directs buyers to amazon.com and amazon.com only.

The other, and in our opinion far more significant, feature is color. The advantage of a color newspaper and e-book reader is incalculable. Stone thinks that IRex is “on track to have a color version of the device by 2011, something that other vendors, which rely on technology from eInk, a subsidiary of Prime View International of Taiwan, say is years away.”

With Stone citing market research projecting a 4 million unit increase in e-reader sales in 2009, the race for dominance in the marketplace is about to grow cutthroat. Don’t forget that Plastic Logic’s no-name device (which we’ve dubbed the “Teasle”) will soon be sprung on the world. And lurking in the shadows is a possible wild card: the Apple Tablet.

Here’s Stone’s article in full: Best Buy and Verizon Jump Into E-Reader Fray.

Richard Curtis

Every Blogger owes a debt of gratitude to newspapers and magazines. This posting relies on original research and reporting performed by the New York Times.

Like tributaries flowing into a river, four events in the past week have come together to increase the depth and breadth of the e-book business. Each bears watching.

1. Discord over the Google Settlement as the September 4 deadline approaches. After Endeavor William Morris Agency voiced its opposition to the opt-in choice for its client-authors, a number of other opponents entered the fray. It will all come to a head at the end of next week.

2. Sony Debuts Wireless. According to Huffington Post, “Sony Corp. plans to offer an e-book reader with the ability to wirelessly download books, injecting more competition in a small but fast-growing market by adopting a key feature of the rival Kindle from Amazon.com.”
In December Sony will release the device with a price tag of $399. It features a touch screen and will carry books and newspapers via AT&T’s cellular network.

Buried in the story is a Sony announcement that you’ll be able to “borrow” ebooks from libraries and view them on their eReader. That appears to be a feature that other device makers have or have even given much thought to. A system like it has been in use at a number of colleges. After a fixed period of time (in Sony’s case, 21 days) the loan expires and your e-book vaporizes.

3. Barnes & Noble Teams with IREX to offer New Digital Reader. Calvin Reid of Publishers Weekly writes that “Barnes & Noble stepped up its efforts to compete with Amazon and the Kindle, announcing plans to partner with Netherlands-based IREX Technologies to offer a new wireless-enabled digital reading device with access to the 700,000 e-book titles available through the newly launched B&N eBookstore.” iRex is a Dutch reading device that has gained some traction in Europe. We hailed it as a Kindle killer a while back, though contenders developed since then are bidding for that title.

One of them is the forthcoming unnamed Plastic Logic reader (we have nicknamed it Teasle until the manufacturer announces the official monicker). And speaking of that, we hope BN.Com will unconfuse us about something. We had the impression that BN had cast its lot exclusively with Plastic Logic. But now it’s announced this relationship with iRex. Can someone out there clarify?

And as for Kindle killers, we’re calling a moratorium on such declarations until Gen Next of e-reading hardware makes itself known. And we’re definitely withholding our blessing until we can read on a full-color screen.

4. Amazon Kindle to launch in Europe next week? Stuff.TV asks whether Kindle is Europe-bound.

The Kindle has proved popular with bookworms in the States, but has failed to launch over here due to licensing issues, leaving British ereaders with a choice between the Sony Reader and the Cool-ER to quench their ebook thirst. However, none of these current offerings have been able to offer the Wi-fi capabilities that is the Kindle’s killer feature, enabling wireless downloads of books and delivery of electronic versions of newspapers and magazines direct to the device. It could be that Amazon is hoping to get the Kindle over here as quickly as possible in order to win over the market before the launch of Sony’s Daily Edition, announced in the States yesterday.

We’ll update you as these four news items unfold.

RC

What do an article in the New York Times and an emailed invitation to an Amazon.com press conference have in common? That’s what we’d like to know, and that’s why we’ll be at the door mid-morning Wednesday, May 6th.

We’re not sure if Las Vegas posts odds for stuff like this, but if we were gamblers we’d put a few chips on two possible announcements. The first is that Amazon will be producing a tablet-sized Kindle dedicated to newspaper and magazine reading. The second is that Amazon is teaming up with a major newspaper or magazine publisher to bring you a digital edition of your daily paper or favorite magazine.

That brings us to the Times’s article, Looking to Big-Screen E-Readers to Help Save the Daily Press by Brad Stone. The gist? “Now the recession-ravaged newspaper and magazine industries are hoping for their own knight in shining digital armor, in the form of portable reading devices with big screens.”

“These devices from Amazon and other manufacturers offer an almost irresistible proposition to newspaper and magazine industries. They would allow publishers to save millions on the cost of printing and distributing their publications, at precisely a time when their businesses are under historic levels of pressure.”

For those who follow our postings, most of the information in Stone’s piece will be familiar. For instance: “These new gadgets, with screens roughly the size of a standard sheet of paper, could present much of the editorial and advertising content of traditional periodicals in generally the same format as they appear in print.” Check out our pieces about Plastic Logic’s as yet unnamed device and the iRex 1000. The former is notable because of its state-of-the-art screen technology, the latter because it has successfully carried newspaper and magazines for a long time and actually beaten Kindle at its own game.

Stone’s mention of News Corp’s interest developing a device for its publications is detailed in a recent piece asking if that company’s boss Rupert Murdoch is “ready to get E-ink on his fingers“.

And of course, for many of our readers, Amazon’s plans for large screen Kindles are old news.

Stone accurately observes that this new generation of tablet-sized readers offers publishers an opportunity “to rethink their strategy in a rapidly evolving digital world. The move by newspapers and magazines to make their material freely available on the Web is now viewed by many as a critical blunder that encouraged readers to stop paying for the print versions.” But most intriguing of all is his speculation that newspaper and magazine publishers might “borrow from the cellphone model and offer specialized reading devices free or at a discount to people who commit to, say, a one-year subscription.”

For some time we have been invoking the spirit of King Gillette, inventor of the modern safety razor, whose motto and fabulously successful approach to fame and fortune was to “Give away the razor and sell ‘em the blades.” You can read all about that here, and it just may be an idea whose time has come.

Our thumbs are limber for an instant posting after Amazon’s press conference. But it won’t surprise us if there are no surprises.

RC

Brian Fichter of coolhunting.com held a prototype of Plastic Logic’s e-reader in his hands at New York’s Tools of Change for Publishing Conference and declared he was “more than impressed.” This is the device we wrote about in September.

Fichter’s reservations are all about shape and color and feel (too beige, corners not rounded to his satisfaction, etc.), but these are cavils compared to the catalogue of advantages he lists, features that are going to give Amazon’s Kindle and Sony’s eReader some stiff competition when the, um, Whatsit is released. That’s not the name for it, but either PL is guarding it like the crown jewels or doesn’t have a clue what to call it. We’ll have to wait about year to know and to hold the device in our own hands. But for a preview check out the video of a demo at the Consumer Electronics Show, along with Fichter’s take on the device. Here’s an excerpt

With a form factor equivalent to that of a legal-size pad of paper, though coming in at half the thickness and weighing under 16 ounces, it’s easy to see the reader’s instant appeal. Compatibility with document formats like Word, Excel, PowerPoint and PDFs, in addition to newspapers, periodicals and books, means that users will no longer need to stuff carry-ons or briefcases full of papers when traveling. The reader has the capacity to store thousands of documents, all of which can be synced wirelessly or with wired access. Publishing partners already include fictionwise, the Financial Times, Ingram Digital and USA Today.

Fichter refers to the Plastic Logic device as a possible “Kindle Killer” but there’s an evil twin lurking in E-Book World, the iRex Reader 1000 about which we wrote last fall; it too was dubbed a potential Kindle Killer. Sounds like there’s a hit-team of assassins looking to whack Kindle, but for now the device is planted smugly on its throne guarded by a fierce contingent of amazons captained by Jeff Bezos.

RC

While Sony has been upgrading its Reader, and Amazon may be upgrading its Kindle (we may know in a week or two), rival firms have not been sitting on their hands. We’ve reported on several contenders like the iRex Reader 1000, described as a “Kindle Killer.” Now Foxit has climbed into the ring with a bantamweight called the eSlick Reader.

One thing it has going for it is price – $230. That’s about one-third less than that of its prestigious competitors. And, according to Jose Fermoso of Wired, “It might be the first large hardware eInk device to play eReader files.” Translation: it uses the Palm format, meaning it can run on iPhones and a number of other mobile phone platforms. It would also presumably enable those who carry eReader books on their Palm Pilots to transfer the files to a larger and more navigable display unit. Down the road, if the gadget takes off, it might carry other, non-eReader platforms as well.

Wired’s Fermoso calls the device ugly, and the name “eSlick Reader” scarcely dances trippingly o’er the tongue. But if it gets the job done, and brings us closer to the tipping point of a $99.00 e-book reader, we’ll forgive its homeliness.

RC

It’s a good time to be alive if you’re a tree. Digitally delivered news is gaining momentum and as we turn the corner to 2009 it’s gotten a rocket boost from the Dutch firm iRex Technologies, which announced it has made a deal with NewspaperDirect to deliver 800 newspapers on iRex’s Digital Reader 1000. As an added Christmas gift you’ll get one month’s subscription free if you’re an existing or new customer from the launch date of Thursday 11th December 2008, according to Loeki van der Lee, Office Manager for the iRex. Ms. van der Lee points out that it’s also a Christmas present for trees:

“With the world consuming over 300 million tonnes of paper annually, the potential implications of receiving and reading newspaper electronically are huge, but until now devices such as the Amazon Kindle have only offered around 30 titles and the restrictions of their small screen size have caused headaches for publishers wishing to replicate the newspaper experience for the digital consumer. The iRex DR1000 developed with the business market in mind offers the world’s largest display allowing full page pdf files and now e‐newspapers to retain their original look and feel and layout thereby offering the reader an unparalleled digital reading experience.”

The iRex/NewspaperDirect partnership will undoubtedly cause some headaches for Amazon.com, too. A visit to Amazon’s Kindle newspaper web page shows 28 listings. The 800 titles to be carried on the iRex 1000, dubbed “Kindle Killer” by some, will obviously dwarf Kindle’s offering. Of course, many of them are foreign language papers like Le Figaro and Die Welt. But 800 is 800 and that’s good news for the environment. According to one stat it takes 12 mature trees to make one tonne of newsprint, which makes 14,000 copies of your daily tabloid. A “tonne” is a little over a US “ton” of 2000 pounds.

Now, do a tree a favor: forward this blog, but don’t print it out.

RC

After tormenting e-book technorati with teasers, iRex has now revealed its Reader 1000. Some bloggers are calling it a Kindle Killer. Time will tell. Here’s what it looks like, and below is iRex’s press release predicting that the Reader 1000 spells “the end of the printed word for business professionals.”

Media Release
22nd September 2008
iRex Opens New Chapter In E‐Reading
Eindhoven, 22 September 2008

- The world’s leading provider of e-reading solutions, Netherlands
based iRex Technologies, has opened a new chapter in professional digital reading with the launch of the iRex 1000 series Digital Reader. The iRex suite of e-reading products is growing steadily following the success of the iLiad and iLiad Book Edition amongst the consumer market. Now the launch of the iRex 1000 series, with its larger display size and memory, is spelling the end of the printed word for business professionals. “The success of digital reading has been focused on and measured by its impact upon the book market when in fact the real revolution is happening in the business world.” Said Hans Brons, CEO of iRex. “The computer revolutionised the way we do business, but it has never offered a solution to match paper.

With the launch of the 1000 series it is now possible to ‘print’ documents onto electronic paper for the first time.” Although the iRex iLiad products with their larger screen and superior functionality have been extremely successful, the company recognised the need for a new generation solution for business. The result is the iRex 1000 series, offering superior functionality and a unique 10.2 inch screen size to allow easy reading and referencing of documents from A4 Powerpoint presentations to sophisticated PDF files and from HTML to TXT and JPEG. Increased memory ensures that users can be confident that the device will hold any and all documents they require.

Weighing less than 570 grams and only 1.2cm deep the 1000 series is an open system which synchronises easily with the PC and is able to read all common formats. The large display has 16 grey tones and storage capacity is delivered via a changeable 1GB SD card. The universal mini‐USB connector can be used for transferring files as well as uploading and content can be easily transferred from the internet. The chargeable built in Li‐Ion battery has sufficient power to last for several days.

The 1000 series will offer three products within the range from the DR1000 base version equipped with a USB connector, through the DR1000 S equipped with a stylus for writing which can serve as an unending notepad, to the DR1000 SW with stylus, plus WIFI and Bluetooth connectivity. The later model will not be available at the launch date but will be introduced at a later stage.

With a recent study demonstrating that the average US office worker prints more than 10,000 pages of paper a year, of which three quarters is thrown away within one week and more than half the same day, the 1000 series finally offers a way for companies and individuals to cut out the billions of pages of printed paper they produce each year, making a powerful contribution to the environment.

“Tax specialists, accountants and lawyers that previously had thick piles of documents can carry them in their digital reader; students and academics can easily save their textbooks in the device.” Says Brons. “Government and public sector organisations can make minutes and reports available electronically whilst medical specialists can have all their patient information and key texts at their fingertips. Plus, in addition to their professional documents they can also have their e‐books and newspapers available.”

The new devices and their place in the suite of iRex products marks a step change in the world of digital reading consolidating iRex’s position as the first choice provider of e‐reading solutions. “Our partnership with our customers, partners and particularly the developer community is vital to drive new and better technology. By offering a suite of separate e‐reader products we are not only meeting the needs but revolutionising the expectations of our customers.”

About iRex Technologies:

iRex Technologies BV have been instrumental in pushing the frontiers of digital reading since 2001 when their team developed the electronic paper display for the Sony Librié the first commercially available ereader launched in 2004. Following the formation of iRex Technologies in 2005 as a spin‐off company from Royal Philips Electronics their focus on open innovation and co‐operation has seen them become the world’s leading provider of solutions for reading written digital content with the ease and comfort of print on paper. This is combined with the interactivity, flexibility and up‐dating functionality provided by digital information.

Located on the High Tech Campus in Eindhoven, the Netherlands iRex serves the B2B market as well as the consumer market and works closely with companies and publishers to enable them to offer their content (newspapers, books, documents) digitally to clients, subscribers and employees.

– Richard Curtis