Kindle Review – Kindle 3 Review, iPad Review

Nook might go international in 2010, Creative has a do-everything eReader and a lot of other Kindle and eReader related news. 

Nook International – Barnes & Noble to take Nook eReader International (at some undisclosed time)

TechCrunch has ferreted out that Barnes & Noble are looking to hire a ‘head of international operations’.  

1. This is all about the Nook and taking it international.
2. Ironically the WiFi capability would allow an international Nook to avoid the $1.99 3G premium Kindle books have outside the US.

We might end up with a situation where by mid to end 2010, the Nook would be available worldwide and B&N ebook prices would actually beat Kindle ebook prices outside the US.

Look for Kindle 3 to have WiFi and work worldwide.

Creative eReader MediaBook on the way

Epizenter has the scoop on Creative’s surprise announcement at their Annual General Meeting -

Creative surprised many by announcing its plan of entering the e-book market.

Displaying a working model of its first e-book reader – tentatively named the MediaBook (no, not the one above) – it features a touchscreen, text-to-speech function and an SD memory card slot.

Running on the company’s Zii Technology, the MediaBook will also be internet-enabled to give the user a multimedia experience.

The other juicy details -

1. Creative hopes to differentiate itself by having videos, pictures, text and services in one device.
2. Creative is discussing content with 10 international and local publishers.
3. It seems to be focused around Singapore at the moment.  

Nintendo planning Nintendo version of Kindle WhisperNet

This is the sort of stealing ideas that should be encouraged. Financial Times report -

Nintendo is looking at the business model of Amazon’s Kindle as it considers the future for its portable consoles, the company’s president said on Friday.

“I’m interested because it’s a new business model in which the user doesn’t bear the communications cost,” Satoru Iwata said.

It makes perfect sense because you don’t have to mess with cartridges and losing them and distribution and all the other complications.

You also eliminate the used games market and game sharing.

Mr. Iwata also points out that it allows Nintendo to reach a wider market than if it went the wireless subscription route -

“Only people who can pay thousands of yen a month [in mobile phone subscriptions] can be iPhone customers. That doesn’t fit Nintendo customers because we make amusement products,” Mr Iwata said.

The article also mentions that the Nintendo DS has sold more than 113 million units worldwide since it launched in 2004. Wonder how many kindles Amazon will sell in its first 5 years. My money’s on 31 million Kindles by end 2012.
Various News

Lots more going on -

1. The AP has a surprisingly well written article on Esquire magazine’s 3D Augmented Reality December issue. You have to give Esquire magazine credit – first experimenting with eInk, now this.
2. Ars Technica reports that a consumer group in Norway are taking a break from handing out Nobel prizes for Christmas and complaining about Kindle’s terms of service.
3. Daily Mail in the UK write about the threat of piracy of ebooks. There’s a comment from English poet Wendy Pope which pretty much captures the actual hopelessness of it - 
   

   … according to the award-winning English poet Wendy Cope, it is authors who stand to lose most from internet book piracy.

   ‘For some time I have been concerned that, as many of my poems are available for free on the internet, some readers may feel there is no need to buy my books,’ she said.

   ‘If the laws of copyright do go out of the window it will have a drastic effect on my income. But as things stand at the moment there is not very much anyone can do about it.‘

Wendy Pope is right – we’ve trained an entire generation to expect free everything. There’s not very much anyone can do about Internet piracy.