Kindle Review – Kindle Fire Review, Kindle 4 Review

Copia are introducing an eReader family and an open platform that they promise will rewrite the reading experience.

It’s certainly an ambitious goal. Let’s review Copia’s various facets.

Copia eReaders and Open Platform aim to make reading a social experience

Copia in a nutshell (my spell check now tells me to avoid using cliches – congrats are due to whoever coded this) –  

1. Copia is an open platform that aims to encourage collaborative reading with shared notes, bookmarks, recommendations and more.
2. It aims to work across eReaders, iPhones, Blackberry phones and more.
3. Copia is releasing 6 of its own eReaders in two product lines. They will be available online by April and in stores by June 2010.
4. There will be a private beta of the Copia platform starting this month and a public beta starting March 2010.

More details at Digital Trends (including pictures you really should check out) and Tomorrow’s Book.

Copia Reader – Social, feature-rich and cheap

Let’s start with the Copia Readers which will retail between $199 and $299 -

Ocean 6 - 6″ eInk capacitive touchscreen with 800 by 600 pixels, 12.5 by 17 by 1.1 cm, 802.11 b/g WiFi, microSD card slot, tilt sensor, and 4GB storage.

Ocean 9 - 9″ eInk capacitive touchscreen with 1024 by 768 screen resolution, 16.3 by 20.8 by 1.1 cm, runs on Linux, 4 GB storage, offers 3G, has speakers.

Ocean 9 3G – Same as above plus 3G connectivity, 2 GB internal memory, and two 0.5 watt stereo speakers.

Tidal – 6″ screen with 800 by 600 resolution, 12.4 by 17 by 0.89 cm, QWERTY soft keyboard, 2 GB storage.

Tidal Touch - 9″ Capacitive touchscreen with 1024 by 768 pixels and 4:3 aspect ratio, 20.7 by 16.2 by 1.1 cm, 4 GB storage, 3G, WiFi, MicroSD card slot..

Tidal Touch 3G - 9″ Capacitive touchscreen with 1024 by 768 pixels and 4:3 aspect ratio, 20.7 by 16.2 by 1.1 cm, WiFi, Linux 2.6.21, 2 GB storage, 3G, and half watt stereo speakers.

A 9″ Copia eReader for $299?

Obviously Copia didn’t get the CES memo to price eReaders at laptop prices.

The Ocean line eReaders look like Plastic Logic’s Que, except they have a metallic silver strip on the left that has buttons. The Tidal line eReaders look like rough-use cellphones with rubber casing and fall-proof construction (don’t know if they’re fall proof).

Copia talk about introducing color eReaders although the screenshots for these 6 eReaders don’t show any color screens.

Copia Reader – In-Built Social Aspects

Each Copia Reader is supposed to include social functionality including -

1. Friends List. 
2. Conversations. 
3. Your notes and your friends’ notes.

There’s also automatic syncing (like WhisperSync) including syncing of all your notes, comments and conversations.

Copia Marketplace

Copia’s ebook store description looks suspiciously like that of B&N -

1. Over 1 million ebooks. 
2. Over half a million free ebooks. 
3. Magazines and Newspapers in addition to ebooks.
4. Download straight from eReader or from Copia desktop software or from website.

They also talk about -

1. eBook browsing that simulates real world book store browsing.  
2. Browsing content by community rating, publisher tags, user tags, popularity, and price.
3. Making it easy to discover new ebooks.

Copia Platform and Community

Copia is promising some pretty impressive social features with two distinct aspects

Find like-minded people

Start Conversations with people who love the same books you do. 

Give and take recommendations.

Share your opinions and insights.

Add past, present and future reads.

Connect with Friends

Connect to your existing friends – Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

See notifications from friends in real-time.

Share notes, highlights and bookmarks.

A re-imagining of book clubs.

The Copia Platform targets every device you can read on

Copia aren’t being shy about making friends. In addition to their own eReaders they are reaching out to -

1. eReaders. 
2. iPhones and other smartphones. 
3. Netbooks.
4. Tablets.
5. Notebooks.  

One of their talking points makes a lot of sense -

• We live in a world where you either have content from stores or content from social networks. Why not combine both?

Certainly a very unique, friendly approach – it’ll be interesting to see exactly what their ‘open’ platform will develop into.

Copia Reader, Platform – Closing Thoughts

Copia, with their social platform and general focus on collaboration, are doing what no other eReader company has attempted to – make reading more social.

1. For a long time the Kindle’s wireless downloads were its big advantage.
2. If Copia plays its cards right they could turn their social approach into almost as big of an advantage.
3. It’s good that Copia is releasing its own eReaders - other eReader companies might be reluctant to let in Copia’s platform.

One key determinant of how well Copia will do will be the amount of financial backing and stability they have and they seem pretty well set.

Copia’s parent company DMC has been around forever (details from their website) -

1. They were the #2 calculator company in the 1970s.
2. They were #1 and #2 in the digital timepiece industry in the 1980s.
3. In the 1990s they say they sold $5 billion worth of Bell South branded telecommunications products.
4. In 2009 they entered the GPS market.
5. This year they’re entering the eReader market.

Copia is going to focus attention on an area that has been ignored so far – the social aspect of reading.

It’s about time eReaders and eBooks made reading more social, not less.

Filed under: evolution Tagged: | copia reader, ereader community