GadgetReview

It looks like Nintendo is feeling the pressure from the iPhone.  So much so, that the company’s President, Satoru Iwata, is perhaps considering an Amazon Kindle like wireless model to deliver games to the portable gaming unit.

I’m interested because it’s a new business model in which the user doesn’t bear the communications cost.

Currently Nintendo DSi users can access the Nintendo store to download a variety of content via WiFi, but that requires that the user be within proximity of a signal and seriously hinders the purchase anytime, anywhere impulse.  Of course, this kind of delivery system would be implemented in the next generation of Nintendo DSes and would add some significant cost to the handheld device, something Nintendo may not be willing to do.

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So the early word is that, finally, we may have a Kindle killer on our hands, and it’s from a little known outfit called Plastic Logic.

The Que, as it’s called, will see the light of day for the first time ever at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas (booth 11840, in case you want to know exactly where to go) on January 7th.

What’s interesting about the Que is that it’s less than a third of an inch thick, yet is WiFi enabled and can handle PDFs, Word documents, and Excel documents.  Plus, the battery life, according to reports, will be measurable in days, as opposed to hours.

The early reports that call this a Kindle killer have one significant hurdle in front of them–namely, answering questions about the price of the device.  The Kindle runs $279, and Sony’s model runs $199…but how much does the Que sell for?  No one knows yet, and we likely won’t know until we can hit booth 11840 for ourselves.

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Ohhhh boy.  Once again, the Aussies take it on the chin in the electronics wars.  Not only do they get their gaming content vastly behind everyone else, and often edited to boot, but now Amazon’s just gone on record as saying that Australians will be paying fully forty percent more for their Kindle content than the United States.

Never mind that Amazon was literally JUST on record as saying that “there are no additional fees for international customers”, they’ve backpedaled like someone rewinding a Tour de France DVD.

But what’s the reason behind the change?  Amazon was keeping pretty mum on that point–but one thing’s clear: this doesn’t bode well for Kindle sales in Australia, that’s for sure.  And with a superabundance of new e-readers ready for market in the next couple months, Kindle’s loss is literally everyone else’s gain.

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I was just perusing Amazon when I noticed an announcement on their home page stating that they’ve dropped the price of the Kindle from $299 to $259. What’s more interesting, though, is the addition of the Kindle International, which demands a $20 premium over the now cheaper Kindle but includes the ability to download books in over 100 countries. Otherwise, it’s the same old Kindle.

The International Kindle will ship October 19th, but they’re taking preorders starting today.

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That’s a strange thought to wake up to, isn’t it?  Well, it turns out they’ve got reason.  Read on:

Words like “clunky”, “slow”, and “a real pain” have come up, as students trying out the Kindle DX in classes are discovering that the ereader may not be the replacement for overpriced textbooks they’d hoped for.

One student found it awkward to hold down the “alt” key every time he wanted to type in numbers.  Since the Kindles have no page numbers, but rather, “location numbers”, students requiring source documentation find themselves typing out huge location numbers rather than simple two or three digit page numbers.  Plus, anyone working out of a regular book will be utterly lost by the Kindle’s location numbering system and be unable to crosscheck the reference without a Kindle of their own.

More suggestions emerged, citing that the Kindle needed page numbers, but also asking for improvements to note taking and highlighting.

So, okay–maybe the Kindle isn’t an academic’s dream gadget just yet.  But there’s every possibility that it will become so in the future.

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So there’s been an announcement that Best Buy means to sell the iRex book reader to compete with Amazon’s Kindle, among numerous others.  It’ll cost a whopping four hundred bucks, but come with an eight inch touchscreen (8.1, actually), connect to Verizon Wireless networks, but while Verizon itself is open to connecting other e-readers through its networks, it’s not willing to sell the iRex in its own stores, at least for the time being.

This is probably the best move Verizon can make, even if it isn’t exactly good news for Best Buy.  However, even Best Buy can get away with a little piggyback advertising with “Verizon’s network”, and of course, the first mover advantage will be a big help for the iRex.

Keep your eyes front, folks–this could be a real donnybrook, with plenty of new players moving for the Kindle market.

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Seems the competition for a piece of Amazon’s coveted Kindle market has already started to boil up out of the woodwork.  iRiver’s Story is one of the first off the block.

Formerly a major player in the Flash-based MP3 market, iRiver’s been having a lot of troubles in its home market of  Korea.  Thus, they’re looking to join in on the e-reader market and snag a little market share away from Amazon.

The iRiver Story has a six-inch LCD display, two gig of internal memory and comes in white only.  It’ll also play back MP3s, which is handy for those books on tape.  It’s not a bad little design, from the look of things, even if it really DOES look a lot like the Kindle.  So hopefully, it’ll manage to pull off a comeback.

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Guess who wants a piece of Amazon’s Kindle market?  As it turns out, a whole a lot of people.

The list is pretty wide and growing by the day, and includes names like News Corp (otherwise known as Fox), Hearst Publishing, and now, Time Magazine wants to change the way you read books and possibly even its own magazine.

At the rate things are going now, it’s not so hard to believe that dead tree publishing will go the way of the dodo within the next 20 years.  After all, who is really that interested in keeping giant cases full of books in their house when all they have to do is put their library down on the nearest end table at night?  Taking a paperback book with view to the grocery store or jury duty or to a doctor’s appointment is a pretty cumbersome task unless you have deep pockets or a handbag,  and you can really only carry one at a time. But imagine the possibilities of being able to take your entire library with you. And why stop at yours? Why not the entire Library of Congress?

Maybe print-based books will have longer than I think they do to live.  But with the sheer amount of competition coming for them, it won’t be an easy fight.

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So it’s making the rounds on the web that, should you lose your Kindle or your iPhone or your Sirius receiver, you can pretty much forget about getting any help from the company.  Well, now you can take matters into your own hands and mete out cyber-vigilante justice to anyone who sneaks off with your stuff.

It’s the TenBu Technologies’ nio (that’s not a typo–it’s all lower case) and it serves as a kind of wireless hub for all your various devices.  The nio connects to the Bluetooth tag in your devices, and sets a certain “zone” around itself.  Say, for example, fifty feet.  If your gadget ever leaves that fifty foot zone, an alarm on the nio goes off and you know your device is either rapidly moving away or is on the other side of the building where you left it.

If the nio can prevent people from losing their devices in the first place, then it really doesn’t matter what Amazon, Sirius and Apple do.  Even better if it can stop some thieves in the act.

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Bet you didn’t know that Amazon, Sirius Satellite and Apple Computers can tell where you are anywhere in the world, did you?

Well, that kind of shocker revelation requires some background.  Most everybody’s felt the heartbreak at one time or another of a favorite gadget just “wandering away”.  Whether it fell or it was pushed, the end result is the same–your valuable gadget is GONE.  It might surprise you to know that most of these gadgets actually already come with the technology required to track them down remotely.

But the companies won’t actually use this technology to help you track down your wayward gear. In fact, just trying to get the companies to shut down your missing tech so that it can’t be used in the future requires a subpoena and a whole lot of dancing with lawyers.

Some say the companies themselves won’t bother because they’d sooner have someone out there use the product and occasionally buy new apps and services, while you have to go buy a new one, plus in some cases all the content you already paid for once.  The companies themselves, meanwhile, are being tight-lipped about the whole thing.

This doesn’t bode well for the gadget makers–unhappy customers are very seldom repeat customers.

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