With the holidays rushing towards us (I saw Christmas trees at K-mart across from the Halloween costumes!!), retailers are pushing out their announcements for the coming shopping season. Amazon started with the announcement that they would be adding a lending feature to the Kindle. Kindle owners will now be able to lend their books out to other Kindle owners for a two-week period. During that time, the book will not be available to the original purchaser, and the book can only be to one person at a time, one time only. Not all books will have this feature enabled as it’s up to the publisher to enable it, just like the audio feature on the Kindle. Of course, the Kindle is only playing catch-up by adding this feature. The Barnes and Noble Nook has had it from day one. But with the e-reader market getting more competitive, the Kindle will have to do everything possible to keep itself at the top. Especially with announcements like the Nook Color. Earlier this week, Barnes and Noble announced they would be releasing a reader tablet for the holidays. It has a full color, android-based touch screen e-reader. It’s 8.1 inches tall with a…
Ignoring the digital world has finally become impossible for the comics world. Over the last several months, mostly after the debut of the Apple iPad, comic publishers have been announcing their digital plans for the future. The big two, Marvel and DC have put their faith in Apple and Comixology. releasing apps and titles through these platforms. At the New York Comic Con, two more publishers, more relevent to manga readers, have announced more of their digital plans. Dark Horse Comics announced their digital strategy at their panel on Friday. Instead of going through Comixology, they are creating their own platform for selling their books. This strategy is supposed to be available across all platforms and on the web. For the iPad/iPhone, they will have an app that will connect to their platform, and therefore bypass the Apple censors. For the most part, I agree with Dark Horse’s strategy. Making their titles available on any device, be it a smart phone, computer or tablet is the smart way to go. With most American comics being in color, I can understand skipping the e-book readers such as the Kindle or the Nook. I think it’s funny though, that Dark Horse has…
RL kept me busy in May, so it wasn’t until this month that I got back to my studies on Smart.fm. I’ve settled into a schedule now of taking two lunches a week (that 1 1/2 hours a week) to continue my studies. Considering my RL schedule, this is the best that I can do at the moment, and it’s actually working out for me! I started with Smart.fm’s Master Hiragana program. I was still studying hiragana when I started, but as of last Friday, I had all 104 hiragana studied, and had mastered 84. The program takes you through the symbol pretty thoroughly, making sure you can recognize them both in Japanese, and romanized. It uses multiple choice, and times how long it takes you to choose the right character. It also does a spelling quiz by showing you the symbol and then you have to type the correct letters. Any mistakes takes you back to the study screen. And as you get closer to completing all the characters, it starts stretching out the amount of time before you can study again. After I hit 84 last Friday, it stopped letting me study and test, and told me to…
The first shot in the tablet wars began with Apple’s release of the iPad, and technology companies have responded. At Computex, a computer and technology show several companies were showing off new devices, some to be available as early as this Fall. The big announcement that everyone is touting is from the creator of the netbook, Asus. They announced three tablets. The Eee Pad will come in two versions. The EP101TC will come with a 10 in screen and the EP121TC will have a 12 in screen. Both devices will be able to playback multimedia, read e-books, browse the web, and with a keyboard can be used as a computer. Asus is promising 10 hours of battery life with these devices. Exact specs or release date haven’t been announced yet. The Eee Tablet is the Asus e-reader. It uses a reflective LCD screen instead of e-ink, and is in grey scale instead of color. It will include a touch screen and style for note taking. It uses Wacom’s pen input technology for more precise and accurate notes. Asus is aiming this device at students. It will include a webcam, microSD slot and USB slot. It will also have a 10…
With Mother’s Day this Sunday, all the ads lately have been about what to get Mom. One common element I’ve seen (beyond the usual of appliances, jewelry, and gardening) is e-readers. Amazon.com has the Kindle on their front page again, touting how it’s the perfect gift for Mom. It’s $259 for the 6″ screen, and includes a wireless connection to Amazon for instant downloading (and gratification). Sony, maker of the e-Reader, has been pushing it’s low end reader, the Pocket Edition, which has the least number of features. You can find this device at Office Depot, Staples and Best Buy going for $149 through Mother’s Day. You have to connect it to a computer to get the e-books on it, but it also now comes in a “special” pink edition. Ooooo…. Yeah, I’m not impressed by that either. I’ve looked over the Pocket Edition, and wasn’t really impressed with it compared to it’s price. But it’s the least expensive e-ink device out right now. Then, I found out about a new device. The Aluratek Libre e-Reader. It’s a low tech e-reader, that’s also low priced. Online it can be found for around $150, but K-Mart will have it for only…
I’m a total girl geek. I read comics and manga, watch sci-fi and anime, and I love technology. One of the things I love about technology is the freedom it gives. It’s the great equalizer. With the advent of better and cheaper hardware and software, anyone can have their own radio and/or TV show. You don’t need to be in broadcasting or work at a radio or TV station to be seen and hear by millions of people. The tech I’ve come to love and really depend on are podcasts. They get me to and from work and sometimes through the long day. I can find podcasts on anime, manga, tech, astronomy, skeptic news and Doctor Who. I try to share at the manga ones on my This Week in Manga posts, but after listening to the latest batch I realized there was something missing from everything I listened too. A female voice.
E-books have been in the news a lot lately, what with the iPad, Amazon vs Publishers, and the Nintendo DSi XL all relating to e-books or e-readers in someway. But none of this news has really had much of an impact on manga readers except to build up hope that we might one days see manga on these platforms. Well, finally news comes from Japan through mobile manga provider NTT Solmare, that 3 publishers will not only be bringing out manga magazines for mobile devices in Japan, but that they plan to release these for the US as well. These magazines won’t just be re-releases of previously printed material, as most mobile manga has been. These will have new titles premiering on the mobile platform. NTT Solmare has released some mobile manga already, but only on the Apple apps store for iPhone/iTouch users only. This new inititive intends to reach out to other mobile platforms and to e-readers such as the Kindle. What really makes this announcement exciting is some of the creators that are being tapped for the debut. One of the creators is Sakura Kinoshita. I love her work even through it hasn’t done so well over here. …
In a previous post I spoke of the Nintendo DS as a possible e-reader. With their latest announcement, it seems that Nintendo is finally answering that call in the US. The DSi XL, originally launched in Japan in November 2009 as the DSi LL, will be coming to the US in March. Along with the new gaming device, which has bigger screens, will be the 100 Classics e-book cartridge that I spoke of in the previous post. While the e-book cartridge itself isn’t that big of news, public domain books are a dime a dozen on the web, it’s the fact that Nintendo is finally stepping into the e-book market in the US that’s exciting. Over in Japan, the DS has been getting manga and books on the platform for at least 2 years. It would be nice to see some manga come to this side of the Pacific. With the larger screen and cartridge format, manga on the DS would be more difficult to pirate. Not impossible, just more work. Some blogs are trying to set this move by Nintendo as a play against Apple. However, if they had been watching Nintendo’s gradual climb up to e-books on the…
Learning Japanese from popular culture such as anime and manga is nothing new. Mangajin, a magazine from the early 90’s used manga to teach lessons. In fact, it’s exactly these things that inspire westerners to want to learn to read and speak Japanese. The Japanese have recognized this and have created a website to help learners of their language. But it’s not exactly what you’d expect. The website, anime-manga.jp doesn’t show you manga panels with translations. No, the purpose of the site is to help teach learners about colloquial expressions that often show up in anime and manga, but not in textbooks. Languages are fluid, they are always changing. Anime and manga, which are all about popular culture reflect these changes, which often stump new readers who don’t live in the culture and see and hear these changes. On the site, you can see and hear expressions from typical characters from anime and manga such as school age boys and girls, butlers, and samurai. You can even hear an Osaka dialect from an old man! I’ve heard people try to discourage others from using anime and manga as a resource for learning Japanese precisely because of the colloquialisms. But in…
Just days after Amazon conceded to MacMillian’s demands for an agency model for e-book pricing (ie, variable pricing), Robert Murdoch’s Harper Collins started rattling it’s saber that it wanted the same deal. By the end of the week Hachette had joined Harper Collins. So like dominoes, the major publishers are falling in line to continue their old publishing strategy of initial high price (hardback), price drop 1 (trade paperback) and price drop 2 (mass market paperback for digital books. Since Amazon capitulated to MacMillian, they will have to do the same with the publishers.
Here in the US, we’re all excited about getting more devices to carry around to read books on. In Japan, they’re taking existing devices that people are already carrying and adapting them to not just read books but to also enhance that reading experience. They are letting the content take advantage of the platform instead of making devices to conform to the content.
Late Friday night, reports started coming in about a dispute between Amazon and publisher MacMillian. According to the New York Times, Amazon has “temporarily” pulled all books by MacMillian, including all imprints such as First Second, Seven Seas Entertainment, and Tor, because MacMillian is pushing for a raise in price of their e-book on the Kindle to $15. The grousing between Amazon and publishers has been going on for a while now, so that this has finally happened is no surprise. Nor is it a surprise that it happens right after Apple announced it’s iPad, which MacMillian is one of the publishers that signed on to provide books for. To get a full range of the story, he’s some links to check out. Johanna Draper Carlson posts about it at Comics Worth Reading. Check out the comments for interesting information on the breakdown of who gets what in the publishing pie. Business Insider has a look at the dispute from the Apple side of the equation. Cory Doctorow, a big proponent of e-books, has his own take at BoingBoing. Definitely check out his post for how the whole battle affects consumers. He’s got some really interesting insights. The Los Angeles…