Kindle display maker E Ink to be bought for $215M

E Ink Corp., the maker of the innovative display for the Amazon Kindle e-book reader, said Monday it has agreed to be acquired by a Taiwanese company for $215 million.

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I have a Kindle 2. Jealous much?

Amazon’s upgraded e-book reader, Kindle 2, has many attributes that gadget freaks will find irresistible. It’s got wireless 3G. (Ooh!) It’s slim and elegant. (Ah!) It’s got a luscious, 16-shade display and can handle 1,500 books at a time. (Wow!)

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Kindle: Great service needs a better device

Seven years ago I took the novels of Jane Austen with me to Egypt. As my companion read and reread her sole paperback, I simply turned on my Rocket eBook and made my way from "Sense and Sensibility" to "Persuasion." The backlit screen was easy to read, the interface simple — I was hooked.

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Analyst Yair Reiner believes that Apple will release a tablet device this coming spring. According to his sources, the still mythical tablet could put a serious damper on Amazon's e-book plans by offering a better deal for publishers.

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On Wednesday, iRex Technologies, a spinoff of Royal Philips Electronics that already makes one of Europe's best-known e-readers, plans to announce that it is entering the United States market with a $399 touch-screen e-reader.

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They may be cheaper and more convenient, writes Andrew Keen, but ebooks do not represent meaningful cultural progress.

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The move is the first price drop on any Kindle since the original was reduced to $359 and puts a larger gap between this and the larger Kindle DX, which still sits at its original $489 price.

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The new gadget, made by Elonex for Borders UK, is not particularly flashy. Where the Sony Reader and Amazon's Kindle - which is not available in Britain - are sleek and beautiful, the Borders eBook is simple and functional.

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A factory in Taiwan has started churning out a new type of power-sipping screen for cell phones, and they could show up in devices before the end of the year.

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In discussions with publishers at the annual BookExpo convention in New York over the weekend, Google signaled its intent to introduce a program by that would enable publishers to sell digital versions of their newest books direct to consumers through Google.

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Several companies are developing display technologies that may take the pigments used in traditional printing and embed them in a low-power electronic display.

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Amazon is holding a press event on Wednesday, and the rumor mill has reached a consensus: it's set to release a large-format reader, more suitable to book and magazine content.

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Electronic books may be the fastest growing segment of the publishing world, but some authors are still not interested in participating. You won't, for instance, find any of the Harry Potter novels in digital format.

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All you really need to know about the dangers of digital commodification you learned in kindergarten. Think back. Remember swapping your baloney sandwich for Jell-o pudding? Now, imagine handing over your sandwich and getting just a spoon.

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Having used both Kindles 1 and 2, I thought it would helpful to list where the new Kindle excels and where it falters.

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Analysts see profits from the new version of Amazon's e-book reader, but they stop short of calling it a major disruptor like Apple's music player.

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At $359 for the Kindle, that's a luxury device anyway you look at it. Like most consumer electronic devices, getting below $200 is key to capturing a more mainstream audience.

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Remember my review of Amazon's first Kindle? I thought it sucked. Almost all of my ire was aimed at its design. I couldn't hold it or pass it to other people without it flipping pages and the UI looked like something Microsoft designed back in the late 1980s.

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The pace of the e-book market over the past decade has been excruciatingly—and yes, you guessed it, unjustly—slow. My frustration is much like that of the Mac users of old.

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Who needs an e-book reader from Amazon or Sony when you can download tomes to a smartphone, often at a fraction of the cost. Adam Parks is an avid reader of digital books.

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Amazon's second-generation Kindle reader has already surfaced in a new leak to BGR this evening and promises to solve many of the first-run issues with the e-book device, which was nicknamed the "iPod of reading" in its first generation.

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Plastic Logic--a company founded to commercialize electronics built on flexible plastic substrates--demonstrated a prototype e-book reader (not yet named) and announced that it plans to ship this product in the first half of next year. You can read the press release for yourself.

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We are all attached to books and the idea seems, at first glance, anachronistic. However there are some good reasons why it might not go away as quickly as you'd think. (via American Libraries Direct)

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ReKindling, an updated review

Back in February, I wrote a quick review of my then brand-new amazon Kindle, the e-book reader from, yes, amazon.com. It's been a few months now and I have been using it for awhile, so I thought I would revisit my review.

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Amazon.com Inc.'s Kindle has turned a long underperforming category of tech gadget -- e-book readers -- into an overnight hit, and in the process has boosted interest in electronic paper display (EPD) technology.

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According to the research, sponsored by UK media lawyers Wiggin, survey data shows books have the highest "attachment" rating of any leisure media activity.

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About a year ago we brought you a prototype device that used a low-energy, high-resolution, rollable e-ink display.

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We've been look at wacky prototypes of rollable displays for so long that it's hard to believe they could ever get real.

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