The image at right shows the work of Nick Chen. That’s not a dual screen ereader; it’s a pair of single screen devices that are designed to work cooperatively over a wireless connection. And yes, he can network 3 or more devices together.

I last covered Nick back in May, and his gadgets are worth seeing even more now. And that’s why I’m happy to say that he has greed to bring them to the petting zoo.

If you’d like a teaser of the ereaders in action, there’s a video after the break. (If this video doesn’t make you want to attend, I don’t know what will.)

Last Minute Addition to The eReader Petting Zoo – A 3-Screen eReader

I think we have an impressive collection of ereaders and tablets.

How impressive? Well, I reached out to manufacturers I know and we have  promises from Ectaco to send their new Jetbook Color and several tablet manufacturers have promised to send their current product. Sony also contributed an eReader, and B&N will be sending  couple Nooks. Joe has reached out to Kobo, and they’ll be sending a KT and Kobo Vox. We even have  promise from Qualcomm to send a Mirasol device.

There will also be an extensive list of borrowed devices on display, including Kindles, iPads, a couple iriver Stories, Onyx Boox, and a Samsung E65. We’re also planning to have an endangered species table with a RIM Playbook, HP TouchPad, the original Kindle, and a few rare items from my collection. I will be contributing my oldest ebook reader, a Sony Data Discman (it works). I’m also pulling out my original Rocket eBook, Softbook Reader, REB-1100, GEB-2150, and an Ebookwise-1150.

This was my first attempt to help organize an event and I think it’s progressing rather nicely. I’m thrilled with the critter list; even if you leave out my contributions it is still going to be more devices in one place than you will see anywhere short of CES. What’s more, we’re going to have the new color E-ink screen next to Qualcomm’s Mirasol screen, and that’s something that you won’t find even at CES.

Registration for the TOC Conference is still open, and press passes are still available (email me or leave  comment).

Is anyone looking forward to the Zoo s much as I am?

Check Out The eReader Petting Zoo at O’Reilly TOC Conference

Reed Exhibitions, operators of BEA, NY Comicon, and  bunchaton of other trade shows and conferences, has just bought the Book Blogger Conference. This con had only been held twice and they’ve already become such  valuable property that Reed snapped them up in order to integrate BBC with BEA. That’s the value of book bloggers.

From now on, the Book Blogger Con will be held during BEA, not after. In its first 2 events Book Blogger Con was co-located at the Javits Center, but it was conveniently held after BEA ended. Now it’s going to be held during BEA, and that means it’s going to conflict with other events. Drat.

On a related note, it looks like I won’t be attending BEA this year; it’s scheduled for the same time as SID Display Week. This is a screen tech conference and I need to go meet the tech companies just as much as I need to meet publishers.

Book Blogger Conference Sold – Now Part of Book Expo America

While it looks like a watch, this is really a 2″ smartphone that you strap to your wrist. It’s running Android v2.2 Froyo on a MTK6516 CPU (480MHz+280MHz) and it has Wifi, a microSD card slot, speaker/mike, and even a SIM card slot that works with the GPRS chip. There’s also a camera, and you can take pictures secret agent style.

The screen has a resolution of 320×240, and the touchscreen is capacitive. Standby battery life is expected to be about a week, with active use estimated to be round 36 hours. The price is just $200 for bulk orders, minimum order quantity of 500.

Phaeton 2″ Android Watch Doubles as a Smartphone

Charbax caught up Mary Lou Jepsen, the founder and CEO of Pixel Qi.
She talks to him about the latest news on Pixel Qi’s screens, including upcoming android prototypes. The new 10.1? (1280×800) Pixel Qi screen is ready and it’s demoed under a bright spotlight.

Pixel Qi at CES 2012

If any of my readers knows someone at Apple, please convey to them what a mistake this was.

I Didn’t Get In to the Apple Event

I posted about my own visit with Sriram Peruvemba, the marketing director at E-ink, a few days back. Today I thought it would be interesting to post Charbax’s interview.  Here’s his 17 minute video.

Sri demonstrates some of the latest uses for E-ink such as a large screen demo unit with a 300dpi display, signage, the Jetbook Color, a fast new stylus input (250 milliseconds), new E Ink watches, and more.

If you’re interested in seeing other examples of products based on E-ink screens, check out the booth visit video I posted back in November. That video was shot at FPD 2011, and it shows all sorts of cool stuff.

Interview with E-ink at CES 2012 (video)

Ever since I saw those 4.0 tablets I’ve wanted to get a good look at the interface. But there was a catch; almost no tablets have ICS right now, so all the demo tablets were teasing us with features we couldn’t take home.

According to my sources on Twitter, the only Android tablet with ICS is the Transformer Prime. Since I don’t want to spend $500, I was out of luck – until now.

I was chatting with a Skytex rep at CES and he told me about their new firmware. It’s a beta release, and the official release is still under development. But it is available.

I’ve just finished installing the update on my Alpha 2 tablet. It was set for Chinese, not English, but now that I got it switched over it seems to be working well. The general interface is a lot like Honeycomb, so there are some radical changes from Gingerbread. But once I figured that out I was able to find everything pretty quickly.

The Alpha 2 is the first of many tablets running on the Boxchip 1.2GHz CPU+400MHz chipset, and it shipped just a couple weeks back. It has Wifi, a VGA webcam,, microSD card slot, and 4GB Flash storage, g-sensor, and it also has a graphics chip which supports true 1080p output and stereoscopic 3D video. I haven’t had a chance to test the 3D video, but I plan to do so in the coming weeks.

It’s doing a decent job running Android 4.0. It’s not the fastest tablet nor does it have the best touchscreen, but this tablet gives me a pretty good idea what all the other Boxchip based tablets will be like. (Let me tell you know, the term budget tablet will take on a whole new meaning in 2012.)

It’s running ICS about as well you might expect the better budget tablets to run Gingerbread. I’ve only installed a few apps, but Angry Birds works great.  The general responsiveness is fine, and I see no reason to switch back to Gingerbread.

• You can find the beta update here.
• And you can find instructions here. They’re rather complicated, so take your time.

Skytex Alpha 2 First 7″ Android 4.0 ICS Tablet – Now in My Hands

And this week I learned that it’s finally going to happen. ZTE isn’t the only company working on a Pixel Qi tablet now.

San Diego based Sol Computer was at CES this past week showing off their 3 new tablets. I’ve confirmed that some time this spring they plan to launch 7″ Windows and Android tablets as well as a 10.1″ dual boot Win8/Android tablet. All will have Pixel Qi screens.

Specs are still up in the air, but I’m told that the Android tablet will likely be running on a 1GHz Cortex-A8 CPU.

I’ve covered Sol once before on this blog. They’re a small start up who launched their first 2 Pixel Qi equipped products in September 2011 (Win7 tablet and netbook). At the time I liked the idea, but I wanted to see a larger version of this screen on a more powerful laptop. (Unfortunately for me, Pixel Qi doesn’t make one.)

So what’s the point of a Pixel Qi tablet? Price certainly isn’t a factor; Sol Computer’s current 10″ Win7 tablet is going for $1100 for so-so specs. And the new tablets will probably also be rather expensive. Due to the assembly costs, the tablets will likely retail for $400 or more that their LCD based competition.

But like any premium product there are some who need the features. And in this case, the primary customers have been people who absolutely had to use a computer in full sunlight and are willing to pay a premium to get it. BTW, that need to run software is why Sol went with Win7 for their first 2 products instead of Android or another mobile OS.

And the premium price means that this is still a niche product.

–

I made a point of not missing this booth because I’ve  been asked a certain question a lot lately. Everyone wants to me to predict which of the new screen tech will succeed in the current struggle to replace LCDs. I would like to say Pixel Qi, but they are still a couple years away from being a mass-market consumer product. My conversation with Chris Swanner, the CEO of Sol Cpmputer, helped me understand why (more on this later).

Sol Computer to Release 3 Pixel Qi Tablets This Year

A Dutch company called Gembird was at CES, and they showed off their new print-to-ereader tech. They’ve developed a new 9.7″ E-ink ereader with docking station, and it’s targeted at the business user who wants to cut down on printing content.

I don’t have full details on the device, but I do know that it is running Android on an 800MHz Freescale CPU.  It has a touchscreen but no wifi. And according to Tweakers, a Dutch gadget blog who did see this device at CES, the dock isn’t required. It’s going to hit the market in April, and the expected retail is 500 euros.

So the idea here is that you’d plug in this ereader to your computer. It would show up as a USB printer, and that would give you the chance to print docs to the device, enabling you to reduce your paper usage. You could then edit the doc on the device and (maybe) send the edited PDF back to the PC.

I cannot find specifics on what happens after you edit the doc, but I really hope that Gembird closed the loop. One detail that most ereader makers fail on is how to get annotations off the ereader. Being able to share an edited PDF is twice as useful as simply editing it.

Gembird  has a great idea here, but do they really have to throw a €500 into the deal? I think there would be a much better value to find a similar ability that utilizes the iPad or other existing tablets and ereaders.

In fact, there already is an option. Goodreader lets you edit PDFs on the iPad, and you can even email or print the PDF after you’ve edited it.  I’m not sure on the best way to get them to the app (email seems like a good bet), but this is still a better value.

Does anyone know of a similar app for Android? In particular, I’m looking for the ability to receive, edit, and then share PDFs. I bet at least one app already does this, but I don’t know what it is.

Gembird via Tweakers

Stuff I Missed at CES 2012: Gembird’s New 9.7″ eReader