ereader

The tax app

Links from Tuesday's episode of Loaded:

Verizon is going to sell the iPhone with a $30 per month unlimited data plan

Barnes & Noble may be discontinuing the 3G Nook

Facebook mandates that all games use Facebook Credits

Mobile Gmail users can now print from their mobile devices

The IRS launches an app that lets you track your tax refund, get daily tax tips, and follow the IRS on Twitter

A new site challenges you to do nothing for two minutes.

Adequate electronic reader

Much ado has been made over the impending death of the book as we know it, and while we doubt that brick-and-mortar bookstores are going to become extinct anytime soon, it's obvious that electronic books are changing the way that we read. And a separate e-book device, such as Amazon.com's Kindle or Barnes & Noble's Nook, isn't necessary to read them; programs like the Barnes & Noble eReader make it possible for users to purchase and read over two million e-books right on their computers. This is an incredibly useful program, but we have to … Read more

Study: Kindle tweets outpace Nook tweets 2 to 1

Both Amazon and Barnes & Noble don't report sales figures for their respective e-readers, the Nook and Kindle. But one company, Crimson Hexagon, has taken it upon itself to formulate some opinions about the e-reader market by charting and analyzing Twitter conversations for both the Nook and Kindle, as well as the iPad as an e-reader.

This is one of the studies you probably have to take with a grain of salt because there are some mixed messages in the report. For starters, the title of Crimson Hexagon's blog post for the study is, "Nook emerges as … Read more

Amazon: Many iPad owners also buying Kindles

Another week, another press release from an e-reader manufacturer talking up big sales. This time it's Amazon announcing that the third-generation Kindle has become the best-selling product in the company's history in just five months. It's officially gone past "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows (Book 7)," the previous reigning champ.

After Bloomberg reported last week that sales for the Kindle 3 were going even better than expected--sources claimed Amazon was due to sell more than 8 million Kindles in 2010--this latest announcement doesn't exactly come as a surprise. But what's interesting about … Read more

Sony: E-readers 'selling out around the world'

A little while back, Barnes & Noble Chairman Len Riggio said his company was straining to meet demand for its Nook Color for the holiday season. Then it was Amazon's turn to let it be known that it was selling millions of Kindles this holiday season. Now Sony, not wanting to be left out of the rosy e-reader numbers game, says that it's "expecting both the Reader Touch and Daily Editions will sell out around the world before the holidays," which we assume means Christmas.

A Sony rep e-mailed to say that Sony, too, had sold … Read more

What's next for e-readers: a Mirasol in the making?

At last year's CES, the e-reader product a lot of people were talking about didn't exist. It was a concept from Mirasol, a Qualcomm-backed company that was showing off its screen technology in a prototype unit.

Mirasol's screen caught people's attention for a few reasons. For starters, it was color. Secondly, its high-tech reflective display technology was not only energy-efficient but readable in direct sunlight. And finally, it was capable of displaying full-motion video. Marrying the best of what e-ink had to offer with some of the strengths of LCD, it looked a lot like the … Read more

Amazon: 'Millions' of Kindles sold this quarter

Last week, Barnes & Noble's chairman Len Riggio mentioned in an interview that his company was producing 18,000 Nook Colors per day, straining to keep up with holiday demand. This week it's Amazon's turn to trumpet Kindle sales, but it isn't CEO Jeff Bezos doing the talking. The company sometimes prefers to do its PR via its own "Kindle Community" message boards.

In this case, the little nugget of info was embedded in a thank you to customers for helping Amazon sell millions of Kindles and a reminder that the device is offering … Read more

Sony returning to e-reader market in Japan

One might have thought Sony was selling e-readers on its home turf. But it actually abandoned Japan's e-reader market in 2007 and is only now returning with its new touch-screen models, which go on sale there December 10.

The price for the 5-inch Pocket Edition PRS-350 will be 20,000 yen ($240) and the Touch Edition PRS-650 will cost 25,000 yen ($299). Reuters reports Sony will launch with 20,000 Japanese-language titles in its e-book store and hopes to sell "300,000 Readers in the first year and win half the domestic market by 2012."

Currently, … Read more

Amazon Kindle and Barnes & Noble Nook Color earn CNET Editors' Choice Awards

We don't always do special blog posts announcing that a certain product has received a CNET Editors' Choice Award, but in the case of our two new winners--the Amazon Kindle and the Barnes & Noble Nook Color--we're taking a moment to explain our decision for a couple for reasons.

For starters, in the case of the third-generation Amazon Kindle, the product has already been out a few months. So why award it an Editors' Choice now? Well, we had been leaning for a long while toward stamping it with an "EC," but upon hearing rumors that … Read more