Last year, there were more sales for e-books than printed books. On March 5 this year, Barnes & Noble, the world’s largest chain of bookstores, acquired online e-book vendor, Fictionwise. President of BN, William J Linch said: “The market hasn’t been that developed to date. We think it’s a big growth area going forward.”

Many people like to purchase and read e-books and e-magazines through lightweight handheld readers today. Several companies have come up with innovative, standalone e-book readers, such as Amazon Kindle, Sony Reader, Hanlin eReader (aka Endless Ideas BeBook), etc; these thin elegant gadgets can take people back to the era of reading. Let’s have a look at some of these readers in this article.

E-books and E-magazines: How Do They Work?

E-books can be of two types: those which can be read on a computer and those which require special devices to read. There are several formats for e-books including Adobe PDF, Microsoft LIT, Palm PDB, etc. In order to buy an e-book, you go to the online vendor of the e-book, pay and register your reader for DRM (Digital Rights Management) protection, and download the e-book to the registered reader. Since only the registered e-book reader can read this e-book, the author and the publisher are protected from piracy. Digital copying is not possible with DRM protection.

Popular E-book Readers

There are many reading devices available in the market, and most of them work with electronic paper technology by E Ink Corporation.

In 2008, an Apple iPhone app for reading e-books in iPhone had a surge of sales (even more than the sales total of Amazon Kindle). This made iPhone one of the popular devices to read e-books. But in this article, we will be looking only at specialized e-book readers.

1. Amazon Kindle

Perhaps the most popular of e-book readers, Amazon Kindle had a sales total of 380,000 units in 2008 in the US alone. Kindle is now in the next generation with the advent of Amazon Kindle 2 and Kindle DX this year (DX is already out of stock). According to Digital Book Readers, K-DX offers native PDF support, has an iPhone-like accelerometer that changes the orientation of the screen when you rotate the Reader and is more suitable for reading electronic versions of newspapers, magazines, and formatted books. With the ability to keep thousands of e-books in storage and easy access to the online Amazon e-book store, Kindle is perhaps the first choice of anyone looking for a standalone e-book reader.

The display is like normal paper and easy to read. Kindle has wireless capabilities to access the online book store and magazine store of Amazon. Kindle 2 has a 600 x 800 (6 inch) display. It can receive books through the high-speed Sprint 3G network, nationally available. Supported formats include the Amazon proprietary format, AZW (DRM-restricted), PRC, TXT, and PDF (some of these formats may need to be converted to AZW).

2. Sony Reader

Sony Digital Book Reader is the popular e-book reader from Sony, and there have been already three editions of this—PRS-500, PRS-505, and PRS-700.

The reader has a 600 x 800 pixel electronic paper display (EPD), similar to Kindle, and the display is 8-level grayscale. PRS-700 edition, unlike others, sports a touch screen. The supported e-book formats include BBeB book (from Marlin), TXT, RTF, ePub, Adobe PDF, Microsoft Word (DOC). It supports JPEG, GIF, PNG, and BMP for images; and MP3 and AAC for audio.

3. iRex iLiad

iRex iLiad, similar to Kindle and Sony Reader, makes use of the electronic paper display and comes at 768 x 1024 (8 inches) resolution. It has 16-level grayscale screen.

Through Wi-Fi, LAN, USB connectivity, or a network using a MyiRex account, you can transfer e-books to the reader. The supported e-book formats include Adobe PDF, MOBI, PRC, HTML, and TXT.

4. Hanlin eReader

Hanlin eReader, known in various brand names across the world, such as Endless Ideas BeBook, is a popular e-book reader. It has a 600 x 800 resolution, 4-level grayscale display. It connects through a USB port.

Unlike other readers mentioned above, this reader supports almost all popular file formats for e-books—Adobe PDF, CHM, DJVU, DOC, ePub, FB2, HTM, LIT, MOBI, PPT, PRC, RTF, TXT, WOLF. It also supports archiving formats like ZIP and RAR; image formats like BMP, GIF, JPEG, PNG, TIFF; and audio format, MP3.

Conclusion

Most of these e-book readers come with revolutionary E-Ink technology developed by E Ink Corporation. This is a digital paper display, which gives the experience of reading actual paper. With the storage space for thousands of e-books and ability to keep battery power for thousands of page turns or several hours, these e-book readers can be regarded as portable libraries. Since they can connect to some network to purchase and download popular fiction and non-fiction from online e-book vendors, they can provide great reading experience when you are on a long-distance journey.

iPhone Reader Overview (Screencast)

Twitter caught the eyes of people with its unique idea of micro blogging. Twitter provided the stage and the way to say what you feel like, to whole world with 140 characters. Growing number of twitter users proved that the world is accepting and going with twitter. The Facebook (referred as fb in this article) on the other hand is the biggest medium to be social on internet. Fb has largest user base in social networking. Idea of fb is completely different and deals with sharing your personal life with your friends and staying updated on what happening in your friend circle.

However, It became quite obvious after fb brought Friend feed, that it will go twitter’s way. Fb started status message. Recently gave option to open your status message to world and allowed third party applications to access its API. Just few days back it introduced the mention feature with @, same as twitter. Clearly, fb trying to adopt the twitter idea to reach maximum people and retains its own users from going to twitter.

So, what makes the Fb to follow twitter? Here are some of main reasons,

1. Growing popularity of twitter: Even fb is the big boss in online social networking, it certainly sense the growing number of people using twitter. It was apparent that fb users are turning to twitter for its ability to reach out to maximum people than fb. Fb certainly doesn’t want its users to go for some other service and as result fb decided to implement same functionality within its own app.

2. Real time searches: This is muscular feature twitter came up with. After Google taken over the searching on internet, this unique feature proved very crucial for twitter in setting its position on internet. With Real time searches twitter soon became the apple of everyone’s eye. It was very easy for twitter as people are tweeting like hell every second and from every part of world. Moreover twitter already has efficient and reliable search algorithm, structure and server power to back this feature. Along with that, twitter is coming with geo location for every tweet, adding new dimension to its search. Google and fb both are looking to grab on to this feature, because it is going to be very critical which of these three make most of it, because I think it is surely going to be next big thing on internet.

3. Reach to maximum people: With fb you are linked to your friends and some known ones. Your reach is limited and bonded by fb privacy terms. You cannot state your viewpoint to whole world. Twitter overcame this without much difficultly as its idea was clear to provide people a universal platform, to reach masses with your tweet. That’s the reason which attracted many celebrities and famous personalities to twitter.

4. Twitter versatilities: People use fb to be in touch with friends. On the other side twitter can be used in various ways like conversation, spreading idea, links, giving opinion, stating one’s viewpoint or simply conveying world what you are doing. Well you can say fb allows photo and video sharing which is absent from twitter. But twitter showed maturity on this by providing third parties its API to create applications which fills its void of media sharing. Twitter apps grown hastily and used twitter’s 140 characters in so many different and creative ways, is just in sane. These app ranges from business to entertainment to information to anything you can think of. I personally like twitter apps more than fb’s useless games, quizzes and questionnaires.

What-so-ever be the reason, the fact that fb going after twitter, makes a point very clear that twitter has lots of potential which can turn social networking in big way. Fb doesn’t want to lose his grip on social networking. Whichever way this struggle goes, the ultimate judge is audience. Personally I feel it is the idea or its excellent implementation which is going turn stone for these social networking giants on internet. Lastly, may the best application wins.

Best iPhone App For Submitting Photos – Facebook, Flickr, Photobucket, Picasa and More!

You would not find more ads on the traditional cellphones. The iPhones have replaced the traditional cellphones. The iPhones are about to take over the advantage of cellphones and computers. On an iPhone you can enjoy computer-based functions. Try out the Apple iPhone which has a glamorous reputation in the global iPhone market. The Apple iPhones have been always praised for its brand and quality service. There are many folk who have said appreciating words on the products of Apple. If you buy the Apple iPhone, then you will definitely come to know it’s cool benefits.

Have you ever imagined about having Google and Yahoo on your cellphone? If you had such a wish in your mind, then now it would come true. Apple iPhone has built-in Google and Yahoo. After knowing this fact, you would definitely rejoice. Have this exclusive cellphone for you and soon you will forget your personal computer. Use Google and Yahoo to remain connected with any person on anywhere on this earth.

Are you facing problems while using the keypad of your cellphone? Well, Apple iPhone would make you forget about the use of keypad. It has been provided with the touch-screen facility so that you do not have to press your cell phone’s keypad all the time. Use your finger to get the feature which you want to have. Isn’t it surprising? Obviously, it is surprising.

Get everything like GPRS, WLAN, EDGE, Bluetooth and USB on <a href=”http://www.freecontractmobilephone.co.uk/Phone_Deal.asp?Ph=Apple–iPhone”>Apple iPhone</a> for a super fast connectivity. These are the most important key features which any iPhone should possess. Are you a music lover or like to watch videos on websites? Then, Apple iPhone has got iPod audio and video player. Now it’s time for listening to your favorite music or watch your favorite videos. Compare this entertainment experience with your the one that you had with your old cellphone. There is no least doubt that Apple iPhone would win the positive feedbacks. Here are some of the key features of Apple iPhone:

· Camera: 2.0Mega Pixel Camera
· Touchscreen, 16M colors, Multi-touch input
· Maps, iPod audio/video player
· Memory: 4/8 GB Shared Memory
· TV output, Email, Bluetooth, Widgets support
· Built-in Google and Yahoo!

Camera Zoom iPhone App Review – AppVee.com