Sony will be shooting out an update on Thursday to allow the Reader to use purchased books in the protected EPUB format from whoever is peddling them, instead of being tied to the Sony’s e-book store, or just DRM-free text and PDF documents.
This is an excellent move by Sony. One of the big downfalls to both the Sony Reader and the Amazon Kindle was the fact that you were tied to the devices’ respective stores for content. We’ve recently seen yet another example of why DRM is bad when applied to music purchases [Yahoo Music Goes Dark, Takes DRM Keys With It], and I think that the same will hold true for ebooks as well. Now, you can load your own DRM-free TXT and PDF files onto the Sony Reader, expanding your content options. If you still want to buy from a major seller, you can buy from anyone using the EPUB system. It’s still DRM, but at least you’re no longer stuck with Sony’s offerings.
I haven’t seen an Amazon Kindle in person yet, but from the photos I think I like the industrial design of the Sony Reader much more. We’ll see what happens if Amazon releases new Kindles in October as rumored, but right now I don’t mind the thought of picking up a Sony Reader on clearance in a year or two.
Wordpress has released an official native app for the iPhone and iPod Touch. It lets you create new posts as well as edit existing posts on Wordpress.com hosted blogs, as well as self hosted installations of Wordpress 2.51 or higher. This is an app I have been hoping for, so I was excited to try it out. The app looks very slick so far. I’m going to upload some photos too to test that out too. The auto-correction for the keyboard is disabled in the post title and tag fields, but thankfully it is intact when you are typing up a post’s body. You can post images from photos you have saved on the device (I used it to attach the screenshot). One feature I hope they will add is the ability to moderate comments. I expect that the app will grow to add such features with updates overtime.
SenseSurface “…allows you to attach real, physical knobs to a flat-panel display. The magnetic knobs are measured by a sensor plate in the rear, letting you turn the knob itself to control the software dials. Sounds like a great way to do synth emulators!”
Thanks to @solidsmack for the heads up on this story at BoingBoing. I could see this combined with RFID tags in the knobs, so that as you attach different knobs, the interaction area changes to different controls. While it may not be more efficient or productive for a workstation situation, I think the gains in usability and intuition in a public setting are through the roof. Very cool application of technology to the realm of user interfaces.
I’ve been playing the new Final Fantasy Tactics A2 on the DS quite a bit lately. I’ve logged over 24 hours in the last week, that’s a lot for me on a video game. @hikikomori posted a heads up tonight that Square Enix has released their first iPod game, Song Summoner: The Unsung Heroes [press release].
The premise is pretty cool, you use songs in your iPod’s music library to create stats for your units in the game. Then you play through it with the Tactics mechanics, each unit having unique range and attacks. My favorite dynamic to the game is that you can level up your units outside of the gameplay by listening to your music. Each playcount added for the songs used to create the units will contribute to leveling up their stats. It really adds a new element to playing your music on shuffle, knowing that when certain songs come up, you’re progressing in a game. Check out a video of game play below.
The idea of using your media library to generate the stats of units is not new, from what I know, Monster Rancher was doing it back in 1997. It IS a mechanic that I haven’t seen used in a while, and it lends itself perfectly to the iPod (or any digital media device) environment.
@hikikomori reports that it runs rather slow on the iPod 5G, but I hope that we’ll see a more robust port hit the App Store for the iPhone and iPod Touch soon. This game is BEGGING for WiFi battling against friends. I’m also extremely excited to see Square Enix publishing games on Apple devices, I think it bodes well for the future of MobileOSX in the casual gaming market.
Reuters is reporting that Toyota is going to add solar panels, produced by Kyocera Corp, to the roof of their Prius Hybrid cars. The panels will be on the top of the line models, and will work toward powering the air conditioner. While it’s not powering the whole car, I do imagine that it could contribute quite a bit of power to the system as a whole. It’s the first time, that I know of, that solar panels have been commercially integrated into a production vehicle by the manufacturer. I’d love to see them add the ability to switch the power over to charging outlets for cell phones and other devices when the A/C isn’t in use, or to have it contribute to the main power cells.
I’ve been on the look out for some reasonably priced solar panels that I could use to charge a device. I’d like to try taking a device like my phone or laptop completely off the grid, only charging it with solar power. If you know of any good solar units for something like that, I’d appreciate any help there.
