Format War
Amazon Announced New Format – KF8: Is It Kindle Fire Only?
About a week ago, we discovered some ‘Kindle Fire’-only contents like childrens’ ebooks and DC Comics books on Amazon Store. Since those titles are not available for e-ink Kindles it was our guess that there will be some new kind of format exclusive for Kindle Fire is on the way. Now it seems that we got the new format called Kindle Format 8 (KF8). It’s not clear whether e-Ink Kindle will support this new format. This new format will support HTML5 and CSS3. And Kindle Touch would be a good candidate for this format as well. However, limitations of e-Ink screen and the power of processor of More >
Is ePub Really Final Barrier for Kindle Adoption?
ZDNet’s Jason Perlow has recently written a piece arguing that Amazon’s lack of willingness to adopt ePub ebook format is the ‘final barrier for Kindle adoption’. His argument is based on the issue of content standardization. We know that ePub has been set as the industry standard ebook format by IDPF, and Apple, Sony, B&N & Kobo have adopted the ePub format. Of course there are some issues with Amazon’s proprietary ebook format:
……there’s the issue that customers don’t want to have to re-buy their content. Presumably, if you’re a SONY eReader or a NOOK user, you don’t want to have to take More >
iPad Got Stanza from Amazon, But Not Kindle Books on Stanza
[stextbox id="info"]The king is back! It might not be as pretty as iBooks, but in terms of features and flexibility, Stanza thrashes Apple’s offering. Free, available now. – Wires.com[/stextbox]
Amazon didn’t kill Stanza. A lot of us believed that the sole purpose of acquisition of Lexicycle (the creator of Stanza) is to kill it before it’s get into the hand of amazon’s competitor. Stanza is free for iPhone/iPodTouch, and it’s one of the favorite ereader for alot of people. With an update to version 3.0 Stanza now available for iPad, which came after a lot of speculation about it’s More >
B&N Nook’s EPUB DRM Hacked and Cracked
i♥cabbages who happens to crack the kindle DRM with the program litled “unswindle” has also recently been able to circumvent B&N’s EPUB DRM. He writes, on his blog:
The basic idea behind the B&N EPUB scheme is the same as that used by the ill-fated eReader format B&N acquired – step 1: generate an encryption key from the book-purchaser’s name + credit card #; step 2: hope that they don’t like giving that information out to strangers. They like to call this a form of “social DRM,” although I believe a more appropriate term is “silly.”
He found that Windows version of the B&N’s eReader More >
B&N Nook’s EPUB DRM Hacked and Cracked
i♥cabbages who happens to crack the kindle DRM with the program litled “unswindle” has also recently been able to circumvent B&N’s EPUB DRM. He writes, on his blog:
The basic idea behind the B&N EPUB scheme is the same as that used by the ill-fated eReader format B&N acquired – step 1: generate an encryption key from the book-purchaser’s name + credit card #; step 2: hope that they don’t like giving that information out to strangers. They like to call this a form of “social DRM,” although I believe a more appropriate term is “silly.”
He found that Windows version of the B&N’s eReader More >
A Christmas Surprise: Kindle for PC DRM Hacked & Cracked – Another DRM Fiasco
Okay, Amazon might be unhappy, probably all publishers as well; but the truth is DRM is not the solution to prevent sharing of ebooks in this digital era when programing has become much more collaborative on the net, and access to internet has become easier than ever. For a long time Amazon got immunity from publishing ebooks with their own DRM. Amazon, from the very beginning was unwilling to release any software to read ebooks on any devices other than on kindle; but due to fierce competition from others, specially, from B&N, in recent times, Amazon had to compromise with that kind of More >
A Christmas Surprise: Kindle for PC DRM Hacked & Cracked – Another DRM Fiasco
Okay, Amazon might be unhappy, probably all publishers as well; but the truth is DRM is not the solution to prevent sharing of ebooks in this digital era when programing has become much more collaborative on the net, and access to internet has become easier than ever. For a long time Amazon got immunity from publishing ebooks with their own DRM. Amazon, from the very beginning was unwilling to release any software to read ebooks on any devices other than on kindle; but due to fierce competition from others, specially, from B&N, in recent times, Amazon had to compromise with that kind of More >
