Kindle Competition

Another day, another Kindle competition. Surpass Hosting is staging a contest where the winner can bag themselves a Kindle.

Its a lot easier to enter than the previous competition we told you about, all you have to do it write a haiku - simple.

Give us a great haiku about Surpass Hosting and win an Amazon Kindle to further enjoy poetry and reading.

“The most common form for Haiku is three short lines. The first line usually contains five (5) syllables, the second line seven (7) syllables, and the third line contains five (5) syllables. Haiku doesn’t rhyme.” Here is an example haiku:

i love you surpass
you make my sites go so fast
happy webmaster

Just post your entry in this thread, then on August 29th we’ll all vote for the winner. It’s a community feeling.

Sometimes I wish that I had a Kindle to give away, I have so many competition ideas, but no prizes to give away =(

Source: Surpass Hosting Blog

The word from Der Spiegel is that German telecommunications company Deutsche Telekom is developing a Kindle rival, of sorts, the as yet unnamed portable e-reader project carries the codenamed “News4me” - there are no images of what the Deutsche Telekom device will look like.

Deutsche Telekom has put this little blurb on their website;

The News4Me project aims to create an individual electronic newspaper. Subscriptions are possible to complete issues or to individual sections from differing newspapers, which will then be transmitted to mobile devices. The contents and the layout adapt constantly to the way that you read. In future, wherever you are, you will benefit from easy access to current news and information which correspond to your personal interests.

According to the Der Spiegel article, the head of Deutsche Telekom’s R&D department, Peter Möckel, says Deutsche Telekom sees a niche market in the gap between mobile phones and laptops and will serve as a conduit for printed media. Deutsche Telekom is said to have plans to test few dozen prototypes in Berlin by the end of the year.

Unlike the Kindle however, the Deutsche Telekom device is rumoured to let customers download personalised content from print media onto their readers, we’re not exactly sure what this means, but there is speculation that the device wont allow for RSS feeds. Also unlike the Kindle, the Deutsche Telekom device is expected to contain targeted ads and is said to be bendable.

Deutsche Telekom isn’t expected to manufacture the device or even provide content for it, since they are a telecommunications company, my guess is that they will simply deliver the content to the device and charge a percentage fee for the content.

Deutsche Telekom could use targeted ads to offset some or all of the price of the reader which will make it more appealing than the $359 Amazon charges for the Kindle.

Source: Der Spiegel-Google translation to English, CrunchGear

AuthorIsland.com turn 2 months today and to celebrate this monumental day they have decided to give away 2 Kindles in a competition, sweet!

From AuthorIsland.com

AuthorIsland.com is turning TWO this month and to celebrate, forty three AuthorIsland.com authors and one of our publisher members got together to offer up one heck of a prize!  They’re giving away TWO - are you ready for this? - TWO AMAZON KINDLES!!!   YIPPEEEE!!!

But you’re going to have to work for it, each of the forty four sponsors has a question for you to answer - the answers can be found somewhere on each of the author’s websites.  Once you have all the answers, email them to AuthorIsland at yahoo.com, numbered, along with your name and address, with AuthorIsland Kindle Contest in the subject line.  TWO winners will be drawn on August 1st from all the correct entries to receive their very own - AMAZON KINDLE!!!

You can enter the competition by following this link, be warned however they ain’t kidding when they say your going to have to work for it, there are 44 questions to answer! however you do have plenty of time to find the answers since the deadline for entering is August 1st.

Good luck if you decide to enter!

Source: Author Island

A New York Times articleby John Markoff this past week made an interesting case that Apple is working on a Kindle-like device called ‘Safari Pad’. Whilst there is no concrete evidence that Apple is working on - or even planning such a device, John Markoff seems to think that something is definitely up.

Steve Jobs does have a history of rubbishing an industry before launching a product, he famously criticised the music and cellphone industries before launching the iPod and iPhone. Apple has confirmed that the iPod Touch is a platform and not a single product, and Intel’s new Atom processor would seem like an ideal chip for a Kindle-like device and certainly Apple’s design department can come up with something which looks better than the Kindle.

Like most discussions on this subject, this article references a comment made by Steve Jobs when the Kindle was announced “Forty percent of the people in the U.S. read one book or less last year. The whole conception is flawed at the top because people don’t read anymore.” could this just be another of Steve Jobs diversion tactic - say one thing, and do another?

If Apple does come out with ‘Safari Pad’ we can safely assume that it will be a full-colour device which will sync to Apple’s other services like iTunes, AppleTV and OSX, which means it would offer video and music content, one thing the Kindle has going for it is that its designed for reading and reading alone which might just give it the upper hand when it comes to e-books.

The article ends with an interesting question - Wouldn’t it be ironic if Mr. Jobs could ultimately claim to have saved reading books in the digital age?

Could Apple do to books what the iPod did for music?

Source: Bits Blog - New York Times