Netflix Keeps Getting Reamed: The Best Streaming Movies Might Go Away [NetFlix]

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The freshest movies on Netflix Watch Instantly come via Starz Play, an arrangement where Starz resells Netflix their movie licenses. As predicted, studios are playing hardball with Netflix, and Disney movies could be the first to poof from instant streaming.

Disney's currently in negotiations with Starz for the rights to its movies over the next few years, and it wants a lot more money from people who watch Starz online—like through Netflix—and if things go badly, it could mean no more Disney or Dreamworks movies on Netflix streaming, according to Bloomberg. (Of trivial, probably inconsequential, note: Steve Jobs is the single largest shareholder of Disney, owning 7 percent of the company, so there is a mild conflict of interest.)

It looks like a rough patch for Netflix and its ambitious plans for Watch Instantly, now obviously the focus of its business. (Why else would Netflix give up a whole month for new releases from Warner Bros. in exchange for better streaming rights? And notice the switched tab arrangement on the Netflix homepage, putting Watch Instantly first.) Expect these battles for streaming rights to repeat themselves with basically every major studio, and expect them to get bloodier. Nobody's conquered internet video, at least not the way iTunes wrapped its arms around digital music, but Netflix is, in many ways, damn near the closest, a fact not lost on the major studios. And they're not going to make it any easier for another company to wield that kind of power. [Bloomberg]



Forget Boston, Even Dubai Isn’t Ready For the BoA Floating Mega-Structure [Architecture]

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Kevin Schopfer, the same delusional, megalomaniac architect behind NOAH is back with the Boston Arcology (BoA) floating city concept for Boston Harbor. I'm not from Boston, but my guess is that their reaction would be: "this is wicked retahded."

But I digress. If constructed, the BoA would be LEED certified and be capable of housing 15,000 people distributed in hotels, offices, retail, museums, condominiums, and a new city hall. Of course, there would also be sky gardens and some sort of public, carbon neutral transportation system that would eliminate the need for cars.

Don't get me wrong, I appreciate Schopfer's progressive thought process on this design, but there has to be more emphasis put on feasibility. Even if all of the construction goals could be accomplished, how much do you think something like this would cost? [Schopfer via Yanko Design via Inhabitat]



Electrical Design Specifications

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Greetings all,

iam working in an out door lighting design for our plant and i calculated the total watt needed (sum of all lights) = 53 kw, 220 volt

our power supply is 480V

so, I chosed a 75 KVA transformer dry type 480/220-127 V 3 phase 60 Hz

cable size from fee

Wheel of stars | Bad Astronomy

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I sometimes ruminate over how to meld astronomy, computers, and preaching to the public. There are lots of ways to make astronomy interesting and accessible, and lots of people turning those possibilities into realities.

wheelofstarsOne of the most interesting and clever ways to do this has been done by Jim Bumgardner: he’s created a piece of software that takes the positions of stars in the sky, maps them, and then has it make an ethereal musical tone whenever a star crosses the meridian (the imaginary line in the sky that connects due north, through the zenith, to due south). He calls it the Wheel of Stars, and it’s really very soothing and wonderful.

As he puts it:

As the stars cross zero and 180 degrees, indicated by the center line, the clock plays an individual note, or chime for each star. The pitch of the chime is based on the star’s BV measurement (which roughly corresponds to color or temperature). The volume is based on the star’s magnitude, or apparent brightness, and the stereo panning is based on the position on the screen (use headphones to hear it better).

I see this as being very useful in planetaria between shows, as a screen saver, or as a projector in a kid’s room. Things like this make me smile. I like clever people; they make the world a far more interesting place.


GM Corn & Organ Failure: Lots of Sensationalism, Few Facts | 80beats

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cornOn Wednesday, we covered the overreaction by a few important online sources to an International Journal of Biological Sciences article claiming to find “signs of toxicity” in three varieties of genetically modified (GM) corn produced by Monsanto. We posted some caveats that made us uneasy about the study, such as the funding sources, the unknown quality of the journal, and the fact that the toxicity claims rely on reinterpreting statistical data that Gilles-Eric Séralini and his coauthors themselves note is not as robust as it needs to be.

Karl Haro von Mogel, a University of Wisconsin Ph.D. student who works with Pamela Ronald (the GM expert we quoted in our last post), responded with some other problems he has on this study. He has a blog post of his own (in which he gets hopping mad at coverage that attributed organ damage, organ failure, or even cancer to the rats in the study). But here are the major issues he points out to DISCOVER:

1. Cherry-picking. “They were picking out about 20–30 significant measurements out of about 500 for one of the sets of data they analyzed,” Haro von Mogel tells DISCOVER. “At the 95% significance level, you would expect that 5% of the observations would show a significant difference due to chance alone, which is what happened.” In other words, one would expect to get some alarming results in approximately 25 out of the 500 of the measurements, which is indeed what they found. “Picking apart what seems to be normal background variability seems to me to be data dredging.”

2. “False Discovery Rate.” The battle over these corn varieties has been cooking for years; Séralini and others published a paper in 2007 on the same issues, and after statistical criticisms like the ones just mentioned the authors came around with this new edition. One of the main shots scientists took at the previous paper, Haro von Mogel says, was that the team didn’t employ a “false discovery rate”—a stringent statistical method that controls for false positives. This time they did, but for at least two of the three varieties—MON 810 and MON 863—the researchers themselves note p-values that are not significant. (A p-value is a measure of the likelihood that any particular finding was due to chance alone rather than a real effect. By convention, science calls anything that has a greater than 5 percent chance of being a random effect “insignificant.”)

3. “Insignificant” results. As you can see in the study’s chart, there a significant effect shown in “Lar uni cell” (large unnucleated cell count) for female rats fed the GM corn as 11 percent of their diet. But for female rats fed three times as much GM corn, it’s not there. “Are they highlighting random variation or finding genuine effects? These are the kinds of questions that scientists need to address before concluding that they have found ’signs of toxicity,’”Haro von Mogel asks. (Séralini et al. have argued that more attention needs to be paid to nonlinear toxic effects, where greater doses would cause less harm.)

4. Lack of corroboration or explanation. The government organization Food Standards for Australia and New Zealand (which disputed Séralini’s 2007 paper [Microsoft Word file]), also disputes the recent study, in part because there is no other science corroborating the statistical data—data that was challenged in the previous points. Their response concludes by saying, “The authors do not offer any plausible scientific explanations for their hypothesis, nor do they consider the lack of concordance of the statistics with other investigative processes used in the studies such as pathology, histopathology and histochemistry…Reliance solely on statistics to determine treatment related effects in such studies is not indicative of a robust toxicological analysis. There is no corroborating evidence that would lead independently to the conclusion that there were effects of toxicological significance. FSANZ remains confident that the changes reported in these studies are neither sex- nor dose-related and are primarily due to chance alone.”

We emailed Séralini to ask if he would respond to these particular criticisms, and have not yet heard a response. But the study is currently available to read for free, and you can see a YouTube clip of him discussing this paper, his methods, and his criticisms of Monsanto.

In light of these concerns regarding the study, it would be an enormous stretch to say the study proves that these corn varieties cause organ damage in mammals. But none of this puts Monsanto’s GM corn totally in the clear, either. As commenters on our earlier post pointed out, Monsanto was simply following the rather laissez-faire rules for government approval, doing the 90-day trials themselves. But Séralini’s team calls for long-term studies, upwards of two years, to get reliable data.

With the dearth of available data, which Monsanto was loath to give up to the researchers in the first place, strong conclusions are tough to come by. As Per Pinstrup-Andersen, a Cornell food expert not associated with Haro von Mogel’s team, sums up this study: “It is very convoluted but the authors imply that the results are not scientifically valid by recommending a study “to provide true scientifically valid data,’” he tells DISCOVER.

But, as Séralini notes in his YouTube clip, that scientifically valid study would cost a fortune. And considering that these biotech crops have already been approved, Monsanto has little incentive to continue testing them.

Related Content:
80beats: GM Corn Leads to Organ Failure!? Not So Fast
80beats: New Biotech Corn Gives Triple Vitamin Boost; Professors Unmoved
80beats: Germany Joins the European Mutiny of Genetically Modified Crops
DISCOVER: Genetically Altered Corn tells how a corn not intended for humans got into the food supply

Image: flickr / Peter Blanchard


Chemical Cleanser

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Hi Guys,

The mixture is:

1:1:5 ---- H2O2(30%) : NH4OH(29%) : H2O(18M Ohm DI water)

I am interested in the pH of the products, potential Off gases and any hazards that may be associated with the mixture. If anyone can help that would fantastic, and if you require more info

Another Anti-Monkey Zapping Protest

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PETA Protests NASA Plan to Radiate Monkeys, Scripps Howard Foundation Wire

"A man in an astronaut suit stood outside the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum Thursday morning. Normal enough, given the contents of the building before him. But he was not promoting an exhibit, nor was he affiliated with the museum. He and a group of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals activists were brandishing signs and distributing pamphlets protesting a NASA program."

Rumor: Windows Mobile 7 Will Have Gestures, Really Debut in February [Windows Mobile 7]

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There's still some question about whether Windows Mobile 6.6 or Windows Mobile 7 will be shown in February, but a solid tipster just told us that it will be WM7. And then he describes it.

Here are a couple things described about WinMo 7 that mesh with the rumors we've heard before. First, it'll have the Natal-like gestures to be able to use the phone without touching it. We first heard about gestures on WM7 two years ago, and then sprinkled about the rumors in the past year.

Then, he says that you won't be able to upgrade to Windows Mobile 7, because the OS actually requires you to have better hardware (faster processor, more memory, etc) and includes support for the motion-sensing gestures above.

This bit also meshes with the rumored specs of the "Zune phone", which is basically Windows Mobile 7. From that rumor:

ARM v6+ processor, with an Open GL ES 2.0-capable graphics chip-this may be the TI3430 or the Nvidia Tegra. To show all the eye candy there will be a 3.5" 800 x 480 or 854 x 480 pixels touchscreen. The specification also points out at other things in Pink, like 3-megapixel camera, GPS, light sensor, 3-axis compass, accelerometer, USB, Bluetooth, and full Wi-Fi support.

But then how does that account for the HD2, which HTC Russia claimed will be getting a WM7 upgrade? Because HD2 is basically the top of the line right now, which—looking at its specs—put it into the Windows Mobile 7-capable category.

So yes, it seems like we'll be seeing Windows Mobile 7 at Mobile World Congress in February. It better be pretty damn good for Microsoft's projection of being able to regain 25% of the phone market by 2014.

Thanks tipster!



Apple Wants to Do the Same Thing for Mobile Ads It Did for Digital Music [Unconfirmed]

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Apple's interest in mobile advertising clearly goes beyond flicking Google in the nads, since they spent $275 million on mobile ad company Quattro after losing AdMob to Google. In fact, according to BusinessWeek, Apple's mobile ad plans are downright ambitious.

"Mobile ads suck" is a sentiment BusinessWeek vaguely ascribes to Steve Jobs through a "source familiar with his thinking." So Jobs, along with "his lieutenants," have been talking about "ways to overhaul mobile advertising in the same way they had revolutionized music players and phones," two sources told BusinessWeek. (Worth noting, Quattro's former CEO is now VP of mobile advertising at Apple.)

Why care so deeply about mobile ads? Besides the ongoing Google rivalry, which stands to get even testier in the mobile space—just check out figures like ones out of this 424-page Morgan Stanley report, which talk about how the mobile internet will be twice as big as it is on the desktop. (Also, this.) The first guy to really figure out mobile ads (whatever that entails)? Wins a truckload of money. Case in point: Google figured out search advertising. Look where they are today.

Mobile browsers aside, just think of all of those free and cheap iPhone apps with room for innovative advertising to make somebody even more money. Not us, though. [BW via Alley Insider]



24 Questions for Elementary Physics | Cosmic Variance

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This weekend at Caltech we had a small but very fun conference: the “Physics of the Universe Summit,” or POTUS for short. (The acronym is just an accident, I’m assured.) The subject matter was pretty conventional — particle physics, the LHC, dark matter — but the organization was a little more free-flowing and responsive than the usual parade of dusty talks.

One of the motivating ideas that was mentioned more than once was the famous list of important problems proposed by David Hilbert in 1900. These were Hilbert’s personal idea of what math problems were important but solvable over the next 100 years, and his ideas turned out to be relatively influential within twentieth-century mathematics. Our conference, 110 years later and in physics rather than math, was encouraged to think along similarly grandiose lines.

And indeed people had done exactly that, especially ten years ago when the century turned: see representative lists here and here. I asked the organizers if anyone was taking a swing at it this time, and was answered in the negative. I was scheduled to give one of the closing summaries, and this sounded more interesting than what I actually had planned, so naturally I had to step up.

Here are the slides from my presentation, where you can find some elaboration on my choices.

hilbert1

And here’s the actual list:

  1. What breaks electroweak symmetry?
  2. What is the ultraviolet extrapolation of the Standard Model?
  3. Why is there a large hierarchy between the Planck scale, the weak scale, and the vaccum energy?
  4. How do strongly-interacting degrees of freedom resolve into weakly-interacting ones?
  5. Is there a pattern/explanation behind the family structure and parameters of the Standard Model?
  6. What is the phenomenology of the dark sector?
  7. What symmetries appear in useful descriptions of nature?
  8. Are there surprises at low masses/energies?
  9. How does the observable universe evolve?
  10. How does gravity work on macroscopic scales?
  11. What is the topology and geometry of spacetime and dynamical degrees of freedom on small scales?
  12. How does quantum gravity work in the real world?
  13. Why was the early universe hot, dense, and very smooth but not perfectly smooth?
  14. What is beyond the observable universe?
  15. Why is there a low-entropy boundary condition in the past but not the future?
  16. Why aren’t we fluctuations in de Sitter space?
  17. How do we compare probabilities for different classes of observers?
  18. What rules govern the evolution of complex structures?
  19. Is quantum mechanics correct?
  20. What happens when wave functions collapse?
  21. How do we go from the quantum Hamiltonian to a quasiclassical configuration space?
  22. Is physics deterministic?
  23. How many bits are required to describe the universe?
  24. Will “elementary physics” ultimately be finished?

Clearly I cheated somewhat by squeezing multiple questions into single problems. But the real challenge was thinking sufficiently big to come up with problems that people a century from now would agree are interesting. And I stuck to “elementary physics” — particle physics, gravitation, cosmology — just because I’m not competent to pick out the important problems in any other fields. Twenty-four, of course, because Hilbert had 23, and we had to go one better. There was certainly no shortage of candidates; I was coming up with more good problems and throwing out old ones right up until the last minute. Any obvious ones I missed?

Kingston SSDNow V 30GB Flash Drive for $80 [Storage]

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Lost in the CES maelstrom, we missed the Kingston SSDNow V 30GB, a solid state hard drive designed to run your operating system, faster faster, kill kill, pussycat. The best thing is the price: Only $80 after rebates.

• Sequential Speed**: up to 180MB/sec. read, 50MB/sec. write
• Performance: enhances productivity; makes users more efficient
• Innovative: 2.5" form factor; uses NAND Flash memory components
• Silent: runs silent and cool with no moving parts
• Reliable: less likely to fail than a standard hard drive
• Shock Resistant: no moving parts; handles rougher conditions than a hard drive
• Supports S.M.A.R.T.: Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology
• Guaranteed: three-year Kingston warranty, 24/7 tech support
• Capacity1: 30GB
• Storage temperatures: -40° C to 85° C
• Operating temperatures: 0° C to 70° C
• Vibration operating: 20G Peak, 10-2000Hz, (20min/Axis)x3 Axis
• Vibration non-operating: 20G Peak, 10-2000Hz, (12 Cycle/Axis) x 3 Axis, x 20min.
• Power specs: Read: 1.4W (TYP), 2.5W (MAX)
• Write: 1.7W (TYP), 4.2W (MAX)
• Idle, Standby, Sleep: 55mw (TYP)
• Life expectancy: 500,000 hours MTBF

** Test system: Intel® DG945ID Desktop Motherboard; Intel® Quad Core Q9550; 4GB DDR2 800MHz system memory; on-board SATA 3Gbps with ACHI enabled in BIOS; OS: Windows® 7 Professional x64 or Windows XP Pro x86 SP3 (Intel® IMSM installed in both operating systems).
** Based on internal testing. Performance may vary based on system settings.

It's coming in February for $110 without the promotional rebates. [Kingston]



Wanna Be a Gizmodo New York Intern? [Interns]

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My caffeine needs have been growing exponentially, so we need more interns in New York City. But, this time, we're lookin' for a few different kinds of interns.

Four different kinds, to be precise:

Writing Intern: Your main task will be writing posts, but with a secondary focus on all the other intern duties as outlined here.

Promotion Intern: Great for people who like to talk to other people. You'll be promoting our stories on Digg, Twitter, Facebook and other social networks. You should know how to angle stories a certain way, and be familiar with social networks as well as other major sites. When I say familiar, I mean you should read them and know what kind of stories they're apt to post.

Research Intern: You should be good at pulling together multiple forms of information from multiple sources for our editors. This includes online and offline sources and even calling up people to arrange (and possibly conduct) interviews. Mostly, you should have a good grasp of technology and be able to locate and dissect information fast.

Copyediting Intern: English. You should know it. And you should be able to recognize when we screw up. You'll be going through our posts as a copyeditor, fixing typos and correcting our grammar. If you're already doing this in your spare time (for free), you'll love this position.

All of these internship positions will still have the primary task of finding stories for us—so think of this as your secondary superpower—as outlined here. Look that over (click the link and read it first!) and see if you're qualified.

If you think you're suited for one of those four positions (choose one only, please), send an email to jobs@gizmodo.com with the subject "NY Writing Intern" or "NY Promotion Intern" or "NY Research Intern" or "NY Copyediting Intern"—whichever one fits you the best. No attachments. No. Attachments.

Remember, it's full time, you need your own laptop, and you need to be able to get to Manhattan daily.

Good luck!



New Poll Shows Support For Space Funding Cuts

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50% Favor Cutting Back on Space Exploration, Rasmussen Reports

"Fifty percent (50%) of Americans now say the United States should cut back on space exploration given the current state of the economy, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey. Just 31% disagree with cutting the space program, and 19% more are not sure. The new findings mark a six-point increase in support - from 44% last July - for cutting back on space exploration."

Keyless Entry for 2007 Chevy Silverado

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The Keyless Entry fob for my 2007 Silverado is not working completely. It will Lock, but not Unlock. I've never heard of this before. I've lost the second fob, so I can't troubleshoot as I would normally be able to do as to whether the problem was in the fob or the truck. I am approaching this a

Haiti Earthquakes and Plate Tectonics

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Haiti and other parts of the Caribbean are the only areas along the eastern coast of the North and South American continents that are experiencing active plate tectonics. The island of Hispaniola, of which Haiti occupies the western third, is itself is an exhumed portion of the Caribbean Plat

The Ultimate Guide to Ebook Readers We Care About [Readers]

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There are too damn many ebook readers and it's tough to figure out what's worth buying and which reader will even survive the market. To make things easy, here's our guide to the readers that matter—for now. Updated.

Of course we're skipping some of the many ebook readers floating around, but quite frankly we can't really stomach all of them. We decided to focus on the ones that matter to us—whether because they stand a shot of surviving the over-saturated market, or simply because they are examples of what we think matters about these gadgets. Feel free to let us know if you disagree with any of our survival odds or if you think we missed a significant device.

Barnes & Noble Nook

When we reviewed the Barnes & Noble Nook, we decided that it was pretty damn good all around. At the time, we mainly focused on pitting it against the Amazon Kindle, but even without that limited comparison the Nook remains a rather good device:

It's got a second screen which actually serves a useful purpose

Expansion and evolution possibilities of this very device are great, especially with touchscreen and Android OS

Lending and in-store Barnes & Noble action will be huge

Native ePub support

A little thicker than Kindle, but as a tradeoff, it's a little smaller footprint

Wi-Fi doesn't seem to matter now—hopefully it will prove to be an advantage later

LCD and other features mean less battery life than Kindle, but still adequate, "measured in days"

Current software is buggy and sluggish in spots; hopefully fixes and optimization will come soon

Second-screen possibilities are great, but current implementation is cautious and conservative

Taking all those features and shortcomings into account, we think that the Nook's survival chance is 80%— if it can fix its firmware and get production up to speed.

Entourage Edge

A hands on of the Entourage Edge left us hesitant about whether there's actually a market for something that has the price tag of a good netbook and barely more features than most readers:

It does have two full screens on which actual work can be done

Can run Android applications and be used to browse the web

Wi-Fi built-in, so you're not stuck relying on 3G

Two built-in microphones for noise-cancelation, but unfortunately no synchronization with notes

Note taking can be done using a stylus

Switching between the screens allows for websites to be loaded on one screen and "pushed" to the other

Just as with most other readers, you can highlight, annotate, and bookmark

It's three whole freakin' pounds and ridiculously bulky

$500 price tag.

The Edge shows us what happens when you try to make a reader into what it's not—a pseudo netbook or tablet. We think the device's survival chance is 0% and consider it pretty much DOA.

Plastic Logic Que

We liked the feel of the Plastic Logic Que when we got our hands on it, but we didn't like the price tag. The device is mainly aimed at business folk who want to carry a notepad-sized device instead of a stack of documents, but it could make a rather nice reader if you crave for a large screen:

At 8.5 x 11 x .33 inches, its about the size and thickness of a standard notepad. It weighs about one pound. Like a heavy notepad.

The screen is huge—and I mean huge. Over ten inches.

Because of Plastic Logic's obsession with its namesake material, the Que is light as a feather

Formatting from magazines and other publications is maintained on the screen

The interface seems snappy and intuitive

Que Mail and Que Calendar services allow email and calendar updates to be pushed over WiFi and 3G networks

While odd to look at, the wide bezel actually makes the Que a lot more comfortable to hold than some other readers

The back of the device is a magnet for fingerprints. It's annoying, but not unusual for shiny toys like this.

$650 for the 4GB model with Wi-FI and $800 for the 8GB model with WiFi and 3G are quite the prices to swallow

We think the Que's features, design, and business as well as consumer appeal leave it with a survival chance of 70%—higher if businesses feel like spending so much on a device that will certainly help cut back on paper use. Or if Plastic Logic manages to cut back on that price.

Spring Design Alex Reader

Our hands on of the Spring Design Alex Reader left us thinking that the Nook might have some serious competition, but even on its own the Alex is a rather good device:

It's thin—we thought we'd break it just by holding it—but it turned out to be surprisingly sturdy

You can run any Android app including the browser, email client, and music player apps

The interaction between the two screens doesn't seem fully worked out

No news about whether there's a data provider secured for the device

$399 makes the Alex a wee bit pricier than the nook

Assuming that a data provider is secured for the Alex, we could see its survival chance being 80%—higher if there's a price drop to bring it closer to the Nook's.

Sony Daily

When the Sony Daily Edition reader was announced, we got a bit excited about its electronic library program and wide screen, but alas, we're still waiting to actually get one of these devices into our hands to check out all the features:

Sony's got plenty of partners for this device to provide content

The on-screen content is rotated automatically to allow viewing in a nice, comfortable, and super wide landscape format

Native EPUB support

The electronic library program will let you borrow books from your local library's electronic collection

Free 3G service is included—but limited to accessing the Sony Store

$399 is a bit much for a device with so few tricks up its sleeve

Until we actually take a Daily for a test run, we're deeming its survival chance as 40%—mostly because the library program is appealing along with the push for EPUB formatting.

Kindle

In our review of the Amazon Kindle 2, we discovered that it's not too different from the original model, but we still liked all the features:

The rounded design makes the device appealing to hold and look at

Zippy interface, decent refresh rate

Plenty of internal storage and long battery life

Text-to-speech book reading

Crisp, sharp display

It's hard to read longer, more complex books

While the Kindle 2 wasn't a huge leap from the first generation, we still think the device about a 80% chance of survival, especially if Amazon works on improving the interface and how the device treats flipping through book sections.

Notion Ink Adam Pixel Qi

When we got our hands on the Notion Ink Adam Pixel Qi, we discovered that it's more of a tablet than it is a reader and that it tries too hard to be both:

The device runs on Android 2.0

There's a snappy Nvidia Tegra 2 processor lurking inside

10.1-inch panel that can switch between backlit LCD mode and low-power electrophoretic reflective mode

3G service, which is becoming fairly standard among readers

LCD colors aren't as vivid as a plain LCD

Despite having "ink" in its name, the Adam falls too far into tablet territory for us to take it seriously as a reader so we give it a 40% chance of survival in that particular market. As a tablet device though, it might actually do rather well.

Skiff Reader

When we got a hands on with the Skiff, we were pretty impressed by its size but uncertain about most features since we didn't get to play with a final production model:

It's big and thin: 11.5 inches of touchscreen space on a device only a quarter of an inch thick

Light and—quite importantly—solid feeling

Layout mimicks a real newspaper better than most readers

Can handle 12fps animation, which is pretty primitive compared to an LCD device

Reasoably responsive to taps and swipes

You can highlight and annotate content

Magazines feel awkward to read as they're full page scans and any zooming feels slow due to the e-ink refresh rate

Once again: The Skiff unit we tried out was not a final version, so plenty can change by the time it hits shelves. But based on what we've seen so far, this could be a pretty great reader overall—despite its key focus being periodicals. Assuming that it's price turns out to be reasonable and the interface is fixed up a bit more, we give it a survival chance of 70%.

Any Others?

Those are the ebook readers we think deserve some discussion right now. There are plenty we left out—super cheap ones, poor imitations of readers mentioned already, and some that just plain make us gag. We didn't want to promote crappy products or those where "you get what you pay for" rings a bit too true. That disclaimer aside, we welcome discussion and mentions of other readers, simply because it's always possible that we omitted something worthwhile—like the Skiff which has now been added—by accident. So let's hear it in the comments.