miBook: The Video Player for the Kitchen and Everywhere Else
From the NY Times:
The miBook from Photoco, for example, is a seven-inch e-book device with a full-color screen. Meant to work more like a media player than a real e-book reader, the $130 device also displays multimedia content like step-by-step recipe instructions, and can play back music through the built-in speakers.
Partnerships with home and garden television channels, including the Food Network, HGTV and ParentsTV, give owners of the miBook multimedia content from cookbooks, parenting guides and travel books. Add-on titles cost about $20, and some electronics stores, like Circuit City, will offer models complete with one or two books built in.
The device has a memory card reader as well as a headphone jack. It can act as a calendar and clock and uses simple graphics to help readers navigate through content.
And from laptopmag.com:
Looking to offer an affordable alternative to pricey e-book readers such as the Amazon Kindle, the $129 Photoco miBook lets users watch and listen to content as well as read it. In the same way that SanDisk partnered with music labels to create ready-to-play content for its slotMusic Player, Photoco teamed up with several television channels, including Food Network, HGTV, DIY Network, and ParentsTV, and is selling versions of the miBook that come packaged with branded multimedia tutorials on SD Cards that combine the ease of use of an e-book reader with the video instructions you’d find on the tube. Viewed strictly as a portable media player, the miBook is flawed, but as a device that specializes in playing How To guides to assist you in your cooking, travel, or do-it-yourself household projects, it’s pretty useful.
Those reviews were written a couple of years ago. Unfortunately, Photoco went bust and now all these miBooks are orphans. I just picked up several on eBay for around $20 each. You can rip your own divx movies to it, use it as a photo frame, whatever.
