Sony on Tuesday unveiled the newest version of its eBook Reader, the Daily Edition, which will have built-in free wireless capability via AT&T's 3G mobile broadband network.
The new Reader, introduced during an event at the main branch of the New York Public Library, will hit SonyStyle stores and sonystyle.com in December and will retail for $399. The Daily Edition will feature a seven-inch touchscreen, and a high contrast ratio with 16 levels of grayscale; you can read in either portrait or landscape orientation. It will have enough onboard memory to hold over 1,000 standard ebooks and is also expandable via Memory Stick/Duo and SD card slots.
Sony also had a number of its newly available Pocket and Touch Readers available to try out. Those readers, priced at $199 and $299, respectively, are available now for purchase. Each of the Sony Readers employs the E Ink Vizplex electronic paper display.
Steven Haber, president of Sony's digital reader business division, emphasized the importance of access, content, and affordability for ebook readers. He mentioned that Sony is moving from a proprietary ebook format to ePub's format, which will streamline the publishing process immensely.
Sony also announced its Library Finder app, developed in partnership with Overdrive.com. Users of Sony's eBook Store will be able to easily locate their local libraries online and download free ebook content using their library cards. When the lending period is up, the content simply expires. One of those libraries will be the New York Public Library, which currently offers about 40,000 downloadable titles, with the goal of goal of digitizing over one million titles. That effort has been facilitated through the library's partnership with Google's book-scanning initiative. "We believe it must be delivered free," said Dr. Paul LeClerc, president and CEO of the NYPL.
25 August 2009
Rico wants one
PCMag.com has an article by Carol Mangis about the latest out of Sony:
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