Our platform focus continues this fine Sunday with the e-Book Echo, our take on the week in the digital publishing world. Sony is teaming up with indie publishers to allow such work to be carried in the company’s e-book store for Sony Reader customers. Sony is working with Smashwords and Author Solutions to handle e-books distributed by those services. This opens the door for authors to get their own self-published works onto the Sony Reader line of electronic readers.

The Foxit eSlick reader is going to support the standard ePUB format for e-books. This support comes with a firmware upgrade for the readers that adds not only ePUB but eReader format support, in addition to the text and PDF formats already handled. The firmware upgrade also added a touch keyboard for entering passwords on the reader.

Barnes and Noble was sued this week for violating information shared with them by Spring Design under NDA. Spring Design announced the Alex reader the day before B&N announced the Nook reader and the two devices do share similar features in both hardware and software. The lawsuit claimed that B&N met several times with Spring Design and details of the Alex were shared, yet B&N never acknowledged they were working on the Nook at the time. The suit asks for an injunction barring the sale of the Nook reader.

After reading so many books on PDAs and phones over the past years, the lack of any lighting on my Kindle2 is a bit of drag. It’s not stopping me from reading one or two novels a week, but there are times I’d like to read without the lights on. That’s were Case-Mate’s Enlighten product comes in.

I like the outside of the case, which looks like an old leather-bound book. And on the inside is an integrated lighting system. All of the Kindle’s buttons are still available to use directly, save for the Previous Page and Next Page buttons on the left. There’s a Next Page button on the right of the Kindle, so that’s not a major issue. And Case-Mate created a spot to push the Previous Page button for use, so it’s not totally lost. Based on Judie’s review at Gear Diary, this looks like a winner to me. Sadly, the $79.95 device isn’t available until mid-December, so I’ll have to wait a bit. I’m adding this product on my letter to Santa right now.

In the “e-book reader that’s really a computer without the computer bits” department comes the Sungale Cyberus Smart Info Engine. The Cyberus is a 7-inch slate device that provides “an e-Book reader, photo display, card reader, and streaming audio and video player, plus clock, calendar and alarm functions” according to the PR.

If you are confused as to exactly what you can do with the Cyberus, you’re not alone. The PR goes on to claim “the full complement of Wi-Fi applications for the device includes: Weather, News from Yahoo or Google, YouTube, Traffic: Driving Directions by Zip, IP Radio, Picasa, Stock, Gmail Alerts, Notepad, Calendar, Clock and  Alarm.”

So basically, what you have is a an e-book reader that handles PDF and TXT files, a media player that handles AVI, MPEG4, DIVIX, XIVID, WMA, JPG, BMP, TIFF, PNG files, and a web computer without a browser or OS. All of this can be found on Amazon at the starting MSRP of $279.

Spring Design shook up the e-book world recently with the announcement of the Alex — a reader with a small, second color LCD touchscreen for navigation. The Alex will be released before the end of the year, and the timing of the announcement of the Alex at the time seemed to be trying to beat the Barnes and Noble announcement of the reader that turned out to be the Nook. The Nook shares similar features to the Alex, most notably the small color LCD touchscreen. Spring Design claims those similar features are no accident, and have filed suit against Barnes and Noble claiming the company “misappropriated trade secrets and violated the parties’ non-disclosure agreement when it copied Alex’ features into its recently announced Nook e-book.”

According to the suit, the two companies have been working together under an NDA since early 2009, and B&N did not inform Spring Design it was working on the Nook.

“Spring Design unfortunately had to take the appropriate action to protect its intellectual property rights,” said Spring Design Vice President of Sales and Marketing, Eric Kmiec. “We showed the Alex e-book design to Barnes & Noble in good faith with the intention of working together to provide a superior dual screen e-book to the market.”

The Nook is set to be sold this month, and this could get very sticky for the bookseller. You can find the full press release after the jump.

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As we head into the year-end holiday season, the companies that produce gadgets are working overtime to make sure that geeks like me are building a wish list. The problem is with holiday gift season drawing nigh, our own wishes are not something we can fill. Not and keep peace at home, anyway. With that in mind I present my current wish list full of gadgets. The list changes almost daily, and is subject to major revisions at a moment’s notice. That’s the legacy of being a geek. This is by no means the only gadgets I would like to have, just the major ones of the moment.

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Folks are finally starting to pick up on something we’ve been saying for years — there is a market for e-books on phones. Before you start the “it’s painful to read books on the small screen” comments, hear me out. I agree with those comments, but only to a point. I’ve read dozens of entire books on various smartphones and PDAs since 2003 and ‘ll admit that it’s not the ideal experience. But back in the day, it was the only way to read e-books on the go without booting up a clunky computer with relatively poor battery life as compared to today’s solutions.

Having said that, the ability to read a few pages, or even a few chapters, in a short chunk of free time at any location is priceless. And that’s why I believe we’re recently seeing more book-related apps than games launching in the iTunes App Store. There’s surely other reasons, but this one trumps the others from where I stand. Think about it this way — if you’re always carrying your phone and an unplanned short opportunity arises to read a book, you don’t want to whip out a computer, do you? In a situation like this, you’re not limited to how much space you have. You can read with just one hand. You don’t need great lighting. It’s simply a win-win, all around.

Don’t get me wrong, because I love reading on the Kindle2 I bought back in March. It’s my primary e-book reader — I use it daily and I read one or two books a week on it. However, there’s something to be said for consuming e-book content in bite-sized chunks here and there. I find reading most enjoyable when the activity doesn’t have a planned time or location. And thanks to my phone, it doesn’t have to be.

Our platform focus continues this fine Sunday with the e-Book Echo, our take on the week in the digital publishing world. The e-book world has been full of product announcements of late, and this week saw things quiet down. The wait is on for the appearance of all the new e-book readers that have been announced right and left lately. Samsung is an electronic giant with a lot of resources, so when they start talking about color e-book screens we sit up and listen. This week they demonstrated a very early prototype of a color e-paper using E-Ink technology. Samsung believes they will be able to bring the color display to market in a couple of years, adding fuel to the color e-book fire.

PVI is another company that makes reader displays, and they are ramping up to produce color screens for them in the last half of 2010. The company currently produces black and white displays, and may have color screens using AMOLED technology appearing soon.

Netbook creator ASUS is talking up making its own e-book reader, and bringing it to market early next year. The company has been investigating products they can produce to address competition in the netbook segment, and e-book readers is one such product. They are expected to make a reader announcement before the end of the year.

Our platform focus continues this fine Sunday with the e-Book Echo, our take on the week in the digital publishing world. Barnes & Noble lit a fire under Amazon with the introduction of its own e-book reader, the Nook. The Nook matches Amazon’s Kindle feature for feature, and adds a small color touchscreen. The Nook will take advantage of the e-book experience with the ability to lend e-books to friends for two weeks. Nook owners will be able to read any e-book for free while inside any B&N brick and mortar store. It is running the Android OS, which opens the possibility up for homebrew apps for the Nook.

Amazon will be releasing a PC version of the Kindle reader, to allow reading Kindle books on any PC. The software is full-featured, with a library manager and reader that is touch optimized for Windows 7 PCs with a touchscreen. The PC program will work with the Amazon WhisperNet, so it will sync libraries and reading positions the same as the Kindle and iPhone versions. The PC Kindle reader program will be available in November. Amazon is working on a version of the program for the Mac platform, but no release date has been provided.

Two other e-book readers were announced this week, the first being Spring Design’s Alex. Alex is similar to the Nook, with a second screen that is a color touchscreen for navigation. Another unique dual screen reader is coming from enTourage that foregoes a tiny color touchscreen for a 10.1-inch variety. The eDGe has a unique hinge that allows operating the reader in a number of forms, including configured as a laptop. Both the Alex and the eDGe are running the Android OS, which is rapidly becoming the OS of choice for the e-book reader.

MoTR 187 is 33:05 minutes long and is a 30.4 MB file in MP3 format.
CLICK HERE to download the file and listen directly.

HOSTS: James Kendrick (Houston), Matthew Miller (Seattle) and Kevin C. Tofel (Philadelphia)

TOPICS:

Windows 7 is here, and so is the Windows 7 Whopper.
Will Starter Edition help or hurt netbook sales?
More time spent with Nokia’s N900 and a definitive guide.
B&N Nook vs. Amazon Kindle (which will have a PC edition soon)

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Kindle for PC Demo on Windows 7

Want to read e-books from Amazon on hardware you likely already have? There’s an app for that but it doesn’t come from Cupertino. At a Windows 7 launch event today, Amazon introduced a Kindle application for PCs that will be available next month. Like the Kindle for iPhone application, the PC software works with Amazon’s Whispersync — stop reading your book on a Kindle or iPhone and you can pick up right where you left off on a computer. And if you’re out of content, Amazon says you can purchase books right from the PC.

The new application also takes advantage of the native touchscreen support in Windows 7, although you’ll need a touchscreen computer, of course. With touch, you can simply swipe through your page flips or, if you have a multitouch computer with Windows 7, you can zoom in and out by pinching. That’s a great implementation, but I think the best news of all is legacy compatibility — the new software doesn’t require Windows 7 as it can be used with Windows XP or Vista. As a Kindle owner, I’m looking forward to the new software, which makes the PC a “third screen” for the Kindle. It ought to come in handy on my netbook in the rare case I’ve left the Kindle at home!