Delivering on its promise to give consumers a variety of choices, Sony announced the third member of its new Reader family - the Reader Daily Edition, a highly-anticipated wireless model with 3G connectivity.  The Daily Edition caps its new line of Reader products, joining the Reader Pocket Edition and the Reader Touch Edition which were announced earlier this month.

The Reader Pocket Edition and the Reader Touch Edition are available immediately, and the Reader Daily Edition will be available this December in time for the holidays at SonyStyle stores and SonyStyle.com.

The Reader Daily Edition gives consumers wireless access via AT&T’s 3G mobile broadband network to Sony’s eBook store from just about anywhere in the U.S.  Book lovers will be able to browse, purchase and download books as well as select newspapers and magazines when and where they want. There are no monthly fees or transaction charges for the basic wireless connectivity and users still have the option to side load personal documents or content from other compatible sites via USB.

Sony is delivering on its promise of making digital readers and eBooks accessible and affordable for consumers with the introduction of two new Readers.  Part of a new Reader line, the Reader Pocket Edition rolls in at only $199. Both the Reader Pocket Edition and the Reader Touch Edition will be available at the end of August, at SonyStyle.com, SonyStyle stores and select retail partners. Also, new releases and New York Times bestseller titles in the eBook Store from Sony will now be available for $9.99.

The Reader Pocket Edition sports a five-inch electronic paper display packaged in a stylish chassis and is available in a variety of colors, including navy blue, rose and silver. The Reader Pocket Edition fits into a purse or jacket pocket. The device can store about 350 standard eBooks and provides up to two weeks on a single battery charge.

The Reader Touch Edition features a menu-driven six-inch touch screen panel that enables navigation, page turning, highlighting and note taking with the swipe of a finger or by using the included stylus pen. Users can take handwritten notes with the stylus pen or type with the virtual keyboard. All notes can be exported and printed out for easy reference. The Reader Touch Edition includes an onboard Oxford American English Dictionary that allows you to look up a word by simply tapping on it. The Touch Edition also offers five adjustable font sizes, as well as expansion slots for both Memory Stick PRO Duo and SD card. It comes in red, black or silver and will retail for about $299.

The only thing wrong with using your PC and Windows Media Center as for watching movies, listening to music, or watching TV is that using a wireless keyboard and mouse to control your TV and media isn’t the best experience. 

Some of the early dedicated Media PCs came with remotes and some laptops still do, but since virtually every PC sold these days comes with a version of Vista that includes Media Center, there are way more media-capable PCs out there and not many remotes among them.

Adesso, who makes a variety of inexpensive but good quality input devices has stepped up to with the Vista Remote to provide an inexpensive solution.

If your life revolves around making video games, then you would be in San Francisco this week.  The annual Game Developers Conference in San Francisco (http://www.gdconf.com/) is THE major event for the game development industry.  GDC is five days of educational sessions, specialized summits, networking events, and expo & career pavilions.

On the final day at GDC, the show continues with lots of activity in the Career Fair.  With the continuing bad economy and poor job outlook, there were many people visiting all the exhibiting companies with resumes and demo reels in hand.  While there were many companies looking for new talent, then number of openings appears to be small.

Many of the final lectures and sessions were very full as the conference attendees eagerly rush to take in a final chance to learn from the many experienced speakers before the close of the show.  As the show ended, hundreds gathered in the main lobby of the convention center reluctant to see this year’s GDC end.

Some things that caught our attention on Friday were:

If your life revolves around making video games, then you would be in San Francisco this week.  The annual Game Developers Conference in San Francisco (http://www.gdconf.com/) is THE major event for the game development industry.  GDC is five days of educational sessions, specialized summits, networking events, and expo & career pavilions.

The second day for the main part of the show opened today with the Career Fair and Expo Hall as well as more session for Art, Programming, Design, Production, etc.

Some things that caught our attention on Thursday were:

If your life revolves around making video games, then you would be in San Francisco this week.  The annual Game Developers Conference in San Francisco (http://www.gdconf.com/) is THE major event for the game development industry.  GDC is five days of educational sessions, specialized summits, networking events, and expo & career pavilions.

The main part of the show opened today with the Career Fair and Expo Hall as well as more session for Art, Programming, Design, Production, etc.
Also featured today was a Keynote Address from Satoru Iwata, President of Nintendo, who spoke about how Nintendo & Independent Developers can both be successful in the same market and how Nintendo’s Star Designer, Shigeru Miyamoto, approaches design and development.

Some things that caught our attention on Wednesday were:

Quote:

Onyx has product listings on Alibaba. They have 10 different case designs ready to manufacture. They range from nice but bland to a couple very pretty ones.

I also just got an email from Onyx telling me that we had incorrect information yesterday. The default CPU speed is 532MHz, and the BOOX does support EPUB. (I don’t know about you, but this makes the device even more tempting.) There is also a Youtube video.

You gotta see the video. It shows how to use the touch screen to use the menu, write and erase notes, and swipe to turn the page. It also shows the web browser.

Join the discussion over at MobileRead: http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=40424

Quoted from AndroidAuthority.com:

The phone, called the DSTL1, is shown in a few renderings in the gallery below.  Astute readers will note that the button configuration on the phone, as shown, won’t fly for Android.  Android phones currently need 5 hardware buttons in order to work (home, back, menu, call send, call end).  General Mobile says that the front of the phone will change from what is shown in the renderings in order to accommodate Android.  But I’m also a bit worried about the display, which is said to be a 400x240 pixel unit manufactured by Sharp.

The specs as they stand today are as follows:

Dual-SIM cards with dual-Standby mode
624MHz Marvell PXA 310 processor
Tri-band GSM/EDGE support (900/1800/1900MHz)
3-inch WQVGA touchscreen display, 260k colors
802.11b/g WiFi support
Bluetooth
135g (4.75oz), 112 x 54 x 16mm (4.4 x 2.1 x .6 inches)
5 megapixel autofocus camera with flash (made by Sharp)

Source: Engadget.com

I spotted this on Engadget this morning. It appears our home location is listed as America’s most wired city, edging out Atlanta for the first time. Since we are located about two blocks from Microsoft and AT&T, i am not supprised by this development.

Quote:

Move over, Atlanta. Seattle, Microsoft and Amazon.com’s home base, is now the country’s most wired city.

While these marquee names have long lent the Emerald City tech-y cachet, it was Seattle’s increased use of broadband that powered it up Forbes’ annual list of the 30 most broadband-connected cities in the U.S. High marks in two other wired city categories—broadband access and wi-fi hot spots—helped Seattle clinch the top spot.

http://www.forbes.com/2009/01/22/wired-cities-2009-tech-wire-cx_ew_0122wiredcities.html

Congratulations to our 44th President of the United States of America; Barack H. Obama!

http://www.whitehouse.gov/

Here is a brief round-up of the vendors we saw at this year’s Lunch@Piero’s event during CES 2009.

VIA Technologies showcased their latest in ultra mobile and small form factor computing featuring the VIA Nano processor and the VIA C7-M ultra mobile processor. More info at http://www.via.com.tw

VIA Embedded showcased their new ARTiGO A2000 barebone storage system and innovative home server set-up using the touch-screen VIPRO. http://www.via.com.tw/en/products/embedded/

Graphics will demonstrated the latest HD video and image applications using the all-new Chrome 500 series graphics cards running on a VIA Nano processor-based board. http://www.s3graphics.com
Blendtec, famous for their “Will it Blend” videos in which they blended an iPhone in their kitchen blender, was on hand to talk about their highly successful viral youtube campaigns. Blendtec CEO Tom Dickson and VP George Wright was on hand throughout Lunch@Piero’s to blend a phone, a garden rake.  http://www.blendtec.com

Developing and organizing your thoughts isn’t always a straightforward linear process, especially in groups. Comappings “mind-mapping” tool helps you make sense of even the most complex topics and projects with its innovative approach to formulating, developing, and organizing ideas. http://www.comapping.com

Continue reading: Round-up of the vendors we saw at this years Lunch@Piero’s event during CES 2009.

While at ShowStoppers during CES 2009 I was able to spend some time with a Plastic Logic e-reader prototype. What an amazing product for an early prototype, it felt and operated like a product ready to ship and use. I was told early samples will trickle out in mid to late 2009 with shipping units in early 2010.

The screen contrast seemed to be on par with my Sony 505, however I did not have it on hand to compare side by side. The page response was quick as you can tell from the video I took.  The device looks like it will support many if not most formats including DRM material when it ships. I did not discover what DRM formats are planned.

Their e-reader interface runs on top of a version of Microsoft WinCE, measures a thin 7mm weighing in at less than 16 oz, with a form factor of 8.5” x 11”. Basically it is the size of a typical magazine.  The touch screen was also quick and responsive and featured a soft keyboard.

I am enthusiastically waiting to make one of these units my new daily e-reader.

http://www.plasticlogic.com/

More pics and videos after the break!

The DSS 30 is compatible with Wav, Flac, AAC, OGG, DFF and WMA files, frequently used compressed formats such as MP3, MP4 and M4O - and others. Using its USB ports, it accepts memory sticks, hard drives, PCs, and CD-Rom players. A built-in Windows-Directory program organizes custom playlists in a variety of ways, and a large, bright, two-line display shows key information about individual tracks, including, titles, times, and formats.

The DSS 30 includes a 4-GB internal memory that can be expanded by an external hard drive, and also includes a removable Secure Digital (SD) memory card. Connections include two USB 2.0 ports on the front, two more USB ports on the rear panel, a PC input, a 75-ohm RCA input, stereo RCA outputs, balanced XLR outputs, and an Ethernet port allowing use in a LAN network. The DSS 30 can also be used in a wireless mode and, using its coax input and output, as a traditional high-end DAC for CD transports.

The Blacknote DSS 30 is available now for a suggested price of $2,876. During 2009, Black Note will introduce three additional models - the DSS 15, DSS 50 and DSS 50, with suggested retail prices of $1,500, $7,200 and $12,800, respectively.

http://www.blacknote.eu/