E-books - Page 4

Spring Design announced a new deal with Borders that will sell the Alex e-reader. Borders will provide retail space and also create a branded e-book store. The Alex will be priced at $359.

The Alex e-reader

Via Engadget

Spring design has signed a deal with Google, that will give its Alex E-Reader users access to Google's massive e-book library (of over 1 million books).

via TechCrunch

Kurzweil Technologies is set to release a new e-reader software, the Blio. This will run on PCs and tablet computers, and let you access over a million books with color. The idea is that Blio lays out the 'pages' just like would be been on paper - it preserves the original book’s format, including typsetting, layout, fonts and pagination.

Blio includes text-to-speech, but with a twist - if you also have the book's audio-version, it automatically syncs the two, and you can hear the words and see them highlighted in the same time. Nice.

Via Wired

Digitimes reports that BenQ hopes to sell 300,000 e-readers in 2010, out of which 50,000 will be in Taiwan and 200,000 in china.

BenQ will start selling their e-reader, the nReader early next year in Japan, China and Taiwan. They will also launch an e-book store in January. 

BenQ are also working on a color e-reader, which they say will be released in 2H 2010.

Contrary to previous reports, Borders' CEO says that they won't be building their own e-reader. He says it'll cost too much money and take too much time. Borders' strategy will be to offer e-books for 'all devices', in partnership with the Kobo on line store (in which they have own 20%, too).

Via Reuters

Borders announced today that they're developing a new e-book reader and an e-book service. Borders have partnered with Kobo for this project. The e-book service is already live Kobobooks.com) but it'll be integrated into Borders' site in 2H 2010.

There's very little information on the e-reader. There will be several versions, and all will have wireless connectivity. The platform will be 'open' - the e-reader will be able to support "any e-book format".

Interestingly, Borders' CEO says that they want to reach "readers who buy a couple of books a year".

Via NYTimes

Our friends over at actualitte say that Packard Bell is planning a new color e-reader for September 2010. But not only this - the company also plans to start selling content (movies, music, e-books, etc.) for netbooks.