Sony to launch Web bookstore, e-book device
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Sony Corp. 6758.T said on Tuesday it   will launch an electronic book store on the Internet and start   selling a device that displays e-books purchased from the store   on October 1, after missing an earlier unveiling in the Spring   due to technical reasons.
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(InfoWorld) - Sony will begin selling an electronic-book reader in stores and on the Web in the U.S. by the end of October, and has opened a dedicated online bookstore for the reader, it said Wednesday. The display of the Portable Reader System PRS-50 uses technology from E Ink to reduce power consumption. The monochrome display needs battery power only when a new page is displayed. When power is turned off, the last page viewed remains visible. The reader will cost around $350, including a USB cable to load books and a power adapter to charge the internal battery, which is good for 7,500 page turns between charges. Buyers registering their reader withÂ Sony's online bookstoreÂ before the end of December will receive a voucher worth $50 for purchases of electronic books. The bookstore contains over 10,000 books, Sony said. Although the vast majority of the books must be paid for, there are several free titles on the bookstore's virtual shelves, including Nick Hornby's novel "How to Be Good" and Dinesh D'Souza's critique of new technologies and the new economy, "The Virtue of Prosperity." They can only be downloaded by U.S. residents, and special software, supplied with the reader, is needed to copy books onto the device. The software runs only on PCs with Windows XP. Sony uses a DRM (digital rights management) system to restrict the ways buyers can use books bought from its store. The reader will not display e-books bought from other stores using different DRM systems, Sony said. However, it will display documents free of the restrictions imposed by DRM, including images in BMP, GIF, JPEG or PNG formats; plain text and RTF (Rich Text Format) files; and unencrypted PDF (Portable Document Format) or BBeB (Broadband electronic book) files. The provided software can also convert documents in other formats, including Microsoft Word documents and RSS feeds, so that they can be read on the device. Sony's publishing schedule has slipped by around six months since it first presented the PRS-50. At the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas in January it said the reader would go on sale in April. The company launched another reader using E-Ink's display technology, the LibriÃ© EBR-1000EP, in Japan in April 2004. Sony has no plans to sell the readers in Europe for now, although that may change after the second quarter of 2007, said company spokeswoman Delphine Viers.ADVERTISEMENTMAKE SOA REAL WITH IBM WEBSPHERE PODCASTStreamline processes and maximize efficiency within a proven service oriented architecture. Take back control of your business processes with IBM WebSphere.
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Sony Corp. says it will introduce its first HD Radio products in July, joining the growing group of companies seeking to make the next-generation digital radio technology a standard feature in audio products over the next several years.
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Sony Corp. (6758.T) will launch its  PlayStation 3 with an 80-gigabyte (GB) hard disk drive on June  16 in South Korea for 518,000 won ($556), offering the upgraded  version of its latest game console for the first time ever, the  Japanese electronics conglomerate said.
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Announcing it may soon compete directly with Apple's iPods and iTunes, Sony says it's looking into producing its own movie download service and products.
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Sony Corp. announced Tuesday a new 20 gigabyte digital music player with MP3 support that will be available in Great Britain and Japan before Christmas and elsewhere in Europe in early 2005.
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Japanese precision equipment maker Olympus Corp. (7733.T) said on Wednesday it would launch a portable music player equipped with a hard disc drive, entering an increasingly crowded field now dominated by Apple Computer's  iPod.
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(InfoWorld) - Google and Amazon.com are planning moves in the electronic-book market which, despite much promise over the years, hasn't met the expectations of book lovers, The New York Times reported Thursday. Amazon plans to launch an e-book reading device called the Kindle in October that will tap into an Amazon e-book store and cost between $400 and $500, the Times reported. Meanwhile, Google, which has a book search engine, will give people the option of paying to obtain the full text of copyright books as part of a service due before the end of the year, according to the newspaper. Google would split the revenue from the service with book publishers. Although e-book technology has been around for years, the concept hasn't caught on as initially expected, as people continue to prefer reading books on paper, rather than on an electronic display. Common complaints about e-books over the years have included discomfort from eye fatigue, inconvenient size, short battery life, and a limited selection of titles. The Times based its report on anonymous sources. Google didn't immediately reply to a request for comment. An Amazon spokesman declined to comment. The Kindle's wireless capabilities will allow it to not only download books and periodicals from Amazon's store but also browse the Web. It has a keyboard and a scroll wheel, according to the Times. Amazon already sells e-books from its main online store as well as from its Mobipocket subsidiary. Google's book search engine displays the full text of books in the public domain, and excerpts of copyright books. For people interested in purchasing books they find, Google provides links to third-party booksellers that carry the titles, such as Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
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Sony launches music players with MP3 support CNET News.com
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Sony Vaio NR laptop will be released next month.
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Polymer Vision's upcoming Readius is an e-book with a flexible screen and cell phone capabilities.
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Sony Corp. (6758.T) will likely launch its new PlayStation Portable hand-held game console in North America and Europe in March, a top executive said on Wednesday.
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Sony Corp. said Tuesday it will begin selling in Japan two new models of digital portable music players that support the MP3 format, which is used by its rival iPod.
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Sony has said it will market in the United States a first-of-a-kind wireless broadband device allowing users to exchange online voice and text messages, browse the Internet and listen to music.
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Sony Corp. is planning to launch a Blu-ray Disc player in the middle of this year that's significantly cheaper than many current models on the market.
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Japan's Sony Corp is expected to unveil a  smaller version of its popular PlayStation 2 game console on  October 26, The Hollywood Reporter said on its Web site, citing  retailers and industry analysts.
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Noise-suppressing headphones included Sony will next week launch its latest Flash-based digital audio player, if online retailers' listings of the as-yet-unannounced Walkman NWS700 series devices are anything to go by.â¦