Sony Reader

David Williams, a colleague from the Newcastle coders group, alerted me to the existence of these nifty devices that are dedicated to reading eBooks through his blog, Alivad.

I am a little excited about this device for these reasons:

1. My wife is a book nerd (or to put more lightly - FREAK. sorry wifey! but you know you are...) We have a storage crisis at home, there are too many books and not enough space. I actually gave a station wagon full of books to the Wallsend book exchange 2 months ago, and we still need to find more space.
2. ebooks are cheaper then real books.
3. ebooks bring up new business opportunities (for those of us that could not set up a book shop, or get a publisher)
4. The device very closely mimics a real book, but adds extra quirks of one touch page turning and other conveniences.
5. I only ever read when I go to bed. If I brought a laptop to bed to read an eBook - insomnia, which I already suffer from (along with many other unwanted side effects ;) .....) would be magnified. A Sony reader instead of a laptop would make sure I'm not checking my emails and RSS feeds at 1.00am in the morning. (although I can see the device expand in the future to have WIFI and Internet browsing capabilities which is scaring me slightly)
6. It reminds me of the resurgence in music players in the form of MP3 players - like this is kind of device (if done right... apple anyone?) will be the next must have gadget. So far Sony has the lead in their e-ink display technology - as long as they handle the sensitive DRM issue correctly.

UPDATE: 24-Nov-07

By now, most people will know about the amazon kindle, in relation to the Sony reader. Still all of my points above apply to the imminent paradigm shift in regards to books - except one thing: if the amazon kindle rules over everything else - ignore point 3. I predict the business opportunity idea will still be prevalent - but not through the kindle if amazon holds on to the publisher stigma (although it is currently necessary to keep quality reading at this stage). A community approach of quality control I believe will ultimately win out - kind of like the rating of you tube videos with comments allowed.

If a decent eBook review site was setup independent of Amazon it would be a good thing - a bit like getting away from the Murdoch's controlling the fox network and hence a large amount of their viewers opinions (please note, its election time in Australia ATM and I'm feeling political). As long as you could buy eBooks from that site too and read them..... but could you on a kindle?