Colleagues/ Hot Off The Press ! / Watch Out Kindle ... /Gerry During an event at the main branch of the New York Public Library this morning, Sony unveiled the newest version of its eBook Reader, the Daily Edition ... which will have built-in free wireless capability via AT&T's 3G mobile broadband network. The new Reader, to sell for $399, will be available by December, just in time for the holidays, at SonyStyle stores and via sonystyle.com. The Daily Edition will feature a 7-inch touchscreen, and a high contrast ratio with 16 levels of grayscale; you can read in either portrait or landscape orientation. It will have enough onboard memory to hold over 1,000 standard ebooks and is also expandable via Memory Stick / Duo and SD card slots. [snip] Sony also announced its Library Finder app, developed in partnership with Overdrive.com. Users of Sony's eBook Store will be able to easily locate their local libraries online, and using their library cards, download free ebook content. When the lending period is up, the content simply expires.[snip] Dr. Paul LeClerc, president and CEO of the NYPL, ... detailed Sony's partnership with libraries to provide free digital contentto all versions of the Sony Reader. Currently, he said, the library offers over 40,000 downloadable titles and is in partnership with Google's book-scanning initiative, with the goal of digitizing over 1 million titles. "We believe it must be delivered free," he stressed. Steven Haber, president of Sony's Digital Reader Business Division, ... emphasized the importance of access, content, and affordability for ebook readers. He mentioned that Sony is moving from a proprietary ebook format to ePub's format, which will streamline the publishing process immensely. Links To Source / Photos / Press Release / Etc Available At [ http://preview.tinyurl.com/ljdedr ] EnJOY! /Gerry Gerry McKiernan Associate Professor Science and Technology Librarian Iowa State University Library Ames IA 50011 gerrymck@iastate.edu There Are No Answers, Only Solutions / Olde Irish Saying The Future Is Already Here, It's Just Not Evenly Distributed / Attributed To William Gibson, SciFi Author / Coined 'Cyberspace