I have a Sony eBook, and aside from the fact that it’s kind of crap (ok fair enough it’s a book and the idea is to focus on making the battery last) and I don’t know what Sony were thinking of except that it is a book just a book and nothing else

A: If you're putting RTF files or Word documents, then it's reading the "properties" section of the file, rather than the document name you see. (Also goes for PDFs, but it's less common that those have different capitalizations of the names.)

Harry Potter soars into ebook era

Accio ebooks!

As any Harry Potter fan knows, that spell summons an object to fly to the caster, but now even Muggles can cast this one. As suddenly as the results of a spell, J.K. Rowling’s seven novels about the boy wizard went on sale as ebooks for the first time last week.

Although Rowling’s books have sold a staggering 450 million copies worldwide in print since the first was published 15 years ago, they have never before been available in ebook format — by far the fastest-growing segment of the book market.

The ebooks were promised in July 2011 when the Pottermore.com website was announced by Rowling and Sony. The interactive, multimedia site, previewed at the LeakyCon fan convention in Orlando in July, was designed to include new content by the author as well as a shop that would be the only place to purchase Harry Potter ebooks.

Pottermore — ebooks not included — opened in a beta version to 1 million users on July 31 (Rowling’s and Harry’s birthday), but its planned public launch was delayed from October to April.

Source: MiamiHerald.com

Sony's Kindle Competition: Touchscreen Plus AT&T, for $399 ...

Open Digital Reading to Mass Audience

NEW YORK, August 25, 2009 Delivering on its promise to give consumers a variety of choices, Sony today 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. “We firmly believe consumers should have choice in every aspect of their digital reading experience,” said Steve Haber, president of Sony’s Digital Reading Business Division. “Today, we take another large stride to deliver on that promise. We now have the most affordable devices on the market, the greatest access to free and affordable eBooks through The eBook Store from Sony and our affiliated ecosystem, and now round out our Reader offering with a wireless device that lets consumer purchase and download content on the go.” 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. The seven-inch wide, touch screen display provides for intuitive navigation and comfortable layout of content, including newspapers and magazines, whether you’re reading in portrait or landscape orientation. In portrait mode, about 30-35 lines of text are visible, making the experience very similar to that of a printed paperback book. A high contrast ratio with 16 levels of grayscale ensures that text and images are crisp and easy to read. The Daily Edition also boasts an attractive aluminum body with an integrated cover for durability. It has enough internal memory to hold more than one thousand standard eBooks and expansion slots for memory cards to hold even more. It will sell for about $399. All three models feature Sony’s award-winning industrial design and an E Ink® Vizplex™ electronic paper display that emulates the look of ink on paper. Sony’s eBook Library software 3.0, which now includes support for many Apple® Macintosh® computers as well as PCs, makes it easy to transfer and read any Adobe® PDF (with reflow capability), EPUB, Microsoft® Word®, BBeB® files, or other text file formats on the Reader. In addition to announcing a new family of Readers, Sony has also made several changes and improvements to its eBook Store to provide better access to an even greater variety of ebooks. Earlier this summer Sony announced the availability of more than one million free public domain books from Google, and the company made new releases and New York Times bestseller titles available for $9.99. Today also marks the launch of Sony’s Library Finder application. Sony, working with OverDrive (www.overdrive.com), the leading global digital distributor of eBooks and to libraries, will now offer visitors to the eBook Store by Sony easy access to their local library’s collection of eBooks. Thousands of libraries in the OverDrive network offer eBooks optimized for the Sony Reader, and visitors can now find these libraries by typing their zip code into the Library Finder. Through the selected library’s download website, visitors can check out eBooks with a valid library card, download them to a PC and transfer to their Reader. At the end of the library’s lending period, eBooks simply expire, so there are never any late fees. The Reader Pocket and Touch Editions, as well as available accessories such as AC adaptors, cases and covers with reading lights, are available now at SonyStyle.com and SonyStyle stores. Book lovers interested in trying out a Reader in person will also be able to find them for sale at Best Buy, BJs, Borders, Sam’s Club, Staples, Target, Toys“R”Us, Wal-Mart and other authorized retailers nationwide.

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