Sony to sell e-book reader
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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. on Tuesday showed a smaller book-size PlayStation 2 going on sale worldwide next month that will help the Japanese electronics and entertainment giant cut costs as video-game consoles continue to drop in price.
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People have been trying to build e-books for years. But few people have decided to become e-readers. Two technologies are improving these devices.
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Amazon also said that consumer electronics replaced books for the first time as the largest sales category. The top selling electronics products were the Apple iPods and a Phillips DVD player.
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Sony has launched two flash memory digital music players that carry the Walkman brand in Europe. The Walkman NW-E99 and NW-E95 take aim at rival Apple&#39;s iPod Minis.
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(InfoWorld) - If you can't beat them, join them? SonyÂ is getting into the iPod accessory market with the U.S. launch of an iPod docking station. The CPF-IP001 will go on sale in the U.S. in March this year for about $250 and is already listed on the SonyStyle online shop. Users insert the iPod in a cradle in the center of the device and music can then be enjoyed through a pair of attached speakers. There's also a remote control so the iPod can be commanded from a distance. It's the first complete audio product from Sony exclusively for the iPod and the second with iPod connectivity. Last year Sony began offering an interface adapter that allows iPods to be connected to one of its car audio systems. The new product is similar to two that Sony has previously launched. The CPF-IX001 allows music to be streamed from a networked PC through the speakers and the CPF-NW001 offers a dock for Sony's Network Walkman players. Sony decided to develop an iPod version when taking into account the needs of users, said Masayo Endo, a spokeswoman for Tokyo-based Sony. The company, which lost its 20-year lead in the portable music market to Apple, has been battling to surpass the iPod's seemingly impenetrable hold on the market with new versions of its Walkman players but to date hasn't managed to come close to regaining the top-spot.
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TOKYO - Sony Marketing (Japan) Inc said Tuesday it will begin selling a personal digital assistant Sept 25 equipped with an organic electroluminescent display, a next-generation monitor.
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Three days before Thanksgiving, Amazon.com unveiled its Kindle e-book reader, the latest, and surely not the last, hand-held device meant to bring the centuries-old experience of the printed page to the digital age.
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Japan's Sony Corp plans to add an  Internet phone function to its PlayStation Portable (PSP) game  player in cooperation with eBay unit Skype to stir up demand,  the Nikkei business daily said on Saturday.
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Tacit admission of defeat IFA 07 Sony will next year kill off its Connect digital music download service, Register Hardware has learned. Its Walkman products will instead Windows Media technology, the consumer electronics giant told its customers today.â¦
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Its proprietary audio technology was a flop, says Sony, as it announces at a Berlin consumer electronics trade fair it will shutter its Connect digital music store and open its portable media players to other formats.
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Sony Corp.  plans to  phase out the cut-priced $499 model of its PlayStation 3 video  game machine, leaving only a higher capacity $599 model for  sale in the United States, the company said on Monday.
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The Sony Corporation today agreed to buy the Hollywood film studio Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and its valuable film library after rival Time Warner withdrew from the bidding.
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HD Radio received a boost Tuesday as Sony announced that it will be shipping both a table radio and mobile tuning device for the service. The devices are part of a multi-year agreement to support the technology.
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TOKYO Sony on Tuesday showed a smaller, book-size PlayStation 2 that will go on sale worldwide next month as it fights to keep the lead in the competitive video game market.
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Sony Corp said Thursday that it had agreed to sell its production facilities for the powerful computer chip at the heart of its struggling PlayStation 3 game console to rival Toshiba Corp.
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Sony is considering making digital music devices that play MP3 song files, the consumer electronics group said yesterday. The move could mean a major shift for the company as the creator of the Walkman has