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Re-activateIt's been quite a week for e-readers, the portable devices that allow you to read books and other text on an electronic display. Just days after announcing a new version of its Kindle e-reader last week, and facing concern from authors that the Kindle 2's new text-to-speech feature might hurt sales of audiobooks, Amazon has announced it's amending the feature.
Rights-holders will now be able to "decide on a title-by-title basis whether they want text-to-speech enabled or disabled," the company announced in a news release. No timeframe for the change was announced, but the company said it's already begun work "on the technical changes required to give authors and publishers that choice."
Meantime, another report says the Hearst Corp. is planning its own e-reader device, likely to debut this year, that seeks to provide a portable platform for the corporation's many newspapers and magazines, which include the Houston Chronicle, Good Housekeeping, and O, The Oprah Magazine. Said to have a bigger screen than that of the Kindle, and so closer to the typical size of a magazine page, the device is likely to debut this year, according to the report from Fortune magazine.
Though best known for its selection of books, the Kindle, too, offers periodicals, at monthly prices of $1.25 and up for magazines, and $5.99 and up for newspapers.
There's also a new model of the Sony Reader, another e-book reader introduced in 2006 and updated several times since then, including in 2007. There's now a higher-end Reader, the PRS-700BC, that adds some features the Kindle lacks, including touch-screen control and a built-in light. At $400, the device is pricier than both the Kindle, which costs $359, and the $299 Sony Reader PRS-505, which launched last year. I plan to review at least one of these newer Sony devices soon.
-Paul Reynolds
[Photo: Sudarshan Vijayaraghavan]
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