Tech Shout!

On Tuesday, Sony said that it plans to launch an electronic book store on the Internet called ‘Sony Connect’ book store and will also start selling a highly anticipated device that displays e-books purchased from the store called ‘Sony electronic book reader’. The launch is expected to take place on October 1 2006.

The Sony Connect book store will carry about 10,000 books from the top six publishers, including News Corp.’s HarperCollins and CBS’s Simon & Schuster. Sony’s marketing vice president, Ron Hawkins said that the sale of the device and launch of the book store were delayed to work out a format for integration of the device, service and computer software required to connect the two.

The Sony Electronic Book Reader will sell for a price of $350. But, for a limited period, new Connect customers will receive a $50 credit to buy books from the service. On an average electronic books cost about 25% less than the cover price of physical books.

Sony’s latest Electronic Book Reader was announced at the Consumer Electronics Show in North America which took place in January this year, and has gathered attention for the electronic ink technology it uses specially made by E Ink of Cambridge, Massechussets. It uses new technology that allows digital text and graphics to be displayed without power-hungry back-lit screens. The Sony Electronic Book reader is very much like a regular paper, but is not back-lit and requires a light source in the room to view the page.

The device and service will also let users download from the “Really Simple Syndication” or RSS Feeds of popular blogs, including Salon, Slate, Huffington Post, engadget and Gizmodo to read on the device. But it will only downloads from approved feeds, restricting users from freely downloading from any RSS feed.

Newspapers and other periodicals will not be offered at first, although Hawkins did not rule out such features down the line. “We’re taking a serious look at it,” he said. “But we’re focusing on books and personal content at launch.”