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The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Sony will officially announce tomorrow two new eReaders – the PRS300 priced at $199 and the PRS600 priced at $299.    This confirms information leaked in service manuals that briefly appeared last weak on SonyInsider.

The PRS600 will be marketed as the “Touch Edition” and will feature a six-inch touch screen with 512MB of onboard memory and will weigh approximately 9 ounces.  The PRS300 will be marketed as the “Pocket Edition” and will feature a five-inch screen and will weigh just under 8 ounces.  See leaked specs here.

Noticeably absent from Sony’s new devices is wireless capability, which enables Amazon’s Kindle to maintain a significant advantage in the eReader race (soon to matched by Plastic Logic’s upcoming eReader).

Sony will also cut its price on best-selling e-books to $9.99 from $11.99, which matches the price offered by Amazon on its best-selling Kindle titles.

Read the full WSJ story here.

The Apple Touch Tablet (aka mediapad) is coming in Q1 2010.  Or, is it September 2009?

The Financial Times ran a story yesterday about Apple’s “Cocktail” project with the major record labels aimed at reigniting consumer interest in albums – rather than individual tracks – by bundling liner notes and video clips with the music.   The more buzzworthy item in this story, however, is speculation by the FT that Apple’s “full-featured, tablet-sized computer” could be launched in September in tandem with the rollout of the new iTunes album format.   The story goes on to say that the new touch-sensitive device’s screen may be up to 10 inches diagonally and will connect to the internet like the iPod Touch, but will likely not have phone capability.

This story comes on the heels of a report on Friday from AppleInsider.com that, “according to people well-respected by AppleInsider for their striking accuracy in Apple’s internal affairs,” Steve Jobs has “cemented the [touch-screen tablet] in the company’s 2010 roadmap, where it’s being positioned for a first quarter launch.”

In a possible related development, TechCrunch also reported Friday that Verizon is “racing to have its LTE service ready to go in a bunch of markets for Q1 2010.”    The source referenced by TechCrunch had no information to specifically tie an Apple device to Verizon, they did note that there was talk of at least one non-dongle (wireless card) product that this LTE launch was being specifically geared towards.  You may recall that BusinessWeek reported back in April that Verizon was in talks with Apple about a “mediapad” that would let media pad that would let users listen to music, view photos, and watch high-definition videos.

Meanwhile, poking fun at all of this Apple speculation, Gizmodo has come out with a handy “Apple Tablet Probablity Meter” that puts the odds at 80% that we’ll see a Tablet release four months from now.

Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos issued a mea culpa yesterday for the company’s widely criticized decision to delete from Kindle libraries illicit copies of  1984 and Animal Farm that had been purchased by Kindle owners.   In a comment titled “An Apology from Amazon,” Bezos issued his apology in the Amazon.com discussion forums.  The post, which included this gem, “Our ’solution’ to the problem was stupid, thoughtless, and painfully out of line with our principles,” has received over 150 responses.

In a challenge to Amazon and its Kindle business, the mega-book retailer Barnes & Noble, has announced the launch of an e-bookstore, along with a deal to be the exclusive e-bookstore provider to Plastic Logic’s forthcoming eReader.

Barnes & Noble’s says its e-bookstore initially offers acces to more than 700,000 titles (expeceted to grow to over 1 million by next year), including hundreds of new releases at only $9.99 (in line with Amazon’s pricing), and more than a half-million free public domain books from Google.

Barnes & Noble jumpstarted its e-bookstore initiative back in March with its $15.7 million acquisition of Fictionwise, in which it picked up that company’s e-bookstore and iPhone eReader application.

Barnes  & Noble is clearly positioning itself as an “open” alternative to the Amazon Kindle.   The first paragraph of its press release states that customers will be able to ”buy eBooks and read them on a wide range of platforms, including the iPhone and iPod touch, BlackBerry® smartphones, as well as most Windows® and Mac® laptops or full-sized desktop computers.”

The big loser in all of this, of course, is Borders Group, the struggling #2 bricks-and-mortar book retailer behind Barnes & Noble.   Borders did launch an eBook initiative with Sony in late 2007, which has since been expanded to include a more significant in-store push of the Sony Reader.  And, Borders U.K. is serving as the launch partner for Elenox’s new eReader.    Unfortunately, Barnes & Noble has now blunted any advantage Borders may have had in the emerging eBook space.

The web has been buzzing (gotta love Gizmodo) about Amazon’s controversial move to automatically delete certain copies of George Orwell’s 1984 and Animal Farm from customers’ Kindles.

David Pogue, who appears to have been the first to report on the incident, set off a firestorm by omitting a key fact – that the ebooks were essentially pirated copies sold by a company that had no rights to the material – from his original blog post just before 1:00 pm EST yesterday (NYTimes got the full story straight in an article it published to its website much later in the day).

Turns out the Orwell e-books were added to the Kindle store via a self-service function by a company called Mobile Reference.  Mobile Reference, which offers public domain books for around $1, however, did not have the right to sell Orwell’s novels because 1984 and Animal Farm are still under copyright protection in the U.S.

Related coverage at: TechCrunch, Technologizer, betanews, Amazon Kindle Community

Barely a week after Google gave netbooks a major shot of cred by announcing that its forthcoming Chome OS will initially be targeted at the ultra-small laptops, Blockbuster had to come along and ruin the party.   The mega video chain, who’s inability to adapt to the digital revolution has made record companies look tech savvy by comparison, today announced a deal with ARCHOS to distribute the hardware company’s netbooks in 1,000 of its stores.

The ARCHOS 10 netbook, which sports 1GB of RAM, an Atom processor and Windows XP, will retail at Blockbuster for $299.99.

Read the full release here.

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Dell has “been developing a pocket-sized device for tapping into the Internet” that would run on Android.  Dell reportedly may begin selling the device later this year through mobile providers.

At the Computerworld in Tokyo back in March, Michael Dell confirmed that the company was “exploring smaller-screen devices.”

Read the full story at WSJ.com

Related coverage:
Phandroid
eWeek
ZDNet