• I walked by a SonyStyle store the other day, and I have to admit they’re doing a good job of pushing their Readers in brick and mortar stores (I’ve also seen them in Best Buy stores amongst others as well). And while they have a decent selection of models, I’m not sure these themed Readers are quite necessary. In other ereader news, the Aiptek Storybook inColor is pretty neato looking, though I still don’t think an LCD ereader is ever going to really fly. The Aluratek Libre has a nice pricetag, but the  same LCD concern still applies. (Before you poo-poo me, electronic ink–in our opinion–really does make a huge difference. Here are my initial impressions of the tech from last spring.)
• The COOL-ER is getting a hardware upgrade, making it marginally cool-er in the eyes of the other wallflower ereaders. And there’s lots of Applet Tablet rumors floating around this week, but I’m not going to link to any, beacause I’m sick of them. We’ll discuss an Apple Tablet and its secondary ereader abilites only when (if) it actually gets announced. Here’s a review of the Sungale Cyberus, which also doesn’t look all that impressive.
• Amazon’s Jeff Bezos took a weird shot at the Nook’s sharing feature. While he’s right that it’s definitely not ideal, it’s a lot more than Kindle’s DRM allows. There’s also a rumor afloat that Amazon, in their benevolent hearts, lose $2 per ebook. The logic on this seems fuzzy at best, and I don’t buy it one bit. Also on the list of things that weren’t well enough thought through, Simon & Schuster will be holding their ebook releases until 4 months after hardcovers go on sale. Good plan guys! HarperCollins has a similar plan, and a similarly dumb explanation. Here’s a nice counterpoint.
• I came across a lot of cool stuff around the web this week. The bookish part of me finds something alluring about Altered Books‘ poetry. I also really like the experiment going on over at One Sentence. The NH part of me really likes this redneck twinkle light display. And this animation by Pascal Campion is pretty mesmerizing.
• My video this week? Well I really like the lyrics in the first, but the octopus in the second is pretty amazing.

• Good news for Amazon and bad news for everyone who wanted one in 2009, the Nook has apparently been delayed until January 11. Sony’s having trouble getting stuff out the door for the holidays too. The second ereaders started running Android we all saw it coming: the rise of the clones… and clones… and clones… and clones. The Nook and the Alex showed a fair bit of innovation this (next) year, so lets hope other companies keep up with experimentation and competition–or at least something not-white.
• Amazon added pdf support to their Kindle, and there might be a large scale software upgrade on the way. After surely catching a lot of flak for not, Barnes & Noble will be accepting gift cards for ebook purchases. Here’s a creative use of the iPhone for interactive books. Step aside Tom Waits, ecomics are big in Japan; Sony even stuck an ecomic reader on their PSP firmware. Smashwords bought indie publisher BookHabit and formed an alliance (oooh) with Shortcovers. And…this week in stupid names: iMagz.
• Three years from now in London: will the Cloud be cool or stupid? Right now in NY: I think these hamster pictures are hilarious. Dads in Short Shorts is currently my favorite blog.
• For videos, Pigeon Impossible is a really cool animation (which I won’t embed here because it’s better when bigger). Also, check out this cool, literary video:

• Creative (maker of the iPod’s poor, homely, and ignored cousin) threw their hat into the ring with the Zii Mediabook.  I’d like to go on the record as saying this is an even dumber name than Nook or Alex. Speaking of, the makers of the Alex have sued Barnes & Noble over the Nook’s dual screen design. Also with dual screens, I can’t decide if the Entourage Edge looks cool or crappy, but I’m leaning toward crappy.
• The inexpensive Jetbook Lite is available now (thanks to reader Ben for the heads up). And on the horizon, ASUS wants in the ereader game after all their netbook success. And so does Bridgestone, after all their tire success? It’s bendy, which is cool. Apparently there are some snazzy new E-Ink processor chips in the pipeline, so hopefully we’ll seem even more creative new tech soon. Lots of ereader hype this selling season, might we finally be at the verge of the Great eReader Adoption?
• Up for some light reading? How about an ebook about mail order Russian brides? These ebook “covers” are so cheesy they’re funny. I find the idea of a cloud library pretty intriguing. And I’m definitely in favor of ebook happy hour, too bad they only serve well books.
• Outside of ebooks, a new Beatles b-side has been discovered, as has the creepiest thing I’ve seen–except for maybe Wii Baby and Me–in a long while: a ventriloquist choir singing “Yesterday.”
• and finally, I’m mesmerized by this Carl Sagan auto-tune video:

For me, the Sony’s ability to borrow library ebooks far outweighs the Kindle’s wireless connectivity. (Almost every other non-Amazon ereader can borrow library ebooks, too. Check out our ereader comparison for more quick details on ereaders.)

But there’s one Kindle feature that I have envied: first chapter previews. There are many ebooks I would never have bought or borrowed if I could’ve read the first chapter beforehand, but until now there have only been a few feeble attempts from non-Amazon ebookstores to duplicate this feature.

The Barnes & Noble eReader, though, didn’t copy it—they just stole it, and that might have been the best decision their eReader team made.

The crappy other options: Kindle Desktop, Stanza Desktop

Kindle Desktop has a big problem: it doesn’t exist. I’ve got the app on my iPod, but I just can’t read a book on that tiny screen. Plus, I want something I can use at my computer, while I’m shopping for new books.

When I heard that Stanza Desktop had come out, I hoped that they would include chapter previews. They do not. Not only that, but the whole app seems a little beside the point.

Stanza Desktop doesn’t support any DRM, which means it’s for .txts and .docs. I already have programs that can open those files. Thanks anyway.

Stanza Desktop's "Horizontal Scrolling" layout

Stanza Desktop also has something called “Horizontal Scrolling” (pictured at left). It presents a book as one long line of text, which you jerkily advance eight words at a time with the arrow keys. On the website, Lexcycle (the maker of Stanza) describes this as Rapid Serial Visual Presentation and says:

Long used as a research tool in perceptual and cognitive psychology, RSVP can dramatically increase the speed at which text is processed and understood by some readers.

Maybe this would be true if you could scroll at a constant, medium speed. Advancing in jumps dramatically increased only the speed at which I felt nauseous and cross-eyed.

The one huge benefit of Stanza Desktop is that it will let you convert PDFs and docs to native Kindle format, making a mockery of the Kindle’s inability to do this itself.

However, I need a Kindle substitute, not a Kindle complement.

The almost good enough other option: Diesel eBooks

Diesel eBooks, surprisingly, does ebook previews better than any other site. You just click a small “Read excerpt” link and the excerpt opens in a new window. Brilliant. (I believe this is the recent implementation of Google Books Preview.) The major problem is that they only have excerpts for about half their books.

Additionally, it seems that about 99% of Diesel’s stock consists of romances; not exactly my cup of tea.

Diesel's sub-categories for Literary & Poetry ebook (full size below)

And though they boast about their “over 600 sub-categories,” most are worthless. At right are the sub-categories for Literary & Poetry books. Two are empty, and another six list less than 10 books. This is a great idea, but unfortunately it’s unusable in practice.

So Diesel is OK, great if they have an excerpt of the book you’re looking for, but not tops on reliability.

Enter Barnes & Noble.

Tell me this is a work in progress: Barnes & Noble

The Barnes & Noble website is not exactly user-friendly. After you buy an ebook, or get a sample, you have to download it from your online ebook library (a link to which is buried in your account page). It would make sense to have the link pop up whenever you buy an ebook, but B&N doesn’t roll like that.

Additionally, there are some vestigial eddies in the site map—like this error screen I somehow got, which advises users on how to activate cookies in Netscape Navigator.

Barnes & Noble's idea of RSVP (full size below)

(Interesting note: B&N has a much different idea of RSVP—pictured at left—which involves highlighting words on the page and automatically advancing the highlight, instead of zooming them past you at font point 30. For the record, I think they’re both obnoxious.)

What the B&N eReader does have is previews of every book on the website, downloadable to your desktop. That’s all I want, and that’s all I use it for.

The B&N eReader also has an iPhone/iPod sister app, so if you don’t have a Kindle, there’s no reason to use the Kindle app. You can check out Sean’s review of that app here.

I’d like to see a two key improvements: I want to be able to buy the book inside the eReader app, and I want ePub support, like Barnes & Noble has promised. They already have Amazon matched on price―if they do ePub, they stand a chance to be the premier ebookstore for non-Kindle users.

And if this software can mesh wirelessly with the rumored Sony Reader models, so much the better.

Next stop: a big fight over DRM; everybody wins.

Diesel's sub-categories―Full-size

B&N's version of RSVP―Full-size