e-readers

Intel threw its hat into the e-reader ring today with the release of the Intel Reader--which, unlike any other reader, is built specifically for the blind. With an onboard camera, Intel's device can convert text from any page photographed by a user into audio, which is read aloud through headphones. Which will surely upset someone, somewhere.

E-readers such as Amazon's Kindle DX, Sony's Daily Edition, and Barnes & Noble's multi-touch hybrid might want to start trembling. A new e-paper from Liquivista promises to allow video-playing and digital note-taking on a multi-touch, color screen.

We're still a week away from Barnes & Noble's big e-reader announcement, but we've know they've had something cooking for a while now. And today, our pals at Gizmodo hit the mother load: leaked shots of a forthcoming dual-screen device that is three-quarters e-ink and one-quarter (wait for it) color multitouch.

Barnes and Noble first tipped their hand in July, when they announed their new e-book store and its 700,000 titles would be made available on the iPhone and BlackBerry platforms. Then in August, the bookseller announced a partnership with e-reader maker iRex, in addition to love for Plastic Logic and their devices. And today (drumroll, please) the company officially announced the iRex DR800SG reader, the first e-book reader with access to the Barnes and Noble catalog.

For a lot of people, e-book readers are a long game of "I'll buy it when..." For some, the rest of that sentence is "it has a color screen," and for others it's "it's cheaper." Asus's upcoming Eee Reader (due by the end of this year) delivers on both counts. Oh, and it will have two screens, too.

Today, Amazon announced a new Kindle e-reader that has a bigger screen -- 9.7 inches diagonally -- and a bigger price tag: 489 smackeroos. So should you fork out $130 more than the last Kindle for the new version? We can't say for sure until we get to play with it for a while, but here's a preliminary guide based on the specs and our quick demo at today's press conference.

I'm not known to buy in blindly to the next big thing, but here is something I know: The twin forces of economic necessity and technological opportunity will soon (in 3, 5, 10 years max) conspire to turn the phrase "print magazine" into an oxymoron. And you know what? It's going to be great.

The catalyst for this transformation will come when a next-next-gen e-reader hits the market, one with a screen large enough to display a full-size magazine page -- or, if you fold it open, a two-page spread -- in glorious, high-resolution color. When that happens, we'll probably offer an incentive of some kind to switch over to digital, but it won't take much convincing. You'll be able to curl up with the latest issue of Popular Science (or, plucked from device storage or the Web, any issue we've published since the magazine debuted in 1872) in the same way and in the same places you do now, whether bed, beach or bathroom.