ereaders

You might be wowed by the fact that Spring Design's Alex e-reader runs Android, or includes both a 6-inch e-ink display and a 3.5-inch LCD screen. But the best part is that those screens have the ability to work and interact with one another -- kind of like a Nintendo DS.

Imagine reading a news story on the e-ink display that happens to have a video clip associated with it. You could hit a button to play that video on the LCD screen below. Perhaps you want to add a few notes, images or links of your own to a book you're reading. You can tag certain passages with "web grabs." Or maybe you're browsing the web on the LCD screen and you see a story you'd like to read. You can send it up to the e-ink display for a bigger view that also conserves battery life.

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.

Sony can now add a feather to their cap; their new e-reader, the Touch Edition (PRS-600), does something Amazon’s Kindle can’t. The Touch’s 6-inch screen can capture handwritten notes, which are exportable and saveable.