PC Magazine has a very limited preview of a pre-production version of Sony's upcoming PRS-500 E-Book Reader, here. It has a six inch screen and is about the size of a thin paperback book. What's most intriguing about the device though is that uses the much touted, but little seen to this point, "E Ink" technology. "E Ink" essentially allows for using power ONLY when changing pages, so keeping a page displayed takes no energy. This is important, as it means battery life is not an issue with even casual recharging and any page you have up on the screen stays up on the screen, not requiring the device to go into a power saving mode or turn its screen off like current devices do. This increases its reference value/usefulness tremendously, and, along with its high resolution, places such a device in more of a competitive balance with print on paper, which of course is the ideal text display "device" to this point.

How about the gamer iPod?I've been speculating for some time that the next logical entry into the portable gaming market would be from Apple (particularly in an editorial response to Gamasutra about six months back) and it looks like other industry analysts are starting to catch wind of the idea as well, for instance in this piece from GameDaily BIZ Newsletter, here.