Remember Bookeen? The company made a line of e-readers called Cybooks. Back in 2007, it was going to make an e-reader for Baen, but it never materialized. In the last few weeks, they’ve made a couple of announcements about an impending new e-ink technology called HSIS (High Speed Ink System) that will be fast enough to allow scrolling and panning around web pages. On GigaOm, Kevin C. Tofel presents a 10-second YouTube video of a demo of the e-ink technology, showing a screen scrolling around on a website. It looks pretty good; comparable to what it looks like to...

Bookeen’s blog has a piece on its new Cybook Orizon e-reader, which is due to launch in Europe in mid October, with pre-orders available starting September 25. The blog post is, predictably, written in PR-speak (“Bookeen, the European leader of the ebook reader market…”) but it does have a few interesting points. The Orizon features a 6” Sipix touchscreen and wifi connectivity, as well as an “unrestricted web browser that allows you access [sic] the website of your choice with no limits, and download content that’s readable on your device.” The device is quite thin, too, being only...

Amazon is selling the Opus for $179. Normally it lists for $249 and according to The EBook Reader Blog its pricing overs around $215-$225. The Blod says that pricing in Europe has dropped as well....

Michael Dahan, co-founder as well as CEO, of Bookeen gives a most interesting interview. Here are a couple of excerpts and for the full interview, including a discussion of Mobipocket and Epub, you can go here. Q: The Gen3 and the Opus use E Ink, while the new Orizon will use Sipix's e-paper. Why did you change to this display technology? For three major reasons: 1. AUO (Sipix) touchscreen is light year away from Sony resistive technology. You keep the optical quality of ePaper and you get an incredibly reactive touchscreen. For us touchscreen on such a large display...

Carly Z at Geardiary has a review of this unit with the latest firmware update. All-in-all she thinks that the price is high for what you get and, while loving the hardware, can find no compelling reason to pay the asking price....

All Romance eBooks: Freebies (via Jane). Amazon: Refurbished Kindle 2s---currently in stock for $219. Will competition further drive down used, refurb and new Kindle prices? Barnes & Noble: “E-books under $5” and $9.99 NYT bestsellers. Books on Board: Cybook Opus for $198. Lets you bold all text in an e-book to increase readability of books with E Ink. When will Sony add this feature to the competing Pocket Reader, now on sale at Fries for $160, as discovered earlier by Danny Davis? Cyberread: “Review your...

Bookeen’s long-delayed upgrade for the Cybook Opus and the Gen3 is out, with two flavors available---one for the aging Mobipocket format and another for ePub, including the Adobe-DRMed variety. In addition, Bookeen is claiming greater-than-expected sales and says it will have a CES booth (12245) in Los Vegas. Now back to the fun stuff. Both versions of the upgrade can display the HTML and TXT formats. Plus, the second flavor includes the FictionBook 2 format. Go to this password-protected support area for the downloads. The readme PDF is here, without a PW needed. Via a memory card...

The Opus is a 5" ereader that supports EPUB, among other formats. It has 1G of internal memory along with a microSD slot. List price is $250, but Amazon, through Beach Camera, is selling it for $215. Thanks to E-Reader-info for the link....

OpenInkpot, a linux-based replacement for the proprietary software in e-book readers, will soon sport a spiffy graphical user interface and improved tabletlike architecture. Take a look at some preview documentation. The reading software includes FBReader, which can handle nonDRMed ePub, unencrypted Mobipocket HTML, TXT, and a bunch of other formats. Of special interest, to me, is that you can choose to boldface all the text---rather handy, given the less than stellar contrast of the current generation of E Ink displays. The text will stand out better against the not-quite-white backgrounds of the screens. This is...

Details here, from PocketLint. Also see Bookeen site. (Via Mike Cane.) ...

When, just when, will E Ink be truly like white paper---with a high contrast between text and background? Ideally it’ll happen in the next few years. But until then, I’ll be very grumpy, as are Robert Kingett and Nicholson Baker. “This was what they were calling e-paper?” Baker has written of his Kindle. “This four-by-five window onto an overcast afternoon? Where was paper white, or paper cream? Forget RGB or CMYK. Where were sharp black letters laid out like lacquered chopsticks on a clean tablecloth?” Until we get decent contrast on the Kindle and other E...

From the Bookeen blog here is a listing of the new feature in the upcoming 2.0 firmware release. They don't give a date, but say it will be coming soon. Firmware 2.0: Adobe Digital Edition - Support of Adobe Digital Edition epub and pdf files. - Support of non DRMed epub and pdf files. - Support of html, txt, jpeg, png, gif. - 12 font sizes on all epub, txt, html files. - Rotation of the page and Zoom from 50 to 100%. - For pdf files: hyperlinks are now activated and the covers are displayed on the library page. - Browsing mode: new interface presentation. - Possibility to...