From the Kansas City Business Journal: European electronic book maker PocketBook is opening a U.S. headquarters in Overland Park and will open its first retail location in Independence Center. PocketBook, which says it sells more than 50,000 devices a month globally, will open the kiosk on Nov. 10, featuring five of its e-readers, which the company said has easier-to-read e-ink screens, language translation and text-to-speech capability. More advanced models also have Wi-Fi capability, color displays and touchscreens. The Independence and Seattle locations will be followed by around 20 more U.S. stores next year, said PocketBook-USA CEO Regina Sergiyenko. More info in the article. ...

At the Berlin IFA trade fair PocketBook will be introducing 5 new ereaders. Here's the rundown from their press release: Pro 602 and Pro 902: They differ from one another by screen size (6” and 9,7” accordingly) and by battery life (14 000 and 7 000 page turns accordingly). Technically both models are identical. They operate on Linux and they are equipped with WiFi and Bluetooth, both have a headphone connector. Internal memory capacity is 2 GB. Pro 603 and Pro 903: They operate on Linux and they are equipped with 3G, WiFi, Bluetooth, a touchscreen (Wacom technology) and...

Sometime this coming week, I should be receiving a Pocketbook 302 e-book reader to review—and Joanna, nee Ficbot, will be reviewing the smaller Pocketbook 360. We have mentioned Pocketbook a few times already; it is a Ukrainian/Taiwanese company that uses e-ink-based hardware from Netronix (the OEM that makes the Cybook, COOL-ER, and others) with its own Linux-based firmware. The 302 is Pocketbook’s most advanced model so far. It seems to be a pretty standard 6” e-ink reader (with the standard USB interface), with the addition of wifi and some apps including RSS, Sudoku, and—according to the Nate’s Ebook...

The Lewis Four has a comprehensive review of the PocketBook 360, a unit we don't hear too much about. Scott says: Flipping pages was absolutely fast, faster than a Kindle 2 and ran circles around a nook. I tried both unprotected and protected ePub files as well as Adobe PDF and in all cases, the page turning speed was quite impressive. As you'll see in the video below, it finished turning the page before the nook began to refresh it's screen, time and time again. ... To illustrate the difference in speed, I shot some video at 120 frames per second...

From Rita Toews: Read an E-Book Week is gearing up for the 2010 event - March 7 - 13th. An impressive list of participants includes Kobo, PocketBook E-Reader and BookGlutton. Also joining in the celebration of e-books is Smashwords, as well as Badosa.com, with a selection of e-books in Spanish, Catalan, English and French. The Wright State University Libraries of Ohio will also recognize the week. They have created a special template that librarians can download from the Read an E-Book Week website to produce lapel buttons for library staff. This year a section containing resource articles has been added to the site....

Dulin's eBooks is introducing 3 new ereaders. All use the standard Vizplex display. The 5 inch includes a built-in cover and accellerometer and, using Linux, will read FB2, FB2.zip, txt, pdf, rtf, html, prc, chm, djvu, doc, epub and tcr. Included are an rss reader, calendar, notes, chess, sudoku, solitaire, ship battle and clock programs. It goes for $240. Additionally there is a 6" reader going for $275 and another 6" reader with a Wacom digitizer, WiFi and a web browser, but that one is not available yet. Thanks to E-Reader-info for the heads-up....

Kindle Review has a summary, with comments, on seemingly all available, and rumored, ereaders. It makes an excellent reference. Covered are Dell, Asus, Sony, Kindle, Foxit, Neolux, Azbooka, Hanlin, BeBook, Cool-er, Samsung, Bookeen, Onyx, Hanlin, Pocketbook, txtr, Plastic Logic, Apple, Netronix, iRex, Fujitsu and Brother....

Screen size of the new PocketBook 360 is five inches, and  supposedly the price will be $300. But here’s the real news. A $400 model with a six-inch touch screen, Blue Tooth, GPRS and 3G will follow in October if all goes as planned. The more expensive model, at least, is to let you connect a keyboard via Blue Tooth. Possibilities for note-taking? What’s more there’ll be an RSS reader. Salvation for news junkies on the go? Check out the page-changing interfaces for both models shown in the videos. What do you think? Beyond the PocketBooks: The e-reader as a commodity At the macro level,...