E Ink and Hanvon have announced the first color e-ink e-book reader, scheduled for release in China in March. The new color paper will be capable of displaying thousands of colors and 16 levels of greyscale. As with old-fashioned black-and-white e-ink, it will only use power to change the display, not to maintain it. The New York Times notes that Hanvon is the largest e-reader seller in China, with a 78% share of the market. In a country with as many potential customers as China, that’s a pretty good position to be in. The device will cost about $440,...

If you want kids to grow up addicted to reading, hook ‘em while they’re young. The Wall Street Journal reports (behind paywall; bypass by clicking through from Google News instead) that Barnes & Noble is launching a new e-reader initiative called Nook Kids, for children between the ages of 3 and 8. The project is going to include approximately 12,000 chapter books as of last night, 100 picture books by mid-November, and 30 “enhanced” picture books by early 2011. It will be readable online at BarnesandNoble.com, and via an app for iOS and other devices by the end of the...

The New York Times looked at the current state of color e-reader technology on Sunday, with an article discussing the current potential solutions (LCD, e-ink, Mirasol) and the ways in which they are currently or could soon be put to use. Meanwhile, Kindle Review suggests that a new color Kindle could be coming soon. The major e-reader companies—Amazon and Barnes & Noble at this point—have made no announcements concerning color yet, but a number of the smaller players such as Sharper Image and Pandigital are coming out with color LCD readers (presumably to try to capitalize on the...

Jeff Bezos was forthcoming about some aspects of the Kindle’s near future at Amazon’s annual shareholder meeting on Tuesday. He said that the Kindle will continue to be focused on reading, not become a multipurpose device like the iPad. He also said that a color kindle is a long way off—color e-ink is not ready for prime-time, and the color LCD reading experience is not as good as e-ink. (Though all the people buying books on the iPad already seem to have few problems with it.) It’s odd Bezos should be so dismissive of LCD given that...