Seemingly relegated to the also-ran position by Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple, and possibly even Kobo, Sony is still not giving up the e-reader fight just yet. Engadget reports on finding a new wi-fi-equipped Sony PRS-T1 e-reader for sale on a Dutch webpage. The device hews to the standard black, angular Sony style, and Engadget speculates that it might be Android-powered just based on what its control buttons look like. The device costs €165 (equivalent to $240 US) on that website, and will probably be a bit cheaper when and if it’s introduced here—but can it be cheap...

Futurebook has an article looking at a new Dutch e-book application called the "delay app". The idea behind this application is that if you know about how long you're going to be delayed, you can choose a story that should take approximately that length of time to read, ranging from 5 minutes to an hour. It's a pretty early attempt—it's currently only for the iPad and iPhone, and there's no way to add new content—but it is interesting for what it represents: a way to fit e-reading applications into the ways people use existing ones already. After all, many...

According to ebookmagazine, bol.com, an online book retailer, has launched new ereader and shopping apps on the iOS and Android platform. Both are aimed at Dutch readers. The Android app will come preloaded on all Galaxy Tablets and smartphones bol sells and the iOS app will be available on the iTunes store. txtr CEO Christophe Maire said the Dutch eBook market “is ahead of most other European countries” with more 1500 eBooks are downloaded per day. As with txtr’s own-label offering, the app allows readers to buy new titles and ‘side load’ existing ePub titles protected by Adobe’s DRM –...

Techdirt has a couple of pieces about digital piracy today. First, a Dutch court has ruled that it is actually advantageous to right-holders (at least in the Netherlands) that unauthorized download sites exist, because the downloads from those sites help to pump up the amount of the Dutch private copying levy. The Court of Appeal stated that the private copying exemption in the Dutch Copyright Act does not differentiate between copies made from legal or illegal sources. With reference to statements made by the Minister of Justice, the Court argued that the legitimate interest of...

According to the Bookseller, Thalia, Germany's largest bookseller, has launched its own ereader, the Oyo. Thalia has teamed up with Bertelsmann's Direct Group to distribute in France through Chapitre.com and is also working with Dutch bookseller Selexyz and the Polish chain Empik. Sales have gone well, with the unit's pre-orders exceeding expectations, according to Thalia's Managing Director. The unit has WiFi, a touchscreen and 2GB of memory. A 3G version is planned. The Oyo can access a Thalia-designed bookshop that has several hundred thousand German and English original titles. ...

This looks like an interesting new service for reading articles. Publishers set the prices and will receive 70% of the income. It has been launched in the Netherlands and they are working on an international version. Here's a short video: ...

From the press release: Baker & Taylor, Inc., ... is pleased to announce at Frankfurt Book Fair that it has entered into an agreement with Centraal Boekhuis, the leading Dutch book distributor and wholesaler, to distribute Dutch and Flemish content via Blio .... Through its strategic relationship with K-NFB Reading Technology, creator and developer of Blio, Baker & Taylor is responsible for distributing digital media content via Blio and its vast worldwide distribution network. Together, Baker & Taylor and Centraal Boekhuis will obtain the rights from Dutch and Belgian publishers to convert Dutch and Flemish titles for digital distribution via Blio. ...

From official Inside Google Books Blog: That team is from the National Library of the Netherlands, the Koninklijke Bibliotheek (KB), and as of today, we'll be working in partnership to add to the library's own extensive digitisation efforts. We'll be scanning more than 160,000 of its public domain books, and making this collection available globally via Google Books. The library will receive copies of the scans so that they can also be viewed via the library's website. And significantly for Europe, the library also plans to make the digitised works available via Europeana, Europe's cultural portal. The books we'll be scanning constitute...