The Reading Edge Podcast

Regina Sergiyenko of Pocketbook USA

This episode contains three more interviews from the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas earlier this month.

First up is Laura Wu, a product manager for Netronix, Inc., the Taiwan-based maker of eReaders for Interead, Bookeen, and Pocketbook USA, among others.  Laura confirmed reports that Netronix plans to sell a million eReaders in 2010.

Phil Wood, marketing director at Interead, said the U.K.-based company relies on Netronix for some of its products, but not all of them.

Regina Sergiyenko, regional director in the US for the Ukraine-based Pocketbook, emphasized the fact that her company’s product is available in many languages.

Click here to download this episode.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

This is an interview Darlene and I did on Friday, January 8, 2010, at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas with Laurent Picard, co-founder of the Paris-based Bookeen, creator of the Cybook series of eReaders, including the recently released Opus.

Laurent also showed us a prototype of the Horizon, due out in April, which will have a screen not based on eInk technology but instead provided by SiPix. Note: Be forewarned that the SiPix link will open with an irritating New Agey audio file that you will have to turn off by clicking on a note icon at the lower left if you want to explore their site in peace.

Bookeen’s original eBook, the Cybook Generation One, made its debut in 2007 just after the first eInk-screened Sony Reader but a couple of weeks ahead of the original Kindle. Laurent revealed a tidbit I’d never heard before, namely that the Kindle was code-named Fiona.  Thank goodness they brought in some branding wizards to dream up an alternative to that–otherwise we’d now all be talking about the Fiona-sphere.

I hope you’ll enjoy this conversation with Laurent Picard as much as we did.  And my apologies to him and to other French speakers for my brief forays into their beautiful language.

Click here to download this episode.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Otis Gates is a Sony Reader product expert for Sony Electronics.  Darlene and I interviewed him on January 9, 2010, at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas.  Is His job is to translate the eReader’s specifications and capabilities into usable form for, say, a Best Buy sales rep demonstrating a Daily Edition to a customer.

Otis’s familiarity with the Daily Edition made him a great person to talk to about this promising new entry into the eBook sector.  Walt Mossberg of The Wall Street Journal has just posted an even-handed review of the Daily Edition, calling it “a big boost for Sony” that “enables them to be in the game in a bigger way than they have been,” mainly because it is Sony’s first wireless eReader.

My own Daily Edition will arrive here in Denver next week, and I’m looking forward to putting it through its paces.  I’m not thrilled that it comes with a stylus that I will probably lose, but the touch screen looks intriguing and I’ll be interested to see how much of an advantage the Daily Edition’s seven-inch diagonal measurement gives it over the six-inch diagonal of the Kindle.

Click here to download this episode.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download