Propose an explanation: What's the "Q" on the Sony Reader?!

[Roy White]

I Think it IS a Q...

The reader was actually created by the Omnipotent yet slighty capricious character named "Q" from the Next Generation mythos.

Brilliant yet tweaked. He laughs at our pathetic attempts to use the impossible connect bookstore and smirks as we cuss the lack of folders on the menu!

Yet brilliantly done.

[dhbailey]

It's a lower case, poorly written cursive e, as I see it.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by chesstron

[Goods and Services IC 009. US 021 023 026 036 038. G & S: hand-held electronic book readers with liquid crystal displays for displaying non-fictional and fictional electronic publications; computer programs for displaying, editing and managing of non-fictional and fictional electronic publications; pre-recorded integrated circuit memory cards featuring non-fictional and fictional electronic publications, namely, books, magazines and articles of any and all subjects; pre-recorded optical discs featuring non-fictional and fictional electronic publications, namely, books, magazines and articles or any and all subjects; pre-recorded magneto-optical discs featuring non-fictional and fictional electronic publications, namely, books, magazines and articles of any and all subjects; pre-recorded magnetic tapes featuring non-fictional and fictional electronic publications, namely, books, magazines and articles of any and all subjects

Right... that's what "Alliterative Electronica" means... in lay-terms, of course...

[Azayzel]

Ok, I'm pretty sure I got it after a bit of Googling. It relates to the devision responsible for Material Productions, Sony has been labeling each of its divisions with short, easy to identify acronym(?). Here's the quote from a carbon-nanofibers abstract that lists each division. May be more to follow if I find more details; i.e., why start with AA and sequentially go up, why not use AM - Applied Materials, PP - Physical Product, etc.

Why they'd brand the front cover of the device with such a label, who's to say? I'd initially (and still think) that it's there to simply imply eReader, since that is what I had heard the device being originally called. Of course it could also be the initials of something in Japanese that has been written in romanji and stylized, since Sony is a Japanese company... maybe it's their hanko for the product?

Title:
Carbon nano-fiber growth on the anode during hydrogen DC arc-discharge
Authors:
Kajiura, Hisashi; Huang, Houjin; Tsutsui, Shigemitsu; Murakami, Yousuke; Miyakoshi, Mitsuaki
Affiliation:
AA(Materials Laboratories, Sony Corporation) AB(Materials Laboratories, Sony Corporation) AC(Materials Laboratories, Sony Corporation) AD(Technical Solutions Center, Sony Corporation) AE(Materials Laboratories, Sony Corporation)
Publication:
American Physical Society, Annual APS March Meeting 2003, March 3-7, 2003, , abstract #C1.029
Publication Date:
03/2003
Origin:
APS
Bibliographic Code:
2003APS..MAR.C1029K

Abstract
{snipped}

Source URL: http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2003APS..MAR.C1029K

[alex_d]

Yeah, definately looks like "ae."

Ok, so... what does "ae" stand for???

always ere... no, can't be it. "Absolutely Exceptional Reader". hmm... too verbose. "An e-Reader." No... too literal.



No, wait! I think i got it! It's a dipthong. ae=æ=I. So... It's an iReader... without the trademark infridgement! Fn sony, i knew it'd come to this...

[Bob Russell]

According to http://www.answers.com/topic/--549
in the card game Magic, "The Gathering uses Æ regularly in Æther, a form of energy between planes from which creatures are summoned."

So for the Sony Reader, it could represent a form of energy between planes (front screen and backplane) from which "characters" are summoned.

[mogui]

Originally Posted by Slava

I think it's stylish E - "E" Reader. It also looks like Greek "α" (Alpha). Sony released this year Alpha DSLR. The third possibility - it is "Q" - the leftover from Qualia products

Yes, Slava, I think you are onto something. In spite of the overwhelmingly and temptingly rational explanations found in this thread, I am going to swing with "Qualia", and thus the symbol "Q".

What could it mean? For each of us, the act of reading carries with it a subjective feeling that we value. It is possible that for each of us the feeling is different. Maybe none of us will ever experience the color green in exactly the same way either. Perhaps we will never know.

Qualia are the subjective components of experience that distinguish them. I assert that Sony is gently reminding us of the unique feeling of settling in with a good book.

There once was a man from Hemphelflieter,
Who settled down to view his Reader,
With his paraphernalia,
Immersed in his qualia,
He forgot himself almost completer!

[NatCh]

Others have expressed trouble seeing the A E thing, which I see fine, but I'm not seeing a Q at all.

In spite of that, the explanations fielded here for the Q thing do make some sense, except for minor detail: they specifically list a trademark that "consists of a stylized combination of the letters 'a' and 'e'." (both as chesstron found for us, and as the Reader's own manual notes), but there's no mention of any "Q." If that were what it was, I'd think they would have trademarked some sort of "Q" thing.

[mogui]

Perhaps if we quickly trademarked a "Q" . . .

Free ebooks forever anyone?

[NatCh]

Nah, they'd just stop making the things, and that's no good.

[SciFiReader]

Are you sure this isn't an "a"??
Still don't know what it would stand for, but could mean "alphabet" since all of those letters are used in the Reader.

[NatCh]

Originally Posted by SciFiReader

Are you sure this isn't an "a"??

Reasonably sure.

The same logic applies to just an a as to a Q -- if it were just an a they'd've trademarked the a rather than the a joined with e thing.

You can see in post 26 how they're both there.

[bkilian]

Originally Posted by Bob Russell

According to http://www.answers.com/topic/--549
in the card game Magic, "The Gathering uses Æ regularly in Æther, a form of energy between planes from which creatures are summoned."

So for the Sony Reader, it could represent a form of energy between planes (front screen and backplane) from which "characters" are summoned.

The ae sound, like in aether, is pronounced "ee", maybe it's just a neat way to trademark the "e" in eReader (which if you pronounced correctly, would use a short 'e', and sound like "ehReader", so aeReader is actually a more correct spelling for how we pronounce internet things with a leading 'e'.)

[NatCh]

That's really clever, bkilian, I like that one.

[Bob Russell]

Okay, I think it's time to stir up the pot again. Here's some more possibilities to consider, now that we know it's "AE" in some way.

Wikipedia says it's used as "Age at death".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%86

So maybe it's a play on the death of paper books, and the date is to be filled in later!?

Æ as abbreviation

Æ and æ were quite commonly used as abbreviations for Latin aetate or aetate sua meaning, roughly, "at the age of" N years (the implied construction being an ablative absolute); also the genitive aetatis suae, Nth year "of his/her age". In inscriptions and records, the most common use is for the age at death.

George William Russell, the fin de siècle Irish poet, signed himself Æ meaning "Æon".

Interestingly, Aeon was the name used for this cool phone...
http://www.engadgetmobile.com/2006/1...phone-concept/

Or from these vast lists, maybe it's "Analog Electronics" or paper "Alter Ego"...
http://www.acronymattic.com/results.aspx?q=AE
http://www.acronymfinder.com/af-query.asp?acronym=AE
http://acronyms.thefreedictionary.com/AE

Or if you look at this page,
http://www.aescir.net/bfi/bfi_lucid.htm
it says that Æ is "a symbol for 'consciousness'"

The word "Æther" is an ancient Alchemy term originally used to name the underlying conscious fabric of the universe. It provides one of the two roots for our new word. The first syllable of Æther (Æ, used as a symbol for "consciousness"), combined with "scir" (the root word of "science"), gives us Æ + scir: Æscir(tm), science of consciousness. The Æ character is pronounced the same as the "short e" in "best"; the word is pronounced "esher". Then we build on Æscir to get a full set of descriptive terms regarding our world-view and its applications.