Sony Reader -- Ask your questions to the Sony team

[CCDMan]

Great Questions! I am anxious to see the answers.
My principal questions were already asked.

I would like to know just what form the Sony connect DRM will take.
How many copies, to how many devices, what devices, any time restrictions, etc.?

And, of course, it is essential that we have the exact date and time (Universal Time, preferably to the second) that we can buy one. <G>

I already have a long list of both DRM and non-DRM books that I plan to put on the reader. I would hate to have to buy those on paper!

[Gameboy70]

I'm more interested in E Ink for web content than books, per se. Will the Sony Reader support HTML natively, or only through conversion?

[Jaapjan]

Is Sony indeed planning on providing the file format on their ebooks to let users make their own tools for converting books?

(and thus create infinite life for the reader instead of being dependant.)

[dan11238]

Sony mentions conversion of some file formats to BBeB using supplied software will their suppllied software be compatiable with Mac systems and will downloads in general be Mac compatable?

[exvaxman]

Is it true that the use of Kinoma technology was the reason for the major delay - like it was for the Connect software?

[scotty1024]

The existing BBeBook format does not support the font magnifier feature very well. The pages in a BBeBook need to be paginated in the file but when the font magnifier is used the pagination is not corrected by the book reader, magnified pages break in unexpected places.

Also, the existing format causes a constant struggle between compression efficiency and battery life on the Librie. The file format only allows compression at the text string level, which often means paragraph by paragraph level compression. This results in low compression efficiency for the eBook. But if one sacrifices page layout and uses large runs of text (and depends upon the Librie to paginate the text onto the display) to gain compression efficiency the battery life is negatively impacted to a serious extent.

Will the new Sony Reader and BBeB format support extensions to address these two issues?

Will the new Sony Reader have a more durable case? My existing Librie has ceased to function at 15 months as the pearlescent plastic has chipped out to the point that the main circuit board has failed (case became too flexible.)

Will the new Sony Reader support the enhanced charger specification supported by Motorola and Blackberry that allows supplying up to 1.5A of power through the USB cable? Since the battery is not swappable, the ability to rapidly recharge it would be a key feature.

Will the Sony Reader be more supportive of the monochromatic fast redraw mode? I've tried many times to use this feature on the Librie but found it nearly impossible to stay in this mode since so many areas in the Librie forced me back into 4 level mode in order to display content.

Will the Sony Reader have an accelerometer to allow flipping the device to turn pages? This would be a huge improvement in the ergonomics of page turning since there would no longer be any requirement to hold the unit in any particular way to allow users to press buttons.

So far Sony has only announced an economic incentive of 20% discount off list for content. What further incentives is Sony planning on introducing to offset the expense of the Reader device? A user would need to purchase roughly 130 titles with a list price of $15 in order to "break even" on the Reader expense at the 20% discount. Doesn't Sony Marketing see this as an issue for uptake of this product into the market?

Will the Sony Reader come with some form of strategy games or will these be offered via the Connect store at a later date? The eInk panel won't support action games but solitare/Go/Backgammon/Checkers/Chess/Risk et al would work quite well.

Will the Sony Reader continue to use the reset button of the Librie or will it employ the slide-and-hoid-the-power-switch-for-five-seconds most Notebooks utilize? I can't recount the number of times my Librie was useless because it froze and no piece of steel small enough to fit in the reset hole left me with out its services. Whereas in all cases (until it finally died) it would have responded to holding the power switch and been back up and running.

Will the Sony Reader support a PIN or some other means of securing confidential content on a per-title basis? I've used my Librie to carry around sensitive material but I've always needed to carefully monitor the location of the Librie during periods where it held such content. It would be very useful if the device could treat sensitive material with a PIN and auto-time out visibility of said content e.g. if forgotten screen would blank.

Will the Sony Reader BBeB format support a true italic font (rather than simply a slanted version of the existing font) in response to the embedded italic command?

Will the Sony Reader have support for GIS data? It would be very nice if the Sony Reader had a GIS viewer so maps could be loaded into it. Extra credit if the GIS viewer allowed Map data to be overlaid with GIS sets via standard XML files.

Will the Sony Reader have support for tabular data? It would be very nice if the Sony Reader had a tabular data viewer so XLS/CSV/TSV data could be loaded and viewed. In a meeting not everyone can hand you an SD card with a PDF of the data...

[Kosst Amojan]

When are all of our questions going to be sent out?

[Laurens]

When will the BBeB specs be published?

[eBookFan]

So many questions to ask! It's so exciting to think about this coming on the market soon!

> What is the target market for the Sony Reader, and why is this device going to be desired by consumers?

> Will the platform and api be open for other developers to write different reader software?

> What led to the decision to support SD cards rather than creating a "memory stick only" device? In the past, Sony has been pretty dogmatic about forcing use of their proprietary media.

> Background activity and power consumption on devices can be significant so page turns doesn't seem to be the best real life estimate of battery life. Approximately, what sort of real-life battery life should be expected in terms of hours spent reading?

> How long does it take to recharge the battery?

> What will come "in the box" with it?

> What formats will be supported natively and what formats will require conversion? What would be the natural steps to take a text or html or pdf document and make it "pleasant" on the reader? (Not perfect layout, but at least reasonable text flow and good margins and nice reading font.)

> What sorts of purchase points will there be? Borders has been publicized as one major reseller. Will they be part of the rollout?

> When can we buy on in the US?!!! Elsewhere?

> There had been previous estimates of an earlier release date... what are the remaining hurdles to make it available? What's the hold up?

> What kind of DRM will the Sony store use, and can we change devices in the future and still read the purchased material? It doesn't seem that very many ebook sellers are here very long despite high hopes. Are there any guarantees to consumers about the books being some way accessible or convertible if the format becomes unsupported? (Sony has pretty much abandoned previous customers in the case of Clie, for example. Seems like the company just turned and ran and never looked back. It's a little frightening to think the same thing might happen for the Sony Reader after buying a boatload of books.)

> What are some of the challenges in adding content to the Connect store? Is it mostly a matter of contract negotiations, or is it an expensive and difficult technical proposition to prepare a book for the Sony Reader?

> The page turn buttons seem backwards.. at least in comparison to what we are used to with a pda. Is it possible to change the settings and reverse the direction, so that the lower button moves to the next page and the upper button moves back a page?

> Is the battery user-replaceable?

> How do bookmarks work? For text documents are there any thoughts of making synchronization available with any Windows ebook readers or Palm/PocketPC readers so the book can be read on multiple platforms at the same time without having to search for you place over and over?

> Does the device work as a USB host so USB storage devices can be attached?

> How long does it take to boot up when turned on, or turn a page or find text or load a book?

> Can it be reset if the device hangs? How?

> Can pages be turned remotely, say with a standard foot pedal switch? (That would allow it to be a sheet music reader for musicians!)

> Can any public RSS feed be read, or just certain formats? How about Atom feeds, RSS2, etc? Or is it only feeds from a Sony provided list of prepared feeds?

> What sort of tradeoffs were made in the design of this product? These things are always hard to resolve because you want to include everything nice, but it's just not practical. Can you give us an idea of some of the thinking that went into making it turn out the way it did?

> Any stories you can share about decisions that were made, or human interest stories about the team members while the development work was being done?

> Where does the team exist? One building? Distributed? How many people work on it? Any team members already at work on designing a new and improved model that we can upgrade to in the future!?

Thanks so much for considering our questions. We are very hungry for more info about it!

[Alexander Turcic]

Wonderful participation, everyone!

I am going to collect the questions now, sort them out, and then send them over to the Sony folks.

[Kosst Amojan]

Did they mention when they would get back to us?

[Alexander Turcic]

They told us yesterday they'd get in touch with us shortly with as many answers as possible.

[ultim8fury]

fantastic. I look forward to the results.

[CCDMan]

.....with as many answers as possible.

I seriously hope these are honest answers to these honest questions and not
the all-too-common-these-days marketing department BS.
They should realize that superficial answers will not play well with this crowd.....

We shall see......

[Snappy!]

Hmmm ... It's been a week since the start of the thread ... and still no replies. Hope they answer the questions promptly and not let them pile up.