At a press event hosted by the New York Public Library, Sony put their recently announced Reader hardware on display and provided an overview of its recent announcements. But the event was more than simply a recap of past announcements. The library location provided context for a program, run through Sony's e-book store, which will allow users to identify their local public library borrow books through its site. There is also new hardware: by the holidays, Sony plans on having a 3G-enabled Reader with a tall seven-inch screen.

The upcoming hardware is called the Reader Daily Edition, which implies partnerships with news outlets. However, aside from the price and 3G capabilities, almost nothing was mentioned about the device. The Sony executive that ran his company's portion of the program (Steve Haber, president of its Digital Reading Business Division) did little more than wave the hardware in front of the audience; it wasn't even clear if it could actually be turned on. Still, it's clear that Sony is gearing up for a long-term battle with not only the Kindle, but the upcoming device (devices?) from Plastic Logic.

For now, however, Sony is attempting to leverage content as its competitive edge. The company had already announced that it was adopting the EPUB format, which is an XML-based standard for storing text that can be reflowed for different screen formats. As a result of that decision, the Sony library management software would be able to handle books from other resellers; Sony announced that over 200 members of the American Bookseller's Association would be selling compatible books that use Adobe's DRM service.

Sony is already offering access to public domain works from Google Books as well, and we talked briefly with Trip Adler from Scribd, who said his company's self-published works could easily be put on the reader via either PDF or EPUB. So it's clear that Sony is taking the opposite approach from Amazon, focusing on selling hardware that can display content from just about anywhere.

That "anywhere" will apparently include libraries. According to Sony's Haber, the new version of its online book store will allow users to enter their ZIP code and determine whether the local library offers electronic versions of its books. These books can be downloaded, at which point they'll have a 21-day expiration date—no late fees, as Haber was happy to point out. The New York Public Library's representative announced that his organization would be taking part in the service. That's a rather significant announcement, given that he said that the NYPL's website was the second-most visited online library, behind only the Library of Congress.

The new library software will have both Mac and PC versions, opening up the software to a wider audience. It's supposed to be available immediately, but neither of the software updates—the updated e-book store with library finder or the 3.0 version of the desktop library management software—were available as we prepared this story.

Functional hardware

Sony was showing off the Reader hardware (Pocket and Touch) editions that will be going on sale before the summer is over, and we had a chance to test some of it out. The Pocket Edition is way too large to fit in a typical pocket, but it is the smallest hardware we've seen yet. It's not touchscreen, but it does have nicely laid out controls that provide easier access to menu and list items than Amazon's offering. In some ways, the hardware controls are superior to the touchscreen—there's no ambiguity about a button press, so if the display is unresponsive (a common event with eInk screens), you know that it's probably just a matter of waiting.

That wasn't clear when using some features on the Touch Edition. Some people using the Touch were attempting to add notes to it, and it was difficult to interpret their failures, as it wasn't clear whether the touches weren't registering, they were performing the wrong action, or the hardware was just being unresponsive. Sony's also changed the software slightly from its previous touchscreen version, which bewildered some experienced users.

Nevertheless, for the most part, the software was well laid out, and it was easy to navigate on screen. The keyboard was arranged in a standard, offset-QWERTY format, which I found far easier to use than Amazon's vertical arrangement. The screen registered keystrokes with a small click when depressed, providing tactile feedback; the largest problem seemed to be that the touches sometimes registered at a slightly different position than the keys appeared on screen, a consequence of the depth difference between the touch and display hardware.

Notes can be exported back to the desktop software with an image of the text they were associated with, so even if the underlying library book expires, the effort isn't lost; maybe Sony didn't want to be targeted with a class action lawsuit, such as the one that Amazon was hit with.

Sony also announced that it would have the Readers on display at 8500 retail locations, giving potential users a chance to try before buying.

In contrast to a lot of areas, where the company seems to be flailing, it's obvious that Sony has a clear strategy here: offer a variety of hardware with different features and price points, and give its owners the option of obtaining material from a wide variety of sources, including their own documents. Making that a profitable strategy is going to be challenging, however, as the Readers will be competing with Amazon's Kindle, new arrivals on the market, and (perhaps most significantly) smartphones and netbooks that can easily handle reading material.