In case you missed Giz Explains the other day—which lays out the entire ebook format and DRM landscape—the iPad will support DRM-free ePub books, in case you’ve got some on your Sony Reader or B&N Nook. If you’ve got a Kindle on the other hand, you’re SOL, since it uses its very own ebook format. [ Apple ] More

“We use the epub format: It is the most popular open book format in the world.” That’s how Steve Jobs announced the iPad. And wow, that sounds like all the ebooks you own will just work on anything. Um, no. More

For all the fuss made at its launch back in August , Sony’s Reader Daily Edition has all but dropped off the map in terms of interest. Remember, Sony’s response to the Kindle gave us a 7-inch touchscreen device with free AT&T 3G data for a street price of $399. Now we’ve got a proper in-depth review of the thing. On the plus side, the interface is simple and easy to understand right out of the box with nice, oversized icons suitable for your meat digit manipulation. Unfortunately, the Daily Reader was also sluggish

The silicon inside 90 percent of ereaders out there is made by Freescale, and their new chip, the i.MX508 —based on a ARM Cortex A8 ( sorta like the iPad !)—will make them cheaper, and page turns 4x faster. The chip’s a custom SoC that integrates the functions from multiple chips into one—specifically, the E-Ink hardware display controller—along with that Cortex A8, which gives the readers enough juice to turn pages in half a second, versus the two seconds that’s typical now. As the first chip expressly designed for ereaders, it also strips out unnecessary features, so the net result for the ereader is that it’s $30 cheaper a unit. Freescale wagers that with the cost savings, it could drive ereaders to under $150 by the end of the year.

What’s this we hear? Is it the distant thunder of sanity emanating from Acer’s Taiwanese headquarters? The Taipei Times is reporting this morning Acer chairman Wang Jeng-tang’s announcement that his company will not be releasing an ebook reader “for now.” It was only a month ago that Jeng-tang and his crew were telling the world about the aggressive inroads they were going to make into the Amazon-dominated e-reader market, but it appears some second-guessing has been taking place in those Taipei boardrooms, which has led to the scrapping of the earlier plans. Considering the absolute glut of interchangeable E Ink devices out there, we have to agree with Acer’s perspective; you either have to come up with something unique — like the Nook , the Edge , or the Adam — or just focus your energies elsewhere.

Remember the SV-100B “Document Viewer” from this time last year? It’s okay, we had to look it up too. With its $1,500 MSRP and exclusive release in Japan, it hardly made waves over here. We’re expecting the SV-70 to have a similarly ripple-free reception in the States, since it too probably isn’t coming here, but there’s no telling how Japanese businesspeople will take to it, ditching the Bluetooth module that gave its predecessor a bit of charm, and even the lowly 2GB microSD card that was formerly included on the way to a lower (but still high) $1,100 MSRP. Other specs remain the same, including a relatively expansive 9.7-inch, 1200 x 825 display, 100MB of internal memory, microSD expansion slot, and 83 hours worth of battery life. Why, that’s plenty of time to read even the lengthiest of pseudo-inspirational corporate memos.

Panasonic’s duo of SDXC cards should be shipping out this month, which means that you’ll be needing a new card reader on the double. Of course, it’s not like you’re really about to pay upwards of $450 for 32GB of wicked fast Secure Digital storage (or $600 for the 64 gigger), but hey, it’s hard to knock Elecom for being proactive. Said outfit has just released what looks to be the first multicard readers to openly support SDXC , with the MR-A001BK handling ten formats and the MR-A002 supporting a grand total of 32 — some of which haven’t been used regularly since Vikings ruled the north. Both are expected to ship in Japan later this month, with pricing set for

Yinlips is jumping on the e-reader bandwagon with a 6-inch, touchscreen E Ink reader all its own. While we don’t have full specs for this think-looking little guy yet, we do know that it supports a wide array of file formats, supposedly gets around 20 hours of battery life, and that it’s got an FM radio with recording functions. There’s no word on pricing, other specs, or even the official name of this product yet (possibly just ‘E-Book’?), so make your suggestions in the comments, and we’ll try to get word to Yinlips for you. Yinlips busts out a 6-inch, E Ink-boasting e-reader originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 06 Feb 2010 14:25:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds

The announcement that Asus was getting into the eBook reader game was a bit of a surprise , but not an unwelcome one. Now that new hands-on pics have hit Flickr, it looks like our initial enthusiasm was founded. What’s most alluring about the DR-950 is still the thinness—just .35-inches despite the 9-inch, 1024×768 display. It’s also one of the first mass market black and white eBook reader’s I’ve seen that doesn’t use e-ink.

We’re still patiently waiting for Endless Ideas to launch a 3G-equipped e-reader to compete with the masses, but ’til then, we suppose we’ll have to be satisfied with the WiFi-toting BeBook Neo. Boasting a 532MHz Freescale CPU, Vizplex display (800 x 600 resolution), 512MB of internal storage, 3.5mm headphone jack, USB 2.0 connectivity and an SD expansion slot, the 6-inch, February-bound Neo brings to the table very little that we haven’t seen elsewhere — in fact, it’s a dead ringer for Onyx International’s Boox . Naturally, you’ll find support for a multitude of file formats (ePUB, PDF, HTML, JPG, PNG, etc.), and the internal battery is good for 7,000 page turns on a full charge. The company is also playing up the unit’s ability to access a wide variety of third-party ebook venues, which gives you the option of purchasing books from any given outlet rather than a predefined store.