The US$100 discount on the Kindles may be Amazon's way of clearing out the first-gen to make room for the now all-but-certain second-gen this fall. Business Week says that Amazon's hired a guy from frog design for the next version, which will have a better screen, thinner body, fewer UI annoyances and (obviously) be better looking. The price point is supposedly somewhere around the US$249-US$299 range, which might be right near the sweet spot that mainstreamers will start to pick one up as an impulse buy. That is, if mainstreamers ever really read anything. Students, on the other hand, would be a gigantic market for a Kindle Education Edition. [Business Week]

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If you buy a regular old book, CD or DVD, you can turn around and loan it to a friend, or sell it again. The right to pass it along is called the "first sale" doctrine. Digital books, music and movies are a different story though. Four students at Columbia Law School's Science and Technology Law Review looked at the particular issue of reselling and copying e-books downloaded to Amazon's Kindle or the Sony Reader, and came up with answers to a fundamental question: Are you buying a crippled licence to intellectual property when you download, or are you buying an honest-to-God book?

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Wired has compared the features of the new Amazon Kindle and the Sony Reader. They don't give a definitive verdict yet, but point out the $400 Kindle's biggest drawback: lack of "format neutrality." Labeled as a "portable DRM bookstore", the Kindle won't be able to read open formats like Acrobat PDF. We agree. You will be the judge but, while the $300 Sony Reader may not have always-on Internet connectivity, looking at the specs it seems like a better option. At least on paper:

AU: I take back my 'I want one' from yesterday. Having seen the fact they want to charge you for everything, even your own files, I'm thinking this is going to fail. It's a less than elegant device design, too. Hmmm. -SB

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A literary tech site has spotted an alleged update to Sony's not-terribly-popular Reader. The PRS-505 doubles the memory capacity of the original PRS-500—it can now hold 160 books rather than 80. The new Reader also has an improved E-Ink screen, comes in a choice of colours and has a much smarter button layout and interface. But will any of this fussing actually help sell Readers?

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While Apacer hasn't given up trying to make iPod competitors, its time is better spent creating frilly stuff, as evidenced by this pretty little Mega Steno USB card reader. Whether you dig its frilly etchings on its case is a matter of taste, but at least someone is trying to make these prosaic devices a little prettier.

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The purpose behind Hitachi's nefarious brain-machine interface has finally been revealed! The company's planning to make the most badass interactive train set ever.

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