A month ago we wrote a piece (The e-Book Revolution) that claimed that Amazon sold 240,000 kindles. Citigroup has since estimated that number up to 380,000 sold. We debated whether the E-Book in Kindle like formats would be widely used. The numbers are encouraging. This month iRex is going to launch it’s next generation e-reader called Reader 1000. Sony is rumoured to be launching its next generation e-reader in October and a company called Plastic Logic recently demo’ed an e-reader aimed at business users.

Don’t be surprised if all the new readers will sport E-Ink technologies. It is the only way of building a thin, durable device that has extended battery life. It’s rumoured that Amazon’s Kindle will still carry the best price point ($360) by a longshot. Some of the new features we are looking to play with are larger screen sizes and interactive touch screens.

The question still remains, do we want to carry a second or third device? Are these dedicated e-readers that much of an improvement to warrant their purchase? I’ve just downloaded an e-book to my iPhone.  Who knew that I was carrying an an e-reader in my pocket all along?

For those interested in a beta trial of reading longer documents (perhaps an e-book) email me suhail@spreedinc.com.

We have been very busy here at Spreed getting everything ready for the launch of our next product as well as incorporating all of the fantastic feedback that we have received from our users. We sent out a survey 3 weeks ago now and the response has been fantastic; so thank you!

We released a new version of Spreed:News Mobile. Some of the most notable features are:

-The incorporation of a popular news tab. This will help everyone stay on top of what our users thinks is big news. As this feature becomes more mature we will be adding in the ability to add friends and only see the news they marked as popular.

-The ability to share articles on Facebook.

-The ability to go below 300 wpm. We have received a lot of requests from our mobile users who wish to view the news at lower that 300 wpm. We have added this in for now although we do not recommend this as it reduces the astonishing levels of comprehension achieved when using spreed at speeds higher than 300 wpm.

Thanks are in order, yet again, for our users for making this product so fantastic. You all rock!