But it will come at a price: The device, shown below (click on image to enlarge), will retail in December for $399. That’s $100 more than the current price of Amazon’s Kindle 2. And that price point is almost certain to drop in coming months.

Sony wouldn’t let reporters handle the Daily, and didn’t put it through its paces, either. So hard to get a sense of much here. But here’s a video I shot of Sony exec Steve Haber holding the machine while talking up its virtues — which include free access to books from your public library.

EXTRA, EXTRA: SONY’S DAILY EDITION ROUNDS OUT NEW LINE OF DIGITAL READERS

Wireless 3G Reader Extends Sony’s Commitment to Bring
Open Digital Reading to Mass Audience

NEW YORK, August 25, 2009 Delivering on its promise to give consumers a variety of choices, Sony today announced the third member of its new Reader family–the Reader Daily Edition™, a highly-anticipated wireless model with 3G connectivity. The Daily Edition caps its new line of Reader products, joining the Reader Pocket Edition™ and the Reader Touch Edition™ which were announced earlier this month.
The Reader Pocket Edition and the Reader Touch Edition are available immediately, and the Reader Daily Edition will be available this December in time for the holidays at SonyStyle stores and SonyStyle.com.
“We firmly believe consumers should have choice in every aspect of their digital reading experience,” said Steve Haber, president of Sony’s Digital Reading Business Division. “Today, we take another large stride to deliver on that promise. We now have the most affordable devices on the market, the greatest access to free and affordable eBooks through The eBook Store from Sony and our affiliated ecosystem, and now round out our Reader offering with a wireless device that lets consumer purchase and download content on the go.”
A Family of Three Readers
The Reader Pocket Edition sports a five-inch electronic paper display packaged in a stylish chassis and is available in a variety of colors, including navy blue, rose and silver. It is available for the ground-breaking price of $199, making it the most affordable dedicated reading device on the market.
The Reader Touch Edition features a responsive, menu-driven six-inch touch screen panel that enables quick, intuitive navigation, page turning, highlighting and note taking with the swipe of a finger or by using the included stylus pen. It comes in red, black or silver and retails for about $299.
The Reader Daily Edition gives consumers wireless access via AT&T’s 3G mobile broadband network to Sony’s eBook store from just about anywhere in the U.S. Book lovers will be able to browse, purchase and download books as well as select newspapers and magazines when and where they want. There are no monthly fees or transaction charges for the basic wireless connectivity and users still have the option to side load personal documents or content from other compatible sites via USB.
The seven-inch wide, touch screen display provides for intuitive navigation and comfortable layout of content, including newspapers and magazines, whether you’re reading in portrait or landscape orientation. In portrait mode, about 30-35 lines of text are visible, making the experience very similar to that of a printed paperback book. A high contrast ratio with 16 levels of grayscale ensures that text and images are crisp and easy to read. The Daily Edition also boasts an attractive aluminum body with an integrated cover for durability. It has enough internal memory to hold more than one thousand standard eBooks and expansion slots for memory cards to hold even more. It will sell for about $399.
All three models feature Sony’s award-winning industrial design and an E Ink® Vizplex™ electronic paper display that emulates the look of ink on paper. Sony’s eBook Library software 3.0, which now includes support for many Apple® Macintosh® computers as well as PCs, makes it easy to transfer and read any Adobe® PDF (with reflow capability), EPUB, Microsoft® Word®, BBeB® files, or other text file formats on the Reader.
Access to Even More Content at the eBook Store by Sony
In addition to announcing a new family of Readers, Sony has also made several changes and improvements to its eBook Store to provide better access to an even greater variety of ebooks. Earlier this summer Sony announced the availability of more than one million free public domain books from Google, and the company made new releases and New York Times bestseller titles available for $9.99.
Today also marks the launch of Sony’s Library Finder application. Sony, working with OverDrive (www.overdrive.com), the leading global digital distributor of eBooks and to libraries, will now offer visitors to the eBook Store by Sony easy access to their local library’s collection of eBooks. Thousands of libraries in the OverDrive network offer eBooks optimized for the Sony Reader, and visitors can now find these libraries by typing their zip code into the Library Finder. Through the selected library’s download website, visitors can check out eBooks with a valid library card, download them to a PC and transfer to their Reader. At the end of the library’s lending period, eBooks simply expire, so there are never any late fees.
The Reader Pocket and Touch Editions, as well as available accessories such as AC adaptors, cases and covers with reading lights, are available now at SonyStyle.com and SonyStyle stores. Book lovers interested in trying out a Reader in person will also be able to find them for sale at Best Buy, BJs, Borders, Sam’s Club, Staples, Target, Toys“R”Us, Wal-Mart and other authorized retailers nationwide.

DIGITAL READING ECOSYSTEM EXPANDS FOR SONY’S READER

NEW YORK, August 25, 2009 Further evidence of the broad support for its open approach to digital reading, Sony today announced relationships with a variety of traditional and digital publishers who provide content in industry standard formats to create a universe of reading material compatible with the Reader.
All of these sites will offer content in the EPUB format, the International Digital Publishing Forum’s (IDPF) XML-based standard format for reflowable digital books and publications. EPUB has gained acceptance among major trade book publishers with dozens of publishers already producing the majority of their eBooks using the standard. Sony recently announced that the company is transitioning its entire content library to the EPUB format, giving consumers the freedom to purchase or download free eBooks from the eBook Store by Sony and read them on any EPUB-compatible device.
“From the beginning, we have said that an open format means more choice for consumers,” said Steve Haber, president of Sony’s Digital Reading Business Division. “Now, working with other industry leaders, we can provide a device that is compatible with the widest selection of content available. Readers can shop around for what interests them rather than be locked into one store.”
Sony’s eBook Store already provides access to more than one million public domain Google Books in EPUB format and, starting today, Sony’s Library Finder application will go live. Library Finder offers visitors to the eBook Store by Sony easy access to their local library’s collection of eBooks. Thousands of libraries offer eBooks optimized for the Sony Reader, and visitors can now find these libraries by typing their zip code into the Library Finder. Through the selected library’s download website, visitors can check out eBooks with a valid library card, download them to a PC and transfer to their Reader.
Other sites offering EPUB content include:
• Independent Bookstores–More than 200 participating members of the American Booksellers Association–including stores such as Tattered Cover (Denver, CO) and Vroman’s Bookstore (Pasadena, CA)–will have the ability to sell e-content to consumers beginning this fall. The stores using ABA’s IndieCommerce platform will offer content in the EPUB format and protected by Adobe’s Content Server 4 (ACS4) digital rights management, which is compatible with Sony e-Reader products. In addition, plans are underway to make Sony’s e-Reader devices available for purchase from independent bookstores in time for this holiday season. ABA is a not-for-profit trade organization devoted to meeting the needs of its core members–independently owned bookstores with storefront locations–through education, information dissemination, business products and services, and advocacy.
·        BooksOnBoard–BooksOnBoard, the largest independent eBook bookseller and member of both the ABA and IDPF, has been a staunch supporter of the EPUB standard through its founder Bob Livolsi. BooksOnBoard was the first eBook site to offer the EPUB standard to its burgeoning customer base and has sold more EPUB formatted books than any other online bookstore. BooksOnBoard believes that the EPUB standard significantly benefits the publisher, authors and most importantly the consumer.
·        NetGalley–NetGalley is an innovative and easy-to-use online service and connection point for book publishers, reviewers, media, librarians, booksellers, bloggers and educators. NetGalley delivers digital galleys and promotional materials to professional readers and helps promote new and upcoming titles. Starting today, NetGalley will support the Reader with the ability to download a protected PDF file and this fall the company will offer digital galleys in EPUB format.
• Powell’s Books and Powells.com–Powell’s Books is the largest independent bookseller in the world.  Innovative since its inception in 1971, it was one of the first booksellers online (beginning in 1994), and one of the first to sell eBooks for reading devices (the Rocket eBook) in 1999. Powell’s offers EPUB content for a wide range of compatible devices, including the Sony line.  Powell’s is an important player in the open access world of eBooks, where titles are provided by a wide range of publishers in a competitive retail environment, read on a range of devices, and downloaded and owned by millions of people around the world.

[CORRECTION: My assertion about NPD's unit sales data below is incorrect: The tracking service counts 12 digital download singles as the equivalent of one CD. That makes Apple's share of the market that much more impressive, since singles make up the majority of iTunes sales.]

Ready to toss dirt on the old, unloved CD? You’re going to have to wait a while. Compact discs are increasingly hard to find (at least in physical stores), but someone out there keeps buying them: The ancient format still makes up the majority of music sales in the U.S.

Here are the data for the first half of the year, via the NPD Group consumer-tracking outfit: CDs made up 65 percent of the music market, while paid digital downloads accounted for 35 percent. The digital share has increased from 20 percent two years ago, and Apple’s iTunes (AAPL) alone makes up 25 percent of overall sales*, so you’re going to hear lots of proclamations about Steve Jobs’s ascent to the to top of the music industry.

But hold off on that, just a bit. Because those numbers are skewed even more in favor of the CD than they appear at first glance: They’re measuring unit sales, not dollars. And given that the majority of digital sales are in the single format (i.e., a dollar or so a pop), that means CDs (at $10 or so a pop) still account for the vast majority of music revenue.

Which is why the industry is still tied to CDs, even though no one you know buys them anymore. And it explains why the industry is working on two separate digital formats (dubbed “Cocktail” when sold by Apple, and CMX when sold by anyone else) designed to induce buyers to pay for CD-like bundles.

It won’t work. At best, they’ll convince some digital album buyers to upgrade, but the music business is once again a singles business, and it’s going to remain that way. But you can’t blame the industry for trying.

By the way, there are decent odds you’ll hear about Cocktail at Apple’s September event, which Digital Daily’s John Paczkowski says is scheduled for Sept. 9. Mark your calendar.

*If you’re keeping track: Wal-Mart (WMT) and Target (TGT) trail Apple in the overall market. And iTunes still dominates the digital download market with a 69 percent share, while Amazon (AMZN) is a distant second with eight percent.

Now Twitter, which has suffered multiple security breaches in the past, has been punctured again. Someone has gotten into the personal Web services accounts of co-founder Evan Williams, his wife and at least one other Twitter employee, and used that access to make off with a pile of confidential company documents. He’s now distributing them on the Web, and TechCrunch promises to publish many of them.

The media ethics colloquy is well underway and will go on for a while (Boomtown’s Kara Swisher is holding her session, appropriately enough, via Twitter). Beyond that, I’m pretty sure Twitter is going to be okay when this dies down.

Based on Williams’s description of the attack (see the bottom of this post), as well as both TechCrunch’s and the hacker’s descriptions of what got pilfered, this looks roughly akin to having your underwear drawer rifled: Embarrassing, but no one’s really going to be surprised about what’s in there.

The hack certainly will be worrisome for people who are using, or thinking about using, any kind of “cloud computing,” whereby work data/documents are stored on servers accessed via the Web. Google (GOOG) in particular is going to get some scrutiny, both because it’s Google and because it appears that a lot of this stuff was stolen after the hacker used Google’s “password recovery” system to root around. UPDATE: Twitter is now going out of its way to say that the attack isn’t Google’s fault, but Twitter’s fault for using passwords that are easy to guess.

Albert Wenger, a partner at Twitter investor Union Square Ventures, says in a post that his shop is currently considering moving its systems to Gmail and Google Docs, but notes the big problem: “The threat of access by a third party increases exponentially with the move to the cloud, because the machines that now contain the documents and the links to those documents (as sent by email) are accessible to the Internet at large.”

But cloud computing isn’t going away, so someone’s going to need to figure out how to make security better, yet still practical. There’s a reason no one follows the standard advice about having a different, impossible-to-remember password for every account you have. Wenger takes a stab at it in post–he suggests something tethered to a mobile phone. But whoever figures it out is going to have a lot of fans.

Williams’s description of the hack, via TechCrunch:

Yes, we did suffer an attack a few weeks ago and are familiar with this list of stuff. This is unrelated to the hack of twitter where someone gained access to user’s accounts. This had nothing to do with the security of twitter.com, and there were no user accounts compromised here.

Some notes:

- He did not actually gain access to my @ev Twitter account (or any Twitter accounts) nor any administrative functions of the site.
- There is also no evidence that he gained access to my email. There was one administrative employee who’s email was compromised, as was my wife’s Gmail account, which is where he got access to some of my credit cards and other information.
- He also successfully targeted a couple other employees personal accounts (Amazon, AT&T, Paypal…)

In general, most of the sensitive information was personal rather than company-related. Obviously, this was highly distressing to myself, my wife, and other Twitter employees who were attacked. It was a good lesson for us that we are being targeted because we work for Twitter. We have taken extra steps to increase our security, but we know we can never be entirely comfortable with what we share via email.

[Image credit: Wikimedia Commons]

But just in case you weren’t convinced, here’s some new data from NPD Group:

• CD sales dropped by 19 percent last year.
• The number of U.S. CD buyers  dropped by 17 million last year.
• The number of music buyers dropped by 13 million last year.

Only the last number is noteworthy. Because while NPD says that digital music downloads increased by 29 percent in the last year–good for Apple (APPL)–the research firm also notes that many Americans have simply stopped paying for recorded music, period.

Up until last fall, music optimists would argue that this was OK, because people were more engaged with music than ever. Semi-true cliche: The music labels are in trouble. The music business is doing just fine.

And indeed, NPD throws out a series of stats which show that more people are listening to free music provided by the likes of Pandora, iMeem and News Corp.’s (NWS) MySpace Music. But all of the sites that are providing free music are having a very hard time figuring out how to make a business out of it. It’s quite likely that we’ll see some of them fold or sell out in the next few months. Stay tuned.

Note: News Corp. owns Dow Jones, which owns this site.

Amazon’s data-free claim that it posted its “best ever” holiday season this month has gotten a deservedly skeptical reception. But here’s one vote in favor of Jeff Bezos’s e-commerce giant: A customer satisfaction poll that singles out just Amazon and Netflix for praise.

Forsee Results says that Amazon (AMZN) and Netflix (NFLX) were the clear winners in its annual survey of Web shoppers. And Amazon was the only company in Forsee’s Top 5 that got higher rankings this year than it did in 2007.

Even mighty Apple (AAPL), whose customers were generally fairly happy with their online shopping experience, saw its ranking drop one point over the last year. Here’s a list of results (click to enlarge):

You can spin this stuff any way that you’d like: It’s sort of interesting, for instance, that brick-and-mortar chains like Wal-Mart (WMT), Target (TGT) and Staples (SPLS) improved their scores. And not that surprising that Circuit City (CC), which is in the midst of a Chapter 11 filing, fared poorly. Click here for the full report (ignore the part about this being a U.K. survey). But the real report cards–tallies of what customers actually spent at the stores in the last two months–are just getting finalized now.

Latest example: Borders Group (BGP), the struggling book chain, has cut its music inventory by 30 percent in the last year, the company said. Music now occupies about seven percent of its floorspace, and the space it used to take up has been given over to higher-margin products like children’s books.

Borders makes up a relatively small portion of U.S. music sales, but most big retailers have been doing the same thing for more than a year. If you don’t believe me, try to find the CD section next time you visit a Target (TGT) or Best Buy (BBY) this month.

The big stores will embrace individual albums–if they have an exclusive, like Best Buy’s deal with Guns N’ Roses, or Wal-Mart’s (WMT) recent AC/DC promotion. (That’s Best Buy’s GNR promotion, pictured above. Lonely, isn’t it?) But beyond that, they are basically telling music shoppers, who bought some $7 billion worth of discs last year, to take their business elsewhere.

[Image Credit: Idolator]