Events at CES dominated ebook news this week as companies took advantage of the accompanying media attention to showcase their current and future products designed with ereading in mind. New reading devices were one of the biggest draws – notable announcements included Hearst Corp’s Skiff, the Plastic Logic QUE, the enTourage eDGe, Spring Design’s Alex and new models from Samsung and COOL-ER. Another important segment was a new class of display technologies from several companies including Qualcomm, Pixel Qi and Liquavista, all threatening to end E Ink’s dominance by offering full color and video capabilities while still being viewable outdoors and consuming much less power than LCDs. Pixel Qi’s screen tech has already been incorporated in Notion Ink’s Adam (slated for release this summer), and there are rumors about the next Kindle using Qualcomm’s Mirasol display. Engadget has a more detailed roundup of ereaders at CES here.

Blio, the new ereading software platform we told you about last week, launched their website this week. When it launches in February, the Blio reader will provide 3-D page turns, text-to-speech capabilities and a touch-enabled interface along with the access to 1.26 million ebooks, over a million of which appear to be free public domain ebooks. Blio will only run on Windows initially.

Borders announced a partnership with Spring Design to integrate their Kobo-powered ebook store with Spring Design’s Alex ereader later this year. Spring Design announced another partnership with Google that will not only allow Alex users to download and read free Google Books on the Android-based device but also allow direct access to ebooks on the Google Books website using the device’s built-in wireless capabilities.

DMC Worldwide announced plans to launch a new ’social ereading platform’ called Copia, consisting of a lineup of ereaders backed by an online store with integration with popular social network sites. The platform will go into private beta this month and is expected to launch this summer.

NewspaperDirect, an aggregator of news publications from around the world made over 1400 periodicals available on the Sony Reader and the Kindle this week. Registered users of NewspaperDirect-owned PressDisplay.com will be able to download available publications to their ereaders for a monthly fee (ranging from $10 to $30) or for a per-item charge of $0.99. The Kindle World blog has a hands-on review of their service. Calibre, a popular free ebook management application also enables users to download full news articles from over 300 sources to supported ebook readers including the Sony Reader and the Kindle.

The City of Cincinnati announced plans to purchase 10 Kindle DX units for the mayor and members of the city council, citing an expected $25,000 in annual savings due to reduced printing expenses. The plan was criticized by several officials including some members of the city council who called the purchase ‘ridiculous’ and ‘hysterical’.

That’s it for ebooks this week! We leave you with pictures of the Guardian, a new waterproof Kindle case from M-Edge.

Happy New Year to everyone!  As expected, not a lot of ebook news to cover from the last week of 2009, but a few things deserve mention:

We got a first look at Blio, cross-platform ereading software by inventor Ray Kurzweil. From initial reports, it appears that Blio ebooks will be PDF files with a new DRM scheme. The software will offer rich multimedia capabilities, making it a good choice for ereading on laptops and tablets but rendering it incompatible with eink devices like the Kindle. Blio will probably have Microsoft’s weight behind it, and will be unveiled at the CES on January 7.

The number of Kindle books available on Amazon.com crossed 400,000 and Amazon launched Bestseller Archives for Kindle books. The new feature allows users to look up Kindle bestsellers for any day, month or year dating back to November 2007 when the first Kindle was launched.

A January 26 unveiling of the Apple Tablet seemed even more certain this week as tablet rumors continued to increase. Apple has been talking to textbook publishers and newspapers, indicating special ebook reading features in the new device.

We expect to have a lot more to share next week as ebook industry announcements are made at the CES and elsewhere. Once again, wishing all of you a wonderful 2010!

Popular Science Fiction and Fantasy author Ursula Le Guin resigned from the Author’s Guild, protesting the Guild’s role in the controversial Google Books Settlement. The settlement will make millions of out-of-print books that are still under copyright available as ebooks through Google’s scanning efforts, but will also grant Google the license to scan and sell ‘orphan’ works – books under copyright for which rights holders can not be identified or located. The Guild released a letter on its website regretting Ms Guin’s decision and defending its stance on the settlement.

Users began posting the first reviews of Sony’ new Daily Edition ereader, which features a 7-inch touchscreen and wireless access and retails for $400. While initial feedback was generally positive, there were concerns about the reader’s inability to access content outside Sony’s online ebook store. The Daily Edition is yet another attempt by Sony to gain market share against the Kindle, which allows users to download DRM-free ebooks from anywhere on the web using the built-in browser.

Amazon announced that daily sales of Kindle Books topped physical book sales for the first time ever on December 25. The Kindle was Amazon’s most-gifted item this holiday season, and continues to occupy the top spot on its electronics best-seller list. In another indicator of rapidly rising ebook popularity, O’Reilly Media posted statistics showing ebooks outselling physical books 3:1 on oreilly.com. While several O’Reilly ebooks are also available in the Kindle store, ebook purchases on oreilly.com are DRM-free and can be downloaded in multiple formats.

Borders CEO Ron Marshall said in an interview that Borders is not planning to build an ereading device like rivals Amazon and B&N, primarily because of the ‘cost and time’ it would take to do so. Borders owns a stake in Kobo, who have indicated plans to launch a dedicated reading device in 2010.

Amazon released KindleGen – a command line utility to convert HTML and ePub ebooks to the Kindle/Mobipocket format. The new utility runs on both Windows and Linux, and replaces Mobigen by Mobipocket, who were acquired by Amazon in 2005. A new version of Calibre, a popular open source utility to manage and convert ebooks was also released this week.

So that’s it for our final post of the year. We have a lot lined up for Inkmesh in 2010, as we hope to continue to make it easier for you to find your next great eread. Stay tuned, and have a wonderful new year!

At Inkmesh we follow developments in the ebook industry with rabid passion, and given how quickly the space is evolving, there’s always something new to discuss. So we thought it would be a good idea to summarize every week’s most important ebook news items on this blog, and starting today, we will have a post titled ‘Ebooks This Week’ every Sunday. Here is this week’s edition:

Stephen Covey granted Amazon exclusive ebook rights to two of his books, including the top-selling ‘Seven Habits of Highly Effective People’. In return for the exclusive deal that lasts a year, Amazon promised to market his ebooks aggressively and give him a much higher percentage of ebook sales. Simon & Schuster, the print publisher for these books, declined to comment on the deal but asserted ownership of ebook rights to all titles in their catalog. In a related development, Random House claimed retroactive ebook rights in a letter to literary agents, and were promptly snubbed by the Authors Guild.

Canadian ebook retailer Shortcovers relaunched as Kobo and announced a CAD $16 million investment from Borders USA and founding and majority shareholder Indigo, among others. Borders simultaneously announced plans to launch a Kobo-powerd ebookstore on borders.com next year, with a new eink device possibly in the works. Borders currently sells Sony Readers in their retail stores.

IDPF, the trade & standards association for digital publishing and the developer of the ePub standard announced election results for Board of Director positions including the role of president. George Kerscher, secretary general of the DAISY consortium, replaces Steve Potash of Overdrive as the new president. The new board consists of executives from several key organizations including Adobe, Random House, Harlequin, Internet Archive and O’Reilly Media. Amazon is notably missing from the IDPF’s current member list.

Google put up the first set of publications guidelines for Google Editions – the ebook store they plan to launch in 2010. Like Amazon, Google ‘reserved the right to sell a book at a price discounted from its list price’, indicating their plan to compete with Amazon and others on ebook prices. Google Editions purchases will be tied to a Google account and will be accessible through a web browser which will cache a copy of the ebook for offline reading. It is not clear if dedicated reading devices will be supported. Google will also offer the choice of securing ebooks with Adobe’s ACS4 DRM.

Amazon released the Kindle iPhone application in more than 60 countries, including Canada and the United Kingdom. The application was previously available only in the United States. A new version of Stanza, a popular iPhone reading application, was also made available in the app store this week. Lexcycle, the company behind Stanza, was acquired by Amazon earlier this year.

Sony announced a partnership with News Corp to make the Wall Street Journal available on the Sony Reader, including the new Daily Edition which features wireless access and a touch screen. Additionally, a daily summary of news events will be available exclusively on Sony Readers. The Wall Street Journal is already available on the Kindle, but News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch has previously expressed dissatisfaction with Amazon’s revenue splits for digital publications and their policy of not sharing subscriber names with content partners. Sony also announced partnerships with other content partners including the New York Times and Financial Times.

So that’s it for the first edition of Ebooks This Week. We would love to hear your comments below, on Twitter or on Facebook. Happy Holidays everyone!