Sony Reader unveiled their new e-book reader yesterday. It's now got wireless connectivity with AT&T, it can shift between vertical and landscape modes, and it's got touchscreen capability. This one ups the e-book stakes even higher, seeing the Kindle's newspaper-and-magazine reading options and raising it with a touchscreen. This pretty much ensures that the next Kindle will have touchscreen capability, too, and I'd be willing to bet the next Kindle will have a color screen, too, just to up the ante.

Moreover—and this is really smart—the new Sony Reader will partner with independent bookstores to sell e-books and it will have "a feature called Library Finder that will allow users to borrow e-books from their local libraries, for free." The Kindle will never have that one. But the real question is: Why just local libraries? Well, the obvious answer is: Because if you could borrow e-books from every library, there wouldn't be much need to buy books anymore. But someone's gonna do it, and then you'll have the rough equivalent of state-sanctioned book piracy.