If you’ve read reviews about the nook, the new Kindle competitor from Barnes & Noble, you may have heard that you can lend ebooks to friends. But don’t get suckered in by this claim. Barnes & Noble is conveniently leaving out some crucial information about how the process works, and it turns out the “loan your book” feature is a lot less useful than most bloggers and journalists are making it sound.

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Free iPod touch! Hooray!

In an effort to promote its online ebook store, the website shortcovers is holding an iPod touch giveaway. The best part for those of you who aren’t feeling spendy is you can enter up to 5 times without making a purchase. Note: I mistakenly wrote that the entry limit was 25 when I first posted this. My apologies.

Of course, any ebook purchase between now and September 27th will also count as one of your 5 entries.

[Info page on shortcovers iPod touch giveaway]

I’ve been using the shortcovers iPhone app this week to read Kathy Griffin’s new biography, “Official Book Club Selection”–which interestingly was about 50 cents cheaper than the Amazon version earlier this week when I bought it (it’s now about 50 cent more expensive, go figure)–and I’d give it a B-. It’s not a bad app once you get into your book and start reading it, but there are some definite bugs and usability quirks that need to be addressed. But of course, if you win an iPod touch, you can also install Stanza, Kindle, or the B&N Reader app on it and read from whatever store or private collection you like.

Lastly, one bonus of shortcovers files are that you can read them online via the shortcovers website, or on your Windows or Mac PC using Adobe’s Digital Editions software. They also work on Sony’s ereader devices. Sorry, Kindle owners, you’re out of luck.

Talk about price cuts–Amazon has slashed the price on refurbished Kindles to $150 (for 1st gen models) and $190 (for 2nd gen). Compared feature-by-feature, that puts them in a pretty sweet spot for people who want to snatch up a device this fall.

However, I MUST WARN YOU: before you buy a Kindle you have to make peace with a very serious aspect of book ownership. In particular, you have to give it up.

You see, you don’t “buy” books on the Kindle. If you actually read the user agreement, you’ll note that what you pay for when you click the “buy” button next to a title is a license to access Amazon’s rights-protected copy of that book. Yes, they let you download a copy of the file for backup, but what you own is a license. Not that copy.

(And if you’re buying via the iPhone app and you don’t physically own a Kindle, you can’t even download those backup copies.)

If for any reason Amazon decides to pull a book–and they’ve done it at least a few times in the past year–your license no longer works. After all, what would it be used on? The book is gone!

As long as you’re cool with that, it truly is a great little device and a great store. You just have to change your expectations of what “ownership” means when it comes to books.

If you can pay $50 to $100 more, consider a Sony Reader device. The books are still rights-managed and locked, but you actually get to own the files, which is an important distinction.

There’s no such thing as a two-paned e-ink device in the pipeline at Asustek. Give up the dream, dear reader. Today the company provided information on upcoming product launches, and yet  they were fairly quiet about ereaders. In fact, the one bit of ereader info in the DigiTimes article is attributed to unnamed “industry sources,” and not from Asus’ CEO Jerry Shen:

According to industry sources, the Eee Reader line will include 6-inch and 9-inch models, both featuring a grayscale touchscreen display.

In other words, more of the same.

If you’ve seen the working demo model of the Asus two-screen device, you can see that it’s more closely aligned with netbooks and notebooks, only without a physical keyboard. Asus has always said that their dual-screen device would have color displays and be able to play video, which isn’t a capability with any current e-ink technology that I know of.  Pixel Qi is doing some awesome stuff with their specialized screens, and I’m crossing my fingers that Asus will be using them in their dual-screen device (which actually would make them a new sort of ereader/PC hybrid)–but I have no reason to believe they will.

But my point is that the new ereaders coming soon from Asus are very likely going to be nearly identical in technology as current devices. What we can hope for, in terms of improvements, are lower price points and an open approach to formats.

[Asustek aims to ship 1 million ultra-thin notebooks by end of 2009] [DigiTimes via liliputing]

Let’s say you’ve got $200-500 burning a hole in your pocket and you’re ready to make the leap into dedicated ebook devices. Now you’re wondering, which is the right choice?

The short answer: WAIT. For the love of reading, wait.

There are two companies–Sony and ASUS–that are releasing new devices in the next 6 months that may significantly alter the space, and introduce some real benefits to weigh in your decision. If you can hold out, you may benefit from either a drop in prices or a boost in features. Try to hold out. Update: Here’s more info on what ASUS is planning to drop later this year–it doesn’t look like it’s going to be anything groundbreaking, but it might be cheaper. You should still wait if you can.

But if you can’t? Well, there are a lot of devices to choose from, and all of them have limitations. The best of the lot are the Amazon Kindle and the Sony Reader, but both have real problems when it comes to digital rights management (DRM) and the thorny concept of “ownership” of the books you buy.

The website Chamber 4 has assembled a catalogue of all most ebook devices currently available, as well as a handful of iPhone/iPod Touch apps, and listed their strengths and weaknesses. It’s one of the best side-by-side guides I’ve seen online so far. Skim through it and you’ll likely be in a much better position to make a rational choice on the device (or app) that’s right for you.

But I still think you should wait.

“eReader Comparison” [Chamber 4]
(Image: lumaxart)