Google has announced that it is now indexing pages that are stored as scanned images rather than text. For many older books, whose electronic format might simply be the scanned page images, this could be a boon.  It will allow material inside the book to be located from a Google search where, until now, the contents have been pretty much hidden.

Google uses OCR (Optical Character Recognition) technology to do this and, while the resulting text will not be a perfect record of what’s on the page, Google says it now feels confident enough of its accuracy to launch this new service.

One limitation: it appears the only images Google is indexing at this stage are those that have been scanned into the PDF format. No mention of JPEG or other common image formats.

A new venture, Vodafone Books on Mobile, has launched in the UK with global ambitions to bring books to mobile phone users. The initial offering centres around audio books but the company behind it sees text-based ebooks as an expanding part of their offering as mobile screens improve.

The service is a partnership between Vodafone and GoSpoken. com, a website dedicated to putting books on mobiles co-founded and co-funded by Andy McNab, the soldier-turned novelist, and Tony Lynch, now the managing director of the company.

Using High-Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) technology, a three hour audio book can be downloaded to a user’s mobile phone in three minutes.

Read the full story, “Vodafone Books on Mobile has strategy for mobile books“, on TimesOnline.

Sony has added a second option to its ebook reader line-up with the announcement of the PRS 700, slated for late November release in the US. No word on any international releases yet.

Among the new features of the PRS 700 is a touch screen with a stylus and on-screen QWERTY keyboard, the ability to annotate books, search for phrases, turn pages with a swipe (new) or button press—and to do this more quickly and largely flicker-free apparently—and a built-in backlight for reading in low-light conditions. The new unit will cost about US$400, a premium of US$100 over the lower-spec PRS 505, and is 10 percent heavier at about 280g. Its internal storage is sufficient for about 350 books, twice the PRS 505’s internal storage capacity.

The one notable absence is wireless. Sony says it’s committed to providing a future wireless option but hasn’t committed to a date. Encouragingly, its reason for the delay is its desire to have a more open system with multiple choices of carrier, bookstores, etc. That will certainly win Sony industry and hopefully consumer plaudits. While rival Amazon already offers wireless, which scores positive ratings for its usabilit, it comes at the expense of openness and means you have to support Amazon for the access to commercial content.

Just as interesting as the hardware announcement was Sony’s indication, via announced organisational  changes, that it’s ready to treat the Reader as a serious new product opportunity and get behind it. A single new US-based division will now take over the product. Currently it’s run from Japan and several groups oversee different components. Among its new marketing initiatives, Sony plans to hire 1000 people to do in-store demos of the ebook readers to help consumers understand what the products do.

See original press release for Sony PRS-700.

Google has now officially launched its new Android-based mobile, an ‘iPhone killer’ or, certainly, a good enough debut to put some real excitement into the mobile phone sector.

Unlike the iPhone, Google’s Android is an open software platform that will be available to any hardware of application provider who wants to create products for it. The first phone comes from Taiwanese computer make HTC and, in its US and UK market launches, is tied to the T-Mobile cellphone network.

This review from the Industry Standard offers a good look at the phone and its features. While not quite an iPhone killer in its first incarnation, it looks like a pretty good debut with lots of potential for development and expansion through third party activity. Maybe the mobile world is about to see a repeat of the Windows vs Mac battle that’s been a feature of the PC world for decades - the Mac is the slickest, most beautiful implementation but Windows is ‘good enough’ and has a huge developer and hardware following.

As well as running on mobiles, Android will run on PCs, Macs and Linux, further extending the range of devices that are likely to appear with Android under the hood.

In the ebook space, no sign yet of the open source FBReaderfor Android. The project website is still showing the pre-release v 0.2 dated May 8 as the latest version.

The day your daily newspaper fix goes digital is now a step closer with the preview this week of an electronic paper aimed at the newspaper market.

Newspapers are likely to give a big boost to ebook publishers by getting ebook reader hardware into consumers’ hands. Once they’ve got the gadget, there’ll be plenty of demand to fill it up with other digital publications, including ebooks.

The new device, from a company called Plastic Logic, is slated for a 2009 release. It’s based on the same E-Ink technology that drives the screens of ebook readers such as Amazon’s Kindle and the Sony Reader. However, in keeping with the more expansive format that newshounds like, these readers are about A4 size, 2.5 times bigger than today’s paperback-size ebook readers. And it comes with wireless communication, another popular feature.

Newspapers will have one big advantage over book publishers in the initial stages of getting these devices into their readers’ hands. They’re already operating a subscription model that makes it financially more viable to sell or subsidise the hardware while it’s still quite expensive. If the advertising researchers and the circulation audit bureaus recognise these electronic subscribers in their numbers, it’s will further enhance its appeal to newspaper publishers. Pioneers in the digital magazine field, such as Zinio, have already done quite a bit of the preparatory work here. This is an important issue because advertising often contributes more than circulation revenue to publishers’ income.

Here’s a picture of the new device (left) compared to an Amazon Kindle (right) and Sony Reader (centre). For more information, check out this article.