For the thousandth time: perhaps the last bit of tech that genuinely interests me these days (besides video games, but that’s a slightly different category) is the electronic book. For someone with no real business reading book after book about, say, how bankers have ruined the world, or what makes a person violent, or what really brought down WCW, well, I do, and quite often. These books can be damn expensive, too, which is why I like the electronic book. I can hold so many books inside a book-sized device, and the books are often bought cheaper than what have paid for the “real” version. I save space and money. WINNAR.

All that said, today IREX (an offshoot of Philips) announced its very own e-book reader, one that works with the Barnes and Noble e-book store that I talked about a few weeks ago. You can read my reasonably live blog here, but this is a space for my slightly more fleshed out ideas and thoughts. And if you have no interest in reading said thoughts, then may I suggest you, I don’t know, read the latest Dave Meltzer column, or listen to Ron and Fez on Sirius XM.

Put simply, I like it, but maybe I’m biased toward these devices. It’s slightly larger than the Amazon Kindle 2—oh how I can’t wait to see the entirely too predictable “Kindle vs. IREX” articles in the coming days—and lets you do the same thing: read e-books. I think it’s safe to say that Barnes and Noble isn’t some two-bit Internet startup, so it’ll have plenty of support from the major publishers and book industry in general. You get the feeling that Barnes and Noble is to Microsoft as Amazon is to Apple: BN’s been around for ages, and is the de-facto place to buy books in the U S of A, while Amazon is the plucky little thorn in BN’s side, selling essentially the same product (books) in a perhaps more attractive package. Why leave the house when Amazon will ship every book found in its warehouse to your door, often saving you money in the process? (Of course, now that Apple has become something of a jerk, and Microsoft is earning street cred, this analogy may not hold for long.)

That is to say you won’t be hurting for content to put on your reader.

The screen is large (yes, larger than the Kindle 2’s), and is totally readable. I understand that “totally readable” is nothing less than subjective drivel, but what do you want? I could read it in the little display room it was displayed in. The screen is big enough that your not turning virtual pages every 30 words, and the font is legible. I haven’t used, or seen, the device outdoors in the brightness of the sun, so I can’t say whether or not the device would make a good beach pal. My guess is that is would, but who knows. (The Zune HD, as I’ve found out in the past few days, is pretty damn hard to read on a bright, sunny day. So have fun with that one, fanboys.)

Presumably we’ll get one before it’s official end-of-October release date

Well look at that: not only is the PS3 Slim a big success over in Japan, but it’s also doing pretty damn well here in the U.S. Sales were up some 300 percent in at Sony’s “top retailers,” comparing the the week it launched to the previous week.

And while a video game console is usually only as good as its latest hit (not necessarily true with the PS3, since it has a Blu-ray player), Sony also noted that the big titles people are looking forward to are: Final Fantasy XIII, God of War III, Assassin’s Creed II, Gran Turismo 5, and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. All sequels, you may have noticed.

For the thousandth time: how different things would be today had Sony launched the PS3 Slim back in 2006!

Please turn your attention to Rolling Stone, where an article about a blind, lonely phreaker is currently tearing up the charts. That is to say, it’s an article worth your time, and it’s certainly better than refreshing drudgereport.com for the thousandth time today.

The quick version, in case you can’t block off 15 minutes of your time to read the whole article, is that a blind kid named Matt was a great phreaker. He was handy with a telephone, able to recognize phone numbers by the tone alone, call up the phone company, impersonate a supervisor, and wreak havoc. He moonlighted as a swatter, someone who can call in a SWAT team to a person’s house in an act of revenge. (“You called me names? Have fun when the cops show up to your house, guns drawn, and drag your ass off to jail.) Lots of fun, in other words.

His progression was pretty predictable: the kid spent all day in his bedroom participating in telephone party lines; made friends, made enemies, swatted every now and then; helped take down someone for the FBI; got caught himself when he was over 18, and is now in prison in Dallas.

The lesson? Do all your phreaking before you turn 18.

Looks like Amazon just dropped the price of the Uncharted 160GB PS3 bundle, from $499 to $449. Of course, as per the rules and regulations of the Internet, we’re now required to speculate that this could maybe mean that Sony is looking to cut the price of the PS3 across the board.

And keep in mind this unofficial price cut comes on the same day that Sony discontinued the 80GB PS3 in Japan. It’s also the same day that the possibility of a PS3 Slim was, for the thousandth time, brought up. And it’s double-also a few days after we learned that the cost to produce the PS3 has dropped precipitously.

As it turns out, Uncharted is a mighty fine game, as I understand it, so it’s not a bad bundle in and of itself.

via GamesIndustry

So I just bought House of Cards: A Tale of Hubris and Wretched Excess on Wall Street, by William D. Cohen, from the just-launched Barnes and Noble e-book store. Long story short, it works pretty well, but there sure as heck isn’t a hint of polish on this thing.

So here’s how it worked. I went to barnesandnoble.com, typed in the name “William Cohen,” then clicked “Read Now,” indicating that I wanted to buy the e-book version. It downloaded to my Desktop (well, Downloads folder). Then I had to download and install the reader software.

Nothing too hard. From the reader software, I then navigated to the .pdb file. A little window popped up asking me to enter my name and credit card number to unlock the file. And now I’m reading about Wall Street’s excess!

I even tried reading the file offline and it worked fine. So if you’re trying to read an e-book on the commuter rail on your laptop, without any Internet access, you should be OK.

For the thousandth time, I don’t have an iPhone, nor do I have any intention to, so I couldn’t test that. But, as far as the Mac version goes, it’s not too different from reading a PDF. And that’s not a bad thing.