Today in the New York Times

There are two interesting articles in the business section of the New York Times today. The first describes a new e-reader device that is is being tested in France to view French newspapers over the device. The article Reading Device Enlisted to Help French Papers describes a e-reader which has a menu of several newspapers and with one click one can select the newspaper they want to read.

Interesting points in this article include the fact that the device and trial are sponsored by France Telecom and the content will include advertisements as a way of increasing revenue. The article points out that it is difficult to effectively track the viewership of on-line ads through such a device. The article also mentions that the e-reader will eventually be able to access other content such as books although it does not mention any active partnerships.

The device seems to lack a keyboard and one tester mentioned that they would really like to be able to cut and paste articles but that did not seem possible at this point with the device. They are not disclosing the cost yet and the article seem to indicate that France Telecom was considering selling the device for a lower price if the customer bought a contract. Elsewhere in the article, it was suggested that the price may be about $800 which would make it more expensive than other readers such as the Kindle.

Another thing that struck me about the article, although not related to e-readers was the percentage of newspaper readers in various countries. In the US and France, that percentage was in the 40's (48% in the US and 43% in France) but the readership in Germany of newspapers is 73%. One must ask why are they so much more popular in Germany.

Overall, very interesting that this is being developed and marketed by a telecommunications provider rinstead of a content provider such as Amazon with the Kindle.

The other interesting article was a column by David Carr, Hey Friend, Do I Know You? about the increasing use of Facebook for professional users. Carr describes "meeting" and "friending" other reporters online and using Facebook to develop his online network. Sounds like Facebook is moving on from merely being a social, social networking tool, to a business social networking tool.