Kobo eReader Touch Edition goes on sale in the US and Canada

At the moment, there are two very similar-looking e-readers with black-and-white Pearl E Ink touchscreens on the market, and now, the smaller and less expensive of the pair is up for grabs. The Kobo eReader Touch Edition went on sale today in the US and Canada for $129.99 (or $139.99 Canadian Dollars) at Best Buy, Borders, Walmart, and the Canadian bookseller Indigo. If you’ll recall, the 6-inch Kobo is thinner, lighter, and more compact than the Nook Touch, even though its screen is the same size. It also undercuts it by $10 but, there’s only 1GB of internal memory reserved for book storage. Could these trade-offs be worth the trimmer design? We’ll leave that to you and your wallet (and the guy who may or may not receive this as a last-minute Father’s Day gift).

Stylish, New Kobo eReader Touch Edition is Available in Canada and U.S. for Father’s Day and Graduation

TORONTO, June 17, 2011 /PRNewswire/ — Kobo, a global leader in eReading with 3.6 million users in more than 100 countries worldwide, today announced that the new Kobo eReader Touch Edition is available in stores and online at leading retailers including Indigo (www.indigo.ca), Best Buy (www.bestbuy.ca), Walmart (www.walmart.ca) and Borders (www.borders.com) with a MSRP of $129.99 USD and $139.99 CDN. In stores now for Father’s Day and graduation gifting, the Kobo Touch Edition is the perfect gift for dads, grads and those looking for summer reading fun. Kobo also offers a Father’s Day Gift Guide with other great gifting ideas at http://www.kobo.com/giftguide.

Beautiful New Design

The Kobo eReader Touch Edition offers a beautiful new design that provides the ultimate in reading comfort. Small and lightweight, it fits easily in a purse or jacket pocket for easy travel anywhere. The new Kobo eReader Touch Edition comes in selection of stylish colors; black, lilac, blue and silver – there is a color to suit everyone. A single, sleek home button allows for a clean design, free of buttons for a pure reading experience – books don’t have keyboards neither should an eReader.

Amazing New Touch Experience

Now with Infrared Touch Technology, eReading is easy, with the new touchscreen users can simply tap or swipe to turn the page, just like reading a real book. Kobo’s eReader Touch Edition offers a revolutionary new flicker-free touch screen experience, featuring the newest E Ink technology that is just like reading print on paper – glare-free and easy to read in bright sunlight. With an extended one-month battery life* and 2GB of onboard storage for 1,000 books** (expandable to 30,000 by adding a SD card), a user can carry access their entire library anytime, anyplace.

Kobo eReader Touch Edition features include:

Beautiful, new contemporary designThe latest Pearl 6″ E Ink screenSlimmer, lighter, and smaller – for easy travelA single home button that eliminates clutter so you can focus on readingFlicker-free page turns – enhanced technology enables flicker-free page turns for an uninterrupted reading experienceEasy-to-use and the ultimate in comfort – read for hours without strainHigh performance engine for ultra-fast page turning, low power consumptionLong battery life that delivers a month of reading on a single chargeReal Touch™ experience – use zForce™ infrared touch technology for tap/swipe Page turns, long press highlights and look up, zoom and rotateIntuitive browsing experience – navigate quickly through entire chapters or your entire libraryCustomizable fonts – two font styles and 12 font sizesBuild your shortlist – quickly create shortcut to favorite books or current readsEasily highlight passages within a bookRead PDFs – Download, access and read personal and professional documents. Zoom in and magnify images, drag your finger to explore the page. Double tap to fast zoom 200%Access more than 2.3 million eBook titles wirelessly or through USB connectionBrowse, buy and download eBooks in minutes with a few quick tapsRead almost any format – supports the most content of any eReaderGet started reading quickly with 15 free hand-picked previews of the hottest new booksGet free, two-week trials of the most popular newspapers and magazinesSupported file formats include: Books: EPUB, PDF and MOBI; Documents: PDF;Images: JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP and TIFF; Text: TXT, HTML and RTF; Comic Books: CBZ and CBRKobo offers 1 million FREE titlesBorrow and read eBooks for your local public libraryRead across devices and pick up from the last page read with Kobo’s synched bookmark technology

Earn Awards Just for Reading – with Reading Life

In addition, the new Kobo Touch Edition also includes Reading Life, Kobo’s social experience that lets users earn awards – and soon rewards – just for reading. Reading Life also allows users to discover their own reading stats, tracking pages read, minutes per reading session and an overview of completed books in their library. With Reading Life, readers can sync Android-enabled phones, iPhones, iPads or iPod Touches to experience Reading Life across devices.

The First International eReader

The Kobo eReader Touch will be the first eReader to be available in multiple languages and will offer a completely local experience, including content, recommendations and the Kobo store. Currently available in English, with French, German, Spanish, and Italian coming soon.

For more information visit http://www.kobo.com/touch. Full Kobo eReader Touch Edition technical specifications are available at http://www.kobo.com/touch_tech.

Razer ships $80 Orochi Black Chrome Edition mobile gaming mouse

It’s an Orochi, but with 100 percent more gloss. Typically, a new hue on an old critter wouldn’t do much for us, but given that Razer’s oh-so-diminutive Orochi still remains our favorite travel mouse to date (for gaming, at least), we couldn’t help but notice the striking young fellow above. The Orochi Black Chrome Edition is the exact same mouse that shipped last fall, but with a much more vivacious set of duds. Aside from being fully capable of sneaking into either of your front pockets, this Bluetooth-enabled unit also touts an ambidextrous design, a 4000DPI laser sensor (with tracking at up to 100 inches per second), on-the-fly sensitivity adjustments and a gold-plated USB connector for those who’d prefer to roll wired. If you’ve been looking to treat yourself, she’s in stock now for $79.99.