Until relatively recently, buying music meant going in to a shop and picking up a CD. Now, all you need is a computer, an internet connection and an MP3 player to instantly download any song you like.

The revolution in the music industry has been driven in part by the success of devices such as Apple’s iPod, which made it easy to download music from iTunes and transfer it on to a device.

Amazon has been leading the charge with its Kindle range in the US, which have won plaudits from the likes of Oprah Winfrey. A large-screen Kindle, dubbed the DX, was launched last month, and is aimed at students who can load electronic textbooks on to a single portable device.

None the less, for some people, the dog-eared paperback cannot be bettered. Many ebook readers are expensive, and getting novels on to the device can be tricky for the less technically minded.

That’s where a British company is hoping to change things. Interead, based appropriately in Reading, has launched a range of colourful, easy-to-use readers that might just persuade people to start dabbling with electronic books.

At £189, its Cool-er is substantially cheaper than Sony’s Reader, which costs around £220. It’s also available in lots of funky colours, and even has its own bookstore, meaning purchasing books and loading them on to the device is as easy as dragging and dropping a file on your computer.

The Cool-er looks rather like a giant iPod, is available in many of the same stylish shades as Apple’s music players, and has a familiar click wheel to flick through pages and navigate menus. It’s thinner than an iPhone, and, at 178g, it’s half the weight of many other ebooks, including Amazon’s Kindle.

Neil Jones, Interead’s founder, believes this portability could be the key to its success: “We have created a reader that is light enough to fit into a jacket or a purse and attractive enough to be reading it publicly.”

Jones says the idea for the Cool-er was born from the frustrating experience of getting a book published. He found himself caught up in endless bureaucracy, and believed not only that there must be a quicker way for authors to get work published, but also that there was a more elegant way to deliver that content to readers.

It took just six months to take the Cool-er from drawing board to production line, but Jones believes it meets the needs of ”normal’’ people, not gadget fiends. “Cool-er has been designed to fit the requirements of a reader. They want it to be portable, light, to fit in a jacket pocket or purse, and they want it to do what they want to do in a simple manner.”

This, he confidently says, could be the “iPod moment that ebook readers have been waiting for,” while he believes that over the next year, his company will be able to build a significant user base that will see behind only Amazon’s Kindle and Sony’s Reader in terms of sales.

In time, says Jones, Cool-ers will boast wi-fi, so that users can download books straight on to the device, rather than transferring them by USB or memory card. Likewise, the price, too, should drop.

In fact, he believes the Cool-er could be the start of a new chapter for the publishing industry. “This is not just about technology,” says Neil Jones. “It’s about being a lifestyle accessory.” Well, it worked for the iPod; who can blame publishers for taking a leaf out of Apple’s book?

Cool-er ebook reader: is this the iPod for books?

Rumors of an iPhone on the Verizon Wireless network have been stirred before, and last week received a fresh turn. The Wall Street Journal, interviewing Verizon’s chief executive Ivan Seidenberg, said Verizon was likely to get access to the iPhone in the coming years, as it converts its 3G network over to 4G, or LTE.

Microsoft is a major player in software for cellphones, but it is working hard to develop a new device that will rival Apple’s.

Verizon, meanwhile, is pushing on several fronts to extend its smart-phone offerings and compete with AT&T Inc., which is the iPhone’s exclusive U.S. carrier.

In a recent interview, Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg declined to comment on whether Verizon and Microsoft were planning an iPhone-like device.

Microsoft’s project, which is code-named “Pink,” aims to produce a phone that will extend the tech giant’s Windows Mobile operating system, adding new software capabilities. It would also likely include Microsoft’s new Windows Marketplace for Mobile, a store for cellphone downloads along the lines of Apple’s App Store, these people said.

The device, according to published reports, will be a kind of miniature tablet computer. Like the iPhone, it would be able to access the Internet over cell phone data networks, allowing users to surf the Web just about anywhere. And analysts expect that, like the iconic smart-phone, the retail price would be subsidized by wireless carriers.

Those rumors have heated up amid the growth of the netbook market. Recent reports suggest that Apple will announce at least two new devices, including an updated iPhone, at its June developer conference in San Francisco. It’s unclear whether Apple will also unveil the new, larger touch-screen device.

Netbooks are small, low-cost laptops that are the fastest-growing category of PCs. They’ve become popular replacements for standard notebooks for travelers and families looking for a second or third computer in the house.

Netbooks sell for about $500 retail, but wireless providers offer them for as little as $100 upfront. They market them like cell phones, selling them below cost and making up for it with a monthly subscription fee from consumers.

Although McAdam would not say what the two companies discussed, two people familiar with the subject said talks covered the new smaller iPhone-like device under development. Representatives of Verizon Wireless and Apple declined to comment. AT&T spokesman Mark Siegel says: “We are delighted with the iPhone and our partnership with Apple.” The company declined to make an executive available.

AT&T by the way, has been the only carrier of Apple’s iPhone in the U.S., adding more than 7 million subscribers as a result of the arrangement; the company is reportedly in talks with Apple to extend the partnership, due to end as soon as next year. An agreement to distribute Apple communication devices via Verizon Wireless may cost AT&T some of the business it has gained as the sole Apple carrier. Even if Verizon Wireless and Apple fail to strike a deal, talks between them increase pressure on AT&T to accept partnership terms favorable to Apple.

Now it’s not surprising for Apple to launch a smaller and cheaper version of it’s popular products, The ipod with it’s ipod shuffle, the Mac with Mac mini, Why not iPhone? as competitors trying to get a slice of the market with similar products. launching a cheaper version of it’s product would surely make it harder for the competitors.

We got a chance to sit down with the application’s principal engineer before the announcement was made at CTIA 2009, to see Skype for iPhone do its thing.

While most of the features aren’t too surprising–Skype does want to maintain some consistency across its mobile applications, after all–there are a few capabilities that are notably missing, and a few iPhone-only perks that are refreshing to see.

In terms of navigation, Skype’s VoIP app for iPhone looks more like your traditional iPhone app than it does Skype 4.0 for Windows. For many who already prefer Apple’s sleek interface archetype, that’s a triumph, but those who enjoy Skype’s branding may feel disappointed.

Skype’s screens are well organized and use the iPhone’s ability to add filters, for instance, to sort your contacts alphabetically, or by who’s online. There’s chatting as well, though Skype’s flagship feature is its VoIP calling that’s free to other Skype users and an inexpensive per-minute fee to landlines.

Calls on Skype for iPhone work only if you’re in range of a Wi-Fi network, so your call quality will in part be at the mercy and strength of wireless networks nearby–calls will not work over the cell phone network on the iPhone (but chatting will). Assuming your connection is solid, you can dial a number or quickly call a contacts stored in your address book.

iPod Touch users will need earphones with an embedded mic to talk. During a call, you can mute the line, go on hold, or put the call on speakerphone. In the My Info window, you can follow a link to buy more SkypeOut credit online.

Taking a photo from within Skype to serve as your avatar image, or pulling a picture in from the camera roll are two iPhone-only features that makes use of the phone’s hardware attributes.

Another imperfect, but still neat, feature is the ability to accept incoming conference calls. While you won’t be able to initiate a call, we’re told, you will be able to jump on one if a buddy invites you in. We hope the next version includes placing conference calls from the iPhone.

Skype left a few more skills out of its maiden iPhone voyage. SMS, setting up a conference calling group, purchasing SkypeOut credit directly, and being able to field a second incoming Skype call are a few. File transferring and getting Skype voicemail native on the phone are two more. We expect to see at least two of these added in the next version, but we’ll hope for more.

Skype versus the competition

Here’s the big question on our minds: will Skype’s iPhone app replace competitors like Nimbuzz and Fring, which focus on cross-network IM but also include VoIP calls with Skype pals even though they’ve been available for the iPhone for months?

Kurt Thywissen, the principal engineer for Skype for iPhone, thinks so. He says what the other apps use is a workaround that requires them to channel calls through a server and transcode audio, resulting in poorer-quality calls than Skype can do in its own app.

He may be right, but those who IM more than they vocalize probably won’t ditch the likes of Fring too soon. They might, however, let Skype handle the calls and let another app take care of the multinetwork chatting.

Skype for iPhone — it’s official

Yahoo Mobile will launch at the end of March in a form downloadable to any phone with a Web browser and from May in custom versions for hundreds of smartphones.

“There is a growing number of consumers out there who are not Apple iPhone users but want a rich starting experience,” Marco Boerries, the head of Yahoo’s mobile division, told Reuters in an interview.

Yahoo will also launch a version of Yahoo Mobile, designed to be a starting point for users to access the Internet, for the iPhone itself at the end of March. A test version for a limited number of public users is going live this week.

Yahoo Mobile offers a front page with colorful, boxy icons resembling the iPhone’s for launching popular applications such as a Web browser, mail, news, weather and social network sites like Facebook.

Users also have the option to easily add any software or Web sites they choose to download on their phones.

The company plans in coming months to promote Yahoo Mobile via a series of 70 major operator partnerships it has struck to reach 850 million mobile subscribers around the globe.

Fifty of those partnerships already offer Yahoo services and the company expects the rest to adopt Yahoo Mobile in coming months, Boerries said.

Yahoo has developed versions that work on hundreds of mid-range and high-end mobile phones from BlackBerry maker RIM, Nokia, Samsung, Sony Ericsson and Motorola, as well as phones running Microsoft Windows.

Boerries defines the universe of phones that can effectively run Yahoo Mobile as “every phone that’s shipped in the last two years that has a decent HTML-capable browser.” He added: “We don’t want to make lowest common denominator stuff.”

A more general version of the service downloadable from the Web will also work on older phones but will not be tailored to those phones’ specifications. Boerries demonstrated it on an old Sony Ericsson model.

Boerries said last year’s on-again off-again talks with would-be buyer Microsoft had not significantly distracted his team, and said he had kept his key staff together for years.

After some prior delays in introducing services such as Yahoo Go, Boerries professed relief that his fuller vision of putting the Web on phones had arrived on time: “It is really, for me, making it all come together.”

“This is like the uber-replacement of Yahoo Go.”

Yahoo offers iPhone-like Web for masses