BeBook on its company blog has posted the first photo of the upcoming 5-inch BeBook Mini e-book reader. Equipped with a 1-inch smaller screen than that of the BeBook 2, the device is reported to be a rebranded Hanlin V5 rather than its own product. The photo shows the BeBook Mini in both black and white flanking the original BeBook 1.0 device.
Barnes & Noble has recently purchased Fictionwise for $15.7 million, a retailer of electronic books, says a Friday Wall Street Journal report, and will launch a new e-book store later this year. William Lynch Jr., president and CEO of Barnes & Noble, said the retailer bought Fictionwise because it has "one of the most popular applications on the iPhone, and they really understand merchandising," among other reasons.Fictionwise was the first e-book retailer to offer third-party e-books supported by Amazon's Kindle reader back in 2007.
The second-generation e-book reader from BeBook will officially be debuted at CeBIT in Germany later on today, the company has announced. Some key preliminary specs of the redesigned player include either Wi-Fi or 3G data network access for downloading new content as well as touchscreen navigation, which is still rare among readers
