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The biggest miss in the Ebook world this week has to be the Sony Daily Reader, the 7 inch, wireless equipped device that Sony is intending to compete with the Kindle DX (as well as the IREX and the upcoming Que). Remember in my holiday shopping guide, where I listed the Daily as a long shot to make it into stores for Christmas? That shot just got MUCH longer as preordering opens today for the device. Sony says that if you order today, the device will be get to you sometime between Dec 18th and Jan 1, with no Daily Readers actually physically in stores before next year. At least the price has been confirmed to be $400, as assumed.

Since the Daily was intended to be a big holiday Ebook reveal, promised for release in early December, this has to be viewed as bad news for Sony and anyone who was hoping that Santa was going to leave a Daily under the tree for them. At this stage, that tree could be pretty brown and rancid before the Daily gets there.

More Ebook news and notes after the jump.

Barnes and Noble continues to sow fear and confusion regarding it’s upcoming Nook release. Assuming the counts allow the release to go forward (What is up with that ANYHOW? Anyone have a legal update?), if you preorder now you are supposed to get one shipped Dec 18th with a promise to get to you by Christmas (not the November 30th date enjoyed by the first preorders…ho ho ho). That is all well and good, but Computer World is reporting that a B&N spokesperson told them that Nooks for sale in stores will ship to outlets along with the first preorders, ON NOVEMBER 30th, meaning they couple be on sale a day or two after that in select Barnes and Noble shops. This feels a bit dubious to me, since other forecasts have been saying actual store units will be the last ones shipped out and you may not be able to saunter into your local mall and walk out with a Nook until 2010. There is enough confusion that anything is possible, so if you want a Nook early and haven’t preordered yet, haunt your local store and see what they get shipped, you may get lucky.

Also at Barnes and Noble, popular pressure has done it’s work, and they are promising to stop being stoopid and issue B&N Gift Cards that are good for Ebooks in time for holiday shopping. I am quite sure my emphatic “FAIL!” in the gift guide turned the tide. YEA ME!

A little more Sony news, at least for those of you in the UK. Romance publisher Mills and Boon have teamed with Sony to produce a branded version of the Pocket Reader which is due for release in the UK next week. Styled in a handsome dusky rose, the Mill’s and Boon Reader comes pre-loaded with three Christmas-themed romance Ebooks: Snowbound: Miracle Marriage, Under The Boss’s Mistletoe and Christmas Betrothals.

On top of that a voucher for ten further Mills and Boon e-book downloads will also be bundled with the Reader as will a case embossed with M&B’s rose logo. No word on price, or if this special edition will be available outside the UK. If it is a success however, I would expect to see more such special editions from publishers, or even to celebrate book releases or anniversaries. Just think how many special Dan Brown edition Readers they could have sold last month…his complete works preinstalled along with The Lost Symbol, with some cryptic packaging and a parchment style case. A gold mine I tell you, a gold mine.

More hardware news is coming from Qualcomm, which is previewing a new display technology called “Mirasol”. Mirasol technology mimics butterfly wings by displaying charged, color-inducing membranes over a mirror (you think I’m kidding?). The technology is estimated to improve battery life enough to power color and video on readers without a loss of performance.

Currently Qualcomm is offering the Mirasol tech to third party partners, but they expect you to see mirasol on the market by late 2010.

Content news this week includes yet another indication that Ebooks are becoming a hit with tech buyers. Motoko Rich ran a piece this week in the New York Times looking at the meteoric rise of Ebook Apps on devices like the iPhone and iPod Touch. Personally I do a lot of reading on my iPod Touch and my Treo Pro, but still feel the draw of dedicated Ebook Readers. The reason for that was put very clearly in the article by Ian Freed of Amazon when he was explaining why people still turn to the Kindle despite being able to read on their phones…

“The Kindle is for people who love to read. People use phones for lots of things. Most often they use them to make phone calls. Second most often, they use them to send text messages or e-mail. Way down on the list, there’s reading.”

Exactly. On a dedicated reader you can focus more completely on what you are reading, the way you can with a real book. On my iPod Touch, every time my mind wanders a bit from what I am reading I can feel the call of Blades of Steel, or Asphalt 5, or Tweetie. Either way, there are far too many reasons not to buckle down and focus my concentration on the task at hand.

Call me weak, but there it is.

Speaking of smartphones, we will close with some good news for Android users.

eReader, one of the best Ebook reader programs has now released an Android version, which can run on any Android phone with Android v1 or later (what was that one called, Cruller or something?). It has been tested on versions 1.5 and 2.0 and works fine.

According to the FAQ…

You can connect to your eReader.com or Fictionwise.com bookshelf directly from the application wirelessly to download your purchases from those stores. In addition, you can launch the Android browser from within the eReader application to browse for new purchases. Several other retail websites sell or have free content in eReader format, such as Manybooks.net.

Download it from www.ereader.com/android.