eCommerce in the News Week 1

Sony's E-Book
http://blogs.wsj.com/biztech/2008/12/03/turns-out-sony-e-book-readers-sell-after-all/

This article from WSJ pretty much talks about how Sony is selling their e-book well, despite having debatable unconventional features, such as lacking pages or having a feel of a real hardcover.

I have mixed feelings about e-books. While I see them as unpreventable replacements for our future books, it also kills our traditional interaction with these things. A book is simply not a book without its pages and binding. The ability to flip through pages, slide in funny looking bookmarks, or check progress by examining the remaining thickness of the book is what makes book reading so unique. With companies cutting down on marginal costs and making the world more techy and digital, I can see books slowly fading away, especially with the new generation of kids who will grow up with nothing but electronics.

So how will books fair with the emerging popularity of E-books? Will books die off like analog photography, or will its traditional features be distinct enough to survive the digital age?