Microsoft highlighted new multi-touch features on the range of new PCs as it launched Windows 7 in New York on Thursday.

Here’s a clip of a photo managing program, which allows you to sort through snaps and manipulate them manually, and a shot of the new Kindle application from Amazon, which lets people read a book onscreen, if that’s what they want to do.

The Windows 7 launch event was quieter than previous versions, focusing on slick new hardware and consumer-oriented features such as watching TV on the PC, creating home networks, making videos and playing music.

Early reviews of Windows 7 have been positive, but it will be a few months before it becomes clear if consumers really take to the new operating system.

Brace yourself for the next salvo in the battle of the ebook readers (or electronic reading devices, or e-reader, or whatever you want to call them).

Barnes & Noble is planning a “major event” next Tuesday in New York to announce a mystery… something.

The bookseller won’t say exactly what it will announce, but we’d be surprised if its NOT a digital book reader, to compete with Amazon’s Kindle and Sony’s Reader series.

In fact, Gizmodo says it has the goods on the device — which it says has “a multi-touch display like an iPhone” — and picture of the device. Click the link and take a look.

What do you think of this device (which may or may not be the actual product)? For that matter, what do you think about e-readers? Are you ready to buy one?

Let us know in the comment area.

“Orwell fans, lock your doors,” was the reaction from Amazon user Caffeine Queen after she and others had received notice from Amazon last Friday that their e-book versions of “1984″ and “Animal Farm” had been removed from their Kindle device.

Amazon explained later that these electronic versions were distributed illegally and that customers were refunded.

Amazon’s decision to remotely delete the e-books not only infuriated customers, it sparked a debate on digital ownership.

Richard Waters of the Financial Times argues that this episode questions the future of ownership in an electronic age:

“New internet media platforms like this raise a dilemma. Their owners have the power to control information on the client. So if they have a legal responsibility to remove data from their systems - say, after receiving a take-down notice under the DMCA - failing to expunge it may expose them to liability.”

Melissa J. Perenson of PC World asks if you can still call it “owning”:

If, in this digital realm, we’re not truly purchasing content, but rather “borrowing” it at a set price, and according to someone else’s changing rulebook, we as consumers we deserve to know this up front, in clear and obvious language (unlike Amazon’s clear references to “buying” books, and all the assumptions of ownership that go with buying books). If the rules have changed on us, we deserve to know.

Meanwhile, user Steve Holden offers his Kindle in the forum: “If I change my mind later I’ll just take it back and return your money. This isn’t digital rights, it’s digital wrongs.”

Here are some of the day’s stories about the media industry:

Amazon Patents Detail Kindle Advertising Model (Mediapost)
Laurie Sullivan writes: “The patents clearly note that Amazon would insert advertisements throughout the ebooks, from the beginning to the end, between chapters or following every 10 pages, as well as in the margins.”

> In-Book Ads Coming to the Amazon Kindle? (Fast Company)
> 6 Reasons Why Ads On The Kindle Don’t Work (Business Insider)

Deadline for Globe bids postponed (Boston Globe)
“The New York Times Co. has postponed tomorrow’s deadline for prospective buyers of The Boston Globe to submit preliminary bids for the newspaper, people briefed on the sales process said. No new date has been set for the bids,” writes Robert Weisman.

ESPN to relaunch UK channel in August (Reuters)
“The Walt Disney-owned (DIS.N) sports network ESPN said on Tuesday it would launch a new channel in Britain in August to show its 46 Premier League soccer matches and other international sports programming.”

NYC announces initiatives aimed at strengthening media industry (Romenesko)
“One of Mayor Bloomberg’s eight initiatives: Establishing a Media and Tech Fellowship to be awarded to approximately 20 “rising star” media and technology entrepreneurs on an annual basis.”

Google’s Gmail says bye-bye beta (Reuters)
Alexei Oreskovic writes: “The change is part of a broader move that Google announced on Tuesday involving Google Apps, the company’s suite of online software products that includes Google Docs and Google Calendar, among others.”

In other news:

• Pittsburgh Clears Way For FiOS TV (Multichannel News)
• Michael Jackson Funeral: 500,000+ Facebook Updates Posted (Mashable)
• Music Labels Reach Royalty Deal With Online Stations (NYT)

I’ve been pretty excited about the new BlackBerry Curve 8900 that my office handed me to replace a prehistoric 8800-series machine. Now there’s a new BlackBerry device, the Tour, which is making its debut this summer. So naturally, I rushed to check out the specs on the web to see what I missed.

Here’s what it’s got: 4.4 inches tall, 2.4 inches wide and 0.6 inch thick. There’s a 3.2 megapixel camera, enhanced media player with 256MB built-in memory, video playback and recording capability, and other consumer-friendly features. At under 5 ounces, it’s a little heavier than the Curve 8900, but it doesn’t look that much different.

But Research in Motion Co-Chief Executive Jim Balsillie told Reuters this latest phone is a “big step forward.” They’re calling it a “world phone”, which means globetrotters can easily access voice and data services on networks outside their home country.

Like the Curve, the Tour is meant to appeal to both executives and regular folks, i.e. those who don’t wear suits but like to surf, e-mail and take pictures on their smartphones.

The Tour will launch with Verizon and Sprint in the US, and Telus and Bell in Canada. But long before then, we’ll get a temperature check on RIM. It’s due to report earnings this week. And analysts expect the Canadian company to do just fine, although it remains to be seen how Apple’s aggressive new pricing on the iPhone will impact BlackBerry sales going forward.

Keep an eye on:

• Amazon’s Kindle will support more book formats in the future. (NYTimes Bits)
• What will Eric Hippeau do as HuffPo CEO? (The Wall Street Journal)
• Boston Globe and a key union continue to discuss concessions. (Reuters)
• Spending on digital entertainment will fuel growth in the sector in the next few years. (Reuters)

Photo: BlackBerry Tour, courtesy website

News Corp Chief Executive showed up for his latest interview on the Fox Business Network (which he owns) on Monday. Here is a transcript of some of his remarks. He covered a lot of ground, from tonight’s union concession vote at The Boston Globe to the future of newspapers and the inclusion of software on computers sold in China that will block access to certain websites. We are providing excerpts — we trimmed for length, most notably excising his comments on healthcare and taxes (We know it’s the Internet, but we had to shorten it up a bit. You can see or read the whole thing here.

On FOX Interactive possibly looking at job cuts:

“It’s too early to talk about job cuts. … We’ve put new management in there, they’ve been there three weeks and they’re making a close examination of it and they’ll no doubt set some new directions, strengthen other very strong parts of it, and you know, the advertising is at least double what Facebook has and it’s in pretty good shape. But there will be, I’m sure, changes with the new management.”

On Chase Carey assuming the titles of deputy chairman, president and chief operating officer July 1:
“No, we’re not making any commitments on that [being an heir apparent] at all. Chase is coming in to be my partner and right-hand, he was with us for 17 years before. I think he’s like coming home.”

On the upcoming vote for The Boston Globe:

“You know, Boston is a very highly unionized place and they may find that difficult but it’s a great newspaper and a great institution, the Boston Globe, and I can’t see it disappearing. Like all newspapers, I think it will change. We think of newspapers in the old-fashioned way, printed on crushed wood so to speak, with ink. It’s going to be digital. Within 10 years I believe nearly all newspapers will be delivered to you digitally either on your PC or on a development of the Kindle, shall we say…something that’s quite mobile and you can take around with you.”

On the future of newspapers and print media:

“Communications are changing totally and we’re moving into the digital age and it’s going to change newspapers. But if you’ve got a newspaper with a great name and a great reputation and you trust it, the people in that community are going to need access to your source of news. What we call newspapers today, I call ‘news organizations,’ journalistic enterprises, if you will. They’re the source of news. And people will reach it if it’s done well, whether they do it on a Blackberry or Kindle or a PC.”

“I can see the day maybe 20 years away where you don’t actually have paper and ink and printing presses. I think it will take a long time and I think it’s a generational thing that is happening. But there’s no doubt that younger people are not picking up the traditional newspapers.”

On China requiring PC makers to include censorship software:

“I’m not worried because we don’t do any business there, or so little that it doesn’t matter. Foreign media is not generally welcomed there. There are opportunities to have 5% of this or invest in new things that are happening there. But you cannot go in and say, start a newspaper or television or whatever. We have a little television channel we make in Shanghai which is allowed to go on cable networks in the Southeast to a fairly limited audience. We have a license for MySpace there and that will grow and be a very good site.”

On whether PC makers should go along with China’s requirements:

“They would have no option. It’s either those PCs or no PCs at all. You can’t expect great companies like Dell or HP to say we’re going to sell no computers in China at all. It’s too big, it’s too big a part of the world.”

On the recovery of the U.S. economy:

“We’re in very early days yet. Wait until unemployment goes to 10, 11%…and it will…Unemployment is going to go up. It’s going to take some time to get down. Perhaps three years to get it back. We probably and hopefully have hit a bottom here, where things will be pretty stable from now on, not nearly as good as they were a little while back, but it’s going to take time to climb out of it and so that’s okay. As far as we’re concerned, we know we can grow. We have a lot of things happening like new cable channels, we’re having a great few months now in our film company so you know we’re in pretty good shape.”

(Photo: Reuters)

Newspapers are in the business of making information public so readers can benefit. Newspaper publishers are in the business of revealing as little as possible unless someone springs a leak.

In the case of the two-dozen newspaper publishers who met in the Chicago area to discuss ways to get people to pay for the news they read online, the leak landed in the hands of The Atlantic. Here is an excerpt:

There’s no mention on its website but the Newspaper Association of America, the industry trade group, has assembled top executives of the New York Times, Gannett, E. W. Scripps, Advance Publications, McClatchy, Hearst Newspapers, MediaNews Group, the Associated Press, Philadelphia Media Holdings, Lee Enterprises and Freedom Communication Inc., among more than two dozen in all. A longtime industry chum, consultant Barbara Cohen, “will facilitate the meeting.” …

There was a dinner Wednesday and, according to the agenda, Thursday begins with a quick declaration of goals at 8 a.m., then an 8:10 a.m. session labeled, “Fair Syndication Consortium/Attributor.” …

That first session is followed by “Journalism Online: Presentation on proposed service to charge for access to newspaper content and to license that content that (sic) online aggregators” (the assistance of at least one of the many copy editors sent packing by the attendees might have been sought).

It’s now safe to wager that most attendees, who were scheduled to include Michael Golden of the New York Times, Gary Pruitt of McClatchy and Tom Curley of the Associated Press, will be dragged into charging for at least some online content.

In other words, the papers are trying to figure out how they can charge people for news on the Internet after largely giving it to them for the past 10-15 years. They have to do this so they don’t have to shut down when print advertising revenue gets so low that they can’t afford to stay in business anymore.

Many people say that newspapers have to come up with industry-wide ways to charge and to do a bunch of other things. The only problem with that is antitrust law. No one wants to be caught colluding — it breaks the law, after all. Not to worry: according to the Newspaper Association of America’s statement, antitrust lawyers were there.

From John F. Sturm, president and CEO, Newspaper Association of America:

Newspaper industry executives met in Chicago today under the auspices of the Newspaper Association of America to discuss how best to support and preserve the traditions of newsgathering that will serve the American public.

Following hearings in committees of both the House and Senate, the group discussed business topics such as protection of intellectual property rights and approaches to the Congress and Administration to address these and other issues.

With antitrust counsel present, the group listened to executives from companies representing various new models for obtaining value from newspaper content online. The participants also shared success stories in driving new revenue to their newspapers products.

Some publishers are arguing for Congress to approve an antitrust rule change that would let them get together to solve the problems that thwart them from delivering journalism these days. Whether such a change could ever happen is up in the air. Either way, it apparently never hurts to start talks on the early side.

(Photo: Reuters)

Most top technology executives are used to juggling businesses worth hundred of millions of dollars, yen or euros. But this week at the Reuters Technology Summit, we asked: if we gave you $1 million to invest anywhere — but not in your own company — where would you spend it?

INTERNET / STARTUPS

If you want the quick answer, I would invest it in Twitter.  I’m sorry that we weren’t in it. I don’t know where it’s going and it would be a fun ride.

– Tim Draper, managing director of venture capital firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson.

I would love to work more with some of these interesting startups like kiva.org that are developing interesting and innovative ways to create micro-lending programs for folks around the world.

I’ve a couple of friends and I would like to invest in their companies, little start-ups. One of them is called Trazzler and the other is called Fluther. One is an innovative travel startup and the other is a service that helps people get answers to questions they need.

I’m not a real big stock guy. Maybe a little Apple, a little Google — companies I use every single day so why not invest in them?

– Twitter Co-founder Biz Stone

It’s stuff in our industry. The most vibrant industry is ours. We’re complaining but the reality is we’re making money. I would literally go after a couple of smaller companies that are up and coming. (Such as) Lala. It’s iTunes without having to download the client. It’s a really neat job. Check it out. You take music on the go. It’s a really nice design.

– Yahoo Inc  Chief Technology Officer Ari Balogh

I have done some angel investing and what I have found in angel investing is it hasn’t been because I was excited about the sector, it was because I was excited about the person. So I don’t know that I could pick a sector, but if I see the right people, that is where I would put the $1 million.

– NetSuite Inc Chief Executive Zach Nelson

ENERGY

I would put it in the hands of scientists who are trying to discover the next energy alternative. By giving them more R&D dollars, we fuel opportunities for higher education. We hopefully allow them to buy better supercomputers and that could improve the computer industry’s short-term prospects and it could obviously help discover the next generation of energy source that could change humanity altogether.

– Nvidia Corp Chief Executive Jen-Hsun Huang

There are many attractive companies in the environmental energy sector. Especially in Japan, technologies are advanced and there are a lot of companies that established business strategies and models from early on. Also, health and safety will be more valued in the future, so healthcare is a very important area.

– Konica Minolta Holdings Inc Senior Executive Officer Shoei Yamana

MIXED PORTFOLIOS

“Because I’m 60, I would probably put half in corporate bonds, spread them around, get a nice interest rate on them. And I would probably put some into energy because I am a long-term believer that energy costs are going to continue to climb, and I think they’ve gotten depressed. And then I would put it into consumer electronics stocks and consumer non-durables. I’m a believer that consumers will come back and will spend again. So I would invest in those things.

– Corning Inc Chief Financial Officer Jim Flaws

The financial sector will come back. I think some smart investment in the financial sector makes sense. Tech will be one of the first industries to emerge from this because that spending is important to the growth and cost agendas of companies.
I’d probably put a third in natural resources probably oil and gas. The fact is it is a diminishing asset. That is probably going to create supply problems that will tend to drive up the value of those problems.

– Dell President of Large Enterprise Steve Schuckenbrock

I’d invest in a company whose business is not doing well. Stocks of companies that are making a lot of money don’t have much room to grow. There are many sectors that are not well performing but won’t ever vanish. For example, chipmakers may be struggling, but that’s only because of the supply/demand balance. When demand comes back, the business will pick up again.
Also, materials and infrastructure industries are interesting. There are countries like China that still need to improve infrastructure, so I think it would be interesting to invest in those.

– Capcom Co Ltd CFO Kazuhiko Abe

HEALTHCARE

Personally, I still think health care. I think the pharmaceutical companies have been beaten down a lot…As population ages, everybody needs more medical help. Pharmaceuticals, drugs are a big part of it. Short term, I think the dollar is going to fluctuate. I wouldn’t sell dollars for the long term. If I had a million dollars, I would probably move to a very beaten down currency at this point, maybe Australian dollars, and then back into U.S. dollars in a year or two.

– Sybase Chief Executive John Chen

I think that the area that is worth investing is in the healthcare area. Small start-up companies that are looking to wirelessly enable health. This whole area of letting people monitor their own health and give them feedback and let others have access. I think there is just a huge revolution in healthcare coming with high-tech. When people can give you a pill, and track it and see inside of your body and tell you what’s really wrong with you…I think that whole area is about to just mushroom. It defies economic cycles. People get sick or get ill regardless of economic cycles.

– AT&T Mobility President Ralph de la Vega

MISCELLANEOUS

I like very much these electronic readers. We actually started that several years back, we were ahead of the time, and we found that publishers, textbook publishers, were not very receptive. The area of flexible paper and digital paper and publishing. We’re not there yet. But (Amazon’s) Kindle is stepping in the right direction. There is a lot of innovation in that space. But it’s got to be like a $49.95 product, not a $300 or $400. It’s got to be for the masses. It’s got to bring educational qualities to kids in the Amazon, 1,000 miles away from civilization.

– SanDisk Chief Executive Eli Harari

I’d say Apple. You wouldn’t be able to find any other company in the world that can do everything from OS to hardware to services like Apple does. It is a company that has a potential to keep offering new services. Apple’s ability to develop products is incomparably better than others.

– Gree Inc CEO Yoshikazu Tanaka

Based on what I saw on CNBC, I think I would put it in Hormel. Since I saw the sales of the Hormel chili and Spam have increased recently because of the economy. It’s as good an idea as any.

– Advanced Micro Devices Inc CEO Dirk Meyer

I’d put it in the bank probably. Definitely not in the automotive industry.

– Marvell Technology Group CEO Sehat Sutardja

You know, being pretty conservative in nature, it’s either invested in TI or sitting in the most conservative way possible. I get more than enough excitement in my daily life than needing excitement with investments on the side on that front.

– Texas Instruments CEO Rich Templeton

Where will the mogul strike next? Doesn’t seem like he’s yearning right now for The New York Times, which is doing battle with a guild that doesn’t want to give up lifetime job guarantees of 190-odd Boston Globe staffers.

Instead, New York Post’s Peter Lauria reports, Rupert Murdoch has set his sights on building a Kindle-like device that will deliver content from News Corp publications like The Wall Street Journal, The Times of London and the NY Post. The device would also offer content from TV shows and movies that come from the News Corp stable. Murdoch sees it as a way of charging for content on the Web, rather than giving it away free as much of the publishing industry has (which, needless to say, is a big source of current troubles).

The global team assembled for this purpose consists of Murdoch himself, son James, Dow Jones CEO Les Hinton and News Corp’s new chief of digital operations, Jonathan Miller, the paper says.

Maybe Murdoch will show the struggling newspaper industry the way out of the morass. Keep an eye on:

• Someone’s going to buy Twitter one of these days. Kara Swisher lays it out. (All Things Digital)
• After two days of rumors, the big-screen Kindle is coming today. (Silicon Alley Insider)
• Journalism confabs and banquets are being canceled due to the recession. (Forbes)

Photo: Reuters

When Massachusetts Democratic Senator John Kerry convenes a Senate Commerce Committee hearing on Wednesday to discuss the fate of U.S. newspapers, don’t look for the man who controls the fate of Kerry’s hometown Boston Globe on Capitol Hill.

Arthur Sulzberger Jr, whose New York Times Co is threatening to close the Globe, will be at a press conference in New York City where online bookseller and retailer Amazon.com plans to release a new version of the Kindle electronic book reader. At least, that’s what The Wall Street Journal says. Amazon and the Times declined to talk to us about the Wednesday event or Sulzberger’s planned appearance.

Senator Kerry need not worry that he can’t question Sulzberger in person. As much as Sulzberger probably wants to limit his talking points to the Kindle, we’re in a Globe state of mind. After all, talks resume tonight over $10 million in cost cuts it wants to wrest from the Globe’s biggest union. We would be happy to ask Kerry’s questions on his behalf.

(Photo: Reuters)