Forget all the new games, video screens and mobile phones unveiled at the annual Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. For me, the real groundbreaker was the Sony Reader.

First Sony took a chance on a gadget for which there does not seem to be a mass consumer market. But I believe there will be a market for handheld readers people can use to read digitalised books.

Sony plans on introducing a new model in the US later this year. The device incorporates what is known as ?digital ink? technology, one that mimics the clarity and resolution of paper. Instead of rows of glowing cells, e Ink microcapsules actually appear as either black or white depending on a positive or negative charge determined by the content. The result gives a high contrast, high-resolution text that is viewable in direct sunlight and at a nearly 180-degree angle. No power is required to maintain the image on the six-inch screen.

This means the reader can save battery power while a page is being read. The device?s rechargeable battery is good enough for up to 7,500 page turns.

With the full package measuring 6.9 inches by 4.9 inches by 5.8 inches the Reader is smaller than many paperbacks. It holds up to 80 average-size books at a time, allowing you to switch between titles at will.

Sony plans on helping the market grow by adding thousands of eBook titles online at Connect, what is currently its Internet music store.

The Sony Reader will also displays Adobe PDFs, personal documents, blogs, newsfeeds, and JPEGs. I think its first use will be in the business arena.

It?s a good way of taking around lots of documents and plans one might need.

Nature magazine survey finds that Wikipedia comes close to Encyclopaedia Britannica when measured by the accuracy of their science entries.

Don?t feel at all confident however. The Nature peer review finds an astounding number of errors in both information sources. The average science entry in Wikipedia contained around four inaccuracies and Britannica, about three.

Among the 42 entries tested, the difference in accuracy was not particularly great. The main difference lies in the manner in which the publications get their information.

Britannica is written and edited by experts. Wikipedia is a free online encyclopaedia that anyone can edit, from a bored bar fly to the mythical rocket scientist. The survey reveals that the open nature of Wikipedia does not pose a great disadvantage when it is compared with the great resources we traditionally depend on for accuracy.

Wikipedia?s credibility recently came under question when one article was revealed as falsely suggesting that a former assistant to US senator Robert Kennedy may have been involved in his assassination.

Podcasting pioneer Adam Curry has also been accused of editing the Wikipedia entry on podcasting to remove references to competitors? work. Nature says its peer review suggests that such high-profile examples are the exception rather than the rule.

Wikipedia?s strength lies in its dispute resolution system. Disputes about content are usually resolved by online discussion among users.

Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia?s co-founder says the finding shows the online source?s potential.

?Our goal is to get to Britannica quality, or better,? he says. For our sakes I hope both sources vastly increase their accuracy. Wikipedia has become the 37th most visited website online, according to Alexa, a web ranking service.

Google Analytics, the search engine?s latest free offering to the market, has become so popular that service has been temporarily suspended. Once it?s back up register if you have a site of your own.

Google Analytics tells you everything you want to know about how your visitors found you and how they interact with your site. This is great in helping you to determine who your audience is, especially if you hope to make some bucks online.

Couple the service with Google?s Sitemaps service and you have pretty well all the information you need to drive visitors to your site. Through Sitemaps, you submit all your URLs to the Google index and get detailed reports about the visibility of your pages on Google. Google recently added some new tools, allowing you to get query stats and see top keywords driving traffic to your web site.