When I first saw the iPod, what I really liked was the form factor and display that made tons of music and videos really portable.   I don't quite use the iPod - it now serves as an external hard disk for some old data that I once put into it - mostly because I am not really somebody who has a music-player plugged into his ears all the time.

When I saw the iPod, the first thing that struck me was that it would be cool to have this device wirelessly connect to the Internet.  Zune solved that by providing a Wi-Fi capable device.  (I do not own a Zune - at least not yet!). 

The other thing that really would have made it a killer device for me, was ability to browse Wikipedia-like information repositories.  After all, there was a fantastic display with crisp resolution.  I did realize that it would be akin to having something that can connect to the Internet - either through Wi-Fi or through GPRS.

When I started using a Windows Mobile phone (first a Pocket PC, now a SmartPhone) - this wish was granted as well. Pocket IE is really damn good and gives a real close feeling to browsing on the PC.   I browse using my phone a lot!  Real lot!  And more often than not, I am browsing Wikipedia.

Coming back to the original idea - I still thought a portable reading device would be a fantastic idea.  The ideal portable reading device would be able to do the following:

• Connect to the Internet wirelessly - not necessarily to the whole wide Internet, but to an online service akin to the Zune or iTunes music store
• Help search/browse through articles, periodicals, journals, books, blogs and the like - basically online reading material.  Again, note that this is reading material - not like a browser that can do a hundred other things.  The focus remains on reading.
• Pick an article or book to read and download that to an offline cache (could be DRM'ed)
• Provide a fantastic reading experience - with ability to hold and read like a book, a screen that's not harmful to hours of gazing at it, provide hours of battery power and easy recharging, etc.
• Support images and maybe a few limited formats of audio/video

Today, I came across Amazon Kindle, something that is a step in this direction.  It still has miles to go, but I think it is a great step.  Obviously there is way too much thought (and maybe multiple market players) to go into this before this becomes mainstream.