Featured Video: New E-reading Device, the Kno, Targets Textbook Market

Around the very same time that BusinessWeek reported that "E-Book Readers Bomb on College Campuses"—referring to negative feedback from students on Amazon's test program where it distributed the Kindle DX to select classes at seven universities—Osman Rashid and Babur Habib, co-founders of the new Kno e-reading device, were premiering the e-reader, which the co-founders say is perfect for the textbook market, at the 2010 D Conference, D8 (by All Things Digtal).

The device has two 14-inch color screens (most laptop screens are around 15 to 17 inches) that open like a book, and close back up to the size of a standard laptop. At "about 5.5. pounds," the Kno is lighter than most laptops, which weigh 7 or 8 pounds, says Habib, and it is much lighter than the typical student's backpack, which, he says, weighs almost 20 pounds.

In addition, he says "95 percent of textbooks fit in their natural, beautiful form on this device itself. ... So you'd have a two-page spread fitting beautifully on the device."

According to All Things Digital, "the Kno shares a co-founder with Chegg, the online textbook rental service, and early partnerships with Cengage Learning, McGraw-Hill and Pearson and Wiley indicate that the device will include access to both textbook-style and reference-database content."

Check out the All Things Digital video coverage of Rashid and Habib introducing the Kno at D8.