The Kobo ereader is a device and platform the follows you on whichever device is in your presence.Whether it’s a desktop computer, tablet, laptop or even a smartphone all of your e-books will be waiting for you. Even the bookmarks will transfer to the mobile device of your choice. Kobo refers to this as being “device-neutral.”

Born into the Borders books family, the Kobo device is a nice sized, lightweight (eight ounces) e-reader that gives user six inches of display screen for comfortable reading. A simple four-way D-pad allows you to maximize your navigation and the device comes equipped with 1GB of memory which is enough for approximately 1,000 books. If you need more storage space, you are allowed to add an SD storage card of any size. The price of this device is $129 which is a great value for a portable e-reader.

Kobo has designed their desktop application to be like a version of “iTunes but for books.” After downloading the application, you can read books immediately, sync with other non-Kobo e-readers (as long as they are any Adobe DRM / ePub compatible eReader or device), read offline and instantly transfer your bookmarks from the Tablet, to the PC, to the smartphone and perhaps back to your Kobo. Only interested in a smartphone version of the app? Kobo is available on the iPhone, Blackberry, Android and Palm Pre. All of the apps are free and packed with numerous features to keep you reading for hours. iPad users don’t despair, the app works for you as well.

In terms of improvements to the app, the one glaring missing feature for the mobile app is a built-in dictionary. If Kobo can fix that along with increasing its selection of free and paid books at a brisk enough pace, we could have on the best e-readers on the market. The cross-platform utilization is a brilliant customer-centric idea and I applaud Kobo for that. In the future , I look forward to seeing how Kobo evolves and stacks up with the other e-readers on the market.

Book lovers  do you have a Kobo reader or the mobile app? Share your experiences with us in the comments section.