Kindle

If you logged onto Amazon Wednesday, you may or may not have noticed that the Kindle 2 had a price drop: it's now selling for $299 instead of $359.

Alas, because Amazon ads for the Kindle 2 (and Kindle DX) are always plastered across its homepage--and are easy to ignore--I actually missed the new pricing until a reader pointed it out to me.

However, I did have a feeling Amazon needed to do something to spur demand, because I just haven't been seeing too many Kindle 2s on the New York City subway (the number seemed to be … Read more

Updated July 7, 2009.

While the Kindle--and now the Kindle 2--haven't created the huge accessories market that Apple's iPod and iPhone have, there's a small cottage industry of Kindle accessories forming. Here's a quick look at some of the top cases and accessories. In the comments section, feel free to suggest any products you think we missed. We'll add to the list as new accessories come out.

Slideshow (click any product image to begin):

1. Amazon Kindle 2 Leather Cover ($29.99)

2. Belkin Neoprene Sleeve Case for Amazon Kindle 2 ($24.99)

3. … Read more

Amazon.com has filed for a number of patents that hint at ad-supported books for its Kindle e-reader--more specifically, a free or discounted ad-supported e-book for customers who buy the physical version.

Amazon Technologies, a subsidiary of Amazon, filed for a patent ("Method and system for access to electronic version of a physical work based on user ownership of the physical work") in December 2006. It was approved last month and makes it possible for buyers of a physical book to have an e-book bundled with it.

But two additional patents, filed a year later by Amazon employees (… Read more

TOOELE, Utah--The first time I tried to physically turn the page of the book I was reading on my Kindle DX, I realized the mistake and chuckled at myself.

The second time I did it, I chuckled, too. But a little bit less.

And the third time? I thought to myself that perhaps I have a problem.

Exhausted after 12 nonstop days of Road Trip 2009, I decided Wednesday evening to lie low and read a book. But rather than pull out one of the three or four actual paper books I'd brought with me, I thought I'd … Read more

Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos spoke on Monday at the Wired Business Conference, discussing his company and the future of the Amazon Kindle.

After discussions on Google Book Search and other topics, Bezos sprinkled in a few tidbits of information that could have a lasting impact both on the e-book business and the tech industry as a whole. According to Bezos, he plans to break the Kindle business into two parts: hardware and software.

Amazon's e-books are already available on the iPhone. Users who want to access titles can download the Kindle app and buy books from Amazon's store. But Bezos wants to do more. He believes that the path to success is through sharing e-book technology with competing hardware makers.

"The device team has the job of making the most remarkable purpose-built reading device in the world," Bezos said at the conference. "We are going to give the device team competition. We will make Kindle books, at the same $9.99 price points, available on the iPhone, and other mobile devices and other computing devices."

It might be the smartest move Amazon has made yet.… Read more

Imagine you wanted to create the Kindle killer, a revolutionary e-book device that matched and improved upon its functionality. What would you do? Well, you could, Mission Impossible-style, break into Amazon's Seattle headquarters and carry off the source code for the Kindle, then copy and extend its functionality to create a competitive device.

Or you could simply download the Kindle's source code from Amazon.com, where Amazon has already released the source code to the Kindle.

In fact, as TechCrunch rightly notes, the Kindle source code has been available since 2007.

Given this fact, why haven't you … Read more

The Amazon Kindle 2 is a good device. No question about it. Almost everyone who has one seems to love it, and indeed, there's a lot to love. But no device is perfect, and that's what keeps us members of the tech media in business. So, I thought I'd start a semi-regular series in which I attempt to give friendly suggestions to companies about how to make their products that much better--how to take it to the next level, if you will. And I'm starting with the Kindle 2. These suggestions aren't all the same issues that our expert reviewers point out in "the bad" section of our official CNET review, but just assume those are in there, too. And yes, some of these ideas depend on widespread adoption of the Kindle or any e-book reader: but they'll also help it get to that widespread adoption in the first place. Win-win! Let's begin.

Make it better with sharing The Kindle 2, or any electronic book reader, marks a dramatic change from the way we normally read books. Sure, the reading is solitary, but books are fundamentally social in nature. You share books. You recommend them, you loan them out, you pass them around, you mark pages for each other. The Kindle 2 takes all of that away: sure, someone can come along and look at everything you're currently reading (which has its own set of issues), but you can't lend anyone a book, you can't share a subscription, and you can't even tell someone you loved a passage on a certain page, since the Kindle doesn't use standard page sizes. OK, Amazon. What can we do here?

Learn from iTunes and allow authorizations. Let me authorize multiple Kindles on a single account so that I can share subscriptions and purchases between them. At minimum, allow two authorizations, which would cover several households; better yet, allow up to four or five. This lets me share a book with a friend, a spouse, a roommate, a parent. This is just a no-brainer. There's no reason to undo the tradition of sharing the Sunday newspaper by tying a subscription to a single device. Let's hurry up with that one, shall we?

Learn from the Microsoft Zune and allow one-time content sharing. Let me use the Whispernet to send another Kindle user an entire book that will expire after two or three days, as a sample. Or, heck, if you want to be stingy, just let me send a chapter. Similarly, let me send bookmarked sections, either Kindle-to-Kindle or via e-mail. I'd love to be able to select a block of text and choose, "e-mail this passage," so I can send particularly poignant text to a friend. This could be a great feature of the Kindle DX: allow limited sharing of helpful textbook passages, or let me play the age-old game of sending newspaper clippings to someone!… Read more

NEW YORK--Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos was coy about exactly why he isn't thrilled with Google's attempt to forge its way into the digital publishing business.

"We have strong opinions about that issue which I'm not going to share," Bezos said to interviewer Steven Levy at the Wired Business Conference. "But, clearly, that settlement in our opinion needs to be revisited and it is being revisited."

In a court battle rife with twists, turns, and delays, Google has been attempting to push forward its Book Search initiative, which could potentially give the Mountain View, … Read more

It's been widely debated since Amazon's Kindle began redefining the e-book space: when will e-books become more compelling than the physical books they were meant to replace?

For me, it happened. Today, at 2 p.m. Eastern, I went to Borders and returned a book I bought just a week ago. The reason was this: I found the book had popped up on the Amazon Kindle store for less. So I pulled the trigger.

The funny thing is I don't even have a Kindle. I have an iPhone 3G running the Kindle app. Yet, for me, in a crowded New York ecosystem where I barely have time or room to pull a book out of my backpack while crammed onto a subway, quick-fix iPhone reading does the trick better than anything else.

The book in question was "Hylozoic" by Rudy Rucker, an excellent and weird science fiction writer whose works I've become addicted to. I had tracked the release of his latest, a sequel to his equally odd "Postsingular," for months. I should have ordered on Amazon in the first place, where it was far cheaper than Borders' full retail, but I wanted instant satisfaction and got trigger-happy. Hylozoic wasn't available on the Kindle store when the book first hit the streets.

I submitted a "this should be a Kindle book" request to Amazon and went back to my life, when yesterday I discovered that "Hylozoic" had in fact been added...for $14.95. … Read more