In addition to the PDF functionality and improved battery life; the firmware update also adds the ability to manually control your screen rotation and makes it possible to convert your PDF files to the Kindle format. To read more about this update or to download it manually go here.

[via ZDNet]

The Kindle’s new read-aloud feature shows great promise for the visually impaired, something that has been missed by other e-readers on the market. The issue becomes activating the read-aloud feature. It’s buried fairly deep in the menu system, and would pretty much require a sighted person to activate it.

In a rather interesting move, the Federation for the Blind has sued one of the schools that participated in a pilot program that brings e-readers into libraries and classrooms for students. The group also filed complaints with the DOJ against 5 other schools that were participating in the trial with Amazon.

MSNBC reports that Amazon has already stated that they working towards making the software easier to navigate, and now many schools have stated that they are not going to be rolling out the electronic devices to their students any time soon.

The Kindle for PC app has full access to the Kindle Book store, but it’s through the computers Internet browsers and not a touchscreen-friendly app. Ebooks look great in the app but only Kindle ebooks; you can’t import anything including PDFs or any other ebook. The app itself looks great but isn’t especially meant for a a touchscreen.

Amazon is onto something here but it’s a good thing this app is still in a beta. If Amazon could make the app a little more touchscreen friendly with larger buttons and a dedicated book store, it very well could be a must-have app on all the touchscreen MID and UMPCs. The stradegy would be solid, get those proven gadget fans hooked with a free app and then possible sell them a Kindle. If they don’t buy a Kindle, at least they are still dropping $10 for each book. That’s money.

The beta is free so why not jump over to Amazon and download it yourself. Mac users will need to sit quietly in the corner until Amazon outs an OS X edition.

B&N is saying that the delay was caused by higher than expected sales numbers and the new ship date is December 11. The Nook is just more popular that B&N had thought it would be and you can totally understand why. It comes sporting a 3G wireless connection like the Kindle, the same price as the Kindle, but also the two screens and an equally vast eBook store. The Nook is where it’s at, kids.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but wasn’t the Amazon Kindle the first device to launch with built-in wireless (that is, cellular data) access? You know, you pay for the device, and then you don’t have to pay monthly wireless access because it’s already included in the cost of the device? It’s pretty neat, I think I can say without too much grief, and is a model that’s been copied by other e-book readers. Now it looks like Nintendo is considering such a model for future versions of the Nintendo DS (and not necessarily the XL, mind you). Exciting!

So Nintendo’s president, Satoru Iwata, said at a recent briefing that he’s “interested” in the business model (wireless access that’s built into the cost of the device) because it’s new, and, well, it could help expand the popularity of DSi Ware. Right now, to access DSi Ware you need to be connected to Wi-Fi, which sorta limits its availability. What if you’re sitting on a park bench on a warm spring day and want to download Something? You can’t!

You can imagine other scenarios, I’m sure.

Iwata did express concern that Nintendo would have to be careful with such a model because Nintendo is, in his words, an “amusement company.” It’s not Apple in the sense that it can’t charge $LOTS for its products.

Such a move would also give this theoretical new DS an edge over the PSP Go, which you’ll recall only ships with 802.11b access. That’s a bad move on Sony’s part, yes.

Keep in mind that Iwata could have just been thinking out loud, and that none of this will ever see the light of day. So there’s that.

via Gamasutra

Books, books, books! The American Booksellers Association, a trade group that represents small bookstores (not Barnes and Noble and the other big guys), has asked the Department of Justice to investigate whether or not Amazon, Wal-Mart, and Target have “[devalued] the very concept of the book” with their ongoing price war. Well, they’re actually asking for an investigation into their selling practices. That is, because Amazon wants to outsell Wal-Mart, and Wal-Mart wants to outsell Amazon, they both sell the latest book (think Stephen King, Dan Brown, etc.) for some really low price, like $10. When you consider that the average hardcover “should” cost something like $20-$30, just based on the wildly outdated economics of book-selling, then you understand why the ABA is so upset.

Here’s what the ABA is thinking: it represents The Little Guy, the indie bookstore on Main Street, USA that doesn’t have the clout of Barnes and Noble or Borders. If these big guys keep trying to undercut each other, it lowers the price Main Street can set for a book. Why would someone pay $30 for a book when they can buy it for $10 from Wal-Mart? The problem becomes, after Main Street goes out of business, that limits the amount of information (books) out there. And what if some author releases a crazy book about some controversial topic, one that Wal-Mart refuses to carry because it doesn’t want to “offend” its customers or whatever? Now there’s no Main Street bookstore to turn to, and that information never gets out there. Then the marketplace of ideas suffers, and we’re all worse off. That’s the ABA’s thinking, at least, and it’s not entirely unreasonable, I don’t think.

If you want, this topic could easily balloon into a much deeper, philosophical discussion on the entire book industry—remember, Barnes and Noble said the other day that the book industry is still bigger than Hollywood, video games, etc.—but other, better people have already begun to tackle that debate.

And why is this on CrunchGear? Yup, e-books. You can make the argument, and the ABA has done just that, that it was the initial release of the Kindle that got this whole dangerous price war started. Amazon needed to jumpstart the public’s acceptance of e-books, so they did the inverse of what game companies do when they release a new system: game companies make money on the software and lose money on the hardware (at least initially), while Amazon was selling these e-books for something like one-third their “actual” value. Gotta get those Kindles out there!

So that’s basically it. The ABA is concerned that a price war, started by the introduction of the Kindle, will eventually limit the number and quality of ideas available to y’all. You’re free to disagree, and I get the feeling that many of you will.

Flickr

Amazon has just made their new Kindle for PC available for pre-order online, a move that turns almost any PC in the entire world into a fully-fledged ereader. The software comes on the heels of all of the big Win7 announcements today evens up the playing fields when it comes to PC-based ereaders.

Amazon has long had the Kindle but Barnes & Noble launched a PC ereader long before Amazon, putting them at a disadvantage. B&N also has versions of their reader for OS X, BlackBerry smartphones, and the iPhone/Touch.

Kindle for PC Demo on Windows 7

The actual Amazon PC version isn’t quite available – it’s still coming soon – but it’s currently floating around in Beta. Unfortunately there is no planned Mac version either, something that B&N already has. Interestingly, Michael noted the value of “opening up” the Kindle service to multiple devices back in August 2008 and it seems that they’re clearly seeing ways into new markets untouched by the current ereader craze.

The B&N’s PC/Mac/iPhone e-reader is here.

I also have this song in my head:

So who will win the ereader race? While no one in particular has to “win” the race, it’s abundantly clear that Amazon has a head start. B&N was late with their readers, starting with a Kindle-like IREX and ending up with an odd duck that uses e-ink for text display but also adds a bit of UI richness with the color LCD. The specs promise an interesting experience and it’s especially nice to hear that the device will last for 10 days with wireless off, a bit longer than any of the Kindle family in practice although, in theory, any member can hit the 14 day mark.

The real value in these bookstore-backed ereaders is discovery and shopping. Sony’s offerings, for example, lost quite a bit of ground even though they were first to market. A vibrant and wide-ranging bookstore is key to an ereaders success which is what makes the Nook quite interesting.

Another interesting tidbit – the Nook, because it’s built on Android, should run Android apps natively, turning the Nook into more of a computing device than a standalone reader.

No one has to lose in this race. However, when it comes to standards and potential sales Amazon may have to change its attiutude towards sharing in order to beat the Nook’s “lending” functionality which allows users to “give” their books to other Nook users outside of their immediate circle.

I’m just glad to see a little competition. Amazon will be the better for it and B&N seems to know what people like.

Deutsche Telekom’s e-book reader probably has gone the way of the Dodo, but the Germans are still getting a home-made Kindle competitor. The device, dubbed txtr, was announced at the Frankfurt Book Fair that’s happening  in Deutschland right now, and it will become available in that country as soon as December 1 (as pre-order).

The txtr is the product of a Berlin-based start-up of the same name. It features a 6-inch grayscale e-ink screen, a microSD slot (an 8GB card is included in the package, 1GB flash), an ARM11 CPU (532MHz), 64MB RAM, a micro-USB port and “ultra-long battery life” (company quote). The device is sized at 151×131×12 mm and weighs 281g.

You can download books and other documents via the USB port, Wi-Fi (802.11b/g) or the txtr wireless service (EDGE/GPRS). The reader can display PDFs and books in the EPUB format. Currently, there are over 10,000 books offered in the official txtr store, with about 3,200 of them being English books. It costs $18 per month to access your documents via the web and synchronize web sites with the reader.

When compared to the Kindle, the price for the txtr can’t really be called competitive at this point: $480 is a lot of money. Another problem for txtr: The Kindle will hit German stores as early as this Monday, while the txtr will be delivered to German customers December 15.

A company representative also said a new version featuring a 9.7-inch touch screen is already being considered for next year.

Via netzwertig [GER]

Amazon has confirmed that they are making the Kindle DX international as well. No word on pricing or availability but you can expect it sometime next year.

The news comes hot on the heels of Amazon’s Kindle 2 price cut and announcement of an international GSM version.

“Kindle has revolutionized the way we purchase and read books, by making it mobile, easy and intuitive,” said Randall Stephenson, chairman and chief executive officer of AT&T. “We are excited to work with Amazon to help readers access books even faster and from significantly more places than ever before, including more than 100 countries and territories around the world through AT&T’s global wireless coverage.”

The new international model will be available for sale in 100 countries. No word on international content but presumably that’s a matter of rights management in each country.

Amazon Lowers Price on #1 Bestseller Kindle to $259 and Introduces New Addition to the Kindle Family of Wireless Reading Devices–Kindle with U.S. & International Wireless
#1 bestseller Kindle now $259,Kindle with U.S. & International Wireless now available for pre-order at $279 and ships Oct. 19

SEATTLE, Oct 07, 2009 (BUSINESS WIRE) — Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN 90.80, -0.11, -0.12%) today announced that it is lowering the price of its #1 bestseller Kindle to $259, down from $299. Also today, Amazon.com introduced a new addition to its family of portable reading devices–Kindle with U.S. & International Wireless. Kindle with U.S. & International Wireless now enables readers to wirelessly download content in over 100 countries and territories. Readers can pre-order Kindle with U.S. & International Wireless starting today for $279 at www.amazon.com/kindle and it ships October 19.

“Kindle is the most wished for, the most gifted, and the #1 bestselling product across the millions of items we sell on Amazon, and we’re excited to be able to lower the price,” said Jeff Bezos, Amazon.com Founder and CEO. “We’re also excited to announce a new addition to the Kindle family–Kindle with global wireless. At home or abroad in over 100 countries, you can think of a book and download it wirelessly in less than 60 seconds.”

Kindle wirelessly downloads books, newspapers, magazines, blogs, and personal documents to a crisp, high-resolution 6-inch electronic ink display that looks and reads like real paper. Kindle utilizes the same 3G wireless technology as advanced cell phones, so you never need to hunt for a Wi-Fi hotspot or sync with a PC. Readers can wirelessly shop the Kindle Store, download books in less than 60 seconds, automatically receive newspaper and magazine subscriptions, receive personal documents, and read from their library–now in over 100 countries and territories.

“Kindle has revolutionized the way we purchase and read books, by making it mobile, easy and intuitive,” said Randall Stephenson, chairman and chief executive officer of AT&T. “We are excited to work with Amazon to help readers access books even faster and from significantly more places than ever before, including more than 100 countries and territories around the world through AT&T’s global wireless coverage.”

The U.S. Kindle Store (www.amazon.com/kindlestore) now has more than 350,000 books, including New Releases and 104 of 112 New York Times Bestsellers, which are typically $9.99 or less. More than 75,000 books have been added to the U.S. Kindle Store in just the last five months. Starting today, Lonely Planet guides are now available in the Kindle Store, joining existing travel guide selection from publishers Rick Steves, Frommers and Michelin.

“Lonely Planet is excited to make a vast selection of travel guides from Australia to Zanzibar available to Kindle customers around the world,” said Lonely Planet CEO Matt Goldberg. “Travelers can now pack as many Lonely Planet guides as they want into Kindle’s 10.2 ounces and download new guides wirelessly while travelling around the world.”

Over 50 top U.S. and international newspapers such as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, The Washington Post, Financial Times, The Times (UK), Le Monde, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, and the Shanghai Daily are available in the Kindle Store for single purchase or subscription, and can now be delivered wirelessly in over 100 countries and territories. Over 35 top magazines, such as The Economist, Newsweek, Time, The New Yorker, Foreign Affairs, The Atlantic, Forbes, Fortune, PC Magazine, and The New England Journal of Medicine are also available for single purchase or subscription, and can also be delivered wirelessly in the U.S. and abroad. U.S. Kindle customers can also continue to take advantage of the Kindle Store’s selection of over 7,000 blogs and receive new posts while traveling overseas.

Kindle with U.S. & International Wireless offers customers the same features that have helped make Kindle with U.S. Wireless the #1 bestselling product on Amazon.com, including:

– Slim and Trim: At just over a third of an inch thin (0.36 inches) and weighing just over 10 ounces, Kindle is pencil thin and lighter than a typical paperback.

– Reads Like Real Paper: Kindle’s 6-inch electronic ink display reads like printed words on paper because the screen works using real ink and doesn’t use a backlight, eliminating the eyestrain and glare associated with other electronic displays.

– Stores Up To 1,500 Books: Kindle’s 2 GB of memory holds up to 1,500 books and Kindle books are automatically backed up by Amazon so customers can re-download titles from their library.

– Read For Weeks On A Single Charge: Kindle’s electronic ink display sips battery power so users can read for over two weeks with wireless turned off and up to four days on a single charge with wireless on.

– Read-To-Me: With the experimental Text-To-Speech feature, Kindle can read most newspapers, magazines, blogs, and books out loud.

– Automatically Syncs With Kindle and Kindle Compatible Devices: Amazon’s “Whispersync” technology automatically syncs customers’ last page read, bookmarks, notes, and highlights across Kindle with U.S. & International Wireless, Kindle with U.S. Wireless, Kindle DX, and Kindle compatible devices like Kindle for iPhone.

– Wirelessly Receive and Read Personal Documents: Wirelessly send, receive, and read personal documents in a variety of formats such as Microsoft Word and PDF.

– Instant Dictionary Lookup: Kindle comes with the New Oxford American Dictionary and over 250,000 definitions that appear instantly at the bottom of the page.

– Choose Text Size: Kindle lets readers customize their reading preference by providing six different text sizes.

– Bookmarks, Notes, and Highlights: By using the QWERTY keyboard Kindle users can add annotations to text, as well as highlight and clip key passages and bookmark pages for future use.

Amazon’s current wireless hardware provider, Qualcomm, seems to be the one that will handle the magical spells wireless solution that gives Kindle owners access to an entire library in their pocket.

The Kindle is coming in as a bit of a late contender, with Sony’s and Border’s ebook readers already available in England since June. But that’s all about to change. TimesOnline called the Kindle “the best eBook reader in the world.” Well, at least now it’ll be the best in the US and Britain.

Comic from the inimitable XKCD

The Kindle is, in its current form, “a poor excuse of an academic tool,” according to Aaron Horvath, Princeton class of 2010. (I think our Ivy League correspondent meant a poor excuse for an academic tool)

When I think of the shortcomings of the Kindle DX, my mind suddenly shifts to the Courier. My god, what a difference! If Microsoft can make the Courier anything like their demo video, that will actually be a replacement for many tools currently required by a student. Annotations? Check. Full color? Check. Schedule? Check. Facebook and Twitter? Check and check.

I’m sure there will be a market for the Kindle-like e-book for a good time to come, but until they offer the kind of functionality we’re going to be seeing in tablets come 2010, they’re always going to be limited to the latest Dan Brownloads.

Refurbished Kindle [Amazon via blog kindle via mobility site]

What’s the one area of technology that I’m still relatively keen on? That’s right: e-books, but that’s because I like the idea of having several books on my person at all times in a device that fits inside my trousers. (The latest: The Wages of Destruction by Adam Tooze. Not an e-book, by the way, since I’m not made of money.) Devin, on the other hand, who also reads his share of books, is not as big a fan of the tech. We’re like The Odd Couple! Anyway, I bring this up because it looks like Dan Brown’s latest novel, The Lost Symbol, is the first book on record that is selling better on the Amazon Kindle than its hardcover counterpart. (Blah, blah, the death of books…)

So what’s going on here? Well, yes, the Kindle version has been outselling the hardcover version on Amazon, but as Fast Company wrote, Amazon isn’t the only book store out there. And since this is a Dan Brown book we’re talking about, you know it’s going to sell like crazy for some reason. (Ron, from Ron and Fez, recently described The Da Vinci Code as a chick flick of a book, but one that men can read without being embarrassed. I never read the book nor saw the movie, so I can’t speak to that.) I wouldn’t be surprised to see it on sale at the corner bodega once it hits paperback.

Never mind that the number of people who can read is greater than the number of people who can read and who can afford a Kindle.

The future, it will be written in an e-book.

The presentation concludes that Time Inc. and other partners should form a new, jointly owned company. Time Inc. might spin out its Maghound service, a service which lets consumers bundle multiple magazines together into a single monthly subscription, to form the base of the joint venture. The company is also considering acquiring other businesses to jumpstart the venture.

Clearly a Time Inc.-centric device would be a a bad idea™ simply because it would end up unused and CueCat-like on the shelf. However, if all the magazine publishers got together on this I would totally be down. But then they’d just use Kindle.

Not much more to it, really. Just click on the button, and it’ll download to whichever device you happen to have. It’s worth your time to explore the site too, it seems that there are quite a few decent titles available for free.

I just might have to get myself a Kindle if this keeps up.

[via Dealnews]

Purchasers will receive a copy of the book for the Kindle or $30 in credit for Amazon products or a check. So either you can get one book or cash for two or more books.

Giz has the full text of emails being sent to folks who bought the book:

Hello,

On July 23, 2009, Jeff Bezos, our Founder and CEO, made the following apology to our customers:

“This is an apology for the way we previously handled illegally sold copies of 1984 and other novels on Kindle. Our “solution” to the problem was stupid, thoughtless, and painfully out of line with our principles. It is wholly self-inflicted, and we deserve the criticism we’ve received. We will use the scar tissue from this painful mistake to help make better decisions going forward, ones that match our mission.

With deep apology to our customers,

Jeff Bezos
Founder & CEO
Amazon.com”

As you were one of the customers impacted by the removal of “Nineteen Eighty-Four” from your Kindle device in July of this year, we would like to offer you the option to have us re-deliver this book to your Kindle along with any annotations you made. You will not be charged for the book. If you do not wish to have us re-deliver the book to your Kindle, you can instead choose to receive an Amazon.com electronic gift certificate or check for $30.

Please email Kindle customer support at kindle-response@amazon.com to indicate your preference. If you prefer to receive a check, please also provide your mailing address.

We look forward to hearing from you.

Sincerely,

The Kindle Team

Well that’s nice! Amazon made two mistakes here – they didn’t pay attention to copyright ownership and they didn’t pay attention to the implications of destroying copies of 1984. If this were My Life in France or a Clive Cussler novel, I doubt it would have created such a buzz. However, the irony and newsworthiness of the destruction essentially made this explode. Amazon will probably send flowers next time they have to delete a book like this – and I know they will – in order to head all the outrage off at the pass.

Do you need to run Linux on it? No, you don’t. What you really need to do, however, is get it to run Doom. That would be epic.

He basically writes:

Anyone looking to beat the Kindle, then, should look to the iPod: Study everything that Apple’s rivals did, and do the opposite.

Whoa, slow down there Zen Master. Sony had been spinning its wheels for half a decade. Its memorysticks, its UMDs, and its ATRAC files have been kept around in a wrong-headed effort to “define” the market the way it had defined hardware during the 1980s and 1990s and it has fallen so far that I doubt it even knows who the iPods rivals are let alone how to avoid their traps. The same goes for the ereader.

My thinking is this: the ereaders will sell. They’ve already sold about 400,000 of the first generation. People buy them because they have lots of PDFs they want to read and they live outside of the US. Those are the only reasons why they buy them. All Amazon has to do is start selling the Kindle outside of the US and it’s curtains. Sure there will be second tier readers, but I doubt Sony’s will be one of them. The second tier will be a cheap ebook for students that will soon replace the written word and will probably be based on an open-sourced hardware design.

In the end, Farhad means well. Sony had a good run but I wonder if a company with such a tin ear is listening to his advice, let alone understanding why it needs it.