Amazon

A 'new and improved' Kindle. So now, what?

The upgrades to Amazon's e-book reader are pretty routine: faster, better battery life, better screen, bigger storage capacity. That still won't be enough to make everyone rush to get one. CNET's David Carnoy examines the changesand the likely impact on potential shoppers still wavering on whether to buy one. Listen now: Download today's podcast

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PsyStar wins round in Apple suit

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Taking another crack at Amazon's Kindle

Webware 100: The official 2009 kickoff

What's new about the Kindle 2? Not a whole lot

NEW YORK--Were there an anthology of gadget launch announcements, the unveiling of Amazon's Kindle 2 e-book reader would have one of the more anticlimactic storylines.

It started out like any other big press conference, with a line of reporters and photographers streaming out the door onto the chilly sidewalk outside the historic Morgan Library & Museum.

The Kindle 2's arrival had been preceded by the usual blog blitz of leaked photos, rumors, and breathless wish lists. (A color screen! Better PDF support! International versions of the Kindle store!) Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos took the stage, Steve Jobs-style, with a slide show recap of the original Kindle's success before making the big debut.

But the announcement itself was underwhelming. The price, $359, remains the same. The battery life's been improved by about 25 percent. The Kindle 2 is much skinnier than its predecessor, slimming down to 0.36 inches in thickness from 0.7, but it's only a tenth of an ounce lighter. The storage capacity has jumped from 256MB to 2GB, or about 200 to 1,500 books, and the electronic ink display has improved from a 4-shade to 16-shade grayscale.

The layout of some of the buttons has been restructured, and the new Kindle also has a text-to-speech reader. In short, the improvements seem worthwhile, but there was no real curveball to give the Kindle a mainstream appeal.… Read more

Live blog: Amazon unveils Kindle 2

Update at 7:25 a.m. PST: Kindle 2 has been officially announced.

Amazon.com unveiled the second generation of its Kindle e-book reader during an event Monday morning at New York's Morgan Library and Museum.

The event started at 7 a.m. PST/10 a.m. EST, and we're updating it live below. Below the CoverItLive box, see photos of the new, $359 Kindle 2, which will start shipping February 24. (See also press release and Kindle 2 site.)

<a href="http://www.coveritlive.com/mobile.php?option=com_mobile&task=viewaltcast&altcast_code=23013053ec" >Amazon's Kindle 2 Launch</a>

Amazon Kindle 2: Complete CNET coverage

… Read more

Report: Amazon scares up Stephen King for Kindle

When Amazon.com hosts its anticipated Monday morning e-book event, one of the highlights could be an exclusive deal for the Kindle with horror story master Stephen King.

The Amazon event, taking place at the Morgan Library and Museum in New York, is widely expected to feature the unveiling of a next-generation Kindle e-book reader. On Monday, The Wall Street Journal reported that Amazon also will say it has acquired a new work by King that would be exclusively for the Kindle.

The Journal says a Kindle-like device is a factor in the story. The work by King might later … Read more

Amazon to unveil next-gen Kindle?

At a Monday morning press event at the Morgan Library & Museum in New York, Amazon.com is expected to turn the page on its e-book reader business.

The company is widely expected to introduce its next-generation Kindle device (CNET News plans to live-blog from the event later Monday morning). Rumors of its imminent launch have circulated since last summer, and in the fall, a photo of what is purported to be the Kindle 2 leaked on the Boy Genius Report blog. On Friday, a fresh set of purported Kindle 2 pictures hit the Web.

What the final product will look like is unknown, but if a new Kindle is launched Monday it's easy to imagine it will be lighter, slimmer, and have an updated look. The original design was largely panned for being too bulky and having too many sharp edges, as well as an interface that wasn't as user-friendly as some had hoped.

Even beyond that, there are a whole host of tweaks to the device consumers want to see in the next Kindle: wider support of file formats like PDF; a color screen; touch-screen capabilities like swiping to turn a page (as with Sony's Reader); and, more particularly, redesign of the "next page" button, which is located near the spot where many hold the device while reading.

… Read more

Reported Kindle 2 photos look like the real deal

Just got an e-mail from Alexander Turcic over at MobileRead.

Turcic, based in Switzerland, writes:

Hi David:

I hope you are doing fine. Got some news regarding Kindle 2 price and release info, plus the first Kindle 2 pics.

Cheers, Alex

According to the post, the Kindle 2, which is expected to be announced Monday at 10 a.m. in New York, will be available on February 24 and carry a list price of $359--just like its predecessor. All in all, the device looks similar to what we saw in earlier leaked photos, but in these shots the Kindle 2 looks sleeker and decidedly more impressive. While we have no confirmation that this is the real deal, these look like marketing shots if I ever saw them.

More photos after the jump. … Read more

Amazon Kindle books coming to cell phones?

Some people have criticized Amazon for essentially making the Kindle a "closed" e-book reader system. However, word from Yahoo Finance is that it might not be so closed after all and that Amazon will be making its Kindle books available on a wide variety of mobile phones in the near future.

At this point, it's unclear whether it will be offering up all its Kindle titles (the Kindle Store currently has about 230,000 e-books for sale) or just a fraction of them. Amazon spokesman Drew Herdener simply said the company is working on making Kindle books … Read more

Mosso challenges Amazon on cloud storage

On their blog today, Rackspace's cloud division, Mosso, shows off a study they did where they compared the costs and performance of Amazon Web Service's S3 storage service and CloudFront Content Delivery Network (CDN) against Mosso's combination of CloudFiles and their partnership with CDN provider, Limelight Networks. The blog post presents five common use cases, and compares the cost of CloudFiles/Limelight with the Amazon offerings, both with and without Amazon's support option.

I spent some time on the phone yesterday with Mosso co-founder, Jonathan Bryce, and Senior Cloud Architect for Rackspace's cloud division, Erik Carlin, discussing what they found. The short-short version is that, for the five use cases they analyzed, they claim (not surprisingly) that Mosso beats Amazon's offerings in simplicity, cost and performance, especially when support is taken into account.… Read more

Steve Jobs meets the Kindle

As Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos readies to take center stage Monday morning to release what will most likely be the next version of his company's much-hyped digital reading device, I recently obtained some very interesting--and exclusive--information concerning a very hush-hush meeting between Steve Jobs and Bezos that took place on the eve of the launch of the original Kindle back in November of 2007.

My Deep Throat simply goes by the handle "The Dude," and it's unclear whether he's a disgruntled employee of Apple, Amazon, or the hotel where the meeting allegedly took place--or whether … Read more