There have been some really interesting developments in the last few days (both for the Kindle and for Amazon) -
Kindle, Amazon Latest Developments
- Free by Chris Anderson is now free on the kindle until July 22nd.
- Kindle UK Release Date nears - Mobile Today claims that Amazon is working with Qualcomm on Kindle UK and that its talking to a mobile network provider and is close to finalizing a kindle uk release date.
- Brier Dudley at Seattle Times breaks the news that a Seattle property management firm executive is suing Amazon for over $5 million in a class action lawsuit. Amazon Customer Service added fuel to the fire by telling the gentleman it’s a common problem (so common we’ve never heard of it before) -
After about three months the Kindle started cracking around the points where the cover attaches with metal clips. The cracks grew and on July 6 the screen froze and the device (shown above) stopped working,
- Various news sources are claiming that Stanza’s rise to 2 million downloads (and 12 million book downloads) is hurting the Kindle. This confuses me – how is having the #1 and #2 reading apps on the iPhone a bad thing?
- Sourcebooks are holding back the ebook release of Kaleb Nation’s Bran Hambric: the Farfield Curse for 6+ months from hardcover release. People are going as far as comparing the situation to DVDs and theatrical releases.
- Taiwan’s biggest bookstore, Far Eastone, is creating its own Kindle and Whispernet -
Taiwan’s largest book store operator and one of its biggest mobile phone service providers have teamed up to promote e-books on the island. They plan to launch an e-book service and e-reader by the second quarter of next year.
- And some unfortunate news – Polymer Vision, makers of the cool, foldable Readius, have shut down.
Update: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group are considering a delay of the ebook version of Dan Brown’s ‘The Lost Symbol’. Could publishers be any more anti-customer?
2nd update: Rumors that Amazon is going to buy Netflix (NFLX hit a 10 week high). The sales tax issue (netflix has physical locations in many states) makes this unlikely.
Kindle in Education Developments
- BlackBoard Inc. (a company that provides educational software to over 2,200 educational institutions in 60 countries) issued a press release stating their support for the Kindle -
The Blackboard Building Block for e-Readers is part of Blackboard’s Next Generation roadmap for e-learning to enable teaching and learning to be accessible across multiple devices beyond the Internet and personal computers.
The Building Block currently supports the Kindle(TM) wireless reader device from Amazon.com
- It basically lets you send documents from your Blackboard course to your Kindle. The software is free and open source.
Bonus: Plastic Logic eReader Developments
- Plastic Logic raised more funding.
- They are also said to be recruiting heavily around the world. The Plastic Logic website certainly doesn’t reflect this – it has less job openings than they had a few months back.
- Business Weekly (the news source) even expect to see a NASDAQ IPO in 2011.
- PL are currently demoing their eReader at SEMICON West at Moscone Center in San Francisco (tomorrow’s the last day so catch it if you can).
Filed under: news Tagged: | kindle amazon developments
