Kindle Review – Kindle 3 Review, iPad Review

Here are some new free book preorders from the kindle store -

1. The Dark Tide by Andrew Gross.  
2. Rides a Dread Legion by Raymond E. Feist. 
3. Stopping Time, Part 1 by Melissa Marr.  

The books are from Harper Collins ebooks. Rather strange since the list price is just $1 each.

Also interesting -

1. Dennis Lehane’s Shutter Island is down to $4.39. Now that the movie is out there’s a lot more interest and it’s hit the Kindle Store Top 10. 
2. Mankind’s Worst Fear by David L. Erickson. It’s rated 4 stars on 4 reviews.
3. San Francisco Mommy has a link to a free St. Patrick’s Day Craft and Recipe eBook.
4. Harper Collins have added two free online books - Big Nate: In a Class by Himself by Lincoln Peirce, and Savor: Mindful Eating, Mindful Life by Thich Nhat Hanh and Dr. Lilian Cheung.

So it’s 5 free books from Harper Collins – not bad at all.

Len Edgerly of The Kindle Chronicles kicks off Kindles for Kandahar

Len has started a very interesting project -

Yesterday I launched a project to provide free Kindles for U.S. troops serving in Afghanistan.  I chose Kandahar because of the letter K, but also because it’s the general region where Army Sgt. Andre B. Corbin will serve when he deploys later this month.  

This project is a terrific use case for eReader technology.  I realized that when Andre described how small the bag is that he will carry for his personal effects when he deploys.  Instead of taking one or two print books, he will be able to bring more than a thousand titles on his 10-ounce Kindle. 

Do check out his post explaining Kindles for Kandahar.

CrunchGear wonders whether eReaders will survive

Quite a well researched article on eReaders and it gives a run down of the various features ereaders are bringing to market – color screens, secondary LCD screens, touchscreens, and more.

There’s not really much point to worrying about what happens to eReaders. If they do a good job of evolving and improving they will survive. eReaders were supposed to die out the day they were launched – not much has changed in people’s attitudes towards them. We might never reach a point where people are willing to admit that eReaders exist and are selling well and people are enjoying them.

Look at netbooks – They’re selling 10 to 20 million units a year and people still hate them because it’s hard to make profits off of them and they don’t fit into the tech elite’s views of what a computer should be. This year smartbooks are supposed to kill netbooks and the iPad is going to take a break from killing eReaders and kill netbooks.

eReaders are the new netbooks – They sell more and more and it bothers certain people more and more and they keep inventing ‘killers’.

In 2011 we’ll be selling ten million plus ereaders a year and we’ll still see the same headlines. Perhaps it’ll be the new triple-folding all-in-one GrimReaper from Qualcomm that will be the Kindle killer of 2011.