You’ve probably heard by now that Amazon is holding a press conference in NYC this coming Wednesday, May 5th. Although there’s no guarantee, most media sources are saying it will be to announce a large-format ebook device, suitable for reading newspapers and textbooks on. It may even announce some sort of content partnership or even–wait for it–device subsidy (much like what cellular carriers do with phones) with The New York Times, which is not entirely far fetched considering:

1. Newspapers are hurting badly in this economy, and the New York Times is in some pretty serious financial trouble;
2. The NYT and other papers have been making serious noise lately about finding new distribution channels and revenue streams. Direct distribution via an ebook device is exactly the sort of new channel they’ve been reported as considering.
3. It may, in fact, be cheaper for a large newspaper to subsidize an ereader for subscribers than it is to distribute the old-fashioned paper route.
4. The New York Times already has had substantial success with subscriptions on the Kindle.
5. It’s speculated (completely unscientifically) that a high number of current Kindle owners are over 40 years of age, hinting that a significant portion of the demographic that will adopt ebook technology may overlap with the demographic that reads (and subscribes) to newspapers.

We’ll find out in about 48 hours. In the meantime, amuse yourself with these news stories about the possible device, beginning with the one in the New York Times that started the whole media flurry today. Here’s an excerpt:
Read the rest of this entry »

It didn’t take long for Amazon to make good on its promise to expand into mobile territory. Last week, only a couple of weeks after releasing the Kindle 2, an official app showed up on the iTunes App Store that allows you to read your Kindle ebooks (but not mags or newspapers) on your iPhone or iPod Touch. Here’s a first look at how the app works, including what it does well and doesn’t do at all.

Perhaps even more interesting, though, is that for the first time, customers who don’t own a Kindle can purchase Kindle ebooks. This throws open the doors of the Kindle bookstore to millions more customers. What doesn’t change, of course, is the fact that the titles remain DRM-shackled. But for the savvy user who knows how to remove the DRM, you suddenly have access to what’s still the cheapest ebook store on the planet. For now, at any rate. Read the rest of this entry »

In the apparent war between publishers/authors and readers (and no, there shouldn’t be a war between us, but that’s what seems to happen in times of innovation), Amazon has again forsaken us. By “us,” I mean readers, and by “forsaken” I mean that Amazon gave in to the Authors Guild regarding the ‘read it now” function of the Kindle 2. From now on, authors and publishers can disable the feature on any titles they choose.

I bet Amazon could have won any lawsuit, just like Google could have won the copyright lawsuit that the Authors Guild brought against them a few years ago over their library scanning project, but Amazon doesn’t seem to want a fight. I get that. On the other hand, it’s infuriating to watch this group of 8,000 or so members strip out functionality that they don’t legally have any right to touch.

I hope someone quickly develops a way to block those crippled ebooks from searches on Amazon’s store. If they want to sell reduced-funtionality versions of their books, there should be an easy way to filter them out so readers don’t have to bother with them ever again.

“Amazon lets publishers and writers disable Kindle 2’s read-aloud feature” [Los Angeles Times]

Because it’s that time of year, so why the heck not? (Remember, here’s how to add them to your own Kindle.)