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List of free Prime eligible Kindle e-books

There's now an easy way to see the full list of free e-book titles available to Kindle owners with Amazon Prime.

In case you missed it, Amazon recently launched the Kindle Owners' Lending Library, which allows Amazon Prime members to check out up to one e-book a month for free with no due date.

The only problem is that it wasn't so easy to find all the more than 5,000 titles in the Kindle Store that qualify for free borrowing. However, as one might expect, a somewhat helpful link has cropped up in the blogosphere.

Click on … Read more

Amazon launches free e-book borrowing for Prime members

In an interesting twist on e-book lending that's sure to rile competitors, Amazon has launched the Kindle Owners' Lending Library, which allows Amazon Prime members to check out up to one e-book a month for free with no due date.

Amazon didn't put an exact figure on the number of books that will be part of the new program, but says that it's "over 5,000" and includes more than "100 current and former New York Times Bestsellers." Not surprisingly, we found a number of Amazon-published e-books on the list. … Read more

Sony Reader WiFi PRS-T1 review: It can't quite catch Kindle

It's hard for some people to imagine, but Sony was the first major brand to offer an e-book reader back in 2006--beating the original Amazon Kindle to market by at least 14 months. Since then, however, the company's e-book strategy has been one step forward and two steps back as it plays catch-up with upstart competitors Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

Consider the 2010 Sony Readers: the models pioneered e-ink touch screens months before the Nook and Kobo, but they inexplicably omitted Wi-Fi from most models--instead requiring readers to tether to a PC and download new e-books. Those … Read more

Removing ads from new Kindle costs $30

There's some good news for those of you who are considering buying one of the new "subsidized" Kindles With Special Offers but are worried the ads might be too irritating: you can easily upgrade to the ad-free Kindle if you don't like it.

That's right, once you buy a Special Offers version, you can easily shut off the ads by simply paying a fee--the difference between what a Kindle Special Offers costs and what an ad-free version costs. In the case of the currently available non-touch Kindle 2011, which goes for $79 for the Special … Read more

Covers gone wild: Are Amazon, Apple and B&N selling soft-core porn e-books?

They have names like "Bent Over," "Double Teamed," "Bedded by the Boss," and "Hot Daddy Cop." They're all part of a bawdier form of romance writing that's generally referred as erotica or erotic romance, and they're all in the Amazon Kindle catalog as well as Barnes & Noble's Nook catalog.

Needless to say, most of the books feature scantily clad figures, often intertwined, on their covers. Now, we're not prudes, but when a woman's bare behind shows up in the top 100 list on the Kindle (as is currently the case with "Bent Over"), you start to wonder whether someone over at Amazon might get a little concerned about its image and what the young folks who own Kindles might come across in their browsing. (Start clicking on "related titles," and things go downhill quickly--from the risque to the downright perverse.) … Read more

Kindle Touch won't browse Web over 3G

Over the weekend, Amazon broke a bit of bad news to prospective buyers of the upcoming Kindle Touch 3G, which starts at $149: you won't be able to the surf the Web using the "experimental" browser over 3G (outside of Wikipedia). Web surfing is a Wi-Fi-only affair on the device.

Amazon, as it sometimes does, delivered the news on its Kindle message board after someone read the fine print on the Kindle Touch 3G product page and noticed the small disclaimer, "Browsing available only in Wi-Fi mode."

Here's the official statement from the Amazon Kindle Team:

We apologize for the confusion. Our new Kindle Touch 3G enables you to connect to the Kindle Store, download books and periodicals, and access Wikipedia--all over 3G or Wi-Fi. Experimental Web browsing (outside of Wikipedia) on Kindle Touch 3G is only available over Wi-Fi.

New Kindles coming to a Best Buy near you

There's still a segment of the population that likes to actually touch a product--and play around with it--before they buy it, and unlike Apple or Barnes & Noble, Amazon doesn't have any brick and mortar stores. However, as it did with the Kindle 3, Best Buy will carry and sell the new Kindles, so you'll be able to try before you buy.

It's worth noting that those new Kindles will only be available for purchase in-store. So far, the just-released $79 Kindle with Special Offers hasn't turned up yet--the site reads "coming soon," … Read more

Kindle Fire's shortcomings: Little storage, no Bluetooth?

Often at big product launches, the devil's in the details, and companies sometimes conveniently forget to mention some features that may be perceived as negatives.

In launching the Kindle Fire, the big headline for Amazon was the tablet's impressively affordable $199 price tag. As Jeff Bezos said multiple times, "We are building premium products and offering them at nonpremium prices," and it's hard to argue with him when it comes to both the Kindle Fire and the new e-ink Kindles. But now that some of the euphoria over the launch has ebbed, folks are starting to look more closely at some of the potential shortcomings of the device.

Big on my list is the limited 8GB of storage, with only 6GB usable (and no expansion slot) and the apparent lack of Bluetooth (Amazon does not list it in the specs).

Others have mentioned the fact that there's no camera or GPS. Those feature may be important to some, but you just wouldn't expect them to be there in a product at this price point. After all, the $249 Nook Color also left off the camera and Bluetooth. Interestingly, that device apparently has a Bluetooth chip, but Barnes & Noble has chosen not to activate it, so who knows, maybe Amazon is hiding one, too. … Read more

How badly do the new Kindles hurt B&N?

For the last several months, Barnes & Noble had a nice winning streak going. Its $249 Nook Color tablet had been selling very well since its launch last October and its more recently released $139 Nook Touch was considered by many critics, including CNET, the top e-ink reader available--until today, anyway.

Of course, we, like everyone else, were waiting for Amazon's Kindle counterattack, suspecting it had some pretty good stuff up its sleeve. Lo and behold, in many ways it delivered exactly what we were expecting, but what surprised us was how aggressively it priced its new Kindles. … Read more

Amazon unveils Kindle Touch and Kindle Fire tablet

Amazon didn't disappoint tech enthusiasts this morning at its big press conference in Manhattan.. The company announced not one, but three new devices, all below the $200 price point.

As Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos said more than once during the presentation, the company is all about "making premium products at non-premium prices." The new products included three new e-ink e-readers and the much-anticipated Kindle Fire, a tablet for enjoying all of Amazon's multimedia content.