Kindle owners will be able to borrow Kindle books from over 11,000 US libraries.

The books can be read on Kindle and free Kindle reading apps. Furthermore, Amazon enables notes, highlights and sync via whispernet, so when you check out a book again or maybe buy it, your notes and highlights will be available to you.

The lending function is available to all Kindle generations as to all free Kindle apps for Android, iPad, iPod touch, iPhone, PC, Mac, BlackBerry or Windows Phone.

Amazon is working with OverDrive, which is the leading provider of digital content solutions for over 11,000 public and educational libraries in the United States.

So finally Amazon erases one big disadvantage to the EPUB-eReaders out there.

In a Gizmodo article they say that you will lose your Kindle back issues of a magazine if you cancel your subscription. This is just plain wrong!

Back-issues on a Kindle are not deleted to cancellation of a subscription. They will reside on the device until you manually delete them. But they might vanish if the issue is more then seven issues old. If you want to keep older issues you have to secure them manually.

Here is the specific part of the Kindle help page:
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“Amazon Introduces New Kindle Family Member: Kindle with Special Offers for $114”
That is $25 less for the #1 bestselling latest-generation Kindle plus special offers and sponsored screensavers.

Special offers in the initial weeks include:
. $10 for $20 Amazon.com Gift Card,
. $1 for an album in the Amazon MP3 Store, and
. a $100 Gift Card with a new Amazon Rewards Visa Card

There is no $25 lower price for the Kindle 3G model, that still costs $189. The use of the 3G wireless for updating the screensavers and the ads may be just to expensive. That way the difference between the lowest-priced Kindle and the 3G model will be $75 now rather than $50.

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Googles GMail allegedly has been losing emails from some user’s mailboxes this weekend. Well, not just some emails were lost but everything disappeared from some GMail accounts.

Google are working on a fix and you can assume that they have a thorough backup system. But it is scary nonetheless.

So the message is again: backup your stuff regularly.
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Amazon has updated its website to include a new section for apps, games, and other active content “Kindle Games & Active Content“. So far there are only 23 titles in this section right now, but that will obviously increase.

The other new category “Kindle Editions with Audio/Video” is for enhanced Kindle ebooks. It contains up to 250 at the moment.

Stephen King might be called an early adopter if it comes to digital publishing and e-books. As early as March 2000 King published the story “Riding the Bullet” as an e-book that could be downloaded from the Web onto hand-held devices or computers.

When the second generation of Amazon’s Kindle went on sale in February 2009, King wrote the novella “Ur” exclusively the Kindle platform.

So far “Ur” earned him $80.000 for a work of three days, as he points out: “I didn’t do ‘Ur’ for money. I did it because it was interesting. [...] It took three days, and I’ve made about $80,000. You can’t get that for short fiction from Playboy or anybody else. It’s ridiculous.”

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According to Amazon, during the last 30 days customers have bought more Kindle e-books than hardback and paper books combined for the top 10, 25, 100, and 1000 bestselling books on Amazon.

In April-June 2010, for every 100 hardcover books sold by Amazon, 143 Kindle books were bought.

Steve Kessel, Senior vice-president of Amazon Kindle said:

“For the top 10 bestselling books on Amazon.com, customers are choosing Kindle books over hardcover and paperback books combined at a rate of greater than 2 to 1. Kindle books are also outselling print books for the top 25, 100, and 1,000 bestsellers—it’s across the board. [...] This is remarkable when you consider that we’ve been selling hardcover and paperback books for 15 years, and Kindle books for just 36 months.”

Amazon also announced more new Kindle 3, launched August 27, have been sold in the last two months than Kindle 2 were sold during the Oct-Dec 2009 quarter, which was a record-breaking holiday quarter for Amazon last year.

Since several days the section beneath “Your Active Kindle Subscriptions” is empty. It just says “No subscriptions found.”

When you click the “Your active Kindle subscriptions” link in the upper right corner of the “Manage your Kindle” page, you will get an error message:
“Looking for Something? We’re sorry. The Web address you entered is not a functioning page on our site ”

I wonder, what Amazon is doing there. It’s quite annoying when you just wanted to terminate a subscription and maybe now have to pay for another month.

What you still can see are your inactive subscriptions and you also can activate them. Since I am receiving subscriptions (blogs, newspapers) on my Kindle, I guess there went something wrong on amazon.com, or they are planing for something new.

Well, they should tell the user, what’s going on!

As you can see in this ad, while the Kindle is the better the more light is available the iPad doubles as a perfect mirror in direct sunlight. I can promise you, reading on a TFT in sunlight will give you a real head ache.

Kindle Wireless Reading Device, Wi-Fi, 6″ Display, Graphite – Latest Generation

by Amazon $139.00

During my vacation I enjoyed my Kindle DX on the beach on every day. Actually even a friend who usually opposes all electronic gadgets read a whole book on my Kindle during that time, cause it was much more convenient than his own book.

As expected a new, no two new Kindles just arrived at amazon.com and will ship from August 27th on.

You now can choose between a $139 WiFi only (available in graphite) and a $189 Free 3G + WiFi (availabele in graphite or bright-white) version of the 6 inch Kindle.

So, the Kindle got WiFi – finally, that is good news, but rises the question, why the more expensive Kindle DX did not get it?

Here are the new features:

• New, High-Contrast E-Ink Screen – 50% better contrast than any other e-reader. The clearest text and sharpest images.
• New and Improved Fonts – New crisper, darker fonts
  • Kindle now has three font styles -  standard Caecilia font, a condensed version of Caecilia, and a sans serif option
  • Support for New Characters -  Cyrillic (such as Russian), Japanese, Chinese (Traditional and Simplified), and Korean characters in addition to Latin and Greek scripts
• New Sleek Design – 21% smaller body while keeping the same 6″ size reading area
• 17% Lighter – Only 8.5 ounces, weighs less than a paperback
• Battery Life of Up to One Month – A single charge lasts up to one month with wireless off
• Built-In Wi-Fi – Shop and download books in less than 60 seconds
• 20% Faster Page Turns – Seamless reading
• Enhanced PDF Reader – With dictionary lookup, notes, and highlights
• New WebKit-Based Browser – Browse the web over Wi-Fi (experimental)

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