Amazon have updated the Kindle4Mac reading app.
Some of the improvements in the latest update:

Use the built-in dictionary to seamlessly look up the definitions of English words without interrupting your reading.
Real page numbers for thousands of books in the Kindle Store. Now you can easily reference and cite passages, and read alongside others in a book club or class.
If several other readers have highlighted a particular passage, then that passage will be highlighted in your book.
Choose whether you’d like to browse your library in a tile view or in a list view.
You can download the app from Amazon or from the Mac App Store.

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.

On Black Friday Amazon is going to sell the Kindle 2 International for just $89. The Kindle 2 International is said to have a better screen contrast than the Kindle 2 U.S. model and thus comes close to the current Kindle 3. gen.

Amazon:
“Our previous generation Kindle uses the old E Ink technology (the same E Ink as in the current Nook). Our all-new Kindle [the Kindle 3 {UK: K3}] uses the latest generation E Ink (Pearl) for 50% percent better contrast, and is available at the everyday low price of …$139.”

The sale doesn’t start until 9:00 AM on Black Friday, November 26 and it will definitely be a limited quantity item.

The $149 B&W E-Ink Nook with the same screen (WiFi only) will sell for $99 on Black Friday as will the smaller Sony without wireless, both do not have 3G and thus of course no international wireless coverage via 3G network for free. In my opinion the Kindle 2 is definitely a better deal with its free 3G cellular wireless web browser, and the Text-to-Speech capability. Other than the Kindle 3.gen it doesn’t have a WiFi module though. But the 3G it got works almost anywhere in the world without fees or the necessity to find a WiFi hot spot that’s also free.

You will find the Kindle 2 3G among the other Black Friday offers at amazon.com/blackfriday as soon as the Friday starts, so be quick!

The new technology from Amazon will automatically swap unwanted presents for books, CDs and DVDs you really want.

Amazon might soon allow customers to swap unwanted presents for items they really want before before the gift even leaves the warehouse.
The company has been granted a patent application entitled “System and method for converting gifts” that will make it easy for them to request a different item in place of the gift ordered by a friend or relative.

It would allow users to set up “rules,” so that whenever an order is placed by relative or friend, the item would automatically be replaced by a gift certificate of the same value, or a similarly-priced item from the recipient’s Amazon “wish list.”

Amazon has not yet indicated whether or how it plans to make the gift conversion tool available on its site.

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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In a press release Amazon announces a Windows Phone 7 Kindle app for later this year. The app will include all standard Kindle features. It will also be able to sync via Whispersync to keep your place in the book you’re reading with your other Kindle apps or Kindle device if you own one or two. It will also incorporate new features built into a Kindle app for the first time, such as personalized book recommendations on your Kindle app home screen and the ability to send a book suggestion to a friend from any book in your library without leaving the app.
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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!

Apple’s iPad is now available directly from Amazon rather than just through third party carriers.

For $13.69 – instead of originally $39.99 – you get the CrazyOnDigital Black Leather Case for Apple iPad, which is getting 4 out of 5 stars from 86 customers so far. priced retail at $39.99.

If you wanna do some word processing or calculations with your iPad you might be interested in the Apple iPad Keyboard Dock.

As Amazon’s press release headlines the new Kindle for Android update makes Kindle for Android “even better”.

The new features are:

. search the full text of Kindle books by voice or text,
. seamlessly look up words and phrases in Wikipedia,
. lock screen orientation in portrait or landscape mode,
. and view details about a book on Shelfari, the books-focused
. social networking site — “all without leaving the app.”

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