Free Republic

In announcing the Oasis on Wednesday, Amazon said its ultimate goal is to make the hardware eventually "disappear," delivering the simplest possible experience for readers. In the retailer's words, the Oasis is "another step toward this mission," weighing in at 4.6 ounces and measuring 3.4 millimeters at its thinnest point. In order to achieve this svelte design, Amazon trimmed battery life on the Kindle itself, and developed a new dual-battery design. The Kindle Oasis ships with an included charging cover that delivers "months" of uptime, according to Amazon.

The abrupt resignation this week of William Lynch, the 43-year-old Barnes & Noble chief executive, was only the latest in a catalogue of troubles at one of the US's biggest book chains. If this were a business whodunnit, nobody could fail to spot the culprit: Amazon. Still, with bookshops everywhere in retreat as the internet takes an ever greater slice of their trade, it seemed to many that a chain with its own dedicated e-reader – the Nook – could have the answer. But with Barnes & Noble's device struggling to make any headway against Amazon's Kindle, that strategy, and...

The U.S. Justice Department says it has reached a settlement with the Sacramento (California) Public Library over a trial program the library was conducting that let patrons borrow Barnes and Noble NOOK e-book readers. DOJ and the National Federation of the Blind objected to the program on grounds that blind people could not use the NOOK e-readers for technological reasons. The Justice Department said the settlement is aimed at stopping discrimination: “Emerging technologies like e-readers are changing the way we interact with the world around us and we need to ensure that people with disabilities are not

I am interested in self-publishing on Kindle. Eventually I would like to publish a book but first I want to publish articles via Kindle of just 500 to 1000 words each. I would like to make the articles available for FREE to the public. This is to familiarize the general public with my humor and would be great publicity for my book.So what I want to know is if it is okay to publish stuff on Kindle that would be available to the public for FREE. Also is there some sort of Kindle index in which such articles would be...

Penguin's security issue was not specified, although it likely refers to piracy concerns. But analyst Avi Greengart said he wondered how much of Penguin's objections have to do with security and how much with the business model of lending titles, especially new titles, through libraries. The growing availability of e-book titles for borrowing through public libraries has hit a bump. On Tuesday, Penguin Group USA announced it would no longer allow digital editions in any e-format of new titles to become available for library lending -- and it is disabling availability of all titles for lending in Amazon's Kindle format....

(Reuters) - Amazon.com Inc is expected to launch its long-awaited tablet computer on Wednesday, sporting a low-enough price to give Apple Inc's iPad some serious competition for the first time. At a news conference Wednesday morning in New York, Amazon will likely unveil a seven-inch tablet that will let users read e-books, download digital music and video games and stream movies and TV shows. Analysts expect the tablet to be priced around $250, roughly half the price of Apple's dominant iPad, which starts at $499. "If Amazon prices the Kindle Fire at $250, it has the potential to become the...

I've been shocked that no one is strongly challenging the idea that the new iPad is going to kill the Amazon Kindle. Reading books on a back lit LCD screen doesn't work. Try it on your laptop. I guarantee you will want to scratch your eyes out of your head in about 20 minutes. The beauty of the Kindle and other e-readers is the e-ink technology that really feels like reading a printed page.