Amazon Update IPhone App, Announces PC Reader

Amazon has just announced a new reader for the PC (no MAC yet) and you can sign up now to be notified when it is ready for download. Click HERE to sign-up for the Kindle PC Reader. Some may consider the lack of Kindle newspapers, magazines, and blogs on the Kindle for PC to be an issue, but I can already read most of those on my PC anyway.

• Get the best reading experience available on your PC. No Kindle required
• Access your Kindle books even if you don't have your Kindle with you
• Automatically synchronizes your last page read and annotations between devices with Whispersync
• Create bookmarks and view the annotations you created on your Kindle

In addition to the PC reader, those using the iPhone App should upgrade - it now has highlighting, notetaking and (for those using the original app) can be locked into landscape or portrait mode, just as the DX can, which is good for reading in bed or on a boat.

Here's the full press-release from Amazon concerning the Kindle for PC:

SEATTLE--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 22, 2009-- Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) today announced "Kindle for PC," the free application that lets readers around the world enjoy Kindle books on their personal computers (PC). The U.S. Kindle Store (www.amazon.com/kindlestore) currently offers over 360,000 books, including New Releases and 101 of 112 New York Times Bestsellers, which are typically $9.99 or less. The Kindle Store is the only place to find some of the most popular books of today in digital format. Kindle books can now be read on the Kindle, Kindle DX, iPhone, iPod touch, and PC.

Kindle for PC features Amazon’s Whispersync technology that automatically saves and synchronizes bookmarks and last page read across devices. Whether you read Kindle books on a Kindle, Kindle DX, or one of the free Kindle applications, you can always have your reading with you and never lose your place. With Kindle for PC, you can read some on your PC, read some on your Kindle, and always pick up right where you left off. Whispersync helped make the Kindle for iPhone application the most popular books app in the Apple App Store.

"Kindle for PC is the perfect companion application for folks who own a Kindle or Kindle DX," said Ian Freed, Vice President, Amazon Kindle. "Kindle for PC is also a great way for people around the world to read the most popular books of today even if they don’t yet have a Kindle."

With Kindle for PC, readers can take advantage of the following features:

* Purchase, download, and read hundreds of thousands of books available in the Kindle Store
* Access their entire library of previously purchased Kindle books stored on Amazon’s servers for free
* Choose from over 10 different font sizes and adjust words per line
* Add and automatically synchronize bookmarks and last page read
* View notes and highlights marked on Kindle and Kindle DX
* Zoom in and out of text with a pinch of the fingers (Windows 7 users only)
* Turn pages with a finger swipe (available in a future release for Windows 7 users)

Microsoft demonstrated Kindle for PC for the first time ever at the Windows 7 launch event today in New York City. “Customers have told us that they want access to a wider variety of content and an increasingly diverse set of form factors,” said Mike Nash, corporate vice president of Windows Platform Strategy at Microsoft. “With the announcement of Kindle for PC, Amazon is making its massive selection of Kindle books available on the world’s most widely used platform. The new Kindle for PC’s use of Windows 7 features such as Jump Lists and Windows Touch demonstrates how Windows 7 makes new things possible.”

Kindle for PC takes advantage of capabilities in the new Windows 7, including Windows Touch technology. In addition to Windows 7, Kindle for PC will also be compatible with Windows XP and Windows Vista. Kindle for PC will be available to customers around the world as a free download next month.

Amazon Lowers Price on Kindle International, Drops Kindle 2

The (electronic) ink has barely dried on Barnes and Noble's press releases for the Nook and Amazon has fired a shot across their bow - the International Kindle, which is now shipping, has been lowered in price to $259 and the Kindle 2 has been dropped as a new product (you can still order a refurbished Kindle 2 for $219). Although the Nook has wireless built in, Barnes & Noble customers can't order new books when outside of the US, only download content they have previously purchased, while the Amazon customers (regardless of which Kindle they own) can buy new content no matter where in the world they are, transferring via USB instead of wireless or using the built-in Whispernet access in 100 countries.

B1G1F on Kindle: Chuck Klosterman

December 31, 2009, buy Eating the Dinosaur ($9.99), by Chuck Klosterman, and receive a free download of Killing Yourself to Live ($9.99). As usual, the free book will simply appear in your Media Library and on your Kindle, you don't click on it's Buy button.

Book Description
Chuck Klosterman has chronicled rock music, film, and sports for almost fifteen years. He's covered extreme metal, extreme nostalgia, disposable art, disposable heroes, life on the road, life through the television, urban uncertainty and small-town weirdness. Through a variety of mediums and with a multitude of motives, he's written about everything he can think of (and a lot that he's forgotten). The world keeps accelerating, but the pop ideas keep coming.

In Eating the Dinosaur, Klosterman is more entertaining and incisive than ever. Whether he's dissecting the boredom of voyeurism, the reason why music fan's inevitably hate their favorite band's latest album, or why we love watching can't-miss superstars fail spectacularly, Klosterman remains obsessed with the relationship between expectation, reality, and living history. It's amateur anthropology for the present tense, and sometimes it's incredibly funny.

Killing Yourself to Live
For 6,557 miles, Chuck Klosterman thought about dying. He drove a rental car from New York to Rhode Island to Georgia to Mississippi to Iowa to Minneapolis to Fargo to Seattle, and he chased death and rock 'n' roll all the way. Within the span of twenty-one days, Chuck had three relationships end -- one by choice, one by chance, and one by exhaustion. He snorted cocaine in a graveyard. He walked a half-mile through a bean field. A man in Dickinson, North Dakota, explained to him why we have fewer windmills than we used to. He listened to the KISS solo albums and the Rod Stewart box set. At one point, poisonous snakes became involved. The road is hard. From the Chelsea Hotel to the swampland where Lynyrd Skynyrd's plane went down to the site where Kurt Cobain blew his head off, Chuck explored every brand of rock star demise. He wanted to know why the greatest career move any musician can make is to stop breathing...and what this means for the rest of us.

Free Read from Harlequin - Feels Like the First Time

Feels Like the First Time ($3.60 Kindle), by Tawny Weber, can be downloaded for free in the Harlequin bookstore, in one of three (DRM'd) formats. It won't work on your Kindle (but the PDF should work on the newer Sony Readers), but it's a pretty short read if you have to read it on your PC (224 pages).

Book Description
Zoe Gaston needs to unmask a mystery man for work. She also must survive her dreaded high school reunion--and the costume party that opens it. So Zoe, once voted Girl Most Likely to Die a Virgin, comes dressed as a leather-clad dominatrix... whip and all!

Her scandalous costume catches a secret lover. He seems so deliciously familiar under his disguise.... He's gotta be her long-ago crush.

But Zoe is shocked to discover the sexy body she's been so thoroughly enjoying belongs to Dexter Drake--her oldest friend! And he's hiding something bigger than just his identity....

Click HERE to buy the book in the Harlequin bookstore. Use coupon code FIRSTTIME when you checkout.

Three Free Books from Sony

There are several free reads in the Sony eBookstore today. They are still in the pre-order stage in the Kindle store (and not free, but I included links for those that want to read the reviews). All three are still pre-orders in the Kindle store; I'll post an update if the price drops there as well, once they are released..

Spinning Forward ($9.60 Kindle), by Terri DuLong

Book Description
In a debut novel brimming with warmth and wit, Terri DuLong spins a tale of new beginnings, old friends, and lives forever bound...

A New Englander born and bred, the last place Sydney Webster expects to find herself starting over is on an island off the coast of Florida. Yet here she is in Cedar Key, trying to pull herself together after her husband's untimely death--and the even more untimely revelation of his gambling addiction. Bereft of her comfortable suburban life, Syd takes shelter at a college pal's bed and breakfast, where amidst the bougainvillea blossoms and the island's gentle rhythms, a plan begins to form....

Syd never considered the possibility of turning her passion for spinning and knitting into something more than a hobby, but when the unique composition of her wool draws attention, a door is opened--the first among many. Yet even as she ventures out of her comfort zone, Syd finds herself stepping into the embrace of a community rich with love, laughter, friendship...and secrets. And as long-hidden truths are revealed, Syd faces a choice: spin a safety net--or spin decidedly forward and never look back....

Mania ($4.47 Kindle), by Craig Larsen

Book Description
A City Gripped By Fear...

Seattle newspaper photographer Nick Wilder has snapped his fair share of gruesome homicide scenes. But when a serial killer dubbed the Street Butcher takes his sick crimes to new depths of depravity, Nick finds the case suddenly getting to him in more ways than one...

A Killer Who Knows No End...

With each new murder Nick is shocked by what he won't soon forget. But the deeper he digs, the closer he gets to his own disturbing past--and the more he must risk to unmask an unpredictable, deranged psychopath. As the motives multiply and the suspects mount, the cold, stark Seattle winter is about to turn even chillier...

Men I Might Have Known ($9.60 Kindle), by Brad Saunders. Note that this is gay fiction/erotica, in case you could not figure it out from the title.

Book Description
Everyone experiences it--that moment when you lock eyes with a perfect stranger and feel a shiver of requited lust. Too often, those opportunities slip by unexplored. But in this steamy, imaginative collection, Brad Saunders turns "what if" into "what happened," recreating the sizzling chance connections he's experienced--and playing them out in uninhibited stories that tap into our deepest fantasies about what can happen when we take the next step.

From a glorious day on a sun-kissed Greek beach with a beautiful German man, to a college crush that turns out to be deliciously mutual, these stories are sometimes tender, sometimes torrid, and always deeply erotic. A gym buddy provides a workout to remember. . .. Venturing up to a Manhattan rooftop party yields a spectacular view--and not of the skyline. . .. And on a city crosswalk, saving a handsome artist from traffic earns the kind of gratitude that can't be conveyed in words.

Hedonistic threesomes, hot nightclub trysts, sweet and sensitive first times. . .whether set in exotic locales or on in your very own bed, these intimate, provocative stories inhabit the space between fact and fiction--where nothing is too wild or too wicked and the only limit to pleasure is your imagination. . .

As always, with Sony, you can see the book HERE on the website, but you'll have to use the Sony software to actually order the book (if you don't have it yet, it's free on the website). Just put the title or author in the search box in the eBook Store.