CrunchGear reports that an Amazon insider leaked the news that two new Amazon Kindle models will be ready for the holiday season, possibly as early as October.

One model is expected to be an updated version of the current Kindle, but with a vastly improved interface.  According to the source, the interface improvement leaps ahead 3 or 4 generations.

The second new Kindle is considerably bigger than the current one, more along the size of an 8 1/2″ X 11″ piece of paper.  Expect both models to come in a choice of colors.  No word on price.  Amazon fairly recently reduced the cost to $359.

I was very interested in this article, Electronic Papyrus: The Digital Book, Unfurled, in the New York Times about the Readius, a new type of digital reader anticipated for an early 2009 availability in the U.S.

The mobile device is being designed for reading books, magazines, newspapers and email, and is the size of a standard cellphone. “Flip it open, though, and a screen tucked within the housing opens to a 5-inch diagonal display.  The screen looks just like a liquid crystal display, but can bend so flexibly that it can wrap around a finger.”

The Readius is pocket-sized, but has a generous, supple screen, and “people with five minutes to spare in a taxi, bus or subway can use the dead time to open it, read a page or two of a book and then return the device to a shirt pocket,” said Karl McGoldrick, the chief executive of Polymer Vision, the company in Eindhoven, the Netherlands, that created the device.  The Readius will be introduced in England, Italy and Germany this fall.

Anyone who has used the Amazon Kindle will recognize the same easy to read E Ink technology on the Readius.  It will display about 22 lines of a book page, depending on the font, and changes from page to page in half a second at the touch of a thumb.  The rechargeable battery provides 30 hours of reading.

The new flexible screen technology of the Readius is anticipated in other products, as well.  “It’s an exciting example, but there are going to be a slew of other devices coming soon, too,” said Shawn O’Rourke, director of engineering at the Flexible Display Center at Arizona State University at Tempe, which focuses on the technology’s future commercialization.

Mr. O’Rourke says flexible displays are unlike today’s cell phones and laptops with their traditional glass backings.  “These displays are thin, lightweight and rugged — and they bend,” he said. The underlying substrates that support the display are typically either plastic or metal foil.

Flexible displays will mean “easy, relatively inexpensive and safe shipping and handling, compared with conventional rigid screens, and are expected to spawn a new generation of portable devices that are mobile, but also have compelling user interfaces,” said Jennifer Colegrove, an analyst at the iSuppli Corporation, a market research firm in El Segundo, Calif.

Check out the interesting array of Readius features, including Global wireless connectivity, with the greatest coverage of any eReader (Tri Band/3.5G HSDPA), supporting ActiveSync and USB mass storage (USB FS),and allowing communication with accessories and other devices (Bluetooth 2.0).

The Readius weblog  says the device is the portal through which readers can select and manage content — some free, some subscription, some one-time purchases.  Content partners will be listed this fall and content can be downloaded to a PC, or transferred over-air, not requiring a computer.

Pricing has not been announced, but is expected to be more than the Kindle’s $359.

California fires map
Google Lat Long Blog has a map of the many fires currently plaguing California.  More thunderstorms (with potential lightning strikes) are in the forecast.  Find the danger zones here.

Web2book for offline viewing of web pages, RSS feeds
Free Windows-only Web2book helps you read web pages, Wikipedia articles and RSS feeds offline.  You can download and convert RSS feeds, Web sites, Project Gutenberg books, Wikipedia entries, Crossword Compiler crossword, Microsoft Reader .Lit files, and other sources into other formats such as  HTML, RTF, LRF or PDF files.  [via Digital Inspiration]

30+ updated Firefox 3 extensions
Mashable lists the most useful updated Firefox 3 extensions for you.  Covers social bookmarking and many more.

More real-time quotes on Google Finance
You can now get both NYSE (as of today) and NASDAQ (as of June 2) free real-time market data via Google Finance.  Search Google or Google Finance, add your stock symbols, and keep the page up to have quotes stream live.

If you add Google Finance to iGoogle, add the Google Finance portfolio gadget and monitor your stocks as they are traded throughout the day.

PDF Search Engine: find, download e-books
You can now search quickly for PDF books using PDF Search Engine.  Some results may show PDFs that are not free.

You can add the PDF search engine to your search engine dropdown menu.

QuestionPro online survey tool
Looking for another online survey tool, or your first?  QuestionPro is similar to Zoomerang and SurveyMonkey.

The free version includes 2 surveys, survey templates, an unlimited number of responses and survey duration, and real-time reports, though you can only have 10 questions per survey.  The pro version offers more surveys and additional features, starting at $15/mo.  [via LibrarianInBlack]
 
Future novel: mashed-up “entertainment package”
Read/WriteWeb asks the question, what would a novel look like when it is adapted for the Internet?

Canadian author Nicola Furlong thinks the answer is a new web publishing format she’s calling a “Quillr.”

Furlong’s latest novel, a “supernatural suspense thriller” called Here Ends the Beginning, is the first to be released using the Quillr format.  The concept, created by Furlong and colleagues Glynne Turner, a video producer and songwriter, and Charles Ormiston, a web designer, “mashes up text, video, audio, and photos to create a new type of ebook that the three hope resonates with the YouTube generation.”

In Here Ends the Beginning, “The text is punctuated throughout with video clips and photographs of actors recreating the characters and scenes.  Music and sound effects further enhance this novel experience,” said Quillrist Furlong.  The first 5 chapters are free, the remaining chapters can be purchased online for $12.95 CDN.

I’ve written about the Kindle — today and previously several times, but what does the publishing industry think of ebooks and ebook readers?

John Blossom reports that despite its limitations, the Kindle “is the darling of book-readers on the go who can’t afford the space, time or trouble of loading multiple books in their overnight bags and pocketbooks.”

The Kindle is also becoming popular among the traditional media outlets because it enables them to maximize revenues when a title gains its peak value in a short period of time.

In fact, although highly speculative, he says that if the Kindle business scales as quickly as Apple’s iPod/iTunes business scaled it’s possible that Amazon could be enjoying more than $740 million in combined Kindle device and content sales by 2010.

If that happens, “then book industry executives may be wondering why they didn’t consider the music industry’s death at the hands of iPod’s proprietary 99-cent downloads as a lesson to have been studied more carefully.”

I confess to being attracted to Amazon’s Kindle ebook reader (now available and recently reduced in price — click on the image).

One of the things that has held me back is that I like free books which I get on loan from my library. There are numerous sites, however, that point you to free books that you can download to your Kindle. What’s not to like about that?

The main sources noted in a recent post at 43 Folders include Project Gutenberg, Manybooks.net, and Feedbooks.

Of great interest is Feedbooks where you can download one Kindle/Mobi book containing clickable links to more free and Creative Commons-licensed books that can be quickly downloaded directly to your Kindle.

I was also very impressed by Free Kindle Books and Free Ebooks Online where you can find links to a large collection of free stuff for your Kindle.

A couple of the links are of special note: an ebook search engine and a link to free audio books in the public domain.

Mobile picture books
Hot sellers in Japan are made-for-mobile picture books for kids.  One publisher plans to have 50 titles and 10,000 downloads by next September. [via iLibrarian]

How Americans use the Internet for purchase decisions
“The internet plays an important role in how people conduct research for purchases, but it is just one among a variety of sources people use and usually not the key factor in final purchasing decisions,” notes this Pew Internet & American Life report (PDF).

Among online Americans who use the Internet for product research, online resources make shopping more efficient by helping them explore options and compare features.  Although many use online resources to look for better deals, few actually make the purchase online.  Among the product purchases examined were music, cell phones, and new housing.

New instant copyright licensing services
In response to growth in blogging and social networking, iCopyright has launched two new instant licensing services – Instant PDF E-Prints and Instant Web Post – to help online publishers promote lawful reuses of their copyrighted content while protecting their rights.  See LISWire for details.

Amazon has reduced the price of its ebook reader to $359. When first introduced, the Kindle sold out immediately and was not available for months — now the deal includes a price reduction and free two-day shipping.

The Amazon Kindle allows you to purchase instantly and wirelessly over 120,000 books, newspapers, magazines and blogs. Wireless connectivity enables you to access the Kindle Store anywhere a cell connection can be established, but there are no wireless charges, service plans or commitments involved.

Kindle’s high-resolution screen looks and reads like paper, but unlike it, the size of the text can be adjusted to meet your preferences. You can download and read free book samples before you buy, and purchases are delivered wirelessly in a minute. Many New York Times Best Sellers and New Releases cost $9.99 — significantly less than paper versions. American and international newspapers and magazines can be purchased, as well. Free wireless access to Wikipedia is included.

The Kindle stores over 200 titles, while being lighter and thinner than a typical paperback book. Click on the Kindle image to access the site for a video demonstration and more details.

The 123,291 libraries in the United States are the nation’s single largest consumer of audiobooks, making up a whopping 32% ($295.4 million) of the total annual audiobook market (according to the Audio Publishers Association), says LISWire.

CDs are still the dominant audiobook format but the digitally downloaded audiobook format has been growing at over 50% a year since 2004, and modern libraries are leading the way when it comes to digital audiobooks.

I am not surprised at the numbers, being devoted to digital audiobooks and the free access I have to them through my library. 

A popular audiobook series called The Freeway Guides sold into libraries nationwide and Jared Patrick, owner, states, “two years ago we would never have guessed how many people would be downloading the Freeway Guides directly from their local library websites without ever leaving their homes.  Increased commute times, improvements in technology and the expectation of information on demand are driving this movement, and we are excited to see libraries leading the way.”

The industry’s leading magazine on audio trends, AudioFile Magazine, reports that audiobook use continues to soar.  Libraries offering digital audiobooks via their websites have expanded their patron base, they say, because of the 24/7 availability and ease of access.  Robin Whitten editor & founder of AudioFile states, “The amount of digital audio content purchased by libraries will only continue to increase.”

Digital audiobooks cover many topics and genres, including best-selling fiction and nonfiction.  If you haven’t looked for them at your library, you may be missing out.  The library audiobook services I am familiar with require an MP3 player rather than an iPod, but there are many players that are simple and inexpensive.  Audiobooks are perfect for those on the go.  On a recent trip abroad, I took 6 unabridged audiobooks with me on an MP3 player no bigger than a pack of gum.