Image provided by Amazon.com

This week, Amazon introduced us to the all-new Kindle.  Simply called Kindle, this newest version is being touted by Amazon as “Smaller, Lighter, Faster with 50% Better Contrast.”

The two new models, one with Wi-Fi and the other with 3G and Wi-Fi, are lighter at 8.5 ounces and 8.7 ounces respectively.  They have more storage space, now able to hold 3500 books.  The battery life on the wireless model will hold a charge for one month with wireless turned off or 3 weeks with it turned on.  The 3G model can last 1 month with no wireless or 3G and 10 days with them turned on.

In a press release dated July 19^th, 2010, Amazon.com has announced that for the past three months, they have sold 143 Kindle books for every 100 Hardcover books they’ve sold.  Even better, in the past 30 days that number has increased to 180 Kindle books for every 100 Hardcover books.  And to think, it only took them 33 months to make this happen.

Borders has launched its E-Bookstore as of July 7th and has some very aggressive plans to take a chunk of the digital book market within the next year.  At launch, they announced their plans to grab 17% of the e-book market by this time next year.

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Monday the 28th of June, marks another big release for Kindle as they have finally made their Kindle reading app a reality for Android users.  Many Android users have been calling for this app as handheld mobile devices become more and more popular for reading.

On April 11, 2010, we did a review on the Kindle app for iPhone in which we really sang the app’s praises as a way to turn your phone into a portable, ebook reader that makes reading fun and potentially even quicker than reading a normal book.  The key with Kindle as an app is that it presents a smaller screen size where the reader is less distracted by smaller amounts of text allowing them to focus on what they are reading and get from one page to the next page more quickly.

Welcome back to another week of Top iPhone Apps.  This week we’re bringing you a review of one of the top five rated free apps in the App Store, iBooks.

We want to make each of our standard segments as useful as possible, but need your feedback to provide the best and most helpful content possible.  If you have any specific apps or categories of apps that you’d like us to review, please leave us a comment with your feedback.  We want to hear from you.

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Pandigital, the company best known for its digital photo frames, has taken a leap into the suddenly crowded e-reader community.  The announcement that they will be releasing a 7″ Android based reading device comes at a time when many have made similar announcements.  Pandigital joins the likes of Barnes and Noble, Borders, Amazon, Sony, and of course Apple.  So, what will set them apart?

Amazon has announced that it will be releasing Kindle software version 2.5 to a limited test group soon and then to all users by the end of May of this year.

There are a number of updates of interest, but the biggest addition is the ability to access facebook and Twitter.  This social networking access will give Kindle owners the ability to share excerpts from the material they are reading with their friends.

Other updates include the ability to organize books into collections, the ability to see what other Kindle users think are interesting or important in the books you are reading, panning and zooming on PDF documents and fonts are being sharpened up to making reading easier and more comfortable.