Kindle DX Isn’t Dead: Coming In Graphite w/ Lower Price

No matter how many iPads fly off the shelves, Amazon is determined to keep it’s ebook market share up. Helping them do that is a brand new Kindle DX, and price drops across the board.

The Kindle DX now sports a graphite color along with the available white, and the screen has a 50% improved contrast ratio. The best part is the price, however which has dropped to $379 (it was $489 before). The normal-sized Kindle 2 also saw a price drop from $259 to $189. The Kindle 2 is available now, and the new Kindle DX will be available July 7th.

Android 2.2 Will Bring Flash, Kindle This Summer

Google and Adobe sure do like each other – a lot – as they are showcasing the seamless Flash experience that will be available with Android 2.2.

The update is supposed to bring 450 percent performance improvement and  amazingly crisp Flash playback. It will also give you a list of flash-enabled sites (counteracting the HTML5 list that Apple displays). Sadly, most of the websites are in mobile form, meaning you won’t be getting the whole web experience. Wait, what? Yes, it’s true.

Amazon also wants to snuggle up to Google in a move to bring Kindle app to the Android Marketplace (which has recently undergone some aesthetic design changes). They hope to bring their entire bookshelf to the Android by this summer.

Kindle for PC Hits, Mac Coming Soon, Kindle Still Worth It?

Amazon released their Beta version of an e-book reader for their Amazon Book Store on desktops today (in beta of course). The app is rather simple, allowing you to read all your purchased content now on your PC (with Mac versions coming soon). But if the Kindle is already on the iPhone, PC, Mac (soon), and with the Nook’s $260 price tag, is the Kindle or Kindle DX really worth the money?

Princeton Students Trash the Kindle DX

Yes, Kindle’s are great for carrying around thousands of books, because, you know, that’s hard. Yet some Princeton students are not taking kindly to the Kindle DX as part of a experimental program at the school. Here’s what on had to say:

“I hate to sound like a Luddite, but this technology is a poor excuse of an academic tool. It’s clunky, slow and a real pain to operate. Much of my learning comes from a physical interaction with the text: bookmarks, highlights, page-tearing, sticky notes and other marks representing the importance of certain passages – not to mention margin notes, where most of my paper ideas come from and interaction with the material occurs. All these things have been lost, and if not lost they’re too slow to keep up with my thinking, and the ‘features’ have been rendered useless.”

Ouch. Sounds like Amazon has some work to do.