Amazon Kindle allows wireless download of books, blogs and magazines

By Giselle Abramovich

November 20, 2007

Amazon Kindle lets consumers download books, newspapers and others

Internet retailer Amazon.com has launched Amazon Kindle, a portable reader that lets consumers wirelessly download books, blogs, magazines and newspapers.
 
The Kindle store already has 90,000 books available, including 101 of the 112 current New York Times bestsellers and new releases.

Consumers can sign up for Kindle for $399 and receive access to a plethora of books through the Amazon Whispernet, which downloads content wirelessly. Kindle customers can shop at the store wirelessly. No PC or Wi-Fi is needed.

Books can be downloaded in less than a minute and magazines and blogs are delivered to subscribers automatically. Amazon pays for the wireless connectivity.

Kindle also gives users access to the New Oxford American Dictionary, with over 250,000 definitions.

Additionally, Kindle has a search functionality that makes it easy to search within the Kindle store, the entire library of content and Wikipedia.org. Customers can even add annotations to text, just like they would write the in the margins of their books.

Readers can edit, delete and export notes, highlight key passages and bookmark pages for future use.

When customers order Kindle, it arrives ready to use. There is no software to load or set up.