The eBook Reader Blog

Amazon announced today that they have opened the doors of their Android appstore to nearly 200 countries worldwide. Previously it had only been accessible to those in the United States since launching in early 2011, and Japan and parts of Europe since fall 2012. This is good news for international tablet users because Amazon’s appstore [...]

This past week Amazon purchased a company called Liquavista that specializes in an alternative type of display technology called electrowetting. Electrowetting displays are similar to E Ink displays used on current Kindles (Kindle ebook readers, not Kindle tablets) in that they are more energy efficient than traditional LCD displays and unlike LCD they are readable [...]

The Kobo Aura HD is the newest ebook reader to hit the market, and it comes with a unique screen that is larger than typical E Ink ereaders, plus the resolution is higher. But is the screen good enough to win over would be Kindle Paperwhite buyers? Is the bigger screen size and better resolution [...]

Amazon has issued another firmware update for the Kindle Paperwhite. This new version goes by the number 5.3.5. It includes the usual “general improvements” as well as a couple of new features. The first feature enhancement improves dictionary usage by showing the full definition of a looked-up word in the dictionary window instead of just [...]

The 7″ Kindle Fire HD just got a lot cooler today thanks to Android developers over at XDA, especially Hashcode, who has just posted an Alpha release of CyanogenMod 10.1 for the 7″ Kindle Fire HD, which brings Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean and all of its Google-infested glory to Amazon’s most popular tablet. CM10 has [...]

Today Amazon announced something that I’m surprised didn’t happen a long time ago. Amazon is set to acquire Goodreads, pending various closing conditions. With over 16 million members and over 30,000 book clubs on their website, Goodreads.com is one of the best places to go for personalized reading recommendations and to discuss and review books, [...]

Amazon has just issued a series of firmware updates for their latest line of Kindle Fire Tablets, including both the 7-inch and 8.9-inch HD models as well as the 2nd generation Kindle Fire (the one that sells for $159). The update adds some new features. The 7-inch Kindles now support X-Ray for Textbooks (the 8.9″ [...]

While doing some research over at Amazon this morning I came across a couple of listings for refurbished Kindle Paperwhites. Usually Amazon has a note along the side of the regular listing when they have refurbished units available, but this time they are completely hidden for some reason. In fact they don’t even show up [...]

Thanks to a tip, I can confirm that there is indeed a workaround to get Go Launcher Ex to work on the Kindle Fire HD tablets, and it doesn’t require rooting, hacking, or anything complicated like that. Basically all that is required to use Go Launcher is one extra tap on the screen after installing [...]

Lately I’ve been making a lot of use of the X-Ray feature on the Kindle Paperwhite so I thought I would go ahead and put together a review detailing how the X-Ray feature works and what it is exactly. Amazon first introduced the X-Ray feature with the launch of the Kindle Touch back in November [...]