Sadly, the text-to-speech abilities of the Kindle were crippled shortly after launch following complaints from the Authors' Guild of America that the text-to-speech functionality in the Kindle 2 -- which promised to bring the benefits of electronic books to blind and partially sighted people -- were infringing authors' rights to be paid a separate royalty for all verbal performances of their works.

This disagreement -- which saw Amazon head off a lawsuit by making the text-to-speech capability controllable by e-book publishers via a flag which disables the functionality -- is directly responsible for the DX's main failings, at least according to the director of libraries at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Ken Frazier: "the big disappointment [in the trials] was learning that the Kindle DX is not accessible to the blind. Advancements in text-to-speech technology have created a market opportunity for an e-book reading device that is fully accessible for everyone, [but] this version of the Kindle e-book reader missed the mark."

Dr. Marc Maurer, President of the National Federation of the Blind, is even more scathing in his disdain for the device: in a statement regarding the use of the Kindle DX in education as a replacement for traditional textbooks, Dr. Maurer states that "it is our position that no university should consider this device [the Kindle DX] to be a viable e-book solution for its students."

Yes, people. You're looking at the first shots of Amazon's Kindle 2. The follow-up to their popular e-book reader. Our ninja sent us a ton of shots, and we have to admit, they look pretty good. The unit didn't go down too much in size which is unfortunate, but then again, you want something pretty large so it's comfortable to read on. He says that the unit is a little wider and a little longer, but it should help those that thought the first unit was a little too awkwardly-shaped. What's even better is that with the new unit, while holding it, you won't accidentally flip the page like the old one.

As far as buttons go, on the right side, the bottoms from top to bottom are: Home, Next Page, Menu, a joystick, and Undo. On the left side, there's Previous, Page, and Next Page. We're told the buttons are significantly smaller to avoid accidental page turning. The joystick takes the place of the scroll wheel and it "takes a little getting used to." As far as the redesigned keyboard... it "has a good layout, but lettering on the keys could be darker." Continuing our tour around the unit, next to the sliding sleep button, there's the headphone jack, and on the right side edge you’ve got the volume up/down buttons. What's interesting (and you can see this in the photos) is that the backside of the unit is mostly metal with the speakers at the bottom pf the back. One more plus? They've finally ditched their own charger. The Kindle 2 is able to be charged with a miniUSB cable.

Amazon and the publisher Grove/Atlantic will give away the electronic download of a new novel, Spirit House, by Christopher G. Moore, to Amazon Kindle customers beginning Friday, in advance of the book's release in print on Aug. 28, the companies announced on Wednesday. Morgan Entrekin, the president and publisher of Grove/Atlantic, said in a statement that the deal with Amazon "is a great way to expand Moore's audience even further." The Kindle, a portable electronic reader that downloads books, newspapers, blogs and magazines, sells on Amazon.com for $359.

[I]ts Reader Digital Book will be able to read electronic books published using the .epub format that many of the largest book publishers are using. Until now, Sony's e-book reader could only read books available from the Sony e-book store, PDF documents, and DRM-free text. Starting next month, the new PRS-505 Sony Reader model will be able to access secure DRM- and non-DRM-protected content in the .epub format, formerly called the Open eBook format.

The Sony Reader Digital Book is the first e-book reading device to support the .epub format, which is the XML-based standard format proposed by the International Digital Publishing Forum. It allows publishers to convert books to different formats, protect the copy using DRM (digital rights management) and has the ability to resize PDF e-books and other text to better fit the reader's screen size.

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"This upgrade opens the door to a whole host of paid and free content from third-party eBook stores, Web sites, and even public libraries," Steve Haber, senior vice president of consumer product marketing for Sony Electronics, said in a statement.

The announcement is the latest move in a standards war over e-book formats pitting Sony against Amazon. Amazon's Kindle e-book reader and e-books it sells support the proprietary .azw format. Amazon also acquired Mobipocket, which offers a format for texts read on PDAs and BlackBerrys and its Kindle can read DRM-free .mobi files.

Publishing officials are reluctant to discuss sales figures, but say that they have seen double digit increases in ebook sales since the Kindle's release, and renewed interest in downloads for the Sony Reader. Sales for the most popular ebooks are in the hundreds, comparable to the number for the Reader, which came out in 2006.

"The Kindle has increased awareness. Publishers have told me that in some cases the Sony numbers were double or triple what they had been," says Michael Smith, head of the International Digital Publishing Forum, which tracks ebook sales. Selling through Amazon.com for $399 (£199), the Kindle is thinner than most paperbacks and weighs 0.29 kg. It can hold some 200 books, along with newspapers, magazines and an entire dictionary.

The Kindle has been praised for the selection of texts available -- more than 100,000 books, blogs and newspapers -- and for the speed of delivery, which averages less than a minute. Fans include authors such as Toni Morrison, Michael Lewis and Neil Gaiman.

Even by the standards of the book world, 2007 saw more hand-wringing than usual, as well as some unexpected good news. The year was punctuated by anxiety over the decline of many newspaper book review sections and worry that publishing, with its old-fashioned way of printing books on paper and shipping them to stores or to online services, can't keep up with a fragmented, increasingly distracted and digital world.

A flurry of bookstores, especially independents, fell victim to the chains, big-boxes and Amazon.com. In Southern California, that meant the shuttering of Dutton's Beverly Hills, Book Soup's Orange County branch, Anaheim's Book Baron and several beloved used-book stores. Leimert Park's Eso Won Books and Pacific Palisades' Village Books are hanging on by the skin of their teeth: Village owner Katie McLaughlin said she's waiting to see how holiday sales go before deciding whether next year will be her store's last.

And because of price discounts, the final installment of the Harry Potter series didn't give many stores the shot in the arm they were hoping for. Even literacy itself, according to a report by the National Endowment for the Arts, seems to be on a slow but steady decline. Add to this the destabilizing and ever-increasing pace of change. "It's one of those years -- they come along every once in a while -- where everyone worries and pulls their hair," said Marie Arana, editor of the Washington Post Book World.