The Kindle Chronicles

News – 1: The next-generation Kindles are temporarily sold out, and the ship date has slipped from August 27 to September 4. Andrys Basten details more features of the Kindle 3. 2: Amazon updates the Kindle for iPad/iPhone/Touch app. 3: Jeff Bezos explains to Charlie Rose the difference between an iPad and a Kindle. Hint: one of them is not used to play Angry Birds. 4: Are Shuffled Row and Every Word the first two Kindle Apps? 5: I receive direct confirmation from the Google Books Team that the soon-to-be-launched Google Editions e-book store will not debut with the Kindle as a supported partner device, but you will be able to buy my mother’s book in non-DRM’d PDF format for reading on your Kindle.

News That Broke Too Late for Audio: Amazon announces the opening of its new U.K. Kindle store.

Tech Tip – You can make a nice e-book from your WordPress blog with the Anthologize plug-in. Thanks to Chris Martin for this tip!

Interview – Baratunde Thurston, Web and Politics Editor at The Onion, was my very first interview guest two years ago on TKC 1, which was uploaded on July 26, 2010. So it was great to talk to him again for an update on his Kindle habits, including the sad news of his original Kindle’s untimely end on the streets of New York City. We spoke via a Maine-to-NYC Skype connection on August 4, 2010.

Content – Stephen Windwalker releases an important new book, How to Price eBooks for the Kindle: A Pocket Pricing Guide for Authors and Publishers to Maximize Sales and Royalties with the New 70 Percent Royalty Option. Mrs. GeekTonic reviews FantasticFiction, a good site for finding e-books to read on your Kindle, and Candy Yates recommends KindleIQ, a site that will notify you of free e-books and price decreases.

Comments – Thorn on the too-many-ebooks problem and Patrick Scott with a good question on K3 hardware.

News – Jeff Bezos posts a classy apology for Amazon’s Orwellian moment, earning a kudo from Andrys Basten. Mignon Fogarty in her excellent new podcast, Behind the Grammar, notes that one of the retracted Orwell books had been annotated by a student for school. Oops! Barnes & Noble teams up with Plastic Logic to challenge the Kindle. New evidence via USA Today that the Kindle is seeping into the mainstream.

Tech Tip – Note: The promised trio of tech tips turns out to be only a duo on the podcast, proving that I should have paid more attention to the missing second one from Larry Goss – about how to use your Kindle 1 or 2 to do math tricks. I’ll be sure to include it next week. The tech tips actually related on the podcast are 1) How to submit your blog for Kindle subscriptions, and 2) and how to read word definitions in larger font on the Kindle 2 or DX, courtesy of Allen MacDiarmid.

Interview – Leading tech blogger and columnist Mike Elgan returns to the podcast to give an engaging, insightful update on the State of the Kindle. Click here for his last visit to the show, on January 2, 2009. He’s also a lively and informative Twitterer.

Content – Check out Jan Zlendich’s excellent blog, The Kindle Reader, for frequently updated tips on good reading for your Kindle. The Kindle Quote is from my sister’s new creation, Stephanie’s Bible Blog, newly available for subscription at the Kindle store.

Audio Comments – Stephanie Bowe, Joshua Tallent, Linda Hopkins, Rick from North Reading, Mass., Peggy Poellot, and Bryan Person.

Email Comments – Stephen Windwalker (a guest on the show here and here) and Robert W. Rutkowski.

Note: I’m sorry this episode is a day late, the first time I’ve missed my Friday deadline since I began the Kindle Chronicles on July 26, 2008. Thanks to a true genius at the Cambridgeside Apple Store, Justin Granger, the recording of my interview with Mike Elgan was rescued this morning from the crashed hard drive on my MacBook Air. Thanks, also, to my mother for loaning me her MacBook Air for a few days, so I could complete this episode and upload it.