Webware

By now, you know you don't need a Kindle 2 to read books electronically. You can use the new Kindle for iPhone app.

But Kindle's not the only way to read books on a iPhone or iPod Touch. There are two other readers well worth checking out:

The apps

eReader

eReader is one of the most popular iPhone apps in the Apple App Store and it's the second-most downloaded program in the store's "Books" section. It's well liked for good reason.

eReader is designed extremely well, and it makes flipping through pages of your free books or premium titles easy. If you want to skip to a certain page, you can use a slidebar above the text to flip through the book. It's a simple feature, but you shouldn't overlook it; this is an ideal way to skip pages that more eBook readers should adopt.

eReader has great features. When you decide to stop reading for a while, it remembers the page you are on in each book you have in your account, and it allows you to wirelessly transfer eBooks to the iPhone's local memory so you don't need to worry about a Web connection to keep reading.

That said, I was a little disappointed with the eReader's dictionary integration, which is too difficult to use. And while the program allows you to change font styles and sizes, I found that the bigger the text size, the worse the experience. And due to the fact that the iPhone has such a small screen, it was somewhat difficult to see default text at times, so I found myself playing with the font size often in an attempt to cut down on scrolling left and right to read the book.

The selection of books offered in eReader is outstanding. Believe it or not, there are over 60,000 titles available to purchase, which include authors ranging from Stephen King to Howard Stern. And much like Stanza, you can buy those titles from Fictionwise.com. If you don't want to pay for the books, you can get some titles for free from Project Gutenberg. Regardless of whether you want new titles like Artie Lange's "Too Fat to Fish" or classics like "Romeo and Juliet," eReader has it all. And the sites are constantly updated with new titles, so you won't be missing out.

If eReader was a paid app, I'd be hesitant to recommend it because of how difficult it can be (at times) to read certain books. But since it's free and offers a slew of titles at no cost, it's definitely worth trying out and using if you don't want to buy a Kindle 2.

Stanza

Stanza is the most-downloaded eBook app on the App Store and it gets that prize for good reason: it's the best application in this roundup.

Unlike the Kindle for iPhone app, Stanza allows you to read much more than just books. In fact, the program also lets you access newspapers and online sites, and supports MS LIT, epub, Mobipocket, and PalmDoc eBook formats. You can even view Word documents and PDF files in Stanza.

Buying books and getting them into Stanza is simple. The easiest way to access titles and start reading them is through the Fictionwise Reader Store, accessible within the app. It claims to have over 50,000 titles. In my search, it had everything I was looking for on topics ranging from history to sports to fiction. I didn't have any trouble getting those books and reading them with the app.

Reading eBooks in Stanza is easily the most appealing when compared with its competitors. The app provides for multi-column views or standard book layout view. And by swiping the screen, you can move up, down, left, and right. You can flip pages with just a tap on the screen. You can also change the color, size, and font of your text with a slidebar. Combine those options and you can easily create an experience that can be tailored to your liking.

Much like eReader, I was impressed by the selection Stanza offered. If you want newer titles and you're willing to pay for them, Stanza allows you to download books from Fictionwise.com. If you want free titles or those you simply can't find elsewhere, you can also use Project Gutenberg. That may not help Stanza differentiate itself from eReader (the selection is practically the same), but I found that with both services at your disposal, you won't be wishing for more titles. In fact, I found books from Stephen Ambrose, Edger Allan Poe, and a slew of other writers. Suffice it to say that, like eReader, Stanza's title selection is outstanding.

The real value of Stanza goes beyond books you can buy or those you can get for free from Project Gutenberg. Because it supports periodicals and Web sites, Stanza is the closest you can get on the iPhone to using the Amazon Kindle--the real Kindle, not the iPhone app. And although it's hobbled by the iPhone's smaller screen, it still provides an outstanding experience (for free, no less) that you definitely should try out in place of Amazon's device.

Kindle for iPhone

Getting going on the Kindle for iPhone application is a snap. When I loaded it for the first time, I was prompted for my Amazon username and password. Once entered, I was brought to the Amazon front page, which featured all of the books that I had purchased for the Amazon Kindle device prior to this review. Since I already purchased those titles, I was able to quickly access them and start reading. And much like the eReader app, Kindle for iPhone remembers where I left off, so I never needed to flip through pages to find my spot.

I was generally impressed by the experience Kindle for iPhone created. Turning the page is achieved by swiping your finger across the screen, and as on the Kindle itself, you can bookmark pages, change font size, and sample the titles before you decide to buy.

But one feature is conspicuously missing: the Kindle application does not support newspapers. You'll be forced to read only books in the application. And if you want to read articles from the newspaper, you'll be forced to do it the old-fashioned way by using Safari.

You also can't buy any books in the app. Instead, you'll be forced to use Safari on the iPhone to go to Amazon's Kindle Store and buy a book there. It's annoying and a confusing decision that makes the value of this app decline significantly. However, you can't beat the selection of current titles that Amazon has available for download.

Reading books on the Kindle app was appealing, and I was generally impressed with the experience. Amazon did a nice job of making the iPhone feel like the Kindle. Kindle for iPhone is free, so you won't need to worry about dishing out any more cash than what's necessary to buy books for the device. But since it's difficult to buy those books and you can't read newspapers, I'm hard-pressed to recommend this program. If you really want a Kindle, don't use this app; buy the device.

Books as apps

Just because there are eBook readers in the App Store, it doesn't mean that you need to use those if you want to read books. Believe it or not, your iPhone is all you'll need.

The App Store has a relatively limited number of books for sale as apps. Since you don't need an additional e-book reader to read through them (the books have reader software built-in), it's an affordable way to get into the e-book market.

I downloaded a few titles on my iPhone and found that, generally, the experience was about the same as you would expect from any other reader on the device. That said, you won't be able to customize the way the books are displayed as easily and each title is a standalone, so you can't have multiple books housed under one icon, like you can with eReader or Stanza.

Overall, the reading experience was fine when I picked individual books and each title remembered where I left off. Swiping to the left allowed me to go to the next page and the "pinch" feature let me zoom in on different parts of the page. It made reading intuitive, but once again, trying to find the sweet spot that balances both font size and readability was difficult.

Individual book pricing is all over the map. Some titles are free in the App Store and others cost more than $20. It all depends on the book. But you probably won't be blown away by the selection. And at $20--given the price of "real" books--I'm not convinced that it's even worth it.

Cream of the crop

If you don't want to switch to the Kindle 2 and you want to use your iPhone to read eBooks, try Stanza first. It's free, it's full-featured, it offers the best reading experience, and it does much of what the Kindle can do in a smaller (and more affordable) package.

Auctioneers at eBay were asking for more than double the retail price of Amazon's Kindle e-Reader on Friday.

A check of eBay at 2:45 p.m. PST showed prices for the e-Book reader went as high as $930. TechCrunch reported that a Kindle, which retails for $399, was bid up to $1,500 earlier in the week.

Has Amazon really discovered untapped consumer demand for digital-book readers?

The e-tailer, dabbling in electronics manufacturing for the first time, sold out of Kindles soon after introducing them last month. The device connects to the Web to download books--a feature that separates it from other e-readers that must sync to a PC to load a book.

Amazon has said it won't start delivering on new Kindle orders until after Christmas.

The company said it sold out of the Kindle in under six hours after the handheld went on sale. Some critics questioned how many Kindles Amazon had in stock. The company declined to say.

Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos believes the Kindle will be to reading what the iPod was to music, according to report published Sunday in the online edition of Newsweek magazine.

In what appears to be the Bezos' first interview about the company's upcoming electronic reader, Amazon's chief told the magazine that the Kindle can store up to 200 books and connect to the Web with the help of a system called Whispernet. Amazon, a company that has become synonymous with buying books online, will also offer Kindle owners a selection of more than 88,000 digital books at launch time, according to Newsweek.

Last week, CNET News.com reported that Bezos will unveil the Kindle at a media event in New York on Monday. An industry source said that the device will retail for $399 and receive automatic downloads from major newspapers, magazines and other publications. The source also said that Kindle features e-mail.

The e-mail service enables owners to receive word documents or PDF files that can be stored in the device's library just like a book, Newsweek reported. But what makes the handheld truly unique is that it downloads books off the Web--and it can do that "in less than a minute," Bezos told the magazine.

E-readers used to confine e-book buyers to wherever their computers were located. Digital books had to be first downloaded to a PC and then synced to an e-reader. Amazon is freeing them to buy wherever they can connect to the Web and this could lead to more impulse purchases.

Amazon is banking a lot on the e-reader. The retailer held up the release for more than a year in an attempt to deliver a superior product than predecessors, a source told CNET News.com. Previous attempts to convince the public to switch to digital books have largely failed.

To help spur demand, Amazon is pricing Kindle editions of New York Times best sellers as well as new releases for $9.99. Price is important because in the past, e-books have often cost the same as the paper kind and that stifled demand.

Newsweek offered few details about the Whispernet system, but did say that its based on the EVDO. A source told CNET that Sprint will provide the EVDO access.

EVDO will enable Kindle owners to hook up to the Web via a cellular network. That means way more coverage than having to look for a Wi-Fi hotspot.

Who says magazines are dead? Not Fortune Small Business Magazine, Hearst Magazines, or Red Herring. And certainly not Olive Software, the Santa Clara, Calif., company responsible for creating the interactive digital twins of their print issues.

Like the best discoveries, I stepped into Olive Software's work by accident, while flipping through the digital leaves of Fortune Small Business Magazine. As a champion of downloadable and Web apps for consumers, I wouldn't normally seek out this kind of story, but the experience was too gratifying not to share. After all, would I hold back from you?

Click once and the magazine blooms in its self-contained online reader. Click again, this time on the right arrow, and the cover unfurls to reveal a faithful representation of the magazine's glossy, full-page interior, down to the shadowed hollow where the pages meet the binding. Flip through to read articles horizontally across multiple pages, each one adhering to the original layout, rather than dive-bombing into a vertical scroll that makes do with the Web's predilection for linear storytelling.... Read More