Amazon allows Kindle ebooks to be gifted

Amazon has announced that you can now gift someone a Kindle book, and that you don't even have to worry if that person has a Kindle or not.
The only requirement is an Amazon account for you and an email address for the recipient. The ebooks can be read from Kindle apps on iPhones, iPads, Android and Blackberry phones and both Macs and PCs. All Kindle apps are free.

"We are thrilled to make it easier than ever for our customers to give their favorite Kindle book to a friend or family member as a gift," said Russ Grandinetti, Vice President, Amazon Kindle. "We're making this functionality available in time for the holidays to offer an easy, stress free holiday shopping option for anyone - not just Kindle owners."

To give a Kindle Book as a gift, customers simply choose a book in the Kindle Store, select "Give as a Gift" and send their gift to anyone with an email address. Notifications of Kindle Books gifts are delivered instantly via e-mail and the recipient redeems the gift in the Kindle Store to read on any Kindle or free Kindle app.

Australian Millenius e-book readers

Australian  Millennius is taking orders for its new e-book readers, as they have two models are available soon. The $A249 unit has a 6in E-ink screen, Wi-Fi with supported formats like TXT, EPUB, FB2, PDF, DOC, XLS, PPT, CHM, HTML, MP3, WMA, AAC, etc. The larger one has a 7in colour (LCD) 800 x 480 pixel screen. In addition to e-books, audio and photos  it can play video files. The 7in model , which runs Linux, is also able to act as a voice recorder.
Battery life is said to be approximately 8000 pages for the 6in model (E-ink uses power when redrawing the screen) and up to 15 hours reading (less for audio or video) for the 7in model.

New York Times to Launch Ebook Best-Seller Lists

It really seems like 2010 will be remembered as the year ebooks finally went mainstream. That ebook sales in the United States are projected to hit almost $1 billion by the end of the year and now The New York Times has announced they plan to launch ebook bestseller lists in early 2011.

The New York Times Best-Seller List, which has been published since 1935, is known as the true mark of a book's success for both publishers and authors. The ebook rankings will reflect sales aggregated from a number of online service providers who sell ebooks to consumers.