Google just optimized their Books site for both the iPhone and G1, and it’s great. But more exciting is news that Amazon may be bringing Kindle apps to mobile phones.
The new mobile Books site is great (it’s at books.google.com/m): it offers access to the full catalog of free works, downloadable in fast chunks for reading on the go. Granted, you have to have an active net connection (there’s no offline viewing potential), and the catalog does not include Kindle’s new releases. But the interface is great, and it remembers your recently viewed books and bookmarks where you left off when you revisit them. Pages are downloaded 15 at a time so you’re not constantly flipping to the next one.
But back on the subject of the Kindle, the New York Times is reporting that Amazon is close to offering a Kindle-like service for mobile phones, with full access to their extensive e-book store and offline reading on the small screen.
I’m still not at all excited to read books on tiny (or even moderately sized screens), but I know a lot of people are, so this is pretty cool. We’ll see if there’s any word on a mobile Kindle store on Monday, when we’ll be covering Amazon’s expected announcement of their next-gen Kindle hardware. [Google Mobile Blog, New York Times via Lifehacker]
https://gizmodo.com/amazon-preparing-to-drop-kindle-2-on-february-9-5140106
