With the announcement of latest Amazon Kindle, the largest online retailer, Amazon, conveys a message that it is pretty much in scene of electronic reading device. In spite of fears that iPad will take-over the e-reading platform, Kindle is selling like a hot cake, thanks to the recent price cuts.

Kindle – 3, the latest dedicated electronic reading device of Amazon, will be released on August 27th, 2010.

It is true that Amazon is afraid of iPad and such devices but it is still strong in terms of ebook inventory and market penetration.The Amazon online store has 10 times more books (630,000 vs 60,000) when compared to iTunes. The latest release is smaller, faster, last longer, and doesn’t cost much when compared to iPad.

Too bad, it doesn’t have the touch screen and color display. But it seems, bookworms think the feature is not in their priority list. At least, not yet!

Here are some of the new Kindle 3 features:

• 21% smaller but, with same 6-inch screen
• 15% lighter than previous model
• Electronic-ink screen has 50% better contrast
• 20% fast while turning pages, with improved fonts
• 2X Battery life – up to one month (wireless off)
• 2X storage 3,500 books
• Built in Wi-Fi
• Newly designed buttons and button layout
• Improved PDF reader
• Text-to-speech

After the report published by Consumer Reports about the iPhone 4 antenna problem, it seems, Apple has taken the issue a bit more seriously. After the iPhone 4 press conference last week, Apple has posted a few new pages on the issue in its website including, new antenna performance page. The page highlights how several other smartphones experience similar attenuation (decreases of signal bars) to that of the iPhone 4.

The performance page initially featured smartphones of Research in Motion (RIM), HTC, Samsung, and it’s own iPhone 3GS. Recently, Apple added the Nokia N97 mini to the page. It looks like, Apple has no plans of stopping, Apple has posted signal attenuation video of Motorola’s recent release Droid X in the page and also in the YouTube site. The description on the video reads:

In our tests, the Motorola Droid X dropped from 3 bars to 0 bars when held in a way that attenuated the signal.

Droid X, a Google Android phone, has been seen as the latest and strong competitor for the iPhone.

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Apple’s latest antenna target – Droid X

Facebook, the social networking site created in the dormitories of Harvard  in February 2004, said that it now has 500 million members.

In the company blog on Wednesday, July 22, the 26-year-old chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, said, that it was an ‘an important milestone‘ for Facebook.

According to the site, ‘50% of the active users log on to Facebook in any given day,’ and an average user has 130 friends.

Facebook says that people spend 500 billion minutes per month on Facebook. That makes each members spend in average 1400 minutes (about a full, 24 hours) a month in the site.

Sharing photos is one of the most popular thing people do in Facebook. People upload 30 billion photographs every months. That makes, everybody is sharing about 60 photos a month.

The popularity of Facebook has created real threat to the sites like Google.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs is not used to being said what to do with his device.

When people started telling that his device was not good enough, he was outraged. He started telling how they need to hold the ‘magic device’. Consumer Reports was the one to blame for all these hassles. That was why he was ‘stunned and embarrassed’.

Some points to prove that he wasn’t at ease in the press meet:

• Admitting "We’re not perfect” shouldn’t have been easy for Jobs. That is why he started his presentation by admitting the truth.
• He was still in defensive mood – repeatedly calling out the press for blowing the problem out of proportion.
• Saying and trying to prove, the antenna problem isn’t unique to Apple.

And yes, nobody cared! As long as they can get their hand on the $29 ‘bumper,’ for free!

Those, who heard of the the Apple engineers knowing about the problem beforehand, are asking, ‘Is Apple staffed with people afraid to tell the truth?’

If you still like those old-fashioned hard- or soft-cover books, it is time to consider yourself old-fashioned if Amazon.com is to be believed.

Amazon’s chief executive Jeff Bezos says, "The Kindle format has now overtaken the hardcover format." Data from the past three months reveal that Amazon has sold 143 Kindle e-books for every 100 hardcover books. That is a big margin.

But, is that the full story? What about the real facts?

The Amazon site has about 630,000 e-books for a price, and numerous titles that are available as free downloads. About 80% of the priced e-books are sold for $9.99 or less, significantly lower than the hardcover books that average to $25.

The ebook sale is also fueled by a drastic cut in the price of the Kindle reader. The book reader sales tripled after Amazon cut the price to $189 from $259, last month. Kindle reader has been Amazon’s top-selling single item for the last two years.

Top 10 bestselling books list on Amazon.com, on July 19, 2010, has only two Kindle eBooks. It is interesting that e-books, "The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes" ranked 6th, and "Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland," ranked 9th both are free downloads.

Whatever they say, I still love the sweet smell of those old fashioned books … and I am sure I am not outdated!