As expected, Amazon's eBook reader, the Kindle, became official today. The details: 30 hour battery life (two hours to recharge), 10.3 ounces, direct download (EVDO on Sprint) with no computer required.
88,000 books will be available on launch, priced from $10. Newspaper and magazine subscriptions can also be bought, and are delivered on release (think RSS for dead trees) and weirdly you can pay to subscribe to selected blogs (for one to two bucks a month). You also get a private email address, to which you can mail PDFs and Word documents. They will then appear in your library (expect spam after around two minutes).
The price? $400. And yes, there will be DRM. And no, we still don't know what that EVDO connection is going to cost. Check out the ridiculously in depth article on the Kindle, interview with Jeff Bezos and the lowdown on eBooks in general, at NewsWeek
Amazon: Reinventing the Book [NewsWeek]
