You may know by now that Amazon announced their e-book reader called kindle today. In short, it can be used to read ebooks (of course), order/download books on-the-go and browse the web.

There have been other readers in market, however what differentiates it from other e-book readers out there is it gives the ability to read/download books anywhere, even if you are not at a wi-fi spot. It uses what Amazon calls whispernet (based EVDO broadband service offered by cell-phone carriers). Here is a quote from Amazon’s Jeff Bezo on what Amazon is trying to do in this regard:

…(we) decided to use EVDO. As soon as I tell you we are using EVDO that should cause a second set of concerns, because everybody knows there has to be a data plan and a monthly bill. … So we built Amazon WhisperNet. it is built on top of Sprint’s EVDO network, but we insulate you from all of those things. there is no data plan, no multi-year contract, no monthly bill. We take care of all that in the background, so you can just read.

Amazon is trying to present it as “the iPod of reading”. Aesthetically, however, it does not not look as attractive as an iPod (at least in pictures):

The product ready for order at $399 on Amazon. The price may sound steep initially but given that Amazon is going to take care of all the “monthly bills” that users would have had to pay in absence of their WhisperNet, it’s not that bad at all.

At this stage, it sounds users may have to pay for subscribing to blogs (I wonder how they will have us pay for something that has always been free and will remain that way), but that may not exactly be right. There are also some concerns about whether it will support industry standard file formats. We can expect more details to emerge in the days to come to clarify these.

However, if you just consider the e-book functionality of Kindle, it does sound like a great idea for someone like Amazon who are sort of still struggling to have e-books accepted by the masses. And they seem to be addressing the main concerns why it hasn’t been popular so far.

It has some nice features like re-downloading the content for free if you lose it, integrated dictionary support, document delivery by email etc.

If Amazon executes it well, it may well mark a big step in helping adoption of e-books as a real alternative to physical (seems we need this prefix going forward? :)) books!