Amazon.com

You think you own those e-books that you've paid for? Think again. Amazon has apparently decided it has the right to pull e-books from its Kindle if it wants to. Sure, it will refund your money -- but only after it's reached out a virtual hand and taken away that book you were reading.

In Wednesday's IT Blogwatch, Richi Jennings watches the AmazonFail, and asks how this could have happened and what could be done to prevent it. Not to mention Facebook pages we'd like to see...

In today's podcast: Attackers exploiting unpatched Adobe flaw; Amazon.com ships Kindle 2; and Micron lays off 2,000 workers.

In Tuesday's IT Blogwatch, Richi Jennings watches Amazon launch its "new, improved" e-book reader. Not to mention corpulence pedagogy...

Wow! It didn't take long for Amazon.com to prove me wrong about their vision for the future of eBooks. It turns out they may have the right vision after all.

On Jan. 27, I posted four ways Amazon.com could "screw up" their "running start" with dominating the future of electronic books. I also gave my predictions about whether they'd get these things right or wrong. I predicted that they'd get two things right and two things wrong.

Amazon.com wants to own the future of publishing, and got off to a running start with its Kindle eBook reader, which launched in November, 2007.

The new, improved Kindle will almost certainly be announced February 9 and ship a few weeks after. If leaked photos and insider reports are any indication, it appears that the new Kindle will be far more usable and appealing than the first iteration.

The company is in a great position to control digital books the way Apple controls digital music. But they could still screw it all up. Here's how.

Verizon Wireless executive Tony Lewis told Reuters this week that he expected competitors to the Amazon Kindle eBook reader to "arrive" in 2009, and hinted that Verizon would sell them to customers like cell phones.

At first, the idea of Verizon selling Kindle competitors sounds insane. Their business plan would presumably involve charging customers connection fees for accessing an online electronic bookstore. This sounds crazy for two reasons: 

We're sorry! It's IT Blogwatch: in which Amazon's Web site dies a nasty, lingering death, losing the company loads of money (or perhaps only a little). Not to mention the perfect career for a writer...

Linda Rosencrance says Amazon.com is dead:

SANTA BARBARA, CALIF. -- Amazon shipped its Kindle e-Book reader way back in November of last year. Since then, the company has tried to paint a picture of runaway success by suggesting that the incredible popularity of the device prevents the company from keeping up with orders. Is the Amazon Kindle really a secret failure?

SANTA BARBARA, CALIF. -- The Amazon Kindle is turning out to be one of the most mysterious gadgets ever sold. The company successfully kept details about the product secret leading up to the launch. What's interesting now is that the company continues to keep a lid on basic facts about the device, even several weeks after its launch.

SELECT * FROM IT_Blogwatch; in which Amazon adds the next element of its cloud computing story: SimpleDB. Not to mention the best technology quotes of 2007...