As many Kindle owners already know, keeping a large number of books on the device can get a bit unruly — so this would be a welcome update. It’s also good news for people on the fence about whether or not to get a Kindle or a Nook over the holidays. It appears that the Kindle is going to be the only game in town until after the new year. [Kindle Facebook via Gadgetell]

The “mirasol” technology mimics iridescent butterfly wings by deploying charged, colour-inducing membranes over a layer of mirror. It’s a technology that, if integrated into Kindles today as-is, would increase battery life by an estimated 20 per cent.

Instead, Qualcomm uses that extra power efficiency to drive colour and higher refresh rates for smooth video. They contend that a Kindle with their more capable display could run about a day with its current battery.

The catch? The lead photo is a non-functional prototype (with a functional, frozen-image display). Qualcomm is offering the tech to third-party partners, and they expect you to see mirasol tech on the market by late 2010. [SlashGear]

As for the Mac version? We’re still told that’s coming soon. [Beta Download | Press Release]

Kindle For PC Features:
• Purchase, download and read hundreds of thousands of books available in the Kindle Store
• Read the beginning of any book for free before you buy
• Access your library of previously purchased Kindle books stored on Amazon’s servers for free
• Read books in full colour including children’s books, cookbooks, travel books, textbooks and graphic novels
• Choose from more than 10 different font sizes and adjust words per line
• Add and automatically synchronise bookmarks and last page read
• View notes and highlights marked on Kindle, Kindle DX, iPhone, and iPod touch
• Zoom in and out of text with a pinch of the fingers (Windows 7 users only)
• Turn pages with a finger swipe (available in a future release for Windows 7 users)

Creative is also talking with publishers, a la Apple, although in their case the talks are primarily in Singapore, where they already have a number of e-learning initiatives.

Images were unavailable, although Engadget did manage to snag a source who snapped a blurry pic of the Creative UI reveal (pictured) earlier today. There will be a touchscreen, which would make this slate/tablet markedly different than an ebook like the Kindle, although somewhat similar to the Nook. That’s all for now. [Epizenter via Engadget]

The sad truth is that you’ve never experienced Vatsyayana’s Kama Sutra until you’ve had it read to you by the Kindle’s text-to-speech option. You’re welcome…

This isn’t another 1984 scenario (at least, not to my knowledge). Purchased books aren’t being remotely deleted from devices at the behest of evil publishers everywhere. But there seems to be something happening with publishers pulling out of the Kindle Store – or at least the Australian store.

The first book I purchased for the Kindle was Raymond Feist’s Krondor: The Betrayal. It’s the first book in a collection of three, all of which were available on the Kindle Store when I first received the device. Instead of buying all three at once though, I opted to pick up the first book, and use the “Save for Later” feature to mark the other two for future purchase.

The problem though, is that when I went back to buy those books after completing the first, they were no longer available. They still sit in my “Save for Later” basket, but searching for them, or the author, on the Kindle Store brings up no results. While the original book still sits on my device, I don’t have any access to purchasing its sequels on the Kindle.

But the situation is even bigger than just my single experience. Yesterday while searching for the books, ensuring it wasn’t my imagination playing tricks on me, I noticed that the Kindle Store boasted it had 285,000 odd books available to purchase. This morning, that number is sitting at 283, 292. Amazon rep Laura Porco said the other day that the number was around 288,000. So what’s going on? Why has the Store stopped selling almost 5000 books in the past week (or 2000 overnight)?

I’ve put the question to Amazon, but they have an Apple-like “no comment” response mechanism, so don’t expect too much in the way of details. Still, in the future it’s worth noting that you should probably buy all the books in a series from the outset to avoid any disappointment that might arise…

[Kindle on Giz]

Reviewing the Kindle is a unique challenge. No matter what cool technology is inside of it, no matter how many buttons or how long the battery lasts, it’s still a device that’s inherently designed to read books, a task that takes time. This isn’t something that you pick up to consume your media quickly and randomly, like an iPod or a mobile phone. It’s an investment in not only dollar terms, but also time.

The very first thing you notice about the Kindle when you take it out of its (expediently delivered) box is that its screen is on. Or at least it looks that way. No matter how many times you read or are told that e-ink displays draw no power unless they are changing, it’s still weird to see an image on the screen when turned off, which is what happens every time you flick the switch on the Kindle.

The second thing is that Amazon looked long and hard at the iPod original iPhone before designing the Kindle. Thin and white on the front, brushed aluminium on the back with a section of plastic, presumably for the built-in SIM card. Sure there are more buttons on the front of the Kindle, but this device is made for reading books, not watching video or listening to music. But the similarity in design is unmistakeable.

The device comes pre-loaded with a guide on how to use the device, as well as a dictionary. Scrolling through the guide will give you a good idea of how the device works, but rather than sit through that, I opted to get straight to downloading from Amazon’s store.

According to Laura Porco, Director of Merchandising at Amazon, the Australian Store launched last week with about 280,000 titles, which has swelled to about 288,000 this week. The US Store has about 370,000 books available to download for the Kindle. But apparently the books available for Australians aren’t a subset of the 370,000 US books – we have books the US doesn’t, they have books we don’t… And the same is true for all the new markets the Kindle is selling in. Amazon is working with local publishers and authors to try and add more content all the time. Doing a quick search of readily known Aussie authors, I got a lot of empty searches: Thomas Keneally, Matthew Riley, Kate Forsyth and Banjo Paterson all turned up blanks. Fantasy writer Ian Irvine’s Human Rites trilogy is available, but that’s it. Tara Moss, for better or worse, has a couple of books available too. Still, given time, we’ll only see more Aussie authors pop up on the device.

The built-in 3G Whispernet service works pretty well. It uses an AT&T SIM card and a global roaming arrangement, which doesn’t actually cost you anything – there are no subscription fees or mobile data plans involved. There is a slight premium on book purchases, but we’ll get to that later. Exactly what network it works on in Australia is unknown – Amazon were as tight lipped as Apple about specific details, and looking at AT&Ts roaming website, it looks like they have arrangements with all the Aussie telcos. In any case, downloading a book takes less than a minute – even for something as chunky as War and Peace.

Actually using the device is pretty easy. The next page buttons are big and conveniently located – it’s easy to walk and read – easier than with a real book, anyway. The keyboard’s kinda horrible, but considering it has limited use (both searching for books, searching for text within a book or taking notes), it’s not a big deal. It’s certainly no worse than using touchscreen input on a Winmo or Android device.

What some people may find irritating is the slow refresh rate of the e-ink screen. In a world where LCDs have 2ms refresh rates, the fact that it seems to take almost a second to change the image on screen could prove frustrating. Personally, it doesn’t phase me considering it takes about the same amount of time to turn a page, but that’s just me. In any case, e-ink is an ideal format for a digital book – reading in bright sunlight is no problems whatsoever, unlike an LCD.

Another potential issue for customers is the fact that everything is in US dollars. both the device itself, and the books you purchase for it, are all charged in US dollars. While that’s all well and good now, while the Aussie dollar is kicking arse and taking names, if it drops down to the 50 cent mark again, you’ll end up paying almost double for the same book. Amazon may change this in the future – they said that they’re running everything out of their US site for convenience rather than profit – although they refuse to comment specifically on future plans. As it stands, you can grab classics for $US2.99, with new releases going for $US11.99, and a whole raft of pricing in between.

If the dollar does crash though, it’s worth noting that the Kindle does read mobipocket files, which you can copy over via the included USB cable. By checking out Project Gutenburg, you can download hundreds of out of copyright books for free and read them on the Kindle. It also does plain txt files, although there are some weird formatting issues with that…

While we’re on the topic of the USB cable, it’s also worth mentioning that the device doesn’t come with a wall charger, just a USB cable. Not so big a deal, until you discover (as Jen Dudley at the Courier Mail did in her review) that the Kindle won’t charge with a USB wall charging adaptor – it only works plugged into your PC. Weird decision on Amazon’s part.

A couple of other things I haven’t mentioned: You can change the font size easily, which is great for those with weaker vision, and the text-to-speech functionality is included as well. It sounds kinda freaky, and you’ll probably never use it, but it’s there for books that publishers have allowed it to work on. You can also subscribe to Newspapers and magazines from around the world (there’s a free two week trial), although most of the pictures have been pulled out. Oh, and no Australian publications yet either, which kind of kills the allure for me. Finally, you can use the inbuilt dictionary to look up any word in any book, which is a great way of expanding that vocab of yours.

So now here’s the question: Is it worth it? It’s $US259 worth of gadget, plus the cost of books. As many detractors have said before, that initial cost is worth a lot of books. And the whole “convenience of carrying 1500 books with you” thing isn’t really practical, as much as it’s cool.

But here are my thoughts – comparing the Kindle to an iPod is a bit misleading. If you think about it, listening to music has always required some kind of device to play the music back, whereas reading has only ever required a book. So the simple truth is that there’s no need to own a Kindle. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t. It’s a well-built, easy to use and convenient device that can offer an immense level of satisfaction. Because of the size, and weight (or lack thereof), you can carry the Kindle with you everywhere, and read little by little much easier than carrying a book and having to bookmark the page when you stop. In the past week, I’ve read more than I have in a while – even reading several books concurrently, something I’ve never ever done.

So while it’s not a necessary purchase for booklovers, it’s certainly a good one, especially for the geeks among us.

[Kindle on Giz]

Mind you, it’s not the most exciting gadget, once you’ve gotten past the initial delight. Now I’m reading Raymond Feist’s Krondor: The Betrayal and loving every minute of it. But using it is about as exciting as reading a book.

Aside from the Kindle, I’ve also got Canon’s new 7D DSLR sitting in my hot little paws It’s nice. Very nice. I’ve also got a date with the Zune Video Marketplace, some Uncharted 2 and some Borderlands on the cards – I know gaming’s mostly Wildgoose’s domain over at Kotaku, but these games are so damn exciting I’ll be looking at them here on Giz as well.

What about you guys? Any exciting gadgets on the cards for the weekend?