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Princeton University has become the latest to announce that they have plans to begin offering Kindle editions of their textbooks. Joining other universities such as Yale, Oxford, and UC Berkeley the Princeton textbooks will be available beginning in the fall semester.

While there was not any mention of the pricing for the Kindle edition books, the nice part here is that students will have a much easier time carrying around a Kindle loaded with textbooks as compared to a backpack filled with textbooks. In addition the built-in functionality of the Kindle should only aid in studying. The Kindle has support to highlight portions of the text, make notes for future reference and even search to find the text you are looking for. While students could always highlight and make notes, the added search should make studying or trying to find something much easier than thumbing through several hundred pages of text.

Aside from hopefully making it easier to study, the Kindle can purchase books from anywhere, which would be nice and also a huge time saver at the beginning of school, no more long lines at the bookstore. Of course, on the flip side, the Kindle edition likely cannot be sold back to get some extra cash at the end of the semester.

Still a worthwhile trade off in my opinion. Hopefully the Kindle will make its way to more colleges across the US.

Read [CNET]

It’s a problem that most Web-based companies would love to have: their website servers crumple under the weight of popularity and pent-up demand (as long as denial-of-service attacks are not involved.) It usually means a lot of people have come to rely on your services, or at the very least are checking out what you have to offer.

It has happened most recently to leading e-tailer Amazon and up-and-coming short form messaging service/social network Twitter. Public relations officials at both companies have had to work overtime explaining why users were not able to access the sites. Amazon’s problems hit on June 6th and 9th and were initially chalked up to a hiccup caused by company systems that are “very complex and on rare occasions, despite our best efforts, they may experience problems.” Twitter’s problems happened a couple of weeks ago and included outages and public viewings of supposedly-private “tweets.”

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A Sanford C. Bernstein analyst predicted that with the ongoing US economic downturn, the Internet will continue to shrink and most of its major players will suffer but at least two of the current major internet players will remain strong. Guess who? Google and Amazon.

The report entitled “U.S. Internet: The End of the Beginning” written by Jeffrey Lindsay predicted that given their current market performances, both Google and Amazon are most likely to sustain their current standing despite the present US economic recession. In fact these two major internet players continue to post 30-40 percent growth while everybody else seems to be suffering financially.

Interestingly the report has confirmed current happenings in the web industry. For one, it claimed that Yahoo will be eventually sold to Microsoft, while IAC will push through with its plan of splitting up its conglomerate. The report also noted that eBay and Amazon may soon be forced to impose sales taxes on their transactions.

The report also suggest that Yahoo may still recuperate from its slumping performance, possibly by turning over some of its search advertising to Google, or if Microsoft finally takes over the company.

Read [Reuters]

Remember that lawsuit filed by Amazon against the state of New York’s new tax policy requiring online stores to collect sales taxes? Well, that tax policy has gotten a new detractor in the form of another big online retailer, Overstock. Following in the footsteps of Amazon, Overstock has also filed a lawsuit challenging the new tax law. Overstock officially joined Amazon in calling the new law unconstitutional and asked the New York Supreme Court for an injunction, due to the potential of the law being unconstitutional.

Although Overstock has already informed its New York-based affiliate advertisers that they would no longer provide advertising for Overstock beginning June 1, the online store is still hoping that they will win the case and hopefully won’t be required to collect the 8.75% sales tax to its New York customers anymore. On the other hand, Amazon has already begun charging the sales tax.

Incidentally, the Amazon case remains unresolved, and this new lawsuit filed by Overstock might trigger other online retailers to follow Amazon and Overstock and file their respective complaints against the law. Should that be the case; Will New York state repeal the implementation of the law? We could only hope so, and we’re not even from Amazon or Overstock. Of course, this law seems a little against the current, as New York State residents are already required to claim any “untaxed out-of-state purchases” when filing their annual taxes.

Read [Reuters]

Fortune is reporting that the New York State sales tax will be applied to all Amazon purchases beginning on June 1. This new rule will mean that New York residents will no longer be able to enjoy those tax free purchases, at least on Amazon. Of course even though Amazon, and other online retailers have not been charging tax at the time of purchase, New York state has, since 2003 required that residents claim any “untaxed out-of-state purchases.” However the failure to report those purchases alone would not have raised “enough concern to prosecute anybody.”

In the past the rule has always been that, as long as their was not a physical store location in that state, then the online retailer was not required to charge the state sales tax. With New York State breaking ground on this change, we can only hope that other states do not begin to follow. Not being in New York myself I am unable to confirm this did in fact go in effect. Amazon currently charges sales tax in five states to include Washington, North Dakota, Kentucky, Kansas and New York.

Via [Fortune]

Buried in all the Bill Gates-Steve Ballmer coffee talk at the All Things Digital conference is a semi-interesting nugget from Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, who was first to take the stage with the Wall Street Journal’s Walt Mossberg. When the discussion moved to web video, Bezos let slip that his company will be launching a new for-pay video streaming service “in the next couple of weeks.”

That’s about it for the details, except that you’ll be able to pay a la carte vs. subscription. And while some bloggers have added that the service will offer movies, none of the early coverage has a quote from Bezos specifically saying that this will involve Hollywood studio offerings. Amazon already plays in the downloadable movie space via Unbox and it’s not a smashing success so far.

Most of the talk revolved around Amazon’s new e-book reader, Kindle, although Bezos is still hesitant to give up exact sales figures. But it was clear from his answers to Mossberg’s questions that the Amazon CEO is giving laser beam-like focus to the Kindle and that it will end up accounting for a better slice of company revenue. Which begs the following questions from this corner: will the Kindle have a role in the new streaming video service? If not “in the next couple of weeks,” then when? And if the current version doesn’t have the specs to handle video, what about Kindle 2.0? Does Amazon even want to play in this arena?

Read [All Things Digital]

It seems that every time I make a purchase the price of the item soon drops, oh well I guess that it part of being any early adopter. Our Kindle was purchased when they arrived back in stock just about a month ago for $399. Lucky for us, the new price is just a little less, coming in at just about a 10% price cut at $359. The free two-day shipping offer also remains in place.

I really like the Kindle and have enjoyed using it, but still feel that $399 was a little on the high side, thankfully the now lower price is getting a little better, but honestly I would have still felt like I overpaid, even at $359, but at least this is a good start at the Kindle becoming more affordable.

Product [Amazon]

Whoa.  Hold it right there.  Is everyone drinking fouled cool aid or just gone straight to the rock?  What happened to our little cottage industry this week?  Let’s play “Who’s on Crack” shall we:

Microsoft. Says they hope to earn a 40% marketshare by 2012.  They were at 13% in ‘07.  Verdict?  Crack.

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It looks like Amazon’s decision to file a lawsuit against New York’s new tax policy on online stores may back fire on them as the Texas Comptroller’s Office is investigating the probability that the online store may actually owe the Texas government millions of dollars in unpaid taxes. If you will recall, in its case against the New York tax policy, Amazon argued that it should not pay the NY government any taxes because it doesn’t have a “physical presence” in New York.

The same reason is now being used by the Texas government as it found out that Amazon has a “physical presence” in the area. Apparently, Amazon has operated a distribution center at 2700 Regent Boulevard in Irving from 2006 to 2007. This was pointed out by the Dallas Morning News when it called Amazon to ask why it is not charging sales taxes to its online customers.

Amazon has not yet issued a statement confirming that it actually owns the distribution center. But if the presence of an Amazon flag outside the building is any indication of ownership, then Amazon may indeed own the distribution center.

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With the release of the Eee PC 900 quickly approaching, we are beginning to see more and more pre-order options opening up. The official release date is this coming Monday, which is May 12, but in case you cannot hold out any longer here are a few online retailers that are giving you the option to get your order in early.

We have already mentioned the listing over at ExcaliberPC, but now joining them are J&R, Buy.com and Amazon, all of which have the notebook listed for $549. For those willing to place their order early, let’s just hope the Eee PC 900 does not experience any shipping delays.

Via [I4U News]