American company, Discovery Communications Inc – who are indeed the people behind the Discovery Channel – has accused Amazon of infringing patents covering electronic book delivery and security with its Kindle e-book reader and said the online retailer should be forced to pay royalties.

Discovery Patent Holdings filed the complaint Wednesday in Delaware’s federal district court (as a side note, never go to Delaware, a few outlet stores and a lot of empty space, I made that mistake, don’t follow me child). Anyway, in that complaint the company claims the infringement of two patents.

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The e-reader wars have begun in earnest (well, in the US anyway) as some of the biggest selling devices in the market went beneath the $200 mark. Amazon’s Kindle and the Nook from US book giant, Barnes & Noble have both dropped prices significantly, with the former falling by a huge $70 to $189 (€154). Barnes & Noble meanwhile lowered the price on its 3G compatible Nook to $199 (€162) from $259 (€211).

A Reuters report notes that shares in both companies fell about 3% as investors feared intense competition (hello iPad) could lure away buyers of e-books. Profit margins on Barnes & Noble’s Nook and Amazon’s Kindle are estimated by analysts to be relatively modest, but the devices are important to attracting book buyers.

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Amazon is to release an application to allow Android-based smartphone and tablet device owners to get in on its Kindle services at some stage during this summer.

If nothing else, we'll be curious to see how well it does...

At the moment, there are Kindle applications available for both Windows and Mac OS X, as well as Apple’s iPhone OS and BlackBerry. As with all of the above, the version of Amazon’s Kindle set to be made available for Android is to include Amazon’s much touted Whispersync, which allows for bookmarks to remain synchronised across multiple devices – should you read on your notebook and then pick up your phone, you should be able to pick up at exactly the same point.

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It seems that Amazon’s Kindle might not be quite the godsend to students that it’s been built up to be.

It's certainly the nicer of the Kindles, but it seems it's still not up to snuff

Amazon had been pushing its line of ebook readers as a replacement for the usual mountain of books and papers that students might need to carry around. While Amazon was quick to publicise the trial at the beginning of the academic year that would see university students replacing their various paper-based texts with its larger form ebook reader, the Kindle DX. Unfortunately, it seems that that trial hasn’t gone down too well with those students with a specific interest in using the device for academic reasons, rather than simply reading for pleasure.

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It’s been announced that Amazon is to add to its Kindle ebook reader a Facebook feature, which will give users the ability to maintain a connection to social networks via the device’s wireless.

Interesting to see how the E Ink display handles Facebook...

Indeed, this latest update to Amazon’s Kindle makes use of the one big feature of the Kindle that few, if any, other ebook readers boast, the persistent 3G connection. Indeed, it’s one of the features that’s made the Kindle so very attractive, offering instant access to Amazon’s Kindle Store on the go, and now the same service will be used to offer Kindle owners the ability to check their Facebook profiles for updates.

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It seems that Random House could well be considering keeping its content away from Apple’s iPad when the device eventually hits, for fear of sparking a price war across platforms.

Still no word on if and when we can expect to see iBooks in Europe...

According to the report coming from the Financial Times, Apple’s iBooks, which is to be rolled out with the iPad, has managed to secure the rest of the top five book publishers, including Macmillan, Simon & Schuster, Hachette, Harper-Collins and Penguin. The big fear, as with Amazon’s Kindle platform last year, is that Apple’s pricing setup might well see books move into a price war the likes of which they’ve not seen in a very long time.

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Amazon has taken the time to show off a little of what its upcoming Kindle apps for tablet devices will look like, unsurprisingly, it’s touting support for Apple’s iPad already.

Amazon's new Kindle arrangement does look lovely

Amazon seems dead set on spreading the Kindle platform so that the service touches just about ever major device possible, with the e-tailer pushing its Kindle applications out to the PC, Mac, iPhone, and BlackBerry already. Now though, the next big push seems to be one that makes, at the very least, a little more sense than making an ebook marketplace available to those platforms, and will see Amazon’s Kindle platform spread itself to a form factor on which books are, at least, a little more readable. Amazon has announced that it will be pushing the service out to “tablet computers.”

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Amazon has announced the availability of the Mac version of its Kindle for desktop application, widening the audience of the Kindle store even further.

Releasing on as many platforms as possible is suiting Amazon very well indeed...

Naturally, Amazon is pleased with the move, which brings access to the company’s vastly successful Kindle digital bookshop to just about every major platform going, and announcing that it hopes to make the Kindle shop available to those who pick up the iPad in the not too distant future. Of course, that’s barring any backlash from Apple, which has, in the past, raised issues with apps that “duplicate the functionality of the device” with the iPhone, something that could rear its head again with the iPads iBooks app.

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It seems that Amazon has taken to heart negative comments about the web browser bundled with its Kindle ebook reader line, and is now looking for people to develop a new version of the browser.

A new browser would only make the Kindle a more attractive prospect...

The word of the new development on Amazon’s Kindle browser comes via Amazon’s own job listing for developers, who it’s hoping will be able to develop “an innovative embedded web browser” for a piece of consumer electronics. Certainly, that description makes it sound very much like the Kindle is looking for a new web developer.

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Well, publishers who’ve gotten quite comfortable on their soapbox won’t  like this – a US academic claims a study he has carried out shows that giving away free electronic versions of your books can actually boost sales of the printed version.

Subtle stock photos, ya can't beat 'em.

Now, admittedly, the bloke who did the study is from the less than well known Brigham Young University (BYU) in Idaho (quite brilliantly it was also known as ‘Ricks Normal College’ from 1917 until 1923), but what with the publishing industry jumping up and down about the effects e-books are having on physical sales it’s good to hear a different perspective on the matter.

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It seems that Sony, no longer content with just sitting back and watching itself be eaten alive, has determined that now is the time to launch a smartphone tied into the PlayStation brand.

Admittedly, Mylo was always an absolutely grotesque affair...

Rumours of a PlayStation phone have been around a very long time indeed, with many surfacing shortly after the launch of the PlayStation Portable, which seems to have failed to gain quite as much traction as Sony might have hoped. Four years ago, when it seemed all but inevitable that there was a device shaping up to be a PlayStation phone under development in Sony, the eventual device wasn’t quite what people had hoped for, turning out to be a phone (called Mylo) that just happened to have some design features in common with the PSP.

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It really was only a matter of time, but Amazon has released a version of its Kindle application for BlackBerry users. Thinking in very straight lines, Amazon will now give BlackBerry owners access to their e-books without a Kindle device.

However, sting in the tail time (there’s always a sting in the tale for Irish consumers we find) is that while the Kindle device and service is now available internationally, the free Kindle for BlackBerry application is only available for users in the US.

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