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Maybe you own a Kindle and find that its relatively small size might be on the big side when traveling or on the go, but you own a BlackBerry and not an iPhone. And maybe you never cared to own an iPhone until the Kindle app became available on it. Well, Amazon finally has some good news for you. Available in beta, the Kindle for BlackBerry app now brings over 400,000 books right to your handset. With the new app, you can access your Kindle library, notes and other tidbits. You can either get the app from Amazon’s website , or point your BlackBerry browser to Amazon’s mobile site for download . While you can always adjust the text size to your liking, I can’t …

Back on the 21st of January when Amazon announced that it would release its Kindle Development Kit , A/K/A KDK, we heard it would begin rolling out in limited beta this month, with a wait list of people getting access to the kit as space was available. Well, that moment has arrived, and you can now sign up to receive said KDK. Our tipster wasn’t able to get the software in hand yet, but we’ll keep on the lookout for it. Hit the read link to sign up, and to check out Amazon’s FAQ, as well. [Thanks, Mark] Kindle dev kit now rolling out…

UPDATED: If you’re interested in books, either the old-fashioned kind or the electronic kind, you’ve probably caught wind of a major dustup going on between Amazon and book publisher Macmillan over what price Macmillan should be allowed to charge for its e-books. Macmillan took out a full-page ad in the magazine Publishers Lunch to inform authors, retailers and readers that Amazon had yanked all of its books from the company’s electronic store. According to several reports — the most detailed (if confusing) of which comes from author Charlie Stross — Amazon didn’t take kindly to Macmillan’s proposal for a new book-pricing structure, which would see new books, both …

Apparently all is not well in e-book land. In an unusual move, publisher Macmillan took out an ad in the Publishers Marketplace magazine protesting the tactics being used by Amazon regarding pricing. The issue is Macmillan is trying to raise prices to $15.00 and up, and Amazon is trying to lock the prices at $9.99 and up per title. The negotiations have been going on for over a year, and finally came to a head on Friday when Amazon pretty much banned titles published by Macmillan by refusing to directly sell them. Macmillan took the fight public when he paid for an ad in the industry paper, the Publishers Lunch : “Under the agency model, we will…

Macmillan’s US CEO, John Sargent just confirmed that Amazon pulled its inventory of Macmillan books in a powerful response to Macmillan’s new pricing demands. Macmillan offered the new pricing on Thursday, just a day after Apple announced Macmillan as a major publishing partner in its new iBookstore — a revelation that certainly factored into the discussions along with Skiff and other emerging e-book distribution and publishing models. During the meeting with Amazon in Seattle, Sargent outlined what he calls an “agency model” that will go into effect in early March. Under the terms offered, if Amazon chose to stay with its existing terms of sale, then it would suffer “extensive and deep windowing of titles.” Amazon’s hardball response was to…

It’s definitely shaping up to be the year of e-book readers: the Amazon Kindle is flying off (virtual) shelves , and we’d expect the Barnes & Noble Nook to start moving at a decent clip once the kinks get worked out . But any device with an always-on 3G connection to a central server raises some privacy questions, especially when it can broadcast granular, specific data about what you’re reading — data that’s subject to a wide spectrum of privacy laws and regulations when it comes to real books and libraries, but much less so in the digital realm. We’d say it’s going to take a while for all the privacy implications of e-books to be dealt with by formal policy, but in the meantime the best solution …

Internet retailer Amazon.com had all the luck in getting its family of proprietary Kindle e-book readers into the hands of consumers while its rivals were faced with delays, but its luck may have turned. The Kindle’s copyright protection has been hacked. An Israeli hacker who goes by the name Labba says he has been able to break the Kindle’s digital-rights management protection, allowing its electronic books to be viewed on non-Kindle devices. A U.S. hacker has also reportedly created a program called Unswindle that converts books stored in the free Kindle for PC application into other formats. DRM prevents making copies…

If there is one near universal gripe folks have with the Kindle, it’s the DRM-laden files. It’s no wonder, then, that the thing has been a lightning rod for the “information wants to be free crowd,” almost since the beginning. Sure, we’ve seen Mobipocket , .epub, and .pdf files used on the device, but if you really want to bedevil Bezos the thing to do would be to altogether circumvent the DRM from your Amazon e-books — and it looks like an Israeli hacker named Labba has done just that. For the time being, the hack, which allows you to convert your legally obtained e-books to unencrypted PDF files, is available as a Python script. We’re sure that the process will be …

Sony Electronics, which has delayed the delivery of its electronic book reader, is hoping a deal with News Corp. will make it worth the wait for consumers. The companies sealed a deal Thursday that will enable Sony Reader users to view content from The Wall Street Journal and the New York Post. The deal comes after reports that News Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch was unhappy with the company’s deal with Amazon.com for the Kindle. Consumers will have to choose between two different subscription models to access the publications’ digital content, and News Corp. will reportedly get better control of subscriptions. A monthly digital subscription to the Journal will cost $14.99. The price for MarketWatch news and columns is $10.99, and a monthly subscription to the…

Rackspace said today that it would offer a database in the cloud through a partnership with FathomDB , a company that provides a relational database as a service. The move will add to Rackspace’s portfolio of enterprise-level offerings and follows on a similar announcement in late October when Amazon announced its own cloud-based relational database service . It may also help FathomDB, a Y Combinator startup that hosts its database-as-a-service offering on Amazon’s cloud, stay alive and compete against that company’s rival service. Signing up with Rackspace gives it a protector (and one that likes to buy innovative startups ), and also adds some competition to the emerging …