July 3 - 12:20pm EDT   imeem is gradually building its own music store that may afford it independence from Apple's iTunes or Amazon MP3, an investigation has found. Normally, those buying permanent copies of music from the site must go through an Amazon or iTunes link and buy it off-site; quietly, however, the company has been adding direct-download MP3 purchases of its own for certain artists, such as Iron and Wine. The payment system is direct and uses either credit cards or PayPal. [full story]

June 29 - 4:15pm EDT   The US Supreme Court today rejected an appeal by film studios and television networks of a New York court ruling that would allow a new type of digital video recorder service from Cablevision. A report says the justices refused to review a ruling made by a US Court of Appeals in New York that said Cablevision's proposed service would not directly infringe the copyrights of the media companies that produce the recorded movie and TV programs. No reason for the rejection was given. [full story]

June 22 - 4:35pm EDT   The E-P1 Micro Four Thirds digital camera from Olympus that was officially introduced last week is now available for pre-order at Amazon. As promised, the camera will be available without a lens, priced at $750; as a kit with a 14-42mm f3.5/5.6 lens for $800; or bundled with a 17mm f2.8 fixed-zoom lens for $900. An add-on optical viewfinder that mounts to the hot-shoe, the VF-1, is a standalone option for all variations and carries a price of $100. [full story]

June 22 - 2:20pm EDT   Fresh from a win against EchoStar, TiVo is set to tie directly into pay-per-view systems as well as Time Warner's cable network, according to two sources. The DVR producer is said by Bloomberg to be talking with more than one pay-per-view provider to either allow its recording directly or else to license out the technology for third-party hardware or software. Details are vague, but it would be separate from online-only support for Amazon VOD, Netflix and other services. [full story]

June 16 - 1:05pm EDT   Plans are underway to spread the Kindle format, and open up access to the dedicated hardware, says Amazon's CEO. Speaking at a Wired conference, Jeff Bezos has explained that Kindle books should continue to sell for $10 as they go on sale through the iPhone plus "other mobile devices and other computing devices." A Kindle app is already available for the iPhone, though purchases must currently be made via the web. [full story]

June 12 - 4:35pm EDT   Just days after shipping on Wednesday, the Kindle DX e-book reader is already sold out at Amazon, with another shipment expected by June 17th. The $489 device, sold exclusively through Amazon, apparently sold out on the first day, also thanks to pre-orders. [full story]

June 10 - 4:50pm EDT   Amazon on Wednesday started shipping the Kindle DX. The most advanced of the retailer's e-book readers was unveiled in May and is billed not only as a much more natural means of reading newspapers and magazines but also as an ideal tool for schools. Its 1200x824, 9.7-inch screen both affords more room for images and auto-rotates for landscape reading when the DX is tilted on its side. [full story]

June 2 - 4:55pm EDT   Actus LLC, patent holding company based in Marshall, Texas, has sued Apple, Amazon, Ebay, Best Buy, Barnes & Noble, and a number of other companies for infringing on several patents relating to methods for "conducting electronic commerce transactions using electronic tokens." The patents - Nos. 7,328,189; 7,249,099; 7,177,838; and 7,376,621 - were originally filed by a company named PayByClick. [full story]

June 1 - 1:10pm EDT   Amazon this afternoon said that it would ship the Kindle DX on June 10th, shipping its largest e-book reader ahead of the promised summer schedule. Launched just last month, the e-paper device centers on a 9.7-inch, 1200x824 display large enough to be used for textbooks and for a larger view of newspapers and other common literature. It accordingly gets an accelerometer to auto-rotate documents for viewing in landscape while gaining native PDF support to read many free documents without needing them converted. [full story]

June 1 - 12:50pm EDT   Taiwan-based Prime View International (PVI), one of the larger suppliers of e-paper displays, today set out plans to acquire e-paper display maker E Ink for $215 million. E Ink's displays are used in the relatively successful 6-inch Amazon Kindle 2 e-book reader as well as its rival, the Sony Reader. The company also makes a 9.7-inch display for the Kindle DX, which it similarly sells as a prototype kit to hardware developers. [full story]

June 1 - 8:55am EDT   Google this weekend signaled its plans to offer paid e-books through its site. The approach would let users effectively "unlock" books and view them over the web; offline reading will rely on browser caching. While potentially less convenient than downloads, the approach is said by Google senior partnership director Tom Turvey to avoid creating a "silo" that limits access and should let smartphones as well as any other devices with sufficiently advanced browsers read the text. [full story]

May 28 - 6:30pm EDT   Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, responding to a question presented at a shareholders meeting, has claimed that his company is unlikely to ever publicly reveal sales numbers for the Kindle, and according to Physorg. The executive also suggests a device utilizing a color display is still in the early stages of development. [full story]

May 25 - 1:25pm EDT   Toshiba has recently introduced a KDDI handset known as the biblio that, in addition to voice support, will double as an e-book reader as well. Instead of an electronic paper display like ones found in established e-book readers, such as Amazon's Kindle, the biblio makes do with a traditional 3.5-inch LCD touchscreen with an extra-long 480x960 resolution. The handset will have 7GB of internal memory for storing content that can be expanded thanks to microSDHC memory cards up to 8GB. [full story]

May 14 - 7:00pm EDT   Steve Jobs' Amazon account has supposedly been hacked, claims an individual identifying himself as "orin0co," according to Cult of Mac. The hacker asserts he was able to gain access to the account by sending Jobs a forged, official-looking e-mail to Jobs, tricking the Apple CEO to log into a fake Amazon account, and subsequently providing the hacker with the personal login information. [full story]

May 14 - 12:50pm EDT   Book publishers have started exploiting the text-to-speech kill switch feature enabled by Amazon for Kindle books, reports show. At least 40 e-books from Random House, including major titles from Toni Morrison and Stephen King, can no longer use the Kindle 2's TTS feature to read the books aloud. Random House hasn't officially announced the move on its own. [full story]