Well, despite the successes of the digital book reader, the Amazon Kindle, Amazon appears ready to concede the war for the ultimate portable digital reading media device to Apple in the hopes that customers will continue to buy digital books and newspapers through Amazon.com.

The “Kindle for iPhone” application is free in the App Store, and provides exactly what it says: the Kindle’s high quality, high resolution reading abilities, using the iPhone as the tool and means to view the media. The App is very intuitive, and imports much of the functions that iPhone users are used to, like pinching to zoom, tapping to highlight words, tapping on the side or flicking to turn pages.

For Kindle owners that own iPhones as well, the App uses a syncing mechanism to seamlessly switch back and forth between the two devices so that a reader does not lose a page or bookmark when switching between the two devices. The “Kindle for iPhone” immediately locks the user in to their Amazon.com account and the web site’s vast store of digital media are available for previewing or purchasing.

Clearly Apps like the “Classics” application, which Apple allegedly based its new reader for the iPad off of, provide welcome sights for book readers who prefer paper, but will use digital devices in a pinch. The iPad, with the already successful iPhone, looks to force Apple into the head of the digital reading field, and so the expensive and underwhelming Kindle might be going the way of the dinosaur.

With the “Kindle for iPhone” App, Amazon has wisely yielded up its digital device in favor of battling over downloads on Apple products; Amazon has chosen to fight with Apple and the iBookstore for the craze of consumers that might start downloading digital books, like iPhone customers download applications.

IMPULSIVE Review Grade: B+

When I was a kid, I used to play lightsabers with cardboard tubes all the time. I always played Luke, while my douchebag neighbor Bryan played Darth Vader. I always won of course, but that’s the way it is when I’m Luke. Anyways, this new game from Lucasfilm is going to take the pretend game up a notch. Mobile Entertainment is reporting that the iPhone app will be released soon, and better yet, it uses Bluetooth to sync up two iPhones for the duel. From the article:

Yes, that means people will be able to swing their iPhones at one another with officially-licensed lightsaber sounds, with Bluetooth connectivity.

The app is the follow-up to 2008’s Lightsaber Unleashed, which was itself THQ’s revamped version of an unofficial app called PhoneSaber.

The new Lightsaber Duel app is due out early next month (April). Besides the two-player Bluetooth mode, it will feature 11 new characters from the Star Wars universe, as well as the ability for players to create multiple custom characters.

So let’s see. 11 characters. That’s a pretty wide range, but let’s guess who a few of them are:

1. Luke
2. Darth Vader
3. Obi Won
4. Yoda
5. Emperor Palpatine
6. Darth Maul
7. Mace Windu

Well, I think those are gimmes. Not sure about the other 4, but maybe they’ll throw in some references to game-only characters, or someone from the Clone Wars series on Cartoon Network. Either way, this is a big step up from a cardboard tube.

Ever read a patent application? I sure haven’t. But I would if I ever needed to go to sleep in a hurry. Fortunately for us Apple fans, there’s a website that does all of the patent office trolling for us, Patently Apple. This time, they’ve found a patent for a new social networking system for the iPhone, named iGroups. From their article on the subject:

Apple is working on a new communications based social networking application that they’re simply calling “iGroups.” According to the documents published by the USPTO today, Apple’s iGroup will be a new service that will work on your iPhone and likely work with MobileMe. The idea is to allow groups of friends or colleagues attending such events as aconcert, a tradeshow, business meeting, wedding or rally to stay in communication with each other as a group to share information or reactions to live events as they’re occurring. The technology behind the new iGroup social networking applications works with a very sophisticated cryptographic key generation system to ensure security and privacy of your communications. Interestingly, the patent states that if one of the devices in your group happens to be without true positioning technology, it appears that Apple’s MobileMe service will provide some sort of “virtual GPS” capability to that user so that they could be aware of the locations of others in the group.

I’m not so sure how I feel about this concept. For me, social networking is a double-edged sword. Facebook was “the other networking site” behind Friendster and MySpace just a few years ago, and now MySpace has all but disappeared while Facebook has taken over. Starting a social networking site takes a lot of effort, and a lot of support. And if it’s tied to MobileMe, I think it’s destined to fail. How many people other than the Mac faithful are willing to pay $100 a year for e-mail and syncing services? If Facebook starting charging it would be decimated in a week. It’s a risky gamble, and it depends a lot on how it’s setup, so we’ll have to see how it goes. My guess though is that we’ll see iGroups in OS 4.0 this summer.

OK, so maybe that’s a bit of an exaggeration. But the fact is, Amazon isn’t too thrilled with the iPad, nor with its iBooks store. The iPad represents a huge threat to its e-book sales, and that’s a hit to the bottom line. Amazon does have an advantage, however. Leverage against the publishers. And guess what? They’re using it. BusinessWeek has a post about the subject, including Amazon’s talks to change pricing.

March 18 (Bloomberg) — Amazon.com Inc., the world’s largest Internet retailer, is in talks to change some prices of Kindle e-books by no later than the April 3 release of Apple Inc.’s iPad, two people with knowledge of the discussions said.

Amazon.com is talking to publishers individually about giving them more control over prices, said the people, who declined to be identified because the negotiations aren’t public. Publishers said they want to be able to set the prices of e-books, with most new titles costing $12.99 to $14.99, compared with $9.99 currently.

So they’re taking the Apple approach. They want to control what they price books at, and that makes sense. I bet those negotiations are pretty civil.

Amazon.com is in talks with publishers about prices and has threatened to stop direct online sales of printed books from some of them unless they make concessions on e-books, the New York Times reported earlier, citing two unidentified industry executives with knowledge of the discussions. The retailer wants them to sign three-year contracts and guarantee that no rival will get lower prices or better terms, the newspaper said.

Oh, that doesn’t sound very nice.

Now granted, Steve Jobs isn’t known for being the nicest guy on the planet, but he’s got the publishers selling books the way he wants it because of his success with movies and music. Now he turns to books and attempts to take on the biggest bookstore out there, a company with 90-percent of e-book sales in 2009, and he’s winning. Maybe Amazon was a pain in the ass to deal with, or maybe they overstepped their bounds in the past. Either way, I see this move by Amazon as pushing away the publishers even more and leading them down the road to the iPad.

iWork, Apple’s answer to the Microsoft Office suite, also has an online component. iWork.com is Apple’s version of Google Docs, and it allows iWork users to share files with both Apple and PC users. I’ve never used it personally, but that’s because I don’t collaborate with anybody. And if I do, I just e-mail them a .doc file.

Anyways, Apple sent out an e-mail about the iWork.com public beta yesterday. Here it is in its entirety:

An important service message about the iWork.com public beta.

Dear iWork.com beta member,

We’re pleased to announce the availability of new features and enhancements to iWork.com.

Share documents on websites and social networks. iWork.com allows you to share a document by creating a public link. Use the link to share your document with large groups or on websites and social networks. There’s no need to set a password or send an invitation. Anyone with the public link can view your document but cannot add comments or notes.

Improved Shared Documents page. Download documents shared on iWork.com without leaving the Shared Documents page. You can also track the number of views your publicly shared documents receive.

Refined user interface. A redesigned Sign In and Shared Documents page for iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch makes it easy to access your documents while on the go. The new interface and improved scrolling help you find your shared documents faster. Visit www.iwork.com from your iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch to view your shared documents.

To take advantage of iWork.com and these new features, make sure you are using the latest version of iWork on your Mac. To update iWork on your Mac, go to the Apple menu, choose Software Update, and install any available updates for iWork. Then, to share a document from Keynote ‘09, Pages ‘09, or Numbers ‘09, choose “Share via iWork.com” from the Share menu.

Thank you for using iWork.com. We hope you enjoy these enhancements to your service. After you’ve had a chance to try them out, we invite you to tell us what you think.

Sincerely,

The iWork.com Team

I tried it out earlier today and it’s pretty neat. The document loads up right on the screen and you can make changes, download it or print it. It’s very Apple-esque, with clean lines and icons, and very similar to MobileMe. Will it make me use it? I dunno for sure, but will you?