Amazon now lets you start reading your books before they ship!

Book shoppers on Amazon (remember when Amazon used to be “just” an online bookstore?) will be happy to hear that Amazon.com has a pretty interesting offer: buy a book now, and start reading it instantly while you wait for it to arrive in the mail. Of course, Amazon recently announced the availability of Kindle MatchBook, its program to offer heavily-discounted Kindle editions of books Amazon customers have previously purchased.

Upon placing an order for (select) books on Amazon, on the Thank You page you’ll be informed that a free “sample copy” of the same book has been made available to you on your Kindle or your Kindle account, should you wish to claim it:

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Star Trek DS9 and the Color Kindle

I’ve been watching Star Trek reruns (thank you, Netflix!) for a while now, and something that caught my eye once I finished TNG and moved on to DS9 was the prevalence of “eBook readers” that have an uncanny resemblance to Amazon’s Kindle.

The devices in DS9 appear to undergo both heavy and subtle changes each time they make an appearance, but one edition of the eBook reader in Star Trek DS9: Profit and Loss bore an incredible resemblance to the (previous gen) Kindle Touch, down to the same gray polymer material, rounded edges, almost exactly the same thickness and dimensions – with the exception of being in color.

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