Amazon naming their color eReader tablet, Kindle Fire didn’t come as a big surprise for us here. In fact this name was mentioned on our blog as far back as December 25th, 2010… Back then we had a Kindle Color name guessing contest and back then, subscriber with nickname “shyam”, submitted Kindle Fire as his guess and was right. Back then I promised a grand prize of Kindle Color reader to whoever would correctly guess the name first. After making this post I’ll be contacting Shyam via email so that he can claim his prize.

Congratulations, Shyam!

If you are would like to win free Kindle Fire or free Kindle Touch for yourself, there is a chance for you to do as well. Just use the button below to tweet about our Kindle Fire and Kindle Touch coverage and follow @blogkindle (so that I can contact you in case you win). One day before Kindle Fire starts shipping (on November 14th, 2011) I’ll randomly select a winner and ship the prize overnight.

Tweet

I’ve done so in the past and I’m doing this again. I’m giving away one free Kindle 3G w/ Special offers. The rules of the giveaway are very simple. All you need to do is follow http://twitter.com/#!/blogkindle and retweet this tweet (http://twitter.com/#!/BlogKindle/status/111982324157136896) before September 16th 2011 ends according to Pacific Standard Time. I’ll monitor all retweets and will randomly pick one person whom I’ll contact regarding the free Kindle via Twitter.

Good luck!

As I was perusing Amazon’s (NASDAQ: AMZN) website, I saw an easy Free Kindle Sweepstakes, and thought you might be interested.  This contest is a token of appreciation for being a fan of the Kindle on Facebook. So, if you are on Facebook, become a fan of the Kindle and enter for a chance to win a Kindle 3G.

How to Enter the Contest

Go to the Kindle Facebook Fan Page, click “like”.  Once you do that, you can enter your name into the sweepstakes via the fan page.  Enter your name, email and phone number, then the site will ask permission to add an Amazon Facebook application.  You can only enter once.  The process is fairly simple.

The contest ends on March 31.

BitDefender, an antivirus and internet security software company, is currently hosting a giveaway series that includes a chance to win 2 free Amazon Kindles.  Other prizes include tablets, laptops, smartphones and many other gadgets.  The grand prize is a BMW 3 Series.  Entering into one contest puts your name in for the grand prize.

Here’s how to enter the contest:

Access the Facebook Application: BitDefender fun4fans.and the contest asks that you connect a set of paragraphs to complete a story.  The application does a good job of explaining how to complete the contests.  From February 18-May 29, there will be weekly draws to win gadgets including the Kindle.  Each week has a different theme.

And yes, I know Facebook applications can be annoying, but this one might just get you a fun gadget to play with.

Kindle Comes to AT&T Stores

Beginning on Sunday, March 6th, customers at AT&T owned stores nation-wide should be seeing something new on the shelves.  The Kindle 3G, yes only the $189 model at this point since it is a cellular store, will be on display and available for customers wanting to grab on the spot or compare side by side with something like the iPad.  Heck, it’ll probably even be on the same wall for some easy reference.

The advantage of having the Kindle available to customers through these stores is clear.  Not terribly impressive at this point, but clear.  This makes one more place for people wanting to test drive a Kindle to stop in at.  That’s all.  I suppose it might be convenient for some people, but other than that there are no real incentives for people shopping at AT&T.

Wow.  That was short.  Ok, guess we have room for more news!

Free Kindles in Our Future?

There’s been talk lately about the possibility of free Kindle devices coming to us as early as November of this year.  Now, take this with a grain of salt, but I wouldn’t entirely discount it.  The rumor stems from an examination of the price drops that the Kindle has experienced since it first came on the market.  Apparently they’ve been pretty steadily linear so far.  So much so that it looks as if we can predict precisely when the price will hit zero.  When this was mentioned to Jeff Bezos last year, he is reported to have said “Oh, you noticed that!” with a smile and left it at that.

Recent speculation has involved a couple different ways that such a free Kindle could manifest.  While some people think it could end up being incentive in some promotion (i.e. Buy 30 eBooks, get your Kindle Free!), I consider the most likely scenario to be the Amazon Prime option.  While there are already a number of benefits to being a Prime member including free 2-day shipping on everything and, more recently, free streaming movies, wouldn’t it be that much more tempting to holdout customers if they got a free Kindle in the deal?

This would go that one step further toward making the Kindle, and Amazon in general, the first stop for any consumer purchase.  I know, having had a Prime membership for a while now, that I’m willing to choose Amazon over other retailers for no other reason than the quick shipping on most things already.  If they beef up their movie selection, I can see it replacing my Netflix account too.

Now, I know that I’m not one to talk, having already expressed my own eReader preferences, but if they sent a Kindle to my house even back when I was fully in the Nook camp and I didn’t have to pay a thing for it, the convenience might well have been enough to win me over.  Maybe that’s what the plan is?  An insidious plot to gain our business by giving good value for the money would be novel, I suppose!

Geek.com and Target have put together foreheads and came up with a simple, but elegant strategy to ask the internet users, why they haven’t purchased an e-book yet.  The model is beautiful in its simplicity.  They are giving away one Kindle (kindly provided by Target) to a randomly chosen user.  In order to enter the contest, one has to leave a comment, explaining why he or she has not bought an e-book.  Randomly selected comment will be the winner and the future owner of the free Kindle.  Users have to leave their comments at http://www.geek.com/articles/gadgets/geek-com-holiday-giveaway-win-a-kindle-20101216/.

The contest ends tomorrow, Tuesday, December 21, 2010.

Some restrictions apply:

• US residents only
• Please use a working email in your comment. It won’t be used for anything aside from contacting the winner.
• Only one comment per e-mail address, if we see more than one, you won’t be included in the draw
• The winner will have 24 hours to respond and after that time we’ll move on to the next person.
• By the way – We’ll ship as soon as possible but no promises that this will arrive before Xmas!

via Geek.com

So far, I can divide the answers into three major categories.

The biggest chunk of the answers is about the price of an e-book.  In this category, people cannot find a good justification for paying over $100 for an e-book, and then continue to pay for the books.

Linda explains, “I haven’t yet purchased a Kindle because of the price. It’s not only a large initial outlay, but the cost of purchasing books is also somewhat prohibitive. I download and listen to audiobooks for free through my public library, and the price can’t be beat!”

Also, Gary Blakesley writes, “The price of an e-reader does not make economic sense until the difference in price of the e-book versus printed book is such that you can easily make up for the e-reader price”.

“nascarfan09” says, “If you purchase an e-book you can’t resell or share like you can with a regular book.”

In the second category, people are waiting for certain improvements in the world of e-books, such as color, faster e-ink, better text-book availability, etc.

Ashley Jellen says, “I have not bought a Kindle because I am waiting for the device to be more educational-oriented. Reading books on kindle are great but I want to use it for studying as well. I hope they will offer e-textbook on kindle and give the option to see e-books with page number.”

The third category consists of the real-book-lovers.

User with a nickname “Tacoloft” comments, “I have not purchased an e-book reader because I am so fond of actual books. Also, the idea I could lose all of my digital books due to hardware failure makes me hesitant.”

On one hand, this contest is a good advertisement for Target’s Kindle sales rack – Target sells 3G model for $189 and Wi-Fi model for $139.  On another hand, it is a quality outreach towards “e-book-less” internet users.  The only problem with the purity of the answers is the fact that those, who participate in this contest, are the ones, who do not have an e-book, but desiring to have it one day.  Personally, I would also like to hear the answers of the ardent e-book-haters – those who do not own an e-book and not planning to purchase it at this moment.

Let’s face it, who doesn’t want a free Kindle DX?  I certainly do.  They’re not ideal for everything, but for some reason they just strike me as cool and they would certainly be better for PDF display than anything else I’ve got handy at the moment.  Feeling similarly?  Check out Lemondrop.com‘s giveaway page.

They’re giving away a single Kindle DX eReader to a random eligible giveaway recipient sometime after June 9th.  To be eligible, you must live legally in the United States(Sadly this does not include Puerto Rico) or Canada(Also excluding Quebec, I’m afraid), be at least 18 years old, enter the contest no more than once, and get your entry into the site before midnight on June 9th. It takes less than a minute to enter the contest, so there’s really no downside to worry about.  And hey, anybody who wants to give away something this cool deserves to be talked about a bit, in my opinion.

I wish you all much luck and may the best…well, random-est I suppose…person win!  As always, we’ll be keeping an eye out for any similar contests or opportunities that might arise to meet the needs of all the eReading enthusiasts out there.

Several folks have asked me what happened to the Free Kindle 2 Contest. I have little excuse other than being lazy but here it goes now:

• Kindle 2 went to Jeff from USA (this is as much information as I can share). According to the UPS tracking it was delivered. I hope that Jeff is enjoying it and putting it to good use.
• I received total 279 entries of which 240 were valid. Remaining 14% didn’t have the date in proper format in the subject field.
• Of those those 240 10 (4.2%) have guessed correctly so I had to flip my favorite 10 sided coin to decide who wins.
• Dates ranged from 3/20/2008 to 10/9/2009… Since first one is most likely a typo along with some other dates before the contest start, earliest really valid date was 3/14/2009 – the next day after the rules were published.
• Most people (17) guessed 4/1/2009 and were off by 1 day.
• Here is a full distribution graph for entries ranging from 3/14/2009 to 4/28/2009. There were several for much later dates that I omitted from the graph.

Thank to everyone for participating and spreading the word and good luck next time! :)

I just performed my everyday 0:01am check and I see 256,806 books available in the Amazon Kindle store.

It means that the winning date is March 31st, 2009 (03/31/2009)!

Now I’ll go and scan all e-mails I received for the competition to find a winner. It may take me some time but I expect to notify Kindle 2 winner within next 2-3 days.

Thanks everyone for participation and I’ll keep you posted!

As of 00:01 PST 3/20/2009 the book count was 252,289 so starting from that time no more entries are accepted.

At the time of this posting the count is 252,758. This means that pretty soon we’ll have a winner who will receive a brand new Kindle 2.

As I look at it right now, there are 251,651 books availabale for purchase. Way to go Amazon!

This also means that unless some books are pulled back (which did happen several times before), today would be your last day for submitting entries to win a free Kindle 2 contest. So hurry up. You have until 11:59PM PST 3/19/2009 to submit your entries. 235 entries has been submitted so far. Good luck!

There are 131 entries now and 249,365 books in the Kindle Store . It’s getting quite close to the cut off number so if you didn’t submit an entry for your chance to win Amazon Kindle 2 you should probably do it within couple of days.

A quick update on contest, being held here on www.blogkinde.com, where you can win a free brand new Kindle 2:

As of 00:01 PST 03/14/2009 there were 248,081 books in Amazon Kindle Store, so it’s almost 3K books before I’ll stop accepting entries. There were 43 entries submitted so far so chances of winning are still pretty high given you’ll guess close enough to the correct date.

Before emailing your entry please make sure that I’t correctly formatted as per contest rules. The answer should be in the subject line (not in the body) and be exactly 10 characters long (no more no less): MM/DD/YYYY, month and day number should have a leading zero if they are less then 10, year should be 4 digit – 2009, not 09 or 9.

I’m writing this beacuse around 10% of the entries fail to follow this format and stince I’ll use semi-automated means for choosing the winner – invalid entries will not win. Please review your entry and if it’s wrong – please resend it, I will not count it as double entry or cheating as long as the date is the same.

Here are the rules of the contest, please read them carefully:

When Amazon Kindle 2 was released Kindle Store had 240,000+ books for sale. This number is growing daily and it’s about to hit 250,000 which is pretty impressive. In order to win brand new Amazon Kindle 2 Wireless eInk reading device all you need to do is email me your best guess about when number of books in Amazon Kindle Store is going to top 256,000 (one thousand books for each megabyte of flash memory in Kindle 1 :) )

You can visit Amazon Kindle Store daily to get a feel for how fast eBooks are piling up. Count as of 03/13/2009 was 248,429 when I checked. I will accept entries until the day number of books will be more than 250,999. I check book counts every 00:01 PST and that would be the cutting line. Once I see 251,000 books or more – no more entries are going to be accepted. I will announce the cut-off date once it happens. After that it’s waiting time: once I see 256,000 books or more at 00:01 that would be the winning date. I’ll announce it in the morning. Of all persons who submitted entries with this date I’ll randomly pick 1 winner.

To submit your entry just send an e-mail to contest@blogkindle.com with your chosen date in the subject in the following form: MM/DD/YYYY, where MM is two digit zero-padded month number, DD is two digit zero-padded day number and YYYY is 4 digit year. So 03/21/2009 would be 21st of March 2009, 04/03/2009 would be 3rd of April, 2009. Please don’t put anything else in the subject line. Any content in the message body is going to be ignored. I will use email address the letter was sent from to contact the winner and arrange for shipping the prize. Any entries that don’t follow the format described above will be discarded. If I don’t receive a response from the winner within 72 hours from sending the letter a new winner will be chosen.

One entry per person for the entire duration of the contest. Cheaters WILL BE disqualified! Amazon employees are on their honor not to participate :)

I will not use your email address for any other reason then to contact your if you are a winner. I’ll not give them to spammers, spam them myself or randomly send out my rants when I feel lonely and sad. In fact once this contest is settled I’m going to delete all of them.

I will not disclose winners identity even partially without winners consent. Though it would be nice to receive this consent for posting at least winner’s city. If you provide a photograph of the Kindle 2 once you receive it (with you if you would like to) I promise to post it here.

OK. Once again the rules in a nutshell:

1. Figure out a date on which at 01:00 PST Amazon Kindle Store would have 256,000 books or more
2. Send email to contest@blogkindle.com with this date date in the subject line in the following format: MM/DD/YYYY (see details and examples above)
3. Email should be sent on a day on which at 01:00 PST book count in Amazon Kindle Store was 250,999 or lower. I’ll post when it happens (though not immediately)
4. There is a limit of one entry per person for the entire duration of the contest.
5. Out of the  people who submitted correct date properly 1 winner will be chosen randomly.
6. Winner will be contacted on the winning day described in (1) using email that entry was submitted from.
7. If I don’t receive any response from the winner within 72 hours of sending the email a new winner would be chosen randomly.
8. In the unlikely case that (6) would be repeated enough times that no winner could be chosen, I’ll randomly choose a winner from people who were off by 1 day either way. I’ll keep expanding the date range and repeating (6) until winner can be found.

That means that as long as there are valid entries somebody is pretty much guaranteed to win.

Why am I doing this? Honestly I would like to see more comments to my posts, I would like readers to get more involved with the blog. I believe that an easy way of achieving that would be to attract more subscribers by holding this contest. So if you like this blog and what I write here please spread the word on other blogs and forums. The more people I would see enjoying the content that I provide here the more time I’ll spend creating more better content.

If you have any questions – please leave a comment. I’ll try to respond as fast as possible.

There are several Kindle 2 giveaways going on in the blogosphere currently. Usually requirements to enter are subscribing to the post or posting something. You can try your luck in one of the following places:

• R. W. Ridley Blog – entries accepted until March 15h, 2009. “To Qualify – Identify the type of primate in the video (chimpanzee, gorilla or orangutan). If you respond with the correct answer, you will be entered into the drawing. Please send me an email with the subject line “I know the primate.”“
• Julie Stratford Blog – “My main idea about the contest is for bloggers to go wild and write a post about how this Kindle 2 would improve their lives, their kid’s lives or something like that.“
• Marketing Pilgrim – contest ends on April 6th, 2009. “Well, if you’re already subscribed to Marketing Pilgrim’s RSS feed or email updates, you’re half-way to being qualified for the April 6th drawing… Then, all you have to do is look for a secret message that will appear at the bottom of the posts for one day only–sometime between now and April 5th“

Since I already have Kindle 2 I’ll leave it up to you to participate.

If you know of any other Kindle related contests, please let me know and I’ll update the post.

And speaking of good sweepstakes… SHOP.COM is running Amazon Kindle Sweepstakes right now and until 2/28/2009. Visit this page for more information. One entry per household and they will sign you up for their newsletter. If you don’t like it you can probably unsubscribe at some later time.

I realize that most of my readers already have the Kindle device but you can always give an extra one to someone as a gift. Unfortunately this particular contest ends after the Valentines Day…

Good luck!