Fortune has an interesting profile of Amazon.com CEO and founder Jeff Bezos, who has persisted, and seen his company grow, through the ups and downs of the dot-com economy. Presently he's worth around $8 billion, which isn't too bad. In addition to recounting his rise to prominence, the piece also details his plans to transform Amazon into the Web's biggest retailer of digital media. Hence Amazon's e-book reader, the Kindle, and the company's push into the MP3 space, where it's trying to unseat Apple as emperor. Apparently this is a pretty heated competition: According to the Fortune piece, he refuses to use the word "Apple."

After six months of operation, the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) XO laptop has logged its first major success story: Peru. Kids love ‘em, administrators love ‘em, parents love ‘em and Nicholas Negroponte is ecstatic. Loaded with approximately 100 copyright-free books (are you listening Amazon.com?), the XO has become exactly the empowering tool that Negroponte predicted. This success story is not without its minor hiccups, however. Although targeted for 9,000 Peruvian elementary, only about 4,000 of these schools have Internet access. Nonetheless, OLPC is working with Peru to surmount this obstacle.—Dave Prochnow

(Image: laptopgiving.org)

Thats right, the hot-selling ASUS Eee PC is now available in colors. Granted, this isnt the flagship, Eee PC 4G model, its the 2G-Surf flavor, but at least you now have the luxury of selecting from three odd color choices: blush pink, sky blue, and lush green. Each color is served up at a tasty $299.99 from J&R Music and Computer World via the venerable Amazon.com. At first blush, that price and color might look tempting, but beware that there are more differences between the 4G and the 2G-Surf than just a 50% smaller flash drive. Missing is the built-in webcam and the 2G model also sports lighter weight 4400 mAh batteries.—Dave Prochnow

(Image: Amazon.com)

For you last minute shoppers, Amazon.com is now showing the ASUS Eee PC 4G-Galaxy Black as in stock. The list price is, well, list price: $399.99. You will have to hustle, though and select One-Day Shipping to have it delivered by December 24.—Dave Prochnow

(Image: Amazon.com)

Is it an animal, vegetable, mineral, or other? So begins the interrogation from the entertaining new game from Radica USA a division of Mattel, Inc. Based on the analog game, 20 Questions, 20Q predicts that it can read your mind. And with a proven (very unscientific sampling of 10 folks) track record of 60% success, 20Q might make you think that it really is, in fact, in your head. At $9.95, these colorful Kreskin-like balls also like to add some insult to the injury with a little bit of snippy banter.—Dave Prochnow

(Image: Amazon.com)

A fellow science writer has called my attention to The New York Times Book Review list of the 100 Notable Books of 2007. Conspicuously absent from the list are any science books. Even medicine only rated a couple of titles. Apparently the reviewers who compile the list prefer history, politics and poetry to even a smidgen of science.

Fortunately, some reviewers do share our love of science. For example, check out the The Royal Society Prizes for Science Books 2007, announced earlier this year. Amazon has  also published its Top 10 Editors' Picks in science for the year. The Invisible Cure, Helen Epstein's book on AIDS, made both the Amazon and the Times lists but probably belongs in Amazon's Health, Mind and Body category rather than Science.

We'd love to hear your picks for the best science books of the year.—Dawn Stover

Image: The Royal Society

WARNING: This is an eclectic project with a touch of whimsy. If frivolous projects annoy you, please excuse me, ignore this post, and move on.

If youre like me, then you dont have enough time in a single day to work on all of your projects, plans, and ideas. Theres picking the kids up from school, doing laundry, preparing meals, homework, reading the daily news, and sleep. Ugh, sleep, what a complete waste of time that is. If only I could get more time to do the things that I really want to do. Forget that idle hands are the devils workshop, stuff. I need time and lots of it. What I need is a clock that gives me all of the time that I need for project building. I need time on my hands.

The ability to download books, newspapers and magazines via a cellular data connection (at no additional charge) is the headline news about Amazon's handsome new electronic book. But there are other important features not found in previous ebook incarnations.  The Kindle has a keyboard and the ability to annotate text as you read: great for students or grown-up researchers.

A built-in dictionary is just a few clicks away while reading, and Kindle supports downloadable audio books from audible.com. In addition to shopping, you can use the online connection to search Wikipedia and Google and, to a limited extent, surf the Web. (But the lack of JavaScript or Flash support torpedos many sites.)

What may prove most significant, though, is the pricing scheme for downloads. Nearly all the current New York Times bestsellers go for $9.99, even when the traditional versions sell only as hardcover editions at $30 or more.  Contrast that with music and movie downloads.  When you buy a digital album from iTunes you pay just a few dollars less than the retail price of a physical CD for significantly lower-quality audio. Same goes for the DVD-equivalent movie download pricing at iTunes and CinemaNow, even though there's no manufacturing cost of physical goods, essentially no shipping cost, and no store rent to cover. 

Amazon is the first retailer to make buying the bits financially beneficial for shoppers, even if it does take a painfully pricey $399 device to get in on the deal.  —Steve Morgenstern

For more on the Kindle, see How 2.0 blogger Dave Prochnow's take here.

The e-book is still alive. Amazon.com is set to start selling the Kindle, a handheld reader that is expected to sell for $399, and Jeff Bezos is calling it the future of reading. For a slightly less biased take, this CNET piece offers an interesting round-up of the e-book market, noting that the technology has improved—the devices are lighter, it's easier to download books, and the reading experience is easier on the eyes, too. The Kindle, for example, is reportedly going to be using technology from E-Ink that allows the reader to look at the digital page from any angle, like traditional printed paper.

But it's still hard to divine how these gadgets will fit into the market in the future; whether readers will ever really embrace them. This Nature blogger suggests that they'll be great for storing reference books—looking up this or that concept—but not digging into a novel.—Gregory Mone