If you liked the idea of being able to use your new kindle to listen to the books you buy, too bad. Even though you paid for the ‘text-to-speech’ feature, Amazon has caved in to the Authors Guild and authors, who will now have the right to block the audio feature being used on their books. Amazon has bowed to pressure from the Authors Guild and will allow authors and publishers to disable the controversial text-to-speech feature on its Kindle e-reader.

Insiders say the move by Amazon was intended to smooth relations with authors, not avoid any lawsuits.

Amazon just announced a press conference at New York’s Morgan Library & Museum for Monday, February 9th. Hmmm. What could they possibly be rolling out at a library? A replacement for the Kindle? One that puts books between two hard coverings, on paper? Oh wait, that’s the old way.

Apparently the newest Kindle will be less angular than it’s predecessor, thinner and just a tad longer. One possibility that is being talked about is a larger-screen version for students. The new version should do away with some of the bugs that the first possessed, like accidental page turns for instance.

Amazon is having some trouble. Maybe they didn’t count on Oprah selling so many units. Maybe they just are really bad at stock management. Whatever the case, shipping on the Kindle ebook reader is currently listed as 11 to 13 weeks time, completely overshooting Christmas and making deliveries at some point in Q1 2009. This will be the second year in a row that the retailer could not meet demand. Last year, with the device being new, Amazon could at least use the excuse that they were ramping up production.

It was back in October that Oprah Winfrey endorsed the Kindle. Amazon is also rumored to be preparing the Kindle’s replacement, which was once expected to be on the market this holiday season, but now it is expected to be delayed until Q1 2009.

ECTACO has nothing to do with a taco, yet they have some pretty big ideas about the future of reading books and they are not afraid to let you know. The company says that it’s jetBook reader will allow you to, “Kiss your old-fashioned, dusty library goodbye,” and that’s good because “Not a single tree was cut down to make it!” It’s obviously a life changing device.

Plus it’s bright red and we all know that red is better then a plain old Kindle any day. The device has a 5-inch grayscale display, multi-language support, and bookmarking ability, plus playback of MP3 files, and an SD slot. The red harbinger of death to real books, and savior of trees will cost you $349.95, which might make some of us as red in the face as the device.