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."

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

Weve known for a long time that Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos has been
building a supersecret spacecraft in his remote Texas lair. We knew the
company was called Blue Origin but didnt really know what his vehicle
looked like or what his grand plan was, other than to be a part of the
nascent space-tourism business. But this week, a video- and image-rich
bonanza suddenly surfaced on his Web site, cleverly disguised as a
help-wanted ad. The fact that he unveiled his very smart-looking
spacecraft is big news. The fact that he also demonstrated it with a
successful test flight is startling and absolutely historic, given that
nobody else in the current crop of private-sector, dot-com-funded space
entrepreneurs has come anywhere close to test-flying a vehicle of that
scale. The program is called New Shepard, and the first vehicle,
modeled on the McDonnell Douglas DC-X Delta Clipper program from the
early 1990s, is respectfully named Goddard. The first flight, on
November 13, achieved an altitude of 285 feet and landed safely. Look
for more info soon about the technology hidden inside that slick piece
of ice-cream-coney rocketry in the pages of Popular
Science.—Eric Adams

Link via Blue Origin

For an exclusive photo tour of Second Life, click here.