Over Christmas more than 1.33 million Brits received a shiny new Kindle. However, it seems that just over a month later many of us have discarded our fancy eReaders like a sad, abandoned puppy we can't be bothered with anymore. Awh.

According to a study carried out by leading discount website MyVoucherCodes.co.uk, 48% of respondents revealed they'd received a Christmas gift that they haven't used since opening it up on Christmas day. From those, a huge 22% admitted to having not used the Amazon Kindle they received for Christmas from a loved one Strangely, of those that admitted to not playing around with their Kindle yet, 52% simply said it's because they hadn't downloaded any books to read on it yet. How. Lazy.

In future guys, remember a Kindle is for at least a few years, not just for Christmas.

The study polled 1,461 Britons and took place in January 2012.

Via Shiny Shiny

Kindle owners get a great new tool this morning with the launch of the new "Send to Kindle" feature for PC.

A small downloadable plugin, "Send to Kindle" lets you easily transfer PC files and documents, along with eBooks, to your Amazon eReader by adding a wireless transfer option to the right-click menu in Windows Explorer.

"From Windows Explorer, simply right-click on one or more documents and choose Send to Kindle. From any other Windows application that can print, select Print and choose Send to Kindle," reads the Amazon blog.

"Your last page read along with bookmarks, notes and highlights are automatically synchronised for your documents (with the exception of PDFs) across your Kindle devices and supported Kindle reading apps."

DOC, DOCX, TXT, RTF, JPEG, JPG, GIF, PNG, BMP and PDF file types are among those supported. Even the Kindle's own .MOBI files, saved on your PC, can be sent using the new function.

Though similar functionality has previously been possible by using your Send-to-Kindle email address, or using the superb eBook manager Calibre, this new feature takes much of the stress out of getting content stored on your PC onto your device though.

Remember however to try where possible to download files over Wi-Fi, or you could end up with a Whispernet 3G charge on supported Kindle devices.

Click here to grab the Send To Kindle plugin. It's a must-have for Kindle owners.

Kindle owners may never have to mains-charge their eReaders again thanks to a newly revealed cover from SolarFocus Technology on show at this years CES.

That is providing you live in sunnier climes than the UK, we mean. SolarFocus have been touting their SolarKindle case, which stores power thanks to a built-in solar panel.

One day's use in the sun gives you Kindle an extra three days worth of charge, stored in the SolarKindle's built-in battery, up to a maximum of three extra months.

There's also a mini LED light built in, good for 50 hours of use, which doesn't drain the Kindle's own battery.

"For the past six years, SolarFocus has been dedicated to developing the most technologically advanced portable solar powered solutions for consumers," said Dick Lu, EVP at SolarFocus.

"We will continuously improve the price / performance ratio of our solar powered solutions on even more consumer electronic products to reduce carbon emissions."

Hitting US shops on January 15th, you'll be able to pick the SolarKindle up for $79.99. That's providing Amazon let SolarFocus use the Kindle name, of course.

For more news from CES 2012, click here.

An estimated 1.33 million eReaders were unwrapped on Christmas Day in Britain this past holiday period, according to new research that's dubbed Santa's season the "Kindle Christmas".

According to YouGov's Technology and Telecoms analysts, 1 in 40 adults received an eReader for Christmas (or bought one for themselves), with 92% of the devices being of Amazon's Kindle brand.

Despite the digital jump, the gift recieving demographics seem to fall in line with regular book buying habits, with 61% of Kinde's received by women, and over 55 year olds twice as likely as 18-24 year olds to receive one.

"This is finally the year when the late-medieval technology of the printing press was challenged by a 21st Century, digital alternative" said Marek Vaygelt, Head of Technology and Telecoms Consulting at YouGov.

"Amazon has done a remarkable job of selling the benefits of e-readers and the upside for the publishing industry is that it appears e-reader owners, at least in the early days, buy more e-books than the printed books they purchased before acquiring an e-reader."

Tablet sales were also strong, with the YouGov findings estimating some 640,000 slates given as gift. Of that figure, 72% were Apple iPads, 60% of which were given to women.

Amazon have given a rare insight into just how units many off their super-popular Kindle product line they're managing to shift in the run up to Christmas.

The company have revealed that more than a million products bearing the Kindle name (from all generations of their eReaders and newly-formed tablet line) are being sold each week.

Even more startling, given the wealth of items available through Amazon, is that their Android-based Kindle Fire tablet is the most popular product Amazon have EVER SOLD.

"Kindle Fire is the most successful product we've ever launched - it's the bestselling product across all of Amazon for 11 straight weeks, we've already sold millions of units, and we're building millions more to meet the high demand," explained Dave Limp, vice president of Amazon Kindle.

"In fact, demand is accelerating - Kindle Fire sales increased week over week for each of the past three weeks. People are buying Kindle Fire because it's a simple, fully-integrated service that makes it easy to do the things they love - watch movies, read books and magazines, listen to music, download apps, play games, and surf the web."

Until now, Amazon had remained silent as to just how well their products were doing, beyond vague "very well" responses. It's hardly surprising though; the Kindle brand name has caught on in a big way, and the Fire tablet will make a perfect, affordable step up for those currently in love with their Kindle eReaders.

To mark the first anniversary of The Beatles back-catalogue being made available digitally for the first time through the iTunes store, Apple have teamed up with the Fab-Four's team to offer iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch users an exclusive free "Yellow Submarine" book, based on the 1968 Beatles movie of the same name.

A digital update of the 2004 "Yellow Submarine" book, it's packed with psychedelic interactive illustrations, video clips from the movie and song snippets, with a full "read aloud" voice over narration track from Dean Lennox Kelly.

Click here to grab the free book, or download it through Apple's iBooks application.

Since making their debut on the iTunes store, The Beatles have racked up ten million songs sales and over 1.8 million album downloads on the iTunes Store worldwide. Bet they wish they'd jumped onboard a bit sooner now!

Now, we know that every now and again we announce that there's a new Kindle killer lined-up to rock the Amazon e-reader's dominance, but they never quite come up to scratch. Either the pricing was too high, or the tech specs too low, and the Kindle still stayed top of the ereading tables.

However, this year there may be a genuine contender to take on the Kindle. No, seriously, hear us out!

Remember the Kobo eReader that hit WH Smiths last month? It was a solid bit of kit, but at the £89.99 asking price Smiths were selling it at, who was ever going to grab it over the identically-priced Kindle?

Well, perhaps quite a few more people now, as Asda have just began stocking the Kobo W-Fi, and are shifting it for just £67. That's a genuine steal.

Not impressed? Well just look at how it shapes up against the Kindle; it's thin at just 10mm thick, has the same is e-ink style screen, is Wi-Fi enabled, comes pre-installed with 100 classic books and has access to a store stocked with some 3 million titles.

However, perhaps its best feature is the fact that its content is not locked to one device. Grab a Kindle, and its books are locked to Amazon's devices and apps. Grab a Kobo and your purchases can be shared across any device of your choosing.

There's a fair bit working in its favour, and at this price point (and with a decent marketing campaign currently running) could be a genuine worry for Amazon.

The British Library has opened its archive of 300 years worth of local and regional newspapers, making 4 million web pages worth of news paper articles available online.

Until now, those looking to use The British Newspaper Archive for research purposes had to travel to Colindale, North London, where hard copies of each of the 65 million stories (some dating back as far as 1700) were kept.

If the 4 million pages right now sounds impressive, you should wait and hear what the British Library have planned. If all goes well, the archivists at the library plan to digitize and distribute a whopping 650 million articles across 40 million web pages by 2020.

"The British Newspaper Archive is a rich and hugely exciting resource, packed with historical detail," said Ed Vaizey, the Minister for Culture, Communications and Creative Industries.

"It's a great example of the public and private sectors collaborating to deliver something that neither party could have delivered by themselves. I searched for my own constituency of Wantage and within seconds had 42,000 results - an indication of the breadth and variety of material featured.

"I'm delighted that the British Library and Brightsolid are working together to transform access to the nation's published memory."

A small fee is required to access the articles. £6.95 gives you 48 hours of browsing time, £29.95 gets you 30 days or £79.95 for a whole year. You're then giving the option of downloading a PDF of the pages of your choice, should you want to keep a copy for further reference. Access at the British Library itself is free.

Check out the archive byclicking here.

Amazon have been giving themselves a pat on the back this morning, revealing that they've been selling their Kindle eReader devices by the buckeltload.

While many analysts believed that the rise of the tablet would mean the demise of eReaders, Amazon's Kindles continue to sell like hot cakes. With a brand new range revealed, Amazon saw its "best Black Friday ever", with Kindle sales "increasing 4x over last year".

Amazon never reveal exact sales figures, but Dave Limp, Kindle VP previously stated that "Even before the busy holiday shopping weekend, we'd already sold millions of the new Kindle family."

Amazon have also stated once again that their Kindle Fire tablet computer remains the bestselling product on Amazon.com. It's been two months now since the tablet was revealed, and the Kindle Fire has been the top seller for the retailer ever since.

With today noted annually as Cyber Monday (one of the biggest days of the year for online shopping), you can expect plenty more cash flowing into Amazon's coffers via Kindle sales.

Tech gifts don't have to be about screen sizes or processing capabilities these days. In fact, they don't have to be physical gifts at all. You can put a smile on a loved one's face just by setting them up with one of the many ace online digital services and subscription packages that are tied into apps, download and streaming sites too.

From music packages like Spotify to productivity programs like Dropbox, there's something here for everyone.

When you're done here, be sure to check out the rest of Tech Digest's 2011 Christmas wishlists too.

UK high street magazine, books and stationary shop WH Smiths are to enter the digital ebook age as they announce they are to sell the Kobo eReader device in their stores.

WH Smiths will sell two versions of the eReader; the touchscreen-based Kobo Touch (priced £109.99) as well as the basic Kobo Wi-Fi version at £89.99. Both will be available from October 17th.

The e-ink readers will offer users access to Kobo's own digital storefront, giving access to some 2.2 million titles as well as one million free books, which WH Smiths claims makes it the most comprehensive digital book catalouge in the UK.

Bookshops however reluctantly are having to move with the ebook revolution of our times. Waterstones recently announced plans to release their own e-reading device, while Barnes & Noble's Nook device has proved popular in the US.

Extracts from the hotly-anticipated Steve Jobs biography have been revealed, giving a unique insight into the late Apple chief's brilliant mind.

Published by Little, Brown and written by Waltar Isaacson, it is the only book to which the turtlenecked-one gave his blessing.

Ursula Mackenzie, CEO of Little, Brown said: 'This extraordinary book gives us a unique insight into the life and thinking of the man who single-handedly transformed the world in ways the rest of us could not have imagined. It is an honour to publish Walter Isaacson's biography which is based on personal conversations with Steve Jobs and written with his full co-operation.

Scroll down to read the extracts. Steve Jobs: The Exclusive biography will be published on 24th October. Click here for more info.

Google Books has finally gone live in the UK after being available Stateside for some months.

Moving into the digital book space currently dominated by Amazon, British customers will also have access to an Android app through which they can browse the sotre and purcahse titles.

"Readers in the UK now have access to the world's largest ebooks collection, with hundreds of thousands of ebooks for sale - from major UK publishers like Hachette, Random House and Penguin - as well as more than two million public domain ebooks for free," reads the Google statement.

A new version of the Android Market has also gone live, accomodating the newly-added books section.

In order to read on an Android handset, you'll need a device running version 2.1 or higher.

Amazon's eReader range is about to get finger friendly with the launch of the Kindle Touch and Kindle Touch 3G.

The touchscreen readers with e-ink displays were revealed by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos today, doing away with the regular Kindle's QWERY keyboard set-up in favour of an IR touch system.

Lacking physical page turn buttons, tapping either side of the screen will now skip forwards or backwards through an eBook, without compromising the Kindle line's excellent battery life and glare-free screen.

The new Kindle also brings with it a brand new feature called X-Ray. As well as bringing up dictionary definitions, tapping on a word also brings up Wikipedia information relevant to the text you are reading, which is downloaded alongside your eBook. Bezos used the Remains of the Day eBook as an example, which brought up a pertinent Wikipedia entry on the Treaty of Versailles through the X-Ray feature.

Despite the touchscreen tech, Amazon have managed to keep the pricing low. A Wi-Fi only Kindle Touch will cost just $99 at launch (around the £63 mark if converted directly into pounds, though we expect it to launch in the UK closer to the £100 mark).

The 3G Kindle touch (which like the existing 3G Kindle offers free mobile browsing and eBook downloads without a costly subscription or network fees) will cost $150 (£96).

No word on a UK release date yet, but both Kindle Touch models go on pre-order today, with US shipping beginning on the 21st November.

Image: Slashgear

The 2,400 years old Dead Sea Scrolls are being brought into the digital age by Google, who've announced that the ancient texts are the latest they've managed to digitise and make available to all readers via the web.

The scrolls contain the oldest known and preserved Biblical writings, and can now be accessed through the library collection arm of The Israel Musuem.

The texts are reproduced online through super-high res 1,200 megapixel stitched images, which can be fully text-searched. Images of the scrolls will now be appearing in relevant Google search engine results too.

The Dead Sea Scrolls join a host of 17th and 18th century texts from the British Library that Google have also digitised, as well as Darwin's own hand-annotated personal library.

For more info on the digitisation process, click here.

Amazon have launched a new service that will allow US Kindle owners to borrow eBooks from participating local libraries.

Kindle book lending will be available at over 11,000 libraries across the States.

"Starting today, millions of Kindle customers can borrow Kindle books from their local libraries," said Jay Marine, director of Amazon Kindle.

"Libraries are a critical part of our communities and we're excited to be making Kindle books available at more than 11,000 local libraries around the country. We're even doing a little extra here - normally, making margin notes in library books is a big no-no. But we're fixing this by extending our Whispersync technology to library books, so your notes, highlights and bookmarks are always backed up and available the next time you check out the book or if you decide to buy the book."

In a nice touch, rather than bypassing the libraries involved in favour of a centralised system, Amazon have opted to channel users through the participating libraries' websties, effectively promoting the services offered by the local book bases. A "Send to Kindle" option will be added to the participating library website's listings for ebooks, which after clicking will see users redirected to Amazon.com, logging into their Kindle accounts to send the book via Wi-Fi.

"This is a welcome day for Kindle users in libraries everywhere and especially our Kindle users here at The Seattle Public Library," said Marcellus Turner, city librarian for The Seattle Public Library.

"We're thrilled that Amazon is offering such a new approach to library ebooks that enhances the reader experience."

Here's hoping the library service makes it to the UK, as it's lovely addition to the latest wave of Sony ereaders currently doing the rounds.

Waterstone's are preparing to launch an e-reader device next spring, according to the company's managing director James Daunt.

Inspired by the success of US highstreet bookseller Barnes and Noble and their well-received Nook e-reader, Daunt told Raido 4 that the project was "well down the planning line", marking the booksellers first steps towards their own branded hardware.

Physical booksales on the highstreet have seen steep decline over the past few years following the monumental growth of Amazon, and the growing popularity of e-reading devices like Amazon's own Kindle.

As a result, Waterstone's has had a major shake-up this year after being bought from HMV Group by Russian businessman Alexander Mamut. Daunt has returned to the company after several year's absence to better guide the company through an age of technological intrusion on the traditional bookselling market.

It's as-yet unknown what the Waterstones reader will look like, or which electronics manufacturers they will partner with to bring the device to stores, but it seems that like-it-or-lump-it, bookshops are having to bring the digital book fight right to rivals Amazon in order to say afloat.

RELATED | Inventor of the eBook, Michael Stern Heart, dies aged 64

Micheal Stern Heart, the inventor of the electronic book, or eBook, and founder of web-hosted literature resource Project Guttenberg, has died aged 64.

After a spell in the armed forces serving in Korea, Heart headed over to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. On July 4th 1971 Heart, inspired by being given a free copy of the U.S. Declaration of Independence, transcribed the text using a computer and shared it across the university network.

Heart then spent the next 40 years refining the digitization and distribution of eBooks, as they came to be known, culminating in the 36,000 free books now seen in the Project Guttenberg web library.

If you're the owner of a Kindle, or have ever read a page of a book through your PC, raise a glass to the man who kick-started a publishing revolution.

Click here to read Dr. Gregory B. Newby's full obituary.

Sony's new e-Reader, the Reader Wi-Fi or PRS-T1, has just been announced at IFA. Sony is dubbing it "the world's lightest e-Reader" and at a mere 168 grams no one's arguing with them just yet.

As well as being light, it's super thin at 8.9mm and boasts Wi-Fi connectivity alongside the ability to borrow ebooks directly and wirelessly from local libraries.

The e-Reader has an "enhanced" touchscreen, although we're not quite sure what that means just yet, as well as an even more advanced kind of E Ink Pearl electronic paper, for clearer reading.

Like Sony's older eReader model, the PRS-350, there's choice when it comes to colour (black, white or red) and according to Engadget, it'll be available in the UK and most of Europe at some point this year. Let's begin that Christmas list...

There's not been any definite indication of price just yet, but the PRS-T1 has popped up on the Sony website already, so expect it to follow soon.

Amazon have launched a new browser-based web app called the Kindle Cloud Reader, using HTML5 tech to offer up their e-book reading experience. While many are expecting Amazon to launch two of their own tablet devices later this year, the aim of this web app seems to be to get iPad owners browsing the Kindle store, as Apple's strict iOS app rules have hamstrung the Kindle app store in the past.

The Kindle Cloud Reader offers access to all your previously Kindle-bought, cloud-stored ebooks, as well as letting iPad owners download book files locally for offline reading, it all has simple, seamless integration with the Amazon Kindle book store for those looking for new titles.

Interestingly, despite rumours of their own Android tablets in the works, the Kindle Cloud Reader currently does not support Honeycomb OS's web browser. Instead, an error message saying "Your web browser isn't supported yet" appears, directing you to download the desktop versions of the Chrome or Safari browsers.

This will likely be fixed sooner rather than later, but shouldn't cause too much hassle for Android users either way; the Kindle app for Google's mobile OS still supports the Kindle store, whereas Apple's rules mean the iOS version has limitations on the amount of places people can buy content from.

To try the Kindle Cloud Reader, visit http://read.amazon.com/.