While you were out shoe shopping, Amazon . . .

This has me excited: http://twurl.nl/cb2e0o

As my lovely wife will readily attest, I have been flirting aggressively with, if not blatantly, outright lusting for a Kindle. As with most gizmos in their early releases, I have maintained a disciplined approach – waiting until the technology moves a little bit higher and the price points a little bit lower. The rollout of the Plastic Logic Reader, however, may put that discipline to a test. What excites me most about this latest iteration of the e-reader is not just its ability to present .pdf documents in a handheld form far superior to the microdocs I can view on my Blackberry, but its promised, full-blown wi-fi platform utilizing AT&T’s 3G network. What this means for me is that I can not only carry around my usual inventory of newspapers, magazines (and books, too), but I can also receive and read documents and access other resources via the web. That capacity alone converts this particular e-reader from merely a fun and convenient device to a tool for which I have legitimate business use. And that means it becomes something I can write off as a business expense. I suspect I am not the only one who is thinking along these lines and that is why I think that this development instantly raises the stakes in the e-reader market.

Your move Imelda, er, Amazon.