kindle-ipad There’s a piece on some recently-announced iPad apps in the New York Times, mentioning a number of companies who have dared defy Apple’s edict to remain silent about their apps until launch time—including Amazon and Barnes & Noble. Still no word on whether Apple will be bumping competing e-book apps out of the store, but Amazon doesn’t seem to be worried.

The Kindle app for the iPad, which Amazon demonstrated to a reporter last week, allows readers to slowly turn pages with their fingers. It also presents two new ways for people to view their entire e-book collection, including one view where large images of book covers are set against a backdrop of a silhouetted figure reading under a tree. The sun’s position in that image varies with the time of day.

Engadget also has a piece mentioning the Kindle app (which is where the above screenshot came from). Gizmodo covers it, too, as well as the worry over how much Apple will allow them to do with it.

Barnes & Noble has 14 developers redesigning its iPhone app for the iPad, with similar user-interface updates. The article does not say whether the Fictionwise version of the eReader app will be getting the same treatment.

But neither of these apps will likely be available first thing at launch—both companies plan to wait to submit until they can try them out on a physical iPad rather than the iPad simulator that is all they’ve had access to so far.

In other iPad news, Apple is offering a $200 discount on bundles of 10 iPads for educational institutions—a whopping 4% saving on the $499 16-gig model (but available in all sizes). Turns out you really do save by buying in bulk!

And as Gizmodo points out, Bill Amend has a great Sunday Foxtrot strip about how the iPad has the potential to “save” comics—with the single exception of one particular superhero…

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