Barnes & Noble, the US's No. 1 bookstore chain, is working with a device maker and Sprint on an Amazon Kindle-like e-book device, according to one wireless industry insider. The news comes a week after the CTIA wireless show, where sources say there was heavy speculation surrounding Barnes & Noble's plan to give e-books another try.

Aiming to outdo Amazon.com and recapture the crown for the most digital titles in an e-book library, Sony is announcing Thursday a deal with Google to make a half million copyright-free books available for its Reader device, a rival to the Amazon Kindle.

Discovery Communications says the Kindle electronic book readers from Amazon.com violate a patent that Discovery registered in 2007.

Amazon.com has launched on the Apple App Store an iPhone application that makes it possible to take a picture of a product and then send it to the online retailer, which will try to match it with products in its inventory.