Lest anyone think Esquire editor-in-chief David Granger is going to let the high-tech media revolution pass him by—and he's not, judging from the publisher's various mobile initiatives alone—The New York Times has a piece on how an upcoming issue of the magazine will feature a cover that runs on a battery.

"Magazines have basically looked the same for 150 years," Mr. Granger said in the article. "I have been frustrated with the lack of forward movement in the magazine industry."

So what's the cover all about? It's going to use the battery and some other electronic circuits in order to flash the message "The 21st Century Begins Now" when it appears on newsstands in September.

Granger hopes that this cover will join others on the third floor of the Museum of Modern Art in Midtown Manhattan, which contains a tribute to Esquire over the years: a collection of 92 covers from the 1960s and early 1970s that have contributed to the iconography of American culture. "The possibilities of print have just begun," Granger said in the report. "In two years, I hope this looks like cellphones did in 1982, or car phones."

(Image credit: Hiroko Masuike / The New York Times)

CrunchGear is reporting that two Amazon Kindle models will hit stores this holiday season, with the first coming as early as October, according to a source close to the company.

Here's what we know. According to the report, the first device will be an updated version of the original model. It will have the same size screen, but it will also come with a smaller form factor and an improved interface. The other new model, which is "shaped like an 8 1/2 x 11-inch piece of paper," will be larger than the current version and will ship before the end of the year. Multiple colors could also be available.

To date, most analysts consider the Kindle to be at least a modest success, even if Amazon refuses to tell anyone exactly how many the company has sold.

Amazon's Kindle e-reader is getting another 5,000 books, thanks to an agreement Amazon made with Simon & Schuster, AfterDawn reports. That sounds impressive, but it's a mere drop in the bucket, considering Amazon already offers 120,000 downloadable titles in the Kindle format.

Downloads for the Kindle reportedly make up 6% of Amazon's book sales, a figure Amazon expects to grow significantly in the next few years. The Kindle has only been available since November, and has spent a good portion of the time since then out of stock.

Completing our trifecta of Microsoft coverage today, the Associated Press reports that Microsoft is abandoning its effort to scan whole libraries and make their contents searchable—which the report calls a sign it may be getting choosier about the fights it will pick with Google.

"Digitizing books and archiving academic journals no longer fits with the company's plan for its search operation," wrote Satya Nadella, senior vice president of Microsoft's search and advertising group, in a blog post Friday.

"We believe the next generation of search is about the development of an underlying, sustainable business model for the search engine, consumer and content partner," Nadella wrote in the post.

Microsoft will take down two separate sites for searching the contents of books and academic journals this week, and Live Search will direct Web surfers looking for books to non-Microsoft sites, the company said in a statement.

We may never know exactly how well the Kindle is selling—or what constitutes "in stock" and "out of stock" according to Bezos—but the popular online retailer just cut the price of its famous eBook reader by $40, bringing it to $359.

The $399 Kindle launched last November and had originally sold out within hours. According to The Associated Press, Amazon sorted out its supply chain and manufacturing problems, and the device was back on sale in April.

Amazon spokesman Drew Herdener said Tuesday that Amazon's cost of manufacturing the Kindles dropped as it increased the number produced, the report said, but he still wouldn't release any sales figures.

Borders has beat Amazon.com to market with an e-book reader in the UK. While Amazon was struggling to meet consumer demand for the Kindle in the US, Borders partnered with iRex Technologies to sell the iRex iLiad Book Edition in some of its UK stores, Pocket-lint reports.

The iLiad boasts an 8.1-inch screen and has enough internal memory to store 100 books. It can handle up to an eight-gig memory card, pushing its capacity to around 10,000 books.

Borders will start selling the iLiad on May 10 for 399 pounds ($779). Amazon charges $399 for the Kindle. The lightweight iLiad comes pre-loaded with 50 "classic" books. It supports PDF, HTML, TXT and Mobipocket file formats, giving readers a wide variety of content choices.

No word on if Borders plans on expanding iLiad sales to more UK stores or go head-to-head against Amazon's Kindle in the States.

Ars Technica posted a detailed analysis of the current generation Kindle, and covered some recent rumors about the second generation of Amazon's eBook reader, saying that they've heard Amazon may be on the verge of announcing a Kindle 2.0. A source aware of the launch plans described it to Ars Technica as "the device they wanted to release in the first place."

As the article points out, we still have no idea how well the first one is doing. Sure, it's out of stock all the time as Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos likes to say on a regular basis. But given that the company hasn't released any sales figures, "out of stock" could mean that they make 100 of them at a time, or it could mean they've sold hundreds of thousands of them.

The reality is that it's probably somewhere between those extremes; at 400 bucks plus extra data charges for its various Web services, it's not the kind of device that will sell millions, at least not yet.

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Random House has teamed with British digital content firm Spoken Entertainment on the launch of the first UK-based service for downloading audiobooks directly to mobile phones.

Dubbed GoSpoken, the service is designed for phones that support high-speed downloads and for consumers with a data plan to go with their phone. Users can visit GoSpoken.com directly from their handset to purchase and download full-length audiobooks that are charged either to their wireless phone bill or a PayPal account.

GoSpoken went live with 50 Random House titles from authors including John Grisham, Karin Slaughter, Thomas Harris and James Patterson. There are also six audiobooks from Andy McNab, who's a partner in Spoken Entertainment.

Encyclopedia fans rejoice! World Book expanded its mobile licensing program to make a lot more of its content available to mobile application developers and distributors. Now, third-party apps can use factoids from more than 90 World Book titles. They'll also have access to a bunch of datasets that can be customized and integrated into all sorts of digital applications, including games. Dataset topics include history, geography, science, literature, art, music, biography and general reference along with an image dataset with more than 20,000 illustrations, diagrams, graphs and maps.

The first mobile developer to take advantage of the newly available content is Mobifusion, which is publishing children's titles under the World Book Mobile imprint, "Baby's First Book" and "World of Animals."

Tribune Media Services just announced the launch of a new political commentary magazine called Opinionated: Voices and Viewpoints on America and the World. What's notable is that the weekly magazine will be distributed exclusively on the Amazon Kindle, the company's eBook reader.

The first issue is currently available on a free trial and subscription basis on Amazon. Opinionated will be published weekly on Mondays and will cost $.49 an issue and $1.49 for a monthly subscription.

The Kindle is the only eBook reader with cellular data capability, so we can see why it's attractive as a weekly magazine dispenser—but it's also a risky move, given the limited market. The pricing is on the low side for a weekly, however.

According to the announcement, Opinionated will draw material from columnists syndicated by Tribune Media Services, on "domestic and international politics, economics, world affairs, social issues, pop culture and other topics. The lineup includes Ian Bremmer, Nathan Gardels, Jonah Goldberg, Carl Hiaasen, Arianna Huffington, Jesse Jackson, Garrison Keillor, Paul Kennedy, Henry Kissinger, Clarence Page, William Pfaff, Leonard Pitts, Cal Thomas, and Jules Witcover among many others."

TMS said that they're working on launching several other magazines for the Kindle on topics including personal finance, travel, food and popular culture.