Remember the rumor about how we'd see a new version of the Amazon Kindle before the end of the year? The one where, even though Amazon publicly denied it, people believed it anyway?

It turns out that it was in fact scheduled for release in October, but Jeff Bezos pulled the plug at the last minute because he wanted changes to the software. That's the word from TechCrunch, which also said that the Kindle 2 is now scheduled for release early in 2009, according to sources close to the product's development.

Interestingly, the images that had surfaced of the new Kindle in October "are real—it's a longer device but not as thick as the original Kindle, and fixes some of the button issues that plague users (like accidental page turns)."