Amazon has launched a proper touch-friendly mobile version of its Kindle store, which is smart considering that you are most likely to be browsing it from a phone or an iPad (or a Kindle Fire, I guess). You can still use the regular Amazon site (in fact, you're forced to if you want to manage your library or Kindle settings), but this new slimmed-down design makes browsing and buying dead easy.
To visit the store, point your iPad's browser to www.amazon.com/iPadKindleStore. You'll land on a bold page with large thumbnails of recommended titles, bestsellers and editors picks. You can also browse by genre, and there's a big search field up top.
Once you have a book you fancy, you can buy it or read a sample, just as with the regular site. And here things get clever. Once you choose a sample (or hit the "buy" button) you can choose to read it in the Kindle app or in the browser using the Amazon Cloud Reader. Gone is the drop-down of places to send the download – the web-app just assumes you want to read it on the device in your hands.
I like it a lot. I still wish that Apple would let Amazon put a link to the site inside the Kindle app, but adding this to the home screen is the next best thing. And it even has a spiffy new favicon. If you ever added the previous version of the Kindle Store to your home screen, you'll know how much this was needed.
