In addition to Barnes & Noble's e-bookstore, the company announced a partnership with the Plastic Logic, the makers of a much-discussed upcoming e-reader. There will be 500,000 free e-books available for the Plastic Logic and other e-readers (not including the Kindle) thanks to a partnership between B&N and Google. Perhaps because of those free e-books, the Barnes & Noble e-reader has topped the list of e-reading apps in Apple's store.

And Plastic Logic just announced that they'll be partnering with AT&T to provide internet access on the devices, too. The Plastic Logic reader will launch in 2010. I'm not saying it'll be able to do everything the Kindle can do (and I hope it'll not be tied exclusively to the Barnes & Noble store), but I'm saying that there will soon be other credible options on the e-reader front.

In other Amazon news, Amazon is set to acquire Zappos.com, the online shoe sales company that annoyingly advertises on the bottom of bins at airport security checkpoints. If they build a shoe-based Kindle, I take back everything I said above: You should totally buy one.