Shelfari has long been a standout in terms of its visual display. Giving the illusion of browsing actual book shelves and the ability to enjoy beautiful and interesting and unique book covers is a way to truly extend the experience of being a real world bookstore (without the annoyance and expense, I’d argue!). Borders.com switched to a similar interface as well, and its easy to see why. On top of cool visual browsing, Shelfari also offers a host of social features.

Well, it seems that Amazon acquiring Shelfari. I’m not sure what this will mean for the health of the online books business, but I am selfishly hoping that Amazon will eventually roll out a version of its Kindle product with a dazzling colorful visual browsing interface.

While there was a good bit of early skepticism about Amazon’s nifty electronic book reader, projections are now being arced high and skyward. As in more than $1 billion in sales and 4% of the company’s revenue by 2010. “Amazon’s iPod” is now being tossed around, with early sales figures to back it up.

Like the iPod and iTunes combo, the Kindle is easy to use, easy to manage, easy/addictive in making purchases, and actually encourages more of an activity you already enjoy (listening to music / reading books and other stuff on the go). In fact, I’m about halfway through the first history book that I’ve managed to dig into in some number of years. It’s about the battle for Moscow during World War II – on my mind in part of course because of the terrible situation in Georgia.