I just read that Oprah Winfrey dubbed Amazon’s Kindle e-book reader her “new favorite, favorite thing in the world.” I may not be as head-over-heels with Kindle as Oprah is, but I have to say I find it awfully handy. Oprah’s endorsement, though, brings with it the opportunity for you to save 50 bucks on a Kindle of your own: Order one at Amazon.com and enter OPRAHWINFREY at checkout to get the price break, good through November 1.
After some initial trials and tribulations, I now really like that Kindle we bought a few months back. I’ve been reading Groundswell on it, taking notes in it, and toting it with me back and forth to appointments in Kansas City. That said, there are ways it could be made better. It’s a little clunky-looking, for example, and the screen is a bit small. You can adjust the print size, but that just means you’re flipping virtual pages a lot more often.
Last week, Plastic Logic introduced an alternative. Its to-be-named e-book reader is the size of a standard piece of paper, super-thin, and under a pound. And they’re working to make it flexible, giving it more of a real book feel. See DEMOfall 2008: Plastic Logic’s Reader Is Thinner, Less Ugly Than Kindle, from Wired.com Gadget Lab, for more photos and commentary.
Pricing will supposedly be competitive with Kindle, which currently sells for $349. Would a device like this cause you to look a little more closely at e-books? What features are must-haves for you to take the plunge? Or are you a dyed-in-the-wool paper lover?
I went to Chicago for a few days last week and brought the Kindle with me as my only reading material. Due to the problems I’ve had with Whispernet service (well documented here) I only had one book loaded onto the device, but hoped if I made it through Wikinomics I could grab some more content while in the Windy City.
My observations:
It took some cajoling, but my Kindle was finally able to connect to Amazon’s Whispernet wireless network. It’s been flaky, dropping in and out with no warning–but I’ve been able to properly register the device, connect to the Kindle Store, and download some sample content.
The best advice I can give about getting Whispernet to work on a Kindle is be patient. You’ll probably have to turn off wireless access (via the control switch on the back), fire it back up, and then wait a few minutes to reestablish a connection. I’ll be in Chicago next week; perhaps an area with denser wireless coverage will help this matter. At any rate, this sketchy wireless capability is the most frustrating aspect of Kindle and something I hope Amazon addresses in future updates.
The Kindle Store is kind of like a subset of Amazon, optimized for browsing on the Kindle’s monochrome display without a traditional mouse/pointing device. Most titles have sample content available–generous samples, I might add. I downloaded the first chapter of Wikinomics and got an ample overview of the book. I was expecting four or five pages, tops, but got what would be at least 10 pages in the printed version–in other words, plenty of material to help decide whether or not to shell out cash for the book.
Speaking of cost: Most books I saw during my brief browsing session were priced at ten bucks. Some were higher. You can also subscribe to some newspapers, magazines, and blogs but I haven’t been able to keep a wireless connection active long enough to browse these sections.
Kindle books don’t have traditional pages–what you see at any given time on the screen depends on your selected font size. So if you want to cite a Kindle-format book, how do you cite it?
This question of proper citation has been asked on Amazon’s customer support boards. Listing the book as a reference shouldn’t be much different than listing a regular, printed book. If you need to list a page number, Kindle recognizes “locations” instead of pages. This is something APA and MLA will need to address and formalize if and when the Kindle format grows in popularity.
Seth Godin is an expert marketer and entrepreneur and is much smarter than I. His blog is a must-add for your RSS reader. This morning, he’s posted some notes on Kindle–timely for us, as we learn more about the device and its implications on what we do at CRL.
Perhaps of more interest than Seth’s critique of the Kindle itself are his comments about how such a gadget could transform the reading experience as we know it. Kindle’s wireless capabilities (which I’ve sort of got working; more on that in another post) give readers full-time, real-time access to a network of fellow readers. Through this network, you might have access to other readers’ notes and highlights, and be able to participate in contextual discussions based on the electronic book–all directly from the device.
From our perspective, what does that mean for literacy as we know it?
Now that I’ve got access to a Kindle, articles like this one are catching my eye: Starting next month, O’Reilly (publishers of technology-oriented books) will make select titles available in digital e-book bundles. While you may not care about picking up the latest edition of Perl in a Nutshell or Unix Power Tools in digital format, this is still worth mentioning because, rather than picking one format and then requiring customers to tether themselves to a device that supports that format, O’Reilly is providing readers a choice to go with PDF, a Kindle-compatible format, a Sony-compatible format, or all of the above. Or you can buy the good ol’ fashioned print edition, same as always.
O’Reilly’s doing a couple of other nice things, too: One, if you buy a PDF book now (the only format they currently support) they’ll give you the bundle when it’s available next month. Two, they’re trusting their customers and not placing digital rights management, or DRM, on the downloaded books. DRM is common with purchased music and video files and is designed to keep people from illegally sharing them, but more often than not causes undue headaches to honest customers.
Anyway, if there’s something for us all to take away from this it’s to think about ways to give consumers–whether they be programmers, teachers, or students–options as to how they may access and use your content.
Yesterday, I got an Amazon Kindle and had some problems with it, mostly particular to the built-in wireless networking. I’ve managed to take a few steps forward–the device is now registered to me, not Shanna, and I’ve learned how to manually transfer files from my computer to Kindle via USB. More on that in a minute–first I want to talk some more about the networking.
Contrary to what I thought last night, Sprint’s EVDO coverage, on which Amazon’s Whispernet service is based, has excellent coverage in Lawrence (which makes sense, as Sprint’s headquarters are a mere 40 miles or so east of here). For whatever reason, though, I can’t maintain a decent signal. I was able to successfully connect long enough to properly register the device, but I still can’t connect wirelessly to Amazon’s Kindle store to buy e-books, e-magazines, etc. Customer support, here I come.
Meanwhile, I have managed to transfer a few files from my computer to the device. This requires a couple of steps. First, you must convert the file into Amazon’s proprietary e-book format. To do this, you e-mail the file as an attachment to a special address at Amazon and get your converted file in a minute or two. Then it’s just a matter of connecting Kindle to your computer via USB and copying the file over, just as if the device were a flash drive. Alternately, you can send the original file to a different special e-mail address, and Amazon will send the file directly to your Kindle for a “small fee” (which I think is 10 cents). As soon as I get networking going properly I’ll give this a shot.
The quality of the converted files is so-so. I sent two PDFs for conversion, and Amazon admits that PDF conversion is still in development and likely to be flaky. If your PDF is primarily text, you shouldn’t have a problem, but files with images may render strangely. PDF is a complex format so this may or may not be corrected eventually.
So, two steps forward and one back for my second day with Kindle. Again, post your questions and comment below and I’ll do my best to answer them.
Update: I have successfully connected to the Kindle Store. Stay tuned.
Amazon Kindle is a portable electronic reading device from Amazon.com, designed to take the place of a traditional printed book. Unlike other devices such as notebook computers or iPods, Kindle’s screen is specifically designed for reading large amounts of text. It also promises easy access to Amazon’s gigantic catalog, meaning you can wirelessly purchase and retrieve a book without tethering to a computer. Although originally released last November, Kindle was hard to come by for awhile. Amazon now has plenty in stock, though, and I got mine today.
First off, the packaging is slick. Kindle ships in a box designed to look like a thick book. The device itself is approximately the size of a trade paperback, with large buttons to turn the electronic pages, and a small keyboard at the bottom. The screen is like nothing else I’ve ever seen. It’s crisp and monochrome, and looks more like a printed page than a computer screen. You don’t scroll through content–rather, you press large buttons along each side to flip pages forward and back. Kindle’s industrial, angular design is not as slick as an iPod or MacBook, but it functions well as an electronic replacement to a book.
I spent some time thumbing through the manual, which is pre-installed on the device. Many of the features I love about PDF books are present in Kindle’s proprietary format–it’s easy to jump to and from the table of contents, bookmark pages, and annotate.
Unfortunately, the manual is the only book I’ve been able to look at on my Kindle. Granted, I haven’t spent a whole lot of time with the device yet, but I’ve hit a roadblock.
When you buy a Kindle, it comes pre-registered to your Amazon.com account. This makes it easy to make purchases directly from the device and transfer previously purchased materials, but it’s a problem when someone else made the purchase for you. In my case, since I purchased the Kindle at KU, it’s registered to Shanna. Of course, you can “deregister” the device, and re-register it with a different account, but that assumes you have a signal with Amazon’s Whispernet wireless service. Whispernet service is provided by Sprint, so you’d think I’d get a good signal in Lawrence–but from my house I have zero bars.
Once I get this wireless service sorted out I should be in business. I’ll be traveling to Chicago for a few days next week and hope to bring Kindle along. I’ll continue to report my experiences with this device, but in the meantime feel free to ask questions (or share your own experiences with Kindle and other e-book readers) in the comments below.
