Tag: kindle

A kindle review by a art direction student

Anna Frew is doing a masters in Art and Design and is majoring in the conflict of ebooks and books. I met her at a Manchester Social Media Cafe in January and found her very intriguing.

So after chatting for a while we got on to the topic of the kindle and ebooks. This was just after BBC Backstage ebook went live. So I had lots of tips how we did the ebooks and how I generally do most of my ebook stuff. Anyway, she wrote up some of the conversation on her blog while reviewing her new Kindle.

I also like how I can alter the line length on the screen. Reading from line to line is something I struggle with in large bodies of text. Often I find myself lost within a text so being able to narrow the text made it much easier to read longer passages. This is problem common for dyslexic people so I think the kindle has great scope as a tool for dyslexic students with long texts to read. I know I would have appreciated being able to do that with some of my readings. Also being able to have all of the texts you need in one place in light weight form will also increase its selling points for students.

The fact that you can very easily put your own work onto the Kindle is also a great plus. Something which is much more difficult with apple products. This is very useful for presenting my work for assessment. Using the hack ‘Calibre’ also has great potential. This is a programme which allows you to turn any online content into an e-book. For example a blog. This means I can put these blog entries straight onto my Kindle for assessment in an organised way, without time consuming reformatting.

Its also very interesting to see her list of positives and negatives for ebooks.

One person to watch in the future I think… (more of this to come soon)

Swap your kindle for a ton of books?

Do you love books?

Do you love books so much that you’d buy a kindle and sell your kindle for a stack of books? Yeah I thought not…

But just in-case your thinking about giving up on your kindle. Microcosm Publishing will take your bet.

I think its all stupid but to be fair Microcosm must have knew it was going to get there name in almost every news site and blog. So to be fair to them, good on them. I wonder how many people have taken up there offer. Although I think the swap is for new books, so its hardly cost effective but then again a 2nd hand kindle can’t be worth that much, can it?

Its also worth noting that Amazon ebooks outsold Hardbooks…

E-books have hit a significant milestone. In each of the last three months, Amazon reports that sales of books for Kindle have outpaced the sale of hardcover books, and that growth is only accelerating.

…and Paperbacks just recently

The ebook revolution has swept past two more milestones in its ferocious advance upon the bastions of literary culture. As the Man Booker prize embraces the digital era, the online retail giant Amazon has announced that sales of Kindle editions have overtaken paperbacks in the US.

Instapaper’s wireless delivery

I didn’t notice Instapaper now supports wireless delivery of epub’s.

Reading on the Kindle’s non-reflective, e-ink screen is easy on the eyes and great for longer content.

Instapaper provides Kindle-compatible files, easily transferred at no charge via USB, containing the Text versions of your saved pages in any folder.

Additionally, you can set up wireless delivery to automatically send your most recent Instapaper stories every day or week. Note: Amazon assesses a surcharge for each wireless delivery, and wireless delivery is not available in all countries.

Instapaper also provides ePub files for other electronic reading devices that support ePub, including most Sony Readers and the Barnes & Noble Nook.

Ok besides the Amazon surcharge (which doesn’t seem to apply if you have a wifi only kindle it seems), this is fantastic. I use to use Instapaper but switched over to using Readitlater. I might have to switch back? At least till readitlater enables the same feature (i and others have already suggested it)

The future of publishing is writable

Newsweek book are not dead bezos

Imran posted a link on his facebook wall.

The future of publishing is writable, Trends of smaller, easier, and more personal content signal a shift away from read-only publishing.

There are three convergence trends in publishing that are already apparent.

One clear long-term trend is that smaller pieces of information are being published. Considering just modern digital forms of publishing, there is a roughly chronological progression toward smaller publications: emails, Usenet postings, web pages, blog posts, blog comments, tweets, tags.

A second trend is a reduction in friction. As access to easy-to-use and inexpensive publishing technology increases, it becomes economically feasible to publish smaller and less valuable pieces of content. We have reached the point where anyone with access to the Internet can easily and cheaply publish trivial, tiny pieces of information — even single words.

The third trend is the rise of publishing personal information. Our inescapable sociability is driving us to shape the Internet into a mechanism for publishing information about ourselves.

These three trends — smaller, easier, more personal — provide a framework to examine the development of online information publishing.

Absolutely…

In a session at BarCampManchester4 titled Ebooks, I was invited to talk about my Kindle ebook reader. I said I have never bought a book from the Amazon Kindle store and may never do.

So the obvious thing people thought was that I download ebooks from questionable sources. But in actual fact most of my ebook collection is either creative commons licensed ebooks such as cory doctorow’s books or there self published content formed from scraping websites using the much loved calibre and its scripts. Its scripts work with everything from standard sites, google reader, instapaper, readitlater, etc, etc.

I’m not saying I’m a self publisher but if you do look at the percentage of ebooks I’ve made/republished compared to the ones I’ve bought or downloaded. Its clear going by my own habits is we going towards a writable, self publishing future.

Kindle everywhere your ebooks everywhere…

Kindle everywhere

Amazon are really cornering the reader market. Not only do they have one of the best ebook readers, but its also one of the cheapest (using there ability to ship many of them). But what really smashed it for them has to be the app which pretty much runs on everything. From PC’s to Android phones. Windows phone 7 to the ipad. Now there launching a kindle for the web. This will optimise any browser into a ebook reader. Impressive stuff.

But I’m worried…

This all seems to be out of the same play book as Apple and there itunes music ecosystem. I can already imagine the special links being sent around social networks pointing into the kindle ecosystem. The only saving grace is the kindle for the web.

Hopefully Amazon will follow the Google approach with these things and leverage the web not fight against it.

If Amazon screw up, Google seem to be right behind with there own ebook store.

What does this mean for the Kindle device, well this is all good news for the Kindle. Kindle is a fantastic eink device but shouldn’t be the only place to see ebooks. Hopefully more people will make there way through ebooks on devices like their phones then make there way towards reading on a eink device. I use to read my ebooks on my PDA (compaq ipaq) and it was painful but I found myself getting use to it. Now I can’t imagine using a phone or anything LCD like to read large amounts of text. But thats just me…

Its great Kindle is everywhere, and people can choose how they want to view the ebooks, period. Choice is good!

Now if they can just sort out the ability to buy a book and ebook version at the same time that would be great.

A few things I’d like to see on my kindle

My Kindle

So I’ve gotten into this lovely routine where I have Calibre automatically turns my subscriptions into ebooks for me and then I connect my Kindle to the USB to automatically sync the items. Then I sit in a nice coffee/tea shop reading my google reader unread subscriptions, readitlater, instapaper, etc. With the experimental webkit browser any links I want to check out, I can check them out using the cafe’s public wifi. The only issue is I really want some way of bookmarking with delicious or even readitlater the important stuff that I read.

I don’t know if you can add bookmarklets to the experimental webkit browser but that would be ideal.

My other alternative is some kind of note taking app on the kindle its self. I know you can add annotations to books but it seems getting them off isn’t as straight forward as it should be. Although I love just being able to read stuff on the kindle screen, I wouldn’t mind some blogging app. The keyboard is not bad and being able to draft up a blog entry would be great, specially when you google reader on the device its self. I’m also wondering if I can make use of Conduit again to do some transferring of notes, like I had planned for my Sony Ereader.

So in ideally I’d like to see a full blogging app, a browser with bookmarklets and Ideally a evernote client.

Come on say it with me, Evernote on a wireless kindle would be amazing and dare I say a killer app for the kindle3.

My Kindle is here, and I love it!

I got a delivery notification in my letter box today saying I missed a deliver and the caretaker took it in. Wondering what it could it be, I looked in my inbox and found…

Dear Customer,
Greetings from Amazon.co.uk,
We are writing to let you know that the following item has been sent
to:

Ian Forrester
APARTMENT ****
** *********** ********* *****
MANCHESTER, LANCS M** ***
United Kingdom

using Royal Mail.

For more information about delivery estimates and any open orders,
please visit: http://www.amazon.co.uk/your-account

Your order #*************************** (received September 07, 2010)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Qty                           Item    Price        Delivery Subtotal

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Amazon.co.uk items (Sold by Amazon EU S.a.r.L.):

1  Kindle Wireless Reading De...  £109.00               1  £109.00

Dispatched via Royal Mail (estimated arrival date: September 24, 2010).

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
This completes your order.

Yeah!!!! I got my Kindle3, so expect tomorrow a unboxing using my new camera. Its been ages since I ordered the Kindle and I’m so glad its came.

So now’s a really good time to sell my Sony e-ink PRS600 reader, although its got a slight scratch which means CEX won’t buy it off me. Its well used and served me very well in its short time.

I got the device in my hands now and yes there is a nice series of unboxing photos on flickr.com if your interested.

What really got me was the amazing difference between my old Sony PRS600 and the Amazon Kindle 3. I know the Sony PRS505 vs Sony PRS600 was always a challenge because the PRS600 had the touch screen over the top of it. But boy oh boy, the PRS600 vs the Kindle3 is shocking… I can’t believe how clear and crisp the screen is. Then there’s the weight of the device! Its almost too light, I feel like I’m lifting a paperback book! Just like the Sony, when you plug it into a computer (yes even Linux) it comes up as a mass storage device, allowing you to just shift stuff back an forth easily. Of course Calibre allows you to easily convert between ebook formats and sync with the kindle directly.

My own complaint so far is the wifi won’t connect to my wireless network, but actually I think what’s going on is my local network isn’t actually connected to the internet yet and its failing to touch the internet and giving up. But over all this device is amazing! They have done so much, even down to the screen saver (as such, because of course with a eink screen you don’t need one) which is displayed when your charging the device. I can’t wait to get the experimental browser working (actually going to the northern quarter later to try it out) and try out some of the kindle apps. I’ve not looked into the Kindle hacking yet but this is certainly one of the massive advantages over the Sony.

This has to be the first break through e-reader… Just over 100 quid for a amazing device! Can’t wait to sit out in the shared garden reading on this device.

The Kindle3 has everything I asked for…

Sony PRS600 vs Amazon Kindle 3

I’m going to sell my old Sony PRS-600 Ebook Reader for the Amazon Kindle 3. But why?

Well it kind of centres on a blog post I wrote a while ago when the iPad was unveiled to the world. In the blog post I touch on points which would make my perfect ereader. 2 of the main points are,

  • Add Bluetooth for file transfer, dialup, networking, etc.
  • Run an open operating system like a cleverly crafted Andriod on it
  • Add accelerometers, proximity sensors and some haptic feedback
  • Wireless 802.11b/g

Well although not all my requirements are met, the Kindle3 does have wireless and a operating system to support (as such) 3rd party apps.

Android would be great to have on there with a open marketplace so people can really develop for it. I don’t know if Android would work on a e-ink screen but you could imagine it wouldn’t take much to build a custom build just for E-ink screens. Bluetooth, Wifi and Accelerometers would open up a whole bunch of applications which the ipad has demonstrated. But the smaller screen would be much more mobile and friendly.

I assumed slightly wrongly that you would need android to have the ability to add apps, but actually Amazon have decided to go with there own OS and App platform. This might be a good idea because you don’t want apps made for a Lcd mixed up with the eink ones. Its also a good idea if developers are thinking about eink instead of building for Lcd and just converting down to eink. Battery life under ink is amazing, but I’d hate to see that going because some app took liberties with the eink technology. Kindle apps are certainly a new area with a fruitful future. I can think of some clever apps you could build with the eink screen.

I thought good and hard about swapping to the Kindle, specially with the 1984 uproar. But to be frank, I’ve never bought a ebook and won’t really be affected by this thing. I would have also perfected a open market place like Android but its the start, so who knows what may happen…

I also downloaded the kindle app on my android phone in preparation for my new Kindle (which has been ordered but I’m still waiting for stock). In the meantime I’m selling my lovely Sony PRS-600, so if anyone is interested drop me a message.