Reading OnScreen Revisited - The Kindle

Just before Thanksgiving mainstream media discovered e-media. Or you’d think so, given the coverage of Amazon’s Kindle in Newsweek, CBS, and The New York Times. And pretty much every podcast or videocast even marginally related to technology spoke up on the product. Daring Fireball’s John Gruber hates it. Whereas Chicago Sun-Time columnist, Andy Ihnatko, has found a new love and should probably just get a room. On the MacBreakWeekly podcast, Ihnatko affectionately said that the device was like having a robot that goes out to gather the best hand-crafted items so that you can have the perfect plate of waffles waiting for you when you wake up. I don’t whether to be concerned or jealous. Or both. That said, except for Ihnatko and Geek Brief’s Cali Lewis, very few actually have the device on-hand to comment on (including yours truly). Strong opinions prevail nonetheless, many of which are the typical “gee whiz,” “look shiny lights” appraisal of the technology without pondering whether this is just a neat (and expensive) technology solution looking for a problem.

backpack Just like Sony e-reader before it, the Kindle touts that one can can carry hundreds of books and documents in their little hand-held device. While that was an amazing concept for the iPod and the first portable MP3 players because we really could see the advantage of being able to shuffle through hundreds of songs, it’s unlikely that one is going to want to shuffle through hundreds of books. Then again, as noted by the Constructing Meaning blog, many a college student or parent of a student would love to replace the 50-plus pounds of textbooks lugged about with a single hand-held device. Yeah, there’s nothing more special, especially early in the school year, as seeing 70-pound sixth graders try to rush about with 50-pounds of textbooks and papers strapped to their backs. Okay, score one point for the little devices.

So then the next hurdle is whether one can get what one wants to (or has to) read on the device. For the early adopters of the Sony reader the answer was an unsatisfying NO. One was also hampered by fact that one could get e-books only from Sony using their proprietary software (NOT Mac or Linux compatible), and no PDF support. Amazon apparently learned from Sony because one doesn’t even need a computer in order to get new content on the Kindle, because the Kindle wirelessly communicates with the “cloud” and downloads new material over-night so that one can wake up to a fresh copy of the Wall Street Journal waiting for you (thus engendering Ihnatko’s earlier waffle-making robot analogy). Score another point for the Kindle. But for college students and parents of students, there’s still a question as to whether the powerful textbook publishers will cooperate and make their books available (for a reasonable price!). This might be the one stumbling block preventing us from living the fantasy of walking about reading from our PADDs a la Star Trek. Damn.

Finally, besides the whole wireless download overnight thing, part of Ihnatko’s endorsement of the Kindle was based on it’s power as an Internet device that Amazon has tucked up under an “Experimental” menu. He reported that it made a damn powerful Internet device for email and text-based Internet needs. With a screen size bigger than the iPhone/iPod Touch, but yet pocket-able he might really be on to something. Maybe this is a device to be taken seriously for reading text, and surfing the net. It almost doubles the device’s usefulness and people are definitely looking for a solution to getting their reading without cutting down trees.

Speaking of double duty, some weeks ago on TWIT sci-fi author, Jerry Pournelle, said that if they get books on to the iPhone than the paperback market is dead. I’ve been getting my copy of PC Magazine and MacWorld digitally delivered to my laptop for over a year. Probably not very coincidentally, the same week as the introduction of the Kindle I got an email from Zinio, the company that provides my digital magazine subscriptions, that they were bringing their service to the iPhone. Pournelle is one smart dude. Damn.