Remember that Sony Book Reader that was supposed to be all the rage and never actually appeared in the Canadian market?
Well, forget about it.
Amazon launched Kindle, a wireless, portable reading device with access to 90,000 titles.
Hmmm, is this how publishers’ Search Inside the Book files are now being used? I bet it is.
Kindle looks ugly but sounds lovely.
* wireless, no internet needed, it uses cell phone networks
* no monthly plan, no software to install, nothing but go
* electronic paper
* can receive emails from you of Word documents and pictures for “easy on-the-go viewing”
* 10 ounces
What’s wrong with it?
* Did I mention ugly?
* How about that it only holds 200 titles and is $400 USD.
* 600 x 800 pixel resolution at 167 ppi, 4-level gray scale. GRAY! Can we have some colour please. Why is that so hard?
Scroll to the bottom of the page to watch the Kindle Drop Test. It’s rather soothing, slow-mo.
UPDATE:
John Gruber of Daring Fireball is mentioned by Paschal in the comments of this post. It’s a good post on why Kindle will/should fail. Here are a couple of quotes that resonate with me.
Quote: What it comes down to is that when you purchase books in Kindle’s e-book format, they’re wrapped in DRM and are in a format that no other software can read. There are no provisions for sharing books even with other Kindle owners, let alone with everyone.
And,
Quote: So the Kindle proposition is this: You pay for downloadable books that can’t be printed, can’t be shared, and can’t be displayed on any device other than Amazon’s own $400 reader , and whether they’re readable at all in the future is solely at Amazon’s discretion. That’s no way to build a library.
Totally agree.