Monday, February 23, 2009

Kindle!

Once again, an article on the Kindle. Alex, when you get it you'll have to let us know if all the hype is true!

6 comments:

  1. I've been pleasantly surprised with the way the Kindle can have an impact for people with certain kinds of disabilities and sensitivities.

    A friend of mine has various chronic pain issues, including migraines and light sensitivity. She loves reading young adult and science fiction/fantasy novels, but she often prefers large print, and those genres are not typically available in that format. In addition, she can't view things on a computer screen for very long. Between its grayish screen, the ability to change text size and the availability of a wide variety of titles -- particularly newer books of all genres, not just what is most popular, the Kindle offers a great opportunity for her to get access to more reading material.

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  2. I got an email over the past weekend saying it's going to be shipped, so I'm eagerly waiting for it. They told me I could make purchases and they would be sent to my in-transit Kindle, which I thought was pretty cool. I've been buying books with what's left of a gift certificate, and I'm finding it to be eerily similar to the addictive practice of buying music on iTunes. One click.

    Plus, older texts are so cheap. I bought this bundle of books about Shakespeare (I know, totally everyone's first choice) for a buck. Some things are $0.00. I bought Virtual Inequality: Beyond the Digital Divide, which is the book I'm going to be reviewing for this class. The Kindle version was $8. The print version is $20, and that doesn't include shipping charges.

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  4. cnet has a review up
    http://reviews.cnet.com/amazon-kindle-2/?tag=smallCarouselArea.0

    I guess it has both male and female robot voices for you. It looks like a pretty cool toy. Can you bring it in for show and tell Alex?

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  5. After getting my hopes up for it arriving yesterday I actually went on-line and tracked it, and there's a bizarre two week period of potential delivery, even though it seems like it was shipped on Sunday. I think this is the drug dealer ethos of building anticipation with a new purchaser. In any case, I'll bring it in when I get it.

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  6. over at boing boing (http://www.boingboing.net/2009/02/25/authors-guild-vs-rea.html), cory doctorow has a pretty good round upof/commentary on the authors guild and their issues with the kindle.

    full disclosure: as i've mentioned in previous posts, i'm in the process of reading a collection of doctorow's writings on DRM and intellectual property, so i'm more than a little pre-inclined to agree with his criticisms of the guild, as well as the criticisms of the hardware itself ("the DRM, the proprietary file format, both imposed on authors and publishers even if they don't want it...").

    great stuff in there.

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