The Kindleville blog is now over a year old but I've become disappointed with Amazon's lack of advancement and development of the Kindle platform. I was hoping to see new features by now (what's the point of the "Experimental" page if they're never going to enhance or add to it?) as well as some creative new content options (book subscriptions, anyone?).
Then there's the fact that the magazine area has been pretty much left for dead (22 magazines and very few of the big ones). Heck, I even had to go back to BusinessWeek with my tail between my legs and start a new print subscription; I waited and waited but there's still no sign BusinessWeek (or many of the other major rags) will ever make it to the Kindle.
Enough of my whining though. The real reason for this post is to see if there's anyone out there who would like to become the new author of Kindleville. I'm looking for someone who's still passionate about the device and will commit to 3-5 good, solid posts every week. If that's too much to ask from one person maybe there are a few of you out there who could work as a team on it.
My interest in the Kindle is waning but I'd like to see Kindleville live on as a resource for the community. It's still the #1 blog being pushed out by the KindleFeeder service, ranking ahead of such heavyweights as The Huffington Post, The New York Times, Lifehacker, Wired's Top Stories and yes, even Amazon's very own Kindle blog. Plus, if Amazon finally wakes up and delivers something breathtaking with Kindle 2.0 I might just be back...but I'm not holding my breath.
So how about it? Is there anyone out there who'd like to take this on? I'll make it simple. You'd just write the posts, email them to me and I'll make sure they get loaded. You'll earn as much money as I have from the blog...nothing...but it's all about the community and a chance to get more visibility for you and your gift for writing.
If you're interested, send me an email message and I'll hook up with you shortly.
P.S. -- I'm not abandoning the blogosphere. I'm still quite passionate about my Publishing 2020 blog and, perhaps more importantly, I'm about to pour a lot of effort into a brand new blog I'm about to launch for the iPhone. It will be called iBlogiPhone.com and I plan to start working on it later today.
Sunday, January 25, 2009
WANTED: Kindleville Curator
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3 comments:
Joe,
I'm thinking that zero responses to your post sums it up.
I love the Kindle for book reading--and I read a lot of books.
But I have become completely disenchanted with it for periodicals.
I initially took the IHT, but decided that paying for a rehash of various other pubs made no sense. I'm still getting Forbes, but I prefer getting forbes.com online because it's current. Forbes info on the Kindle is no better than the 2 week old print version.
I'm still doing the Financial Times, but find that their iPhone version is pretty adequate, albeit missing some subscription-based stuff.
I pay for the WSJ online and find that what I can get on the iPhone covers about 3/4 of what I might want on the main version.
Ultimately, there interface is fine for books but way too clunky for news-type pubs.
In addition, by way of example the NYT iPhone does a great job of including at least one great color pic. No color--and virtually no images--on the Kindle.
You are dead right. It sure looks like they stopped serious development on the K.
Thanks for being a fab pioneer with your Kindle blog. It's probably time to move on.
As for the iPhone, I see it as the metaphor of the future of information distribution.
Newt
I think it's odd that some blog owners - such as yourself - think of themselves as somehow detached from the "blog brand". What put you at the top of Kindlefeeder is not your blog title or frequency of posts but you, your personality, style and choice of post topics.
It reminds me of how the "BookSlut" authoress was taken over by a new guy who was, frankly, horrible. As is usually the case -- since good blogging is not transferable.
Hi Newt. I've had 3 people contact me via email with interest. Not sure where that will lead, so we'll see.
Eire, good point, but I do think there are ways to add other voices to a blog like this and still keep it relevant and popular. That's why I'd like to talk with anyone who might become a contributor so that I can make sure it's a good fit.
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