The "Other" Kindle Home Page

Here's a fairly new site you need to bookmark immediately: It's called A Kindle Home Page and it's an all-in-one resource center for add-on's, free content, blogs, news and an assortment of other great links. The site is brought to you by Stephen Windwalker, author of the popular How to Use the Amazon Kindle for Email and Other Cool Tricks.

The Lost Kindle Saga

What a bummer. Blogger Jim Lyons writes here about losing his Kindle a few weeks ago. I felt bad for the guy, then I wondered...

Why can't Amazon help him track this down? I'm not asking them to hire a detective and find the darned thing, but how useful is a stolen/lost Kindle? Amazon knows the serial number and who bought that particular device. Shouldn't there be a way to alert Amazon when you lose it so that they can prevent anyone from ordering more books for it? Then the device becomes nothing more than a paperweight, useless to the person who stole/found it.

Technology Review Covers the Kindle

If you're still on the fence about the Kindle and want a quick overview to see what all the hype is about, take a couple of minutes and watch this video from Technology Review magazine. Although it hits all the highlights, you can tell these guys don't do video for a living. Zooming in every so often to show what's on the screen would help improve the viewing experience...

I also have to admit an odd fascination with the size and shape of the reviewer's thumbs; it didn't help matters that his left one has some sort of enormous bandage on it. I hope this guy isn't dreaming of being a professional hand model one day.

Will Amazon Ever Collect This Sort of Data?

As I read this press release earlier today I got to thinking... This company, Smart's Publishing, is just leveraging the technology and tracking recipient reading habits to better serve their customers. Pretty straightforward stuff and highly useful information for the newsletter publishers using the service.

We don't think too much about the footprints we create when opening and reading e-newsletters, but what if similar tracking features found their way onto your e-book reader? Would you care?

My sense is that most consumers feel their book-reading habits should be considered private. Of course, if you're buying your books through an online vendor or using a member discount card at a brick-and-mortar, well, your habits are already being tracked.

I'm talking about something much more granular than this though. For example, would publishers like to know what percentage of customers typically only get about 20 pages into an e-book before giving up and never reading the rest? Would reference book publishers like to know what topics tend to be the most viewed or what terms are most frequently searched for? Could these patterns have value? Absolutely.

Perhaps that's another pricing model that will find its way into the e-book world: You could pay one price for privacy where your activity isn't being tracked or a lower price if you're willing to let the vendor capture your habits and potentially sell the resulting data.

The Kindle Ruins a Subway Pastime

If the Kindle really takes off it's likely to affect a favorite time-waster on subways and buses everywhere: Speculating more about fellow riders by the cover of the book they're reading, or so says this article in The New York Times.

And oh, here's a little April Fools fun for Kindle owners everywhere... This story from gadget website T3 talks about a forthcoming Kindle rival called "The Good E-Book", a device that "removes all unsuitable content" on the fly. Enjoy!

A Couple of Quick Kindle Tips

Mike Elgan of Computerworld is trying to use the Kindle to help him become less reliant on paper. If you're like Mike and you do a lot of public speaking, why not use your Kindle for your talking points/notes rather than paper? That's a great idea, and since the Kindle has a much smaller footprint than a laptop, it fits nicely on just about any podium.

Today's other tip has to do with a book called 55 Ways to Have Fun with Google, by Philipp Lenssen. You could either buy the paperback edition on Amazon (currently selling for $17.69) or just go to this website where you'll find the PDF edition for free.

The $9.99 Factor

Here's yet another interesting post and follow-up discussion on Kindlekorner, this time, regarding the price of e-books. One publisher felt the wrath of the community by coming out with a Kindle edition that's well over the popular $9.99 price point. The title in question was quickly changed from a price of more than $20 to, you guessed it, $9.99.

Regardless of how Amazon is arriving at and settling on their pricing levels, you've got to believe there will be more and more community discontent every time a new Kindle edition comes out at something higher than $9.99. Amazon's response was swift in this case; it will be interesting to see if that pattern continues, particularly as the Kindle ownership base grows.