Coming Soon to Your PC: Kindle Books

First there was the Kindle iPhone app and now Amazon is further hedging their hardware bet with this announcement about the future ability to read Kindle books on your Windows PC. No word on Mac support, btw.

The most important point in this announcement is captured by these three words: "No Kindle required." You probably won't want to read on your laptop for hours at a time, but a netbook/tablet device becomes a more viable option, even with a backlit display.

Just as printed books will never go away I can see where dedicated e-readers like the Kindle, Sony Reader, iRex, etc., could be around for quite awhile. And while they'll offer a reading experience that's easy on the eyes, I've said it before and I'll say it again: More and more reading will take place on multi-function devices, not one-trick ponies like the Kindle.

Amazon obviously realizes that too and is taking the initial steps to ensure they remain relevant as an e-content provider on other platforms.

The Asus Eee-Reader: I Don't Get It

Have you seen the leaked photos of the upcoming Asus Eee-Reader? If you missed it, here's a short article on CNET with a picture. OK, I get the lower price. Sure, that's something the market is clamoring for as the Kindles, Sony Readers, etc., are destined to be nothing more than nichey luxuries as long as they're $300+.

But what's with the 2-panel hinged display? Why take a relic of the print book and force it into an e-reader? Think about it. There's not a single time in the past year where I've said, "gee, I really wish this Kindle had a second display that hinged onto this one." Never.

Why? First of all, I can only read one screen at a time. OK, things get more interesting when you can have full color with hi-res so that images pop. Um, that's not the current state of the Kindle (or Sony) technology though, is it? So a second screen is just there, waiting for me to get to it. Oh, and btw, it costs more to make. And since this new device won't be using eInk display technologies, it's basically a pair of LCD screens that suck more juice from the battery. What's there to like?

They talk about using the second screen as a virtual keyboard. Anyone who owns an iPhone will tell you the thing they like least about it is the virtual keyboard. Heck, even the chicklet Kindle keyboard is better than a virtual one. (Wow, did I just say the Kindle has an interface feature that's better than the iPhone's?! That's the only one, btw.)

The article goes on to talk about how the device will have speakers, a webcam and a microphone built in. Sounds great, but isn't this starting to smell a lot like a netbook? Asus has been in the netbook space for a few years now and they're just tweaking their product a bit and calling it an e-reader.

I'd rather just have a netbook. And if there's one thing I've learned in 2009 it's that the dedicated e-reader doesn't have much of a future. Sure, they'll still be around in a few years but the real action will be with the multi-purpose devices like mobile phones and tablets.

Managing Stolen/Lost Kindles

It should be so much easier than this. I'm talking about Amazon's policy regarding lost/stolen Kindles, as outlined in this article. I can't imagine losing my Kindle and having Amazon tell me they won't disable it.

Come on. That's an almost $400 device and it would be so easy for them to deny service to the person who found/stole it. If England can do this with cell phones why in the world can't Amazon do it with Kindles?

Whatever happened to this company that built its reputation on a foundation of outstanding customer service? Anyone who accepts this policy and then buys another Kindle to replace their lost/stolen one is a sucker.

Dear Mr. Bezos, can you please just implement the oh-so-simple solution outlined at the end of the article?!

Sheet Music on Kindle DX

Kudos to Andrys Basten and her Kindle World blog for opening my eyes to something I had never considered before: Using the Kindle DX to display sheet music. The DX screen still seems a bit too small to me for this but maybe that's just because my vision isn't what it used to be!

You'll find there's a quite a bit of sheet music already for sale on Amazon's website but be sure to consider the free options as well. Andrys provides info on IMSLP, a free public domain sheet music library, as well as some screen shots of how sheet music renders on her own DX (here and here).

If you're on Twitter, and you should be(!), you can follow Andrys there too.

Slowly Losing Interest in Subscriptions

I've been a Kindle NY Times subscriber for more than a year now. Because the issues show up automatically and wirelessly wherever I go it's one of the reasons I tell people I enjoy owning a Kindle and taking it on the road.

I discovered the NY Times iPhone app when I got my first iPhone. As is the case with most apps, they keep updating and improving it. The latest version has me wondering why I bother paying Amazon $13.99/month for the Kindle version. I hear there are elements in the Kindle version that don't appear in the (free) iPhone version but I'm hard-pressed to tell you what they are. All the articles I read in yesterday's Kindle edition are right there in the iPhone version.

The iPhone version has ads and the Kindle version doesn't. So what? If that's one of the key differences and it saves me $14/month, bring on the ads!

The Kindle version comes automatically and can be read without a live web connection (once the issue is downloaded, of course). The iPhone version let's me save individual articles for later offline reading. Close, but not quite the same. Of course, if the iPhone app ever comes with a setting that lets me save the whole edition automatically, well, I'd pay at least $5/month for that, maybe even $10.

Amazon hasn't exactly set the world on fire with new and exciting Kindle features. The ones that exist on the K2 and DX are pretty much the same that debuted with K1 almost 2 years ago. Meanwhile, Apple is rumored to have a sexy netbook/tablet coming next month. It will undoubtedly build on the success of the iPhone and unless Apple lays an egg it's likely to be the product I upgrade to from my Kindle 1.0.

Lessons from the iPhone App Store

The Kindle Review blog recently posted this excellent article on lessons we can learn from Apple's App Store. As the post notes, discoverability is one of the major problems in the App Store today. Sure, Apple provides lists of recent additions and even popular apps, but finding your way through 65K+ apps seems hopeless when you're scrolling through 5 or so at a time!

I'm an iPhone owner and I love the device. I've downloaded a few dozen apps over the past 6 months but I'm amazed at how many I miss out on. The other night at dinner a colleague mentioned a new one to me that's just what I was looking for (Fluent News). I had never heard of it but I immediately downloaded it. Word-of-mouth promotion is nice and all but it can't be the only way forward.

I'm anxious to see how this all plays out. What new promotional vehicles will develop that help improve the discovery problem? And before we look at it as just an Apple issue, think about how this applies to ebooks...

Amazon has a tried and true method for promotion and encouraging discovery. But they're only one outlet. More and more ebook storefronts are popping up every week. Then there's the self-publishing angle. How many new self-published works hit virtual shelves every month? Hundreds of thousands?

Is this an opportunity for a third-party aggregator to step in and build an uber-catalog with all sorts of bells and whistles? This isn't just bestseller lists but also community recommendations and other lists tailored for your needs and interests.

Ebook services and offerings are growing like crazy. Without an uber-catalog service we'll soon find ourselves as lost in the sea of unknown ebook choices as iPhone owners are in the sea of apps.

A glimpse of the future?

At the end of the film 2010, Dr. Heywood Floyd looks up at the new sun that had been created in our solar system and observes, "You can tell your children of the day when everyone looked up and realized that they were only tenants of this world. We have been given a new lease and a warning from the landlord."

Amazon's recent Orwell (and Orwellian) debacle served as a similar wake up call for me as a Kindle user.

People are still debating over whether Amazon handled the situation properly.  Some, including our own Joe Wikert, have offered suggestions on how Amazon could have handled it better.

But what bothers me is not whether Amazon was right or wrong in removing books from our Kindles -- it's the fact that they had (and still have) the technology to do it at all.

In a recent Slate column titled "Why 2024 Will Be Like Nineteen Eighty-Four," Farhad Manjoo warns that we've just glimpsed the future of book banning.  Sure it sounds alarmist now, but consider the possibilities.  As Manjoo observes, Amazon's mass deletion "sets up a terrible precedent.  Amazon deleted books that were already available in print, but in our paperless future—when all books exist as files on servers—courts would have the power to make works vanish completely."

Unthinkable?  Perhaps.  But now we've been shown that it is technically possible.

Manjoo's suggestion? 

Don't buy a Kindle until Amazon updates its terms of service to prohibit remote deletions. Even better, the company ought to remove the technical capability to do so, making such a mass evisceration impossible in the event that a government compels it.

I'm not quite ready to go that far, but I do think we need to keep the pressure on Amazon.  And the incident has made me think twice about purchasing Kindle editions of books.

I'm sure Amazon didn't intend to send a message when they deleted those files from our Kindles, but a message was sent nonetheless.

It was a reminder that we do not really own the e-books we purchase from Amazon. 

It was a reminder that when we abandon physical media for digital we give up a lot of rights.

And it was a reminder that the media giants who sell us that digital content wield an ever-increasing amount of power.

We Kindle users just got a warning from the landlord.    For the future's sake we better pay attention.

Has the incident made you think differently about the Kindle or the future of ebooks?

Paul

Follow me on Twitter @phigginbotham
What I'm reading now on my Kindle:  Nothing.  I'm reading a dead-tree edition of American Theocracy: The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil, and Borrowed Money in the 21stCentury by Kevin Phillips.