Kindle 2.0 Details

Amazon has just issued a press release of the features of Kindle 2.0.

From the text:

"New Slim and Sleek Design
The new Kindle 2 features a completely new design. At just over a third of an inch thin (0.36 inches) and weighing just over 10 ounces, Kindle 2 is pencil thin and lighter than a typical paperback. New buttons make it easy to turn the page from any holding position. The new 5-way controller on Kindle 2 allows for more precise note-taking and highlighting both up and down and side to side in lines of text. The new controller also makes it easy to quickly jump between articles and sections of newspapers. Kindle 2 comes with a redesigned power charger that is more portable than the previous Kindle charger. The official Amazon.com cover for Kindle 2, which is sold separately, has an integrated attachment hinge to ensure a secure fit and features a leather cover for style and durability. Patagonia, Cole Haan and Belkin also designed covers for Kindle 2 that are available in the Kindle Store.

New Crisper, Faster Display
Kindle 2’s 6-inch, 600 x 800 electronic paper display provides 16 shades of gray versus 4 shades available in the original Kindle, resulting in crisp text, and sharper images and photos. Kindle reads like printed words on paper because the screen works using real ink and doesn’t use a backlight, eliminating the eyestrain and glare associated with other electronic displays. With the latest electronic paper display, pages turn an average of 20 percent faster than the original Kindle for an even smoother reading experience.

New 2 GB Memory Holds Over 1,500 Books
With 2 GB of memory, Kindle 2 can hold more than 1,500 books, compared with 200 with the original Kindle. And because Amazon automatically backs up a copy of every Kindle book purchased, customers can wirelessly re-download titles in their library at any time.

25% Longer Battery Life
Kindle 2 customers can read for four to five days on one charge with wireless on and for over two weeks with wireless turned off.

New Instant Dictionary Lookup
Kindle 2 comes with the New Oxford American Dictionary and its 250,000 word definitions built-in, and with Kindle 2 definitions appear instantly at the bottom of the page.

New Experimental Read-To-Me Feature
Kindle 2 offers the experimental read-to-me feature “Text-to-Speech” that converts words on a page to spoken word so customers have the option to read or listen. Customers can switch back and forth between reading and listening, and their spot is automatically saved. Pages turn automatically while the content is being read so customers can listen hands-free. Customers can choose to be read to by male or female voices and can choose the speed to suit their listening preference. Using the read-to-me feature, anything you can read on Kindle, including books, newspapers, magazines, blogs, and personal documents, Kindle 2 can read to you.

Still Wireless, Still No PC, Still No Hunting for Wi-Fi Hot Spots
Kindle 2 uses the same wireless delivery system as the original Kindle—Amazon Whispernet. Customers can wirelessly shop the Kindle Store, download or receive new content in less than 60 seconds, and read from their library—all without a PC, Wi-Fi hot spot, or syncing. Whispernet utilizes Amazon’s optimized technology plus Sprint’s national 3G data network and is expanded to cover all 50 U.S. states. Amazon still pays for the wireless connectivity on Kindle 2 so books can be downloaded in less than 60 seconds—with no monthly wireless bills, data plans, or service commitments.

Automatically Syncs With Original Kindle, Kindle 2, and future devices
Amazon’s new “Whispersync” technology automatically syncs Kindle 2 and the original Kindle, which makes transitioning to the new Kindle 2 or using both devices easy for customers. Kindle 2 will also sync with a range of mobile devices in the future.

Earth’s Biggest E-book Store Keeps Expanding, Plus New Stephen King Exclusive
The Kindle Store currently offers more than 230,000 books—up from 90,000 when Kindle launched. Books from numerous popular authors have been added since the original Kindle launched, including John Steinbeck, C.S. Lewis, Beverly Cleary, Martha Stewart, Terry Goodkind, and Spencer Johnson.

Author Stephen King announced today that he is releasing a novella, “Ur,” which will only be available on Kindle. At the center of Ur is lovelorn college English instructor Wesley Smith, who can’t seem to get his ex-girlfriend’s parting shot out of his head: “Why can’t you just read off the computer like the rest of us?” Egged on by her question and piqued by a student’s suggestion, Wesley places an order for a Kindle. Smith’s Kindle arrives in a box stamped with the smile logo and unlocks a literary world that even the most avid of book lovers could never imagine. But once the door is open, there are those things that one hopes we’ll never read or live through. Ur is available for pre-order beginning today and will be released later this month. For Kindle customers who pre-order, King’s new novella will download automatically when it becomes available.

The Kindle Store now includes many additional magazines and newspapers, such as The New Yorker, which is available for the first time on Kindle starting today. Magazines and newspaper subscriptions are auto-delivered wirelessly to Kindle overnight so that the latest edition is waiting for customers when they wake up. Monthly Kindle newspaper subscriptions are $5.99 to $14.99 per month, and Kindle magazines are $1.25 to $3.49 per month.

Over 1,200 blogs are available on Kindle today—up from 250 when Kindle launched. New blogs added to the Kindle Store recently include the Wired blogs, VF Daily and James Wolcott’s Blog from Vanity Fair. Blogs are updated and downloaded wirelessly throughout the day so Kindle customers can read blogs whenever and wherever they want. Wireless delivery of blogs costs as little as $0.99 each per month and includes a free two-week trial.

Same Popular Kindle Features
Kindle 2 includes all the features Kindle customers enjoy every day, including:
· Choose from six text sizes
· Add bookmarks, notes, and highlights
· Read personal documents such as Microsoft Word and PDF, and view images, all
delivered wirelessly
· Search Web, Wikipedia.org, Kindle Store, and Your Kindle Library where
customers’ purchased content is stored
· No setup required—Kindle comes ready to use—no software to load or set up

Kindle is available for pre-order starting today for $359 at http://amazon.com/kindle2 and will ship on February 24. Customers who are currently in line for the original Kindle will receive an automatic upgrade to the new Kindle 2."

What surprises does Amazon have in store today?

For Kindle owners, Monday is an exciting day. While perhaps not as monumental as the presidential election or the Super Bowl, the promise of what may be a major upgrade to my favorite gadget is occaison for some wistful hoping. With the market becoming more competitive and Amazon choosing to introduce competition to the Kindle by selling "Kindle editions" for the iphone, the burden, as I've written elsewhere, is on Amazon to produce some significant new features for Kindle 2.0.

What might those feature be? Predictions abound, including this recent PC World article. Well, since Jeff Bezos seems to have lost my cell phone number, I'm not in the loop, but here are my top five hopes:


5) Longer battery life. Even with performance better than most gadgets I own, I'm recharging every couple of days, even with judicial use of the wireless modem. It would be tremendously convenient if the Kindle could be the camel of e-book readers, only needing a drink of the juice every week or so.


4) More Kindle titles. While this isn't a feature of the hardware per-se, the link between the Kindle store and the Kindle is inseparable, like Michael Jackson and his pet monkey. Want to read John Grisham's latest novel, The Associate? You can't. Not available on the Kindle. For the Kindle to become truly popular, Amazon will need to convince publishers to license the rights to high profile titles.


3) A backlight. While accessories like M-Edge's E-Luminator (a video review of which should be on Kindleville by the time you read this) are helpful, why not build in a light, as Sony has for its e-book reader?


2) The ability to read an e-book and listen to an audiobook simultaneously. I love to listen to a well-narrated audio book while reading along; it makes me slow down and relish the language and the details of the book. Currently, of course, you can listen to an Audible book, but you can't read on your Kindle while the audio book is playing. This seems just plain silly, and I hope Amazon fixes it, particularly since they own Audible and could bundle the text and audio versions together for a higher price.


1) Amazon needs to open its formats and drop digital rights management, as they have with music. Digital rights management provides the illusion of security--sort of like those TSA agents at the airports scrutinizing your Ziploc bag full of saline solution and lip balm for signs of Osama bin Laden. Many times--when the technological or economic winds change direction--DRM results in consumers losing access to digital products they've paid for with their hard earned dollars. Ditch the DRM and trust your customers, Amazon!


What are your predictions? What features do you think Amazon will unleash in Kindle 2.0?

Review of the M-Edge Executive Jacket & E-Luminator Booklight

Watch Kindleville Review of the M-Edge Executive Jacket and E-Luminator Book Light | View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

Posted by Kindleville contributor Tyler Steben, author of the Reading Bytes blog.

Will "Fallout 101" Change the Face of Publishing?

Members of the Kindle community have been encouraging Amazon to think creatively about how the capabilities of the popular e-reader can introduce new publishing models.

Amazon has launched an experiment in the form of distributing Andrew Macauley's science fiction project Fallout 101 that shows the company may have some interest in shaking up the status quo in the publishing world. While the overall plot is tried and true sci-fi―a man is revived in a laboratory on a futuristic world and must figure out where he came from and what's going on―there are some unique features of the project that make it stand out.

The work is being distributed in serial form, with users getting a couple chapters a week. In addition to the novel, subscribers receive essays from the author on various elements of writing the book (how he creates characters, for example) and the Amazon description promises that readers will periodically receive short stories that are not part of the novel but relate to the plot, characters, and setting of the work.

I've been reading Fallout 101 for a couple weeks now and have been enjoying it. The world that that Macauley has created is engaging―the characters are interesting, the action well plotted and there's just the right dash of cool futuristic gadgetry. The essays on character and plot development are a little less interesting to me personally, but I like that the project includes pieces that help to understand and develop a relationship with the author. One recent note indicated that the author would be posting less content on a given week than usual because he was helping his mother move. You don't get that with a Grisham novel!

While the project shows the potential for exploring new and different publishing models, there are some flaws. First, Fallout 101 uses the Kindle's blog delivery capability and displays installments in reverse chronological order, with the most recent installments at the top of the table of contents. This works well for blogs, but not so well for a novel. A late-comer to the Fallout 101 party would need to go to the end of the article list and return to the table of contents after each chapter to select the next chapter above the previous one. This process disrupts the flow of reading unnecessarily.

What hampers calling Fallout 101 a breakthrough experiment in e-book publishing is the fact the entire project is available for free at www.fallout101.com. Kindle subscribers, then, are paying for the convenience of re-distributing the content to the device, not for the content itself.

It does strike me as odd that Amazon is trying to fit the proverbial square peg in a round hole. There must be a more engaging way to present the content than using the blog reading interface. And why not commission a serial project from a capable author and make the content exclusive to the Kindle, or at least make the content exclusive while the book is being serialized? Amazon may argue that it is attempting to keep the price low, which is admirable, but this early adopter would happily pay a few times the current price of .99 cents a month for exclusive content.

What do you think? Does Fallout 101 represent an evolution in the publishing model, or is Fallout an experiment that falls short?

Posted by Kindleville contributor Tyler Steben, author of the Reading Bytes blog.

The Kindle: Remarkable but ot for the reasons you think

Gut reaction to the Kindle? Do you remember?

When I started using the Kindle for the first time, my imagination went into overdrive: this was the end of books, the end of magazines, the end of libraries, the end of paper. Paper!

So, maybe my intuitions aren't spot on, perhaps I have a tendency to exaggerate, but the Kindle does bring visions of Adolf Huxley's A Brave New World to the forefront of your mind.

The intriguing and noteworthy aspect of the Kindle, however, is not necessarily the physical gadget created by Amazon, but rather the E-Ink technology behind it. The Cambridge, MA company is responsible for developing the 'electronic paper' technology used not only in the Amazon Kindle, but also in the Sony e-reader. In the coming years, I think that this is the technology to watch out for: just think of the implications of such invention, particularly when they are able to master the 'paper' part of 'electronic paper.'

While librarians probably don't have to start looking for a new profession just yet, perhaps the days of 20 pound text books are coming to a close.

Where do you see this technology going?

Posted by Kindleville contributor Andrea Nadosy, founder and CEO of bobarra.

The New Voices of Kindleville

A couple of weeks ago I wrote a post about how I was searching for a curator for Kindleville. My interest in the Kindle has been fading and I was hoping I could convince someone to step in and feed the Kindleville blog with posts of their own.

I'm happy to say that several people expressed an interest, but two in particular impressed me as a great fit for this blog. Their names are Andrea Nadosy and Tyler Steben. Here's a bit of background on both of them:

Andrea Nadosy is the founder and CEO of bobarra, a company specializing in stylish yet functional Kindle covers and checkpoint friendly laptop bags. Born and raised in New York City, Andrea graduated from Harvard College in 2003 with a degree in biological anthropology. She then spent a year living and studying in Paris before returning stateside for stints working in the non-profit world and studying at Columbia's School of Urban Planning. In 2006, Andrea made her way back to Harvard, this time for business school. It was at HBS where she discovered not only her love for the Kindle, but also for entrepreneurship; she launched bobarra soon after graduating.

She currently reads and resides in San Francisco where she enjoys hiking, baking and has a profound appreciation for iced-tea spoons.

Tyler Steben been involved with digital publishing for 18 years. His early career was in an academic institution where a large online project he created was acquired by a major university press. He then worked for one of Pearson's higher ed imprints in New York City as a member of the digital publishing team and established media brands and products that are still in existence today. In 1999 Tyler was recruited to be a founding manager at XanEdu, a company that does digital custom publishing for the higher ed market. He's had the good fortune to collaborate with a range of successful authors, ranging from Henry Louis Gates to leading textbook authors to musician Thomas Dolby. He lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan with his wife and son. Tyler also recently launched another blog called Reading Bytes.

When I talked with Andrea and Tyler they both struck me as extremely passionate about the Kindle and that's the key attribute I was looking for. I went in search of one writer and found two. Actually, I won't completely disappear from Kindleville. I'll still write a post now and then, but Andrea and Tyler will be the primary voices going forward.

P.S. -- Tomorrow we'll be hearing the big announcement from Amazon...the worst kept secret in years, Kindle 2.0. I'm heading to O'Reilly's Tools of Change (TOC) conference in New York tomorrow morning, but I plan to keep an eye on the Amazon news. I'll be Twittering both the TOC conference and the Amazon announcement(s). You can follow my tweets here, but if you're interested in hearing about TOC from other attendees, be sure to follow the #toc hashtag in Twitter.

Kindle 2.0 Pictures Popping Up

There it is. What do you think? I feel it's a very sleek, attractive upgrade from Kindle 1.0, but I'm less concerned about look-and-feel and more interested in the Kindle platform itself.

As I just mentioned in an email reply to one of my blog readers, "Will Amazon open up this platform? Will they abandon DRM? Will they offer an upgrade deal for existing owners?"

As far as I'm concerned, the answers to these questions are much more important than whether Kindle 2.0 is thinner than Kindle 1.0 or if they finally fixed the placement of the next/prev page buttons.

Btw, perhaps I'm in the minority but I'm pleased with the news that Amazon plans to make their Kindle content available on cell phones. On the one hand, I hope it's a sign that they are about to open things up a bit. More importantly, if they're going to offer the entire lineup of Kindle content for my iPhone, well, I can just focus on upgrading one device (iPhone) and not two (iPhone+Kindle).