Amazon's fee$ to convert emailed docs direct to Kindle

On May 4, Amazon starts charging for converting e-mailed documents for the Kindle when they are emailed direct to your Kindle. These will be at 15c per megabyte rather than the previously advertised 10c per document, rounded up to the next megabyte -- and will include support for DOCX files though, like PDFs, the more complex ones might not format correctly.

There will still be free format-conversion of emailed documents for the Kindle but only if you direct the email to [you]@free.kindle.com rather than [you]@kindle.com.  Kindle users will need to move the documents from their computers to their Kindles, with the USB cable provided (it's part of the power cord) and while that will be inconvenient for many, the conversions will still be done free of cost.

The ease of just having the converted emailed-document sitting on the Kindle without having to place it there with Windows Explorer or Mac Finder will now cost you 15c per megabyte.  It will also mean that the Kindle owner must have a computer and know how to use basic file-handling to move documents from one folder to another if they want the free conversions to their computers.  Many have bought Kindles for parents without computers.  That group of customers will need to pay for any e-mailed converted documents to the Kindle.  Amazon's statement on this:

"As always, you can also use our free document conversion service for any document you want to transfer over USB, and you will not be charged.

  Still, most Amazon-format books are under a megabyte.  That will mean a 15c charge (rounded up) for a rather hefty-sized document.  We're talking text-focused books.

  The difference will be in how many illustrations are involved.  PDF documents can be in text form or consist of image-scans or direct graphic copies -- the latter is not recommended for any of the small e-readers anyway.  Documents with large photographs will be large in size (always) and therefore much more costly and these always load slowly on an e-reader, so these have not been recommended in the past.

Small photographs won't be so much of a problem but can make a book average 2 megabytes rather than 1 megabyte -- or a cost of 30c to convert it and send it direct to your Kindle.

(One of my electronics manuals was 28 megs -- but that was too large for Amazon to handle anyway so I did it myself with MobiPocket Creator, which Amazon owns, I believe, and then I used the USB cable to put the converted PDF from my computer into the Kindle's document folder.  That's a Windows program.  Mac users would tend to use Stanza or Calibre as discussed in other blog entries below, earlier.

 But unless Amazon becomes capable of having the Kindle read PDFs natively on the Kindle within a year, they will not survive in the e-reader world that is coming up.  Sony already reads it natively although the results are almost unreadable due to the small font they use for documents meant for 8x10 paper or large screens but instead presented on a 6" screen.  Every e-reader being developed will be able to read PDFs and maybe ePub files directly.  Since Amazon just bought Stanza, they may plan to do this also.

A service like Kindlefeeder will be somewhat affected by this, since that service is already feeling the impact of too many who are downloading large feeds daily and the service is needing to charge $20/yr for scheduled deliveries to one's Kindle, to lighten the queued-documents problem on their servers.  The Amazon-related cost to the user of doing a large volume of feeds direct to the Kindle, daily, may result in a scaling back now of the large demand on Kindlefeeder's servers as some subscribers may choose a smaller number of periodicals for the downloads. The free Kindlefeeder feature involves doing a manual-send to your Kindle and some may even prefer that to the automated daily send.  Daniel feels that this will also shorten processing times overall.  The daily scheduled delivery is now going to be on the premium plan noted. Getting it, on demand, as wanted is free. The Amazon-emailing cost of a daily feed to the Kindle direct, at 15c a day, will average $4.50/mo.  There are a lot of newspaper/magazine feeds available to be batched in one file per day though.
UPDATE: 5/14/09:  Premium members will get free direct Kindle downloads.

Kindle 2 and iPod Shuffle Screen Test 2 - Star Trek

The Wrath of Khan - Those voices are at it again. Will we be the first to fall?

DVICE's Talking Gadget Theater II - With EMOtion this time (well ...)

KHAN: Kindle 2
KIRK:  iPod Shuffle

What does Amazon gain with Stanza?

Update to Amazon Buys Stanza.

What Amazon gains - by Chad Berndtson:
1. Exploding base of e-reader consumers - 1.3 million users worldwide
2. More than 40,000 books downloaded a day from Lexcycle
3. Successful team with expertise, supporting widely different formats
4. Possible willingness to use Stanza for the kind of 'free'-use items phase that brought Apple its success with the iPod.
5. Further consolidation of a market it already dominates
6. Pre-emptive move before Apple, eager to dominate the digital-everything market, could buy it.

New Kindle-2 Screen Contrast Finding by Ted Inoue

This is an update to the original Kindle-2 screen-contrast story and updates, focusing on Ted Inoue's analysis.

While the original theories for varying screen-contrast of Kindle 2 screens involved thinner looking fonts and anti-aliasing that used the increased grayscales available to the Kindle 2, Inoue has done new tests from screen-grabs of the same page using both the Kindle 1 and Kindle 2, enlarged in Photoshop with examination of the pixel make-up of the characters.  They are the same.  Only 4-shades appear to be used for the basic font.

As Ted has explained, including on two forums following this, the variances in screen output of the same basic material comprising the font characters we see, indicates something seen in his earlier test of displays from his first Kindle 2 (Unit-A) vs his second Kindle 2 (Unit-B) - a difference in how both Kindle-2 units are rendering the same font.  What we see as less well-defined or less-sharp on Unit-A (which Ted notes as a unit that does not resolve well) shows less black brought to the 'surface' than we can see for the fonts from his second Kindle, Unit-B, when they're magnified.

  I have wondered if it was more a matter of seeing more black "brought to light" (that we can see) on the second unit so that his first unit's less-solid-blackened characters will appear less sharp then.  With Photoshop, we will tend to add contrast (more dark grays to black and more light grays to white) to enhance the perception of sharpness or definition of edges.

In the meantime, the screen-grabs from a Kindle 1 vs Kindle 2 mentioned above shows no difference in the basic font used for the devices.  Ted says that the differences that people can see easily in photographs result from how each unit renders the same basic combo of same pixels, and M. Matthews posted on March 28 that this might be related to the amount of voltage used to get the black portions to the surface and posted on April 28 that the variations we've seen indicate that the density of the black may be harder to control with the newer e-Ink screen with its 16-shades of gray vs 4 for the Kindle 1.  Whatever, it appears to be a quality control problem, especially with the seemingly unusual number of screens doing all right until brought into direct sunlight and fading under those conditions - a definite defect, since an advertised strength of the e-Ink screen (a feature I personally love) is how readable it is in direct sunlight.  There is an explanation, said to be given by an Amazon customer service representative, for the fading, having to do with faulty e-ink receptors.

Ted refers to some photo comparisons I made of my K1 and K2 and, in my own case, my Kindle 2 display is sharper and is black enough (though somewhat lighter in some lighting but good enough for me because it is definitely sharper than even my excellent Kindle 1).  I also took some photos last weekend of the Kindle2 vs the Sony PRS505 (using the older 8-shade e-Ink screen) and found the Kindle 2 looking very good in contrast (no pun intended).  They both have good displays.  But obviously, these screens can differ dramatically, though the large majority of owners appear to have units that meet the standards set for them.  The photos in my entry about problems for some users with bad screen contrast are repeated here for easier access.  These are some photo-comparison examples plus an added example and the most egregious one.
  In contrast, here are two examples of how the display should appear, taken with a cell phone last weekend while at Target:
Kindle-2 'Home' library listing and
Kindle-2 display of some text that I copied off a website to reference while shopping.

Amazon IS replacing units that are reported to have fonts that are too light to read, in connection with the warranty they do honor.  Customers have been very positive about how Amazon customer svc representatives have been handling this, with the exception of one official Communications executive who dismissed the concerns by telling Wired about a "few" customers wanting less gray shades!  From what I've read -- only as an offered option for pure-text reading where the font becomes gray instead of black.

As mentioned in the original screen contrast entry, customers who almost returned their Kindles have been ecstatic with the replacement fonts offered for trial by Inoue to Amazon Customer Service, at his site.

In the meantime, the long request-to-Amazon thread joined by new owners each day continues.  In between pleas for darker fonts displayed, they praise Inoue's new fonts (but which have to be uninstalled each time Amazon has a Kindle update).

Periscope's Kindle 2 deskset

Periscope's Lighted Folio, upgraded for the Kindle 2.   I think of it more as a lighted portable desktop :-)

Well, while attractive, this is not something I would want, as the attraction of the Kindle 2 for me is its light weight.  However, the light is retractable and some may be interested in this for use in the office - at home or work - or even on a plane.

I tend to make my notes on the Kindle, for the book, or article, but some prefer paper notes.  Since the product is new, here are existing reviews of the Kindle 1 version of the cover.  This isn't a recommendation (I've not tried it) but an alert.

For earlier photo-reports on two Kindle-2 covers I did buy and do like very much, see:
    Amazon's,   M-Edge's Platform

Amazon buys Stanza

As was rumored to happen, Amazon bought Stanza today or, more accurately, bought Lexcycle, the company behind Stanza.  Here's Lexcycle's announcement.  In addition to its free books for iPhone focus, Kindle users have been using Stanza with their Macs to convert PDFs to Kindle format.  Maybe we can now see direct ePub support for the Kindle, or am I being too optimistic?

Amazon 1st qtr earnings/net sales grow

Wall St. Journal reports Jeff Bezos' press conference detailing very positive 1st quarter results yesterday at a time when companies all around are not doing so well.  To a question about Kindle plans and whether Amazon will "unleash" their computing power to compete more with netbooks, Bezos replied:

"We think reading is an important enough activity that it deserves a purpose-built device. That's really a sweet spot for us."

Publisher promises darker fonts for Kindle owners

Per a press release Thursday , Vellum Publishing, Inc., "a digital publishing company of new exciting ebooks for Amazon.com's Kindle reader, announces that it has responded to reader concerns that the text on the Kindle 2 is lighter and more difficult to read.

  "Vellum has posted a new video at their website http:/www.newkindlebooks.com that informs Kindle owners they now format their entire shelf of digital books to a Times New Roman Bold type to give Vellum books a darker, easier-to-read text.

  "Since the release of the Kindle 2, we've been hearing a lot of discussion from readers about the text being lighter on the new Kindle," said Meyer, President of Vellum Publishing, Inc.

  "So, in keeping with our company policy of listening and responding to our readers' concerns, we came up with what we feel is a good solution. By using bold print, the text is noticeably clearer and easier to read, causing less eyestrain for the reader."

Is Amazon listening? Are they interested?

Meyer went on to say that since the re-formatting process has been completed, readers have responded with positive enthusiasm, commenting on how much easier Vellum Publishing, Inc. books are to read when compared to other books they have downloaded to their Kindle 2.

Kindle and iPod Shuffle act out Bladerunner scene

E-reader voices read a scene from a screenplay.

Kindle's "Tom" voice is Bladerunner's "Holden" and the iPod Shuffle is "Leon."  The Kindle's voice is definitely more suited (relatively speaking) to the 'human' talker, and the iPod's to the replicant.  What a kick.

  See some background info if not familiar with Bladerunner but are interested in what they're doing here.

  I've moved the inline videoclip to my Kindle2 photos set at pbase because it holds up this page too much otherwise.  You can click on the opening small image or click here to play it with a small explanation there also.

Photos: Kindle-2 vs Sony PRS-505 grays - M-Edge cover

I was putting together a set of cell-phone photos of a Kindle in the wild, to be used later on in this blog, but I decided to make a pointer here to the Kindle-related picture set now, for those who've been curious about any of the following:

Sony PRS-505 and Kindle-2 gray screens, at Target.  It's been said the Sony gray is lighter, but not particularly so, although it seems bluer while the Kindle leans more to a greenish tint.
  UPDATE: 4/24/09.  PC World's Melissa J. Perenson presents a "visual tour" contrasting the Sony PRS-700 and Kindle 2 units.

Posting a reply to a forum (to Ned-san).
The process is slow, and when you're through typing, the web-process tells you that you were unable to connect with the site, but the posting does goes through.  Same false error-message happens with Gmail-sends.


M-Edge Platform cover - upright on my lap in a dark, cool restaurant lobby on a hot day.  The food took so long I thought I'd take a pic of the Platform jacket in action, with a colorful background.  Not an uplifting news story though.


The M-Edge Platform, closed.
  Like the Amazon cover, it lies very flat but is 3/4" longer to provide the webbing that allows the front cover to be used as a stand.  As the pics indicated, it's also nicely padded.  The left-ledge is meant for an integrated light (separate purchase) when the new version is ready, but that edge makes it less fatiguing to hold with one hand, so I'm rethinking the separate light.
 While I like Amazon's notebook-style cover a lot, the M-Edge's stand-up feature is a real Plus. :-)  So I alternate the covers.  Their other covers.

Inside the Kindle 2 - what is its "true cost"?

Businessweek's Arik_Hesseldahl reports on what was uncovered during the disassembling of a Kindle 2.

Points from the article for those curious about the details.
1. Research firm iSuppli tears one apart to determine the cost of its components.
    Getting straight to the point, they estimate the cost of building at $185.49, or 52% of its retail price.
2. Hesseldahl makes an assessment of its unique identification and branding in a short time:

"...Amazon's (AMZN) Kindle has come to personify the e-reader in much the same way Apple's (AAPL) iPod brand of music player is often used generically to mean an MP3 player."

3. iSuppli identifies the suppliers and estimates the the cost of the components, to arrive at a rough estimate of the profit margin for each unit.
3. They believe the most costly component is its display (surprise!) made by E Ink.
4. The display is integrated into the final module by Taiwan's Prime View International (PVI).
    (This leads to the question of quality control issues -- E Ink's? or PVI's ?)
5. iSuppli's supervising analyst, Andrew Rasseiler, estimates the cost of the E Ink display at $60 "or about 42% of the cost of materials"
6. "The screen uses tiny, round microcapsules that change to black, white, or gray to represent text or images as needed."  When the unit was disassembled, the last image remained on the screen, as no power is needed to keep it there, requiring less battery power/drain.
7. Novatel Wireless makes the basic wireless module that costs $39.50.
8. Since the Kindle 1 had wireless components right on the motherboard instead of in a separate module as the Kindle 2 has, that was a more complicated and costly design, Rassweiler says.
9. Inside the wireless module are Qualcomm chips, which cost $13.18.
10. The main applications chip is from Freescale Semiconductor (spun off from Motorola) at a cost of $8.64.
11. Other:  memory chips, Samsung;  power mgmt chips, TI;   and 3 other companies provided some parts.

So we've a total estimated cost of materials.  Then there is of course the additional cost of its main feature, wireless access and the pre-paid use of Sprint's EV-DO cell phone network which usually costs cell phone users at least $30/month for limited use, with tiered levels (above) available.  At this point, Kindle users can access the entire Net 24/7, even if it is far from ideal in execution.

Add the cost of assembling, sw/hw development, distribution, management, customer support, etc.  Jeff Bezos has mentioned a few times that the profit margin is low on the unit, which is likely a reason they don't distribute it through stores, but they appear to have some faith in its more addictive powers, allowing customers to use it for 30 days and to return it if just uninterested in keeping it.  I've not heard of anyone having problems getting the refunds.

ADDED 4/27/09: Earlier photos of the inside of the Kindle 2 - page 1, page 2.  Note a commenter's note that what some thought was a spot for an SD card is instead a SIM connecter, with less pins than an SD connector.

Kindle 2 firmware update 2.03 coming in

Well, an update is coming in for sure, distributed in batches but no one seems to know how Amazon decides who gets updates first and why.

Three people on forums (Amazon's and Mobileread's) have already said that they think they are imagining a noticeable increase in screen contrast; of course they (and I) hope it's not their imaginations.  Wishing upon an Amazon user-rating star...

 Others think it may just be making it possible for Amazon to disable text-to-speech, when the publisher insists on that, and fixing minor bugs.

If a person doesn't want to wait, the update can be done manually.  For those eager enough to do this (it's not difficult) they must remember to UNinstall any changes they made, such as for personalized screensavers and for font-replacements they themselves may have installed.  These personalized customizations need to be UNinstalled, latest one first. Only then will a new Amazon update work correctly.  I'd do it now before Amazon tries to change your settings overnight -- or, keep your wireless off until you uninstall personalized installs.

A guide for a MANUAL install of the Amazon update file for those who can't wait is at MobileRead forums, thanks to Bruce Woodcock, but they (and I) don't take responsibility for what others decide to do.  I'm just reporting its availability in a Kindle world :-).

Kindle 2 screen and the direct-sunlight test

The E Ink screen's positive points include the unusual feature of being "an image stable reflective display technology that uses ultra-low power but is easily read under any lighting condition including direct sunlight." Amazon points to that feature on its main Kindle page in the "Enhanced Reading" section.

Over the last 2 months, as noted here and by some online stories, some customers have experienced problems with what they describe as a lack of sufficient contrast between the Kindle 2's somewhat lighter and thinner font and its sometimes darker gray screen -- a gray against gray for some.  As I've said, my own screen is very readable and crisp but the somewhat fainter and thinner font used as a basic default is not as easy to read for prolonged periods, as was possible with the Kindle 1.  My screen is similar to my Kindle 1's, a light gray, which is pleasant.  For me, it also features a wispy, lighter font that can be harder to read in some light, but otherwise I'm happy with mine, since the display is sharp.

At the same time, customers in forums have helped one another by asking those with problems to take their Kindles into direct sunlight and hold it there for a minute or so, and to try a page turn with it while doing so.  As with the Kindle 1, some units don't do well in direct sunlight, showing fading of fonts.  Any such unit would be a defective one, which Amazon customer reps now recognize, and they will replace such units honoring the basic warranty with a 1-day shipment of another boxed Kindle 2.  This has made a difference for those whose problems had more to do with something in the circuitry of some units.

"sylar," in the "Amazon's 'Official' Response" topic discussion, writes:

'The official word from amazon cs was that faulty e-ink receptors in some of the first batch of kindle 2's were the source of the problem.  It is a defect and the k2 is not supposed to do this so for those of you who haven't tested your device in sunlight you might want to look into it.'

Now, this is apparently a personal report from a conversation with a customer service representative, but it's not likely that the customer thought up the "faulty e-ink receptors" explanation for what seems to have happened in the first batch of Kindle 2s.

So, those who have been unhappy with having to refresh their Kindle 2s with the alt-g key combination that will remove occasional ghosting as well as make the e-ink characters darker temporarily (as if more ink was filling in the characters at the top of the glass) may want to test their units out in direct sunlight.  Here are some photo-comparison examples plus an added example and the most egregious one.

Banned Amazon user loses Kindle access ?

A customer banned from access to management of his purchased Amazon Kindle books and from ability to buy more Kindle books has had his predicament described by online media, including the usually thorough Wired, with wild inaccuracy, including the claim that the banning was turning Kindles into "$360 paperweights."

Hardly, since the books remain on said Kindles, though some readers have bought the claim, repeating to one another that Amazon wiped out the files from the Kindle.  The customer has been reinstated with a warning, the customer writing that an Amazon rep had referred to his returning "virtually everything" he'd purchased.

The problem of loss of access to management of one's Kindle library at Amazon is an issue that's very important to address though, because a ban against further purchases shouldn't be tied to the ability to manage the customer's Amazon library of books a user bought which should remain available to the user - and the Kindle is sold for what it can do, a main focus being the ability to instantly download books.  For non-Kindle users: "manage" in this case means to be able to download again to your Kindle any material you had decided to delete earlier, since a feature of the Kindle unit is that Amazon stores the books (and your highlighting and annotations) for you for retrieval as needed if you've deleted them from the Kindle.

But on this important issue, there has been careless reporting that occurred beginning with the first posting I'd seen on a news site days ago, to be repeated over and over again, this time even by Wired's Bruce Sterling (a posting which does not allow comments).

The main source for the story is a humongous forum thread started by the customer who was banned, ostensibly for returning several "large electronics" later described by him as "2 TVs and 'several' cameras."  Some members are a bit dubious about some of it because the customer posted exact-duplicate posts on the Amazon forums, which require an active account in 'good standing'... and once the issue was resolved, the user has not responded to questions about the particulars.

For the record, since this report will keep circulating, ArsTechnica repeated the errors of reporting, but users corrected them in the comments areas (which do not get the same kind of distribution).

"Zayin" posts a comment with a few actual facts:

'There are a few inaccuracies in this article...

"...reportedly due to an overly high volume of returns on their Kindle books"
  The "high-price" returns were not returns on Kindle books, but rather returns on "large electronics" purchased via Amazon. Amazon will (apparently) lock your account if they think you are abusing their return policy. Other retailers will do the same...

"...which also locked him out of accessing his already-purchased Kindle items."
  This is partially incorrect. He wouldn't be able to redownload any books he had already purchased, or continue with subscriptions (if any) that had been purchased. However, any books already on the device would still be there, and any materials backed up to disk would still be usable as well.

"...turning their Kindles into $360 paperweights."
  The Kindle would still work as an ebook reader for any already downloaded content or content purchased from other sources. Most of my ebooks have come from Baen, not Amazon.

"A bookstore that locks you out because you treated it like a library doesn't take away the collection already sitting on your bookshelf, after all."
  Neither does Amazon, unless you leave all of your media on their servers, and keep nothing either on your Kindle or backed up to hard disk. I suppose that is possible, but it seems unusual, to say the least.

"Amazon is perfectly capable of yanking customer access to their books at any time—whether the service shuts down or not. The only way to get around it would be to break the user agreement with Amazon and crack the DRM..."
  This is inaccurate. If you have content downloaded, you can back it up easily. Plug the Kindle in to a USB port and copy the stuff to disk. As far as I know, Amazon has no method of pulling access to media already on a Kindle either (if you are really paranoid on this, simply disable the wireless)...'

"_fluffy" writes:

'I worked on Kindle, and wrote one of the DRM components (which was something I put off as long as possible, and basically tacked on at the very end).  The Kindle DRM is purely about keeping the publishers happy.  We didn't want to do it, but the publishers wouldn't allow us to sell their books if we didn't.  It was a make-or-break thing for the device's entire business model.'

 Again, it's my strong feeling that management access to one's Amazon Kindle Library of purchased books shouldn't be tied to a general banning of further purchases.

UPDATE:  A communique across the vast cyberspaces through which I can apparently toss a comment after all :-) Would that the K1 had lived as long as a hamster!  And you've a point: what happens to the entirety of Western Cybercivilization when the USA gets metabolized by the People's Republic of China (where gray Kindle screens first awake, sluggishly, and the PRC is looking to foreclose on us).

300,000 Kindle 2's sold since February 24

The Washington Post reports that "a source close to Amazon" says that Amazon has sold about 300,000 Kindle 2's "suggesting Amazon has made over $100 million in revenue from the sales of the $359 device alone this year.

The Kindle 1 probably sold between 400,000-500,000, by an estimate of Citi analyst Mark Mahaney


I'm adding a link to the full text of Jeff Bezos' 2008 annual letter to shareholders today.  It describes goals and plans for the future and includes this statement:

'Our pricing objective is to earn customer trust, not to optimize short-term profit dollars. We take it as an article of faith that pricing in this manner is the best way to grow our aggregate profit dollars over the long term. We may make less per item, but by consistently earning trust we will sell many more items. Therefore, we offer low prices across our entire product range'

May this include actually acknowledging, with respect and some interest in fixing a now known problem for -- not all, but -- too many customers:  the Kindle 2 screen-contrast issues that have been much discussed on Amazon forums and in the dominant online journals that cover electronics.  Also, Kindle users are resisting any Kindle book pricing for non-technical books above $9.99.

Plastic Logic and newspaper/magazine e-revenue

Plastic Logic's plans
This product isn't positioning itself to compete with the small Amazon Kindle for the home book market.  Where it might certainly challenge Amazon is in the student and technical areas, but with no wireless access.  From the article:

Plastic Logic is planning to release its, as yet un-named, reader in January 2010 ... the Plastic Logic product will have a considerably larger display [than the Kindle] and will be marketed towards the 'mobile business professional,' rather than the leisure reader, clarified Benzi. The screen will measure 10.7 inches diagonally (about 27cm) compared to Kindle's 6 inch/15cm display.
... Despite its larger size, the device will weigh about the same as the Kindle, as it will be made from plastic rather than glass and silicon. This also gives it the advantage of being more robust and durable, explained Benzi . . .The device is extremely easy to use, Benzi added, with an "intuitive touch screen" and just one button to power the display.

... Some modifications will still have to be made to put a newspaper on such a product, but Benzi explained that there are companies which can do that for them. It will also be much easier to transfer documents such as word or pdf files from a computer to the e-reader, via a USB port. Although the product is focused on the needs of a business person, that does not mean that books will not be available also: "I don't want to discount the fact that the business professional enjoys leisure reading," Benzi added.

... Content will be available through a shop, similar to Kindle's. The first product will be in grey scale but Benzi described the company's commitment to producing a colour device in the near future as a reason why papers with strong colour branding, such as the Financial Times and USA Today, are so keen to collaborate. Plastic Logic recently signed deals with these two publications

... Benzi explained that although the first device will not access the internet, consumers might well be able to click on an advertisement for additional information on products or offers:

Just what we want: one-sided information.
More invasively ... See the next paragraph

... Plastic Logic will be able to "track the information about what the customer is doing with the device," a system which would seem to offer benefits to both newspapers and advertisers.

... Pricing for the device or for subscriptions have not yet been finalised, but Benzi confirmed that prices would be competitive. He accepts that there are some savings when producing a digital product which should be passed on to the customer, and that will be taken into account when comparing the pricing with a print subscription.

... one of the advantages of the device is that readers can focus entirely on consuming content, they will not be disturbed by emails

I think people will be demanding email capability for prices PL will charge for the large-screen unit.

... It must expect some competition from Hearst, which just announced that it is to release a large-format wireless e-reader this year, "suited to the reading and advertising requirements of newspapers and magazines," according to Fortune. It seems that the newspapers are indeed enthusiastic, but are the customers?

New Kindle stand, for side-sleepers

Gizmodo alerts us to The Pursuit of Laziness.

The Kindle and Sprint EV-DO's 24/7 wireless costs

There are no wireless costs at this point for the customer.  But there are for Amazon.  Information Week's Howard Anderson writes:

"On vacation, my wife was busy reading books on her new Kindle 2.0.  Do you know what they call Sherpas in the developed world? Husbands.  For years, I would go on vacation with a hernia-producing bag of reading material.  I was carrying atoms; now I carry electrons -- much lighter. The publishers make money because they don't have to buy paper and pay printers and the Postal Service.  Amazon makes money because it doesn't have to ship anything.  The consumer (me) gets books for $9.95.  The Kindle is as impressive as the iPhone, maybe more so.  How is this possible?  Because Sprint Nextel has excess capacity, which it sells to Amazon.  If you can't use your extra capacity to sell cellular service, then wholesale it to someone who can.

So Sprint Nextel is going to try to replicate what it's done with Amazon with any number of consumer electronics companies, such as Garmin, which offers a GPS device.  And since Sprint has excess capacity, it can assume that its costs are (almost) zero.  No billing expenses, no customer service.  That was what really cost money..."

It seems Sprint is looking to make similar deals with other companies, including Garmin.  Might that have an impact on wireless network speed?  There are times when I wonder if they intentionally throttle the download speeds for the Kindle access (unless we happen to be at the Amazon Kindle store).

Also, there are now many articles mentioning the enthusiastic use of the Kindle 2 by either the writer or the spouse.  I was surprised to see a somewhat over-the-top love letter to the Kindle by Slate.com's Jacob Weisberg, who is Slate Group's chairman and editor-in-chief and author of The Bush Tragedy.  A few of his remarks:

"I'm doing my best not to become a Kindle bore.  When I catch myself evangelizing to someone who couldn't care less about the marvels of the 2.0 version of Amazon's reading machine -- I can take a whole library on vacation!  Adjust the type size!  Peruse the morning paper without getting out of bed! -- I pause and remember my boyhood friend Scott H., who loved showing off the capabilities of his state of-the-art stereo but had only four records because he wasn't really that into music.

So apologies in advance if I'm irksomely enthusiastic about my cool new literature delivery system. Like the early PCs, the Kindle 2 is a primitive tool...But however the technology and marketplace evolve, Jeff Bezos has built a machine that marks a cultural revolution."

But then he goes too far, in surmising:

"The Kindle 2 signals that after a happy, 550-year union, reading and printing are getting separated.  It tells us that printed books, the most important artifacts of human civilization, are going to join newspapers and magazines on the road to obsolescence..."

WELL, I don't think so.  This is more like the idea that television would spell the death of movie theaters.  Most of us K-readers want both DTBs ("Dead Tree Books") AND K-books and periodicals (plus personal docs) on our Kindles.  I read far more than I did before but also find myself spending more time in Barnes & Noble enjoying hard-copy books of the type that cannot be shown successfully on a small e-ink unit.  However, in time, that will change too, I suppose.

 But a book or magazine with its own unique physical attributes and layout will always be an attraction, and a special treasure, although for actual ease of reading, it's hard to beat being able to change the font size and spacing between lines to suit our particular eyesight preferences and being able to carry around so much with you when out of the home.  Long waiting lines are no longer a problem for me.

If you click on the image that starts this entry, you'll be at a page that explains how wireless technology works, without hammering the reader with jargon.

Amazon de-ranking & 'hiding' some 'adult' books?

The Los Angeles Times today has an article about a Twitter user's findings that some books considered 'adult' books (by that, I guess they mean with more than the usual emphasis on sex) are being taken off the Amazon ranking system where they'll no longer appear but, worse, will not be in search results if a user is actually looking for the book.

[ Possibly resolved - see updates ]

I've seen the problem on photograph-hosting sites, where the "most popular" have inevitably been the ones verging on pornographic or well into the zone, until the hosting site has de-ranked those while also removing them from search processes.  It's the latter action that I find ultra questionable, especially when it comes to books.

The L. A. Times points out that a book about a sadistic murderer remains available to find but a well-reviewed book on military policy (you guessed it: having to do with sex) has lost its sales ranking and won't be seen in the best sellers.  They go on with many other examples - see details at the linked LA Times article.  The problem for many, including me, is that these books are also taken off the list for searchable books, so a person looking for "Unfriendly Fire" will not be able to find it.

IRONICALLY, the Kindle version of "Unfriendly Fire" keeps its ranking.  All the more reason to have a Kindle :-)  The article cites book critic Bethanne Patrick who, when she came across the news, posted it on Twitter, "where it circulated rapidly.  Sunday afternoon it took just an hour for the hashtag #amazonfail to become the top trending topic on the site.  An online petition was created." They report that a site run by romance writers is hoping to redefine the phrase "Amazon rank" as "To censor and exclude on the basis of adult content in literature (except for Playboy, Penthouse, dogfighting and graphic novels depicting incest orgies)."

As LA Times writer Carolyn Kellog points out:

"But as troubling as the unevenness of the policy of un-ranking and de-searching certain titles might be, it's a bit beside the point.  It's the action itself that is troubling: making books harder to find, or keeping them off bestseller lists on the basis of their content can't be a good idea."

To say the least.

UPDATE 4:55 pm.  I just went over to Kindleboards to see what was being said and saw a link from MichelleR to a Live Journal's Meta Writer, a community maintained by Chris Smith.  They're requesting help on identifying books that have been de-ranked and among them are Brokeback Mountain; Well of Loneliness; Giovanni's Room, non-fiction books having anything to do with LGBT topics; a Travel guide: Damron Womens Traveller (expressly, it's said, written for Lesbians);  a behind-the scenes book for the tv show QAF by Paul Ruditlis;  Neil McKenna's The Secret Life of Oscar Wilde; self-help books coping with issues relating to LGBT concerns;  and Randy Shifts' The Mayor of Castro Street: The Life and Times of Harvey Milk among many, many others.  I suppose they'll take the film/DVD Milk off the sales rankings as well?

This is beyond the pale.  What goofball would have decided on this and how could they even think to carry it out this way, if the reports are accurate?

But re the Best Sellers page that I link to, there are categories on the left side that will hold/display the categories of books found to be not searchable and which have been noted as removed from the general bestseller listings.  I maintain that the books should be generally searchable.

UPDATES through 4/13/09 at 10:10 am.  PublishersWeekly posted that an Amazon spokesperson said they were fixing a "glitch" that had occurred and said it was not a result of any new policy.  The Director ("Erastes") of the Erotic Authors Association said that many of her members had noticed their books were missing from the sales 'rankings' on Amazon.
  Publishers Weekly writes that one of them (Mark Probst) reported on his blog that Amazon customer service representative Ashlyn D, from Member Services,Amazon.com Advantage, had written him that "'adult' material" was being excluded from "appearing in 'some searches and best seller lists' 'in consideration of our entire customer base.' "

Now that's a glitch that also included a written explanation from a customer service rep, apparently.  Commenters to the story are saying that authors received emails from Amazon responding that their books were removed due to "content" and some of the authors are said to have posted copies of Amazon emails to that effect. Craig Seymour gives his own experience, with the same reason given him, though his situation has been corrected.

tehdaly theorizes that this was a troll-group using the flagging feature, for 'adult' content, against any books it deemed unworthy of visibility, with the goal of pitting one community aganst another and having, as an added bonus, a bad effect on Amazon.  Interesting theory, though most readers seem dubious.  Caution: some there say to avoid clicking on the early link to Warriors for Innocence which may have, at one time, had malware on it.  Here's the follow-up Twitter 'Glitch' response-thread;  a Kindleboards thread that monitors the placing of books back into the search database.  MichelleR adds a link to a blog with updated info at the bottom.  LeslieN adds Erastes' listing of news articles and updates.

UPDATE: 4/13/09 at 10:23 am. 'Weev' AKA 'veew' has claimed responsibility for the fiasco and explained how he did it (if he did), the methods and motivives matching closely the theory that tehdely (paragraph above) had last night.  He claims he did it out of hatred of "reputation systems based on user input" and his disgust with the gay community, taking advantage of a milder policy in place and system programming with not enough security against malicious use of it.  He now has his admirers, of course.

As I said in the comments section here last night -- that it was possibly a mischievous person who was primarily responsible helps, but the milder version of the Amazon 'adult' content policies already in place, as we've seen in emails from Amazon to authors recently, and the lack of sufficient care against system gaming, just made this possible.

Some of the books have been slowly showing up in searches again although their ranking #'s (which bring exposure to reader$) have remained removed as of today.  This would take longer though.  Let's hope that books like Brokeback Mountain (which was okay in a collection because it wasn't 'tagged'), Well of Loneliness, and Unfriendly Fire are not seen as books that should be hidden from families.  Amazon has a diverse crowd in today's world, which was confirmed this weekend.

MichelleR, put a copy of an Amazon statement about this, in this entry's Comments area.  Books affected in the Health books area that they mention had been included in the long lists circulated last night.

UPDATE: 4/15/09 at 05:15 am.  The Saga Continues.  Amazon calls mistake 'embarrassing and hamfisted' saying that categories of Health, Mind & Body, Reproductive & Sexual Medicine, and Erotica were involved, not just LGBT (but lists showed those were primarily LGBT unless a book was outright raunchy.

 Mike Daisey, a former employee who has a book out about working at Amazon until 2001 (8 years ago) quoted the words of a friend who works at Amazon, saying that

"Well, this is the real story: a guy from Amazon France got confused on how he was editing the site, and mixed up “adult”, which is the term they use for porn, with stuff like “erotic” and “sexuality”.  That browse node editor is universal, so by doing that there he affected ALL of Amazon. The CS rep thought the porn question as a standard porn question about how searches work."

and Brandt then opined that Weev was "full of" it.

 One problem with the story is that people searching on the weekend could not find books in Amazon U.S. but did find them in the UK and in Canada, so it doesn't seem to entirely have been worldwide.  Daisey says further that it was editing that is shared, not data -- so how are the attributes (tags) of a book changed without that being 'data'? even if it's through editing that these are changed?  And assigned a negative meaning.

 Daisey could see no connection, moreover, between the quiet de-ranking of authors and removal from topic searches since February (with emails confirming that Amazon was methodically doing this) and the current imbroglio.  No?  Wouldn't the most innocent explanation consist of a mildly executed policy suddenly going off the charts due to error on a holiday weekend?

In the meantime, Bryant Durrell, who has an impressive technical resume, opined strongly that Weev could not have done what he bragged he did, based on trying to run Weev's forum-posted coding examples on Amazon pages not there but being reminded later that Amazon had said they'd taken pages down and plugged up some problem areas by Sunday afternoon.  Weev/Bryant: yet another mystery, and Bryant may well be right (and I had said, "IF he did" it, as he seemed too eager to claim credit for upsetting Amazon and gays).  It's no more decided than anything else here.  We are all relying on people who have areas to defend.  Both Weev and Bryant Durrell warn about believing the online word of strangers too easily.

Gizmodo, on Monday, headlined: "Amazon Unconvincingly Explains Its Bout of Homophobia Was Just a Glitch" and it gets harsher from there. Other news sites are a bit more politic.
And Wired gives a fairly balanced summary of it all.

For me, the most well thought-out, generous and eloquent piece about this debacle (and there have been many fascinating blog pieces) is the article by "Making Light" site (very apt name) - specifically by Patrick Nielsen Hayden.  He imagines that Amazon's policies of removing rankings and participation in search-databases due to 'adult' content -- and they seem to have started in February -- were intially meant to cover what Amazon considered more raunchy material.  Somewhere in the last 3 months, someone or a few decided to include more types of writing and subject matter in that category, and human decisions made (by Amazon France's employee's "misunderstanding" of English sex-tinged terminology (a loose mgmt style?) or by a Weev/Veew just caused the total confusion and explosion we saw.

The listed books are showing up in search results now, and people are watching to see if authors also get their earned rankings back, depending on google caches to know what the numbers were before the disappearances :-).

UPDATE 4/17/09 at 1:05 pm.   Two articles that aren't just repeats of other ones: "Why Amazon Didn't Just Have A Glitch" - Washington Post Tech Crunch;  "Amazon’s "Glitch" Myth Debunked" - afterellen.com

E-ink, that Esquire cover, and the future

First, notice the grayness of the E-Ink's output, at the right.   I ran across older articles on an interesting use of e-ink -- Esquire's Oct.'08 75th Anniversary issue used an e-ink cover, for which a special small battery was designed (6-figure investment) to fit inside the cover and run for 90 days, until after the magazine was sold.

  Make Magazine has some good photos and details (including links to high resolution photos) of the physical elements that went into that cover, including chips and 2  e-ink screens.

  Here's a video of that cover (click on "HD" at bottom-right of video for a better look -- a big investment for a small effect!, but definitely different and the jaded crowd commenting on Gizmodo and Flickr were impressed.  Esquire challenged the engineering-inclined to hack the cover.
There's also a video of it on newstands, blinking away :-)  Now I remember seeing it and wondering, briefly, what on earth that was.

Esquire has a page mapping out how this was all put together, distribution-wise, across the world, starting from its being, yes, "Made in China."

Why the cover?   Esquire explains: "...we created the special cover to demonstrate a revolutionary technology that will change the way we all read paper magazines in the years ahead."   The idea for the cover started 7 years ago when Esquire visited E Ink, a startup in Cambridge, Massachusetts, whose managing partner, the Nicobar Group, is in Shanghai.

The beginnings: as described in a piece written in 2002 and titled "The Next Gutenberg."   Joseph Jacobson (MIT), a founder of E Ink, called the new 'paper'  "Radio Paper" and the Esquire writer points out, "Because the type on the page is not pixels but, essentially, ink -- tiny chips of pigment on a layer of circuitry -- E Ink promises the best of both worlds: the visual appeal of ink on paper and the renewability of a computer screen"

Some of us have wondered how e-ink technology works.



  In addition to information on the linked page above, here's a video of the e-Ink process by the Museum of Science, Boston.  The movie requires Real Player.   How Stuff Works also has an article on how electronic ink works, and Jason Slater Technologies has a brief and less-technical article on it.

Even in a new Kindle world, there are competing technologies already challenging e-ink right now, and I'll probably include some of that too.

Amazon is considering K2 screen contrast issue

Which inner gray box has a lighter gray?  Why does one seem lighter?

  Posted 3/24/09 at 3:57pm   (Updated 4/9/09, at the bottom)
  I called Customer Service a couple of times to ask what Amazon is saying to us these days about the screen/font issue with the Kindle 2, in that some customers have felt that the thinner new font, used with a lighter weight than is used for the Kindle 1, is not as easy on their eyes.

  Some customers are driving a petition for a gray screen that is a lighter gray because their Kindle 1's have a somewhat lighter gray and a darker basic font.  For others, the differences are slight, and I find I can read full-width webpages because of the new fineness of the fonts when it's decreased. It's that sharp.

  But the relative lightness of the thinner K2 basic font, along with a somewhat darker gray perceived by a percentage of users moved to write to forums and to comment-areas of review columns, raises an issue (readibility) which is important and Amazon had earlier been a bit tone deaf to the concerns.

 The complaints are from people who prefer high contrast and who want to keep their Kindle 2's but want them to be as easy on their eyes as was the Kindle 1.  There have been odd choices by Amazon, such as changing the HOME item-listing from a dark medium-size font of the K1 to the wispy non-bolded thinner font weight of the K2.  Some people prefer to read output from medium-point pens to that from fine-point pens. And vice versa.

That's what Amazon seems to be taking into consideration.  I was told they do take customer feedback seriously and are working on a way to modify the darkness/lightness of the screen but that it's important to find something that will work for most of it customers.  As we've seen, many magazine reviewers have mentioned the 'sharper' and 'crisper' lettering.  Customers who read for longer stretches of time in different lighting situations may have quite different responses.

  I'm somewhere in between. I often wish for the more defined K1 weight for the font but I don't think about it much when I don't have the K1 nearby. But I do notice I used to be able to read for hours without noticing any eye strain whatsoever (new to me).

However, it was good to see they ARE working on a solution that can work for more customers, though it may take a while.  This is better than the silence we'd heard or the idea that there was no real issue there.  So, I'm encouraged.

UPDATE - 4/9 - 4/12/09 At the Amazon forums, Ted-san (Ted Inoue) describes running private tests using the native Kindle 2 fonts, comparing the display of a tweaked set he made against that of the native font set.  It involves using a more bolded font as the basic one and making normally "bolded" fonts even more bolded to keep the differences.  He proposes that users have the option of choosing between 'normal' and 'enhanced' display while reading, so that those who like the current fonts setup as-is are not affected.

The perspicacious :-) and meticulous Inoue has reorganized his test reports, and his full set shows what the relative lack of contrast can look like for some users on some Kindle units and what effect modifications in font properties can have.  (However, my own Kindle 2 has far more contrast than shown and is very sharp too, but units in the same home have been reported to show noticeable variances in contrast ratio.)  Also, he has found an even better example (Michael Bach's) of an optical-illusion having to do with the perception of lightness and darkness of objects with constant luminance, their brightness values perceived as changing when seen against the luminance values of surrounding objects (simultaneous contrast).

 As for a fix, my own wish is simpler: that they just provide a darker-effect basic font similar to what they did for the Kindle 1 and that the e-Ink folks have a better quality control process over the relative lightness/darkness of the screen's gray.  Luckily, I have no problems with my Kindle 2 and I find mine a real joy to use (constantly), but my eyes are still more comfortable with the Kindle 1 font and I'm mindful that some other customers have a tougher time of it with the current-font to gray-background contrast ratio.  For balance, it appears most customers are quite happy with the current state, but enough aren't so that Amazon should do something, and I was told they were working on this very carefully, as mentioned, keeping in mind all customers need to be happy with the results.

UPDATE - 4/17/09 (late update) - On April 13, Wired's Gadget Lab posted an article about the screen font/background problem experienced by many K2 users.  By Priya Ganapati, it's an unusually accurate and thorough summary of the issues -- citing Ted Inoue's extensively detailed work on the anti-aliasing factor plus information from this blog and via a phone discussion).  It also references a busy Amazon forum thread that is a heavy request for darker fonts.  The story was picked up by most of the online computer and gadget sites, some listed at Inoue's "Kindle Optimizer" pages.

UPDATE - 4/26/09: Ted Inoue offered Amazon Customer Service representatives results of private tests with font replacements that would help the screen contrast issue for those having it.  It's a simple fix for those who want it or need it (there is a reason Amazon is doing easy Kindle 2 replacements) and the people who've been unhappy with their K2s are ecstatic over the change the fonts make.  Crunchgear writes today about the problems and the test results.

PDF and EPUB converter ON the Kindle

Gizmodo and O'Reilly report today that there is now a utility offered which runs ON the Kindle and will convert [text-based]PDF and EPUB files to the Kindle's .mobi format.

Called "Savory" and developed by Jesse Vincent, it does not open rights-protected (DRM) books, since that is clearly illegal. As Gizmodo writes:

'It converts specific unprotected files on the fly—from PDF and ePub to Mobipocket, so it feels like they are supported by the Kindle 2. (Not, alas, the first-gen Kindle.)'

Gizmodo goes on to quote Jesse's blog:

'Savory installs a small program which runs on your Kindle and watches for new files in the 'Documents' directory with names ending in '.epub' and '.pdf'. When the system notifies Savory that a document has shown up, it wakes up and runs an open-source file conversion program called Calibre. Savory also updates your Kindle2's browser configuration file to tell it that the Kindle can now handle .pdf and .epub documents.'

However, Jesse is not sure that this wouldn't void the warranty. That is a big uncertainty.

And, the process is not for the faint of heart when it comes to computers. Jesse describes it on his Savory page and reminds people that it could void your warranty.

He also has done a second version over the weekend, which converts a 2nd time, from the converted text to an image-based version.  That's a beta version and the process results in two files, neither perfect but you can decide which one you want to keep.  He's asking for feedback. The image-set version will look more like the original copy but that may not be ideal on a small screen and it will be a much larger file. I would read all the feedback before tip-toeing into this.

I am not recommending any of this be done but am informing the interested that it's available in a Kindle world :-)

UPDATE (4/12/09 at 5:20 pm):  ZDNet's Joe Brockmeier writes on 4/10/09 about this, saying "Jesse Vincent is doing Amazon’s work for it...He released the first version on April 3rd, and has since added support for “picture perfect” conversion of PDFs to the Kindle. The screenshots look very sweet indeed"

KindleCulture's Kindle comics

Kindle Cultures's comic today gave me such a good laugh.  I kept my image small to make sure you go see the actual cartoon there.  Kindle enthusiasts will appreciate this one.

While you're there, alco check the equally hilarious cartoon for March!  There are icons for opening up previous months' contents.

The $9.99-tag boycott on Kindle books priced over $10

Wired has an article on the boycott, by some energetic Amazon Kindle users, of Kindle e-books priced over $9.99; they're using Amazon's tagging system to identify books which go beyond their maximum acceptable pricing.

  Included in this piece of news were a couple of interesting nuggets by Priya Ganapatti:

Last year, sales of e-books rose 68.4 percent from the year before to $113.2 million, even as overall book sales fell 2.8 percent, according to the Association of American Publishers.  Much of that growth has been driven by the Kindle's popularity.' ...

The Kindle reader revolt is likely to be little more than a minor annoyance for the fledgling e-book reader ... analysts estimate that the company sold half a million Kindles in 2008.  By comparison, 250 users is a tiny drop in the bucket.

If that last sentence is true, there's scant hope for the online petition of those unhappy with the Kindle 2's lighter basic font and somewhat darker screen that many readers are reporting, except that the 250+ in the "screen contrast problems" group may represent many more customers - since the vast majority of customers don't post to online forums - whereas the boycott group involves organized processes by online customers.

Hard to know, though, how many other customers will look at prices higher at times than paperback editions and just decide that's more than they want to spend.  The article puts the onus on the publishers and likens the dynamics to the battle between buyers and companies over restrictive copy-protective technologies.

Amazon had not responded to a request for comment as of Tuesday evening although the boycotters have used the boycott tag more than 7,200 times so far.  Here's the massive forum thread

I know the feeling.  I have a couple of books that I've tried to get a Kindle version for, as I am more apt to read them on the Kindle, which is always with me, very readable, and is very easy to make even more readable (with adjustments possible for font size and line spacing).  But pricing above $10 has stopped me.  The article cites the usual reasons that people feel the e-books should be priced lower.

Save website info to PDFs with CutePdf

Print webpage info to PDFs with the CutePdf utility, which is free.   you can then email these to [you]@kindle.com (direct to your Kindle).  [As of May 4, Amazon charges 15c per megabyte, rounded up, for a file-send.]  You can instead email items to [you]@free.kindle.com - which remains officially free - and then usb-cable the converted files to your Kindle.

While I take notes for myself about interesting utilities, I hadn't tried this one until tonight.  Interested in website info about a destination, I printed the pages to CutePdf and it made a pdf out of that - text and maps together.  And it's very readable on my Kindle (both Kindles can enlarge map images now).
Highly recommended.

That would work best with less complex ad-light pages.
  For more complex pages, you can highlight text you want, Copy it, open up Microsoft Word and Paste what you copied and then save the file.  The Word Doc file can then be sent to [you]@kindle.com etc. That's just one of many ways to do it.

Agonizing choices

A few mildly amusing news bits about whether or not
to actually GET one of those Kindles.

1. "Frightful Kindle" - by Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo site.

2. "Hunch" is a new social media technology that's hot on the heels of the puzzling but popular "Twitter."   "It's designed to help us all cope with the problem of choice."
  So, the author, Wade Roush, uses Hunch for advice on whether to buy a Kindle.

3. PBS writer Mark Glaser also ponders the "Pros and Cons of the Kindle 2 and says "A friend who had been traveling to beaches recently said they couldn't believe how many Kindles they saw people reading."
  So, apparently it's being seen more in the wild these days.  But the upshot is that his son wants more pictures and color.