Accessing Facebook with the Kindle 2

It does take patience.
 I was asked by mathmom, at the Web-browsing guide/tips article here, if I was able to access Facebook with the Kindle 2 to do anything interactive rather than just passive reading.

That's a very complex site and I'd never thought to go there, so I tried it out.
  Often, large sites today will offer a mobile-unit version of their pages, so I tried using m.facebook.com and that link got me to a somewhat trimmed-down version of the Facebook site.  And, even if you put in just 'facebook.com' (the Kindle provides the "http://" part for us), it knows when you're on a mobile unit web browser and then takes you to the mobile version anyway.

    Update 1/4/11 - Try touch.facebook.com if encountering problems.  That works best with Kindle 3's, according to reports.

Since the site tends to run a lot of scripts and Basic Mode did not seem to allow me to log in, I went to the Kindle browser's Menu option for "Settings" and chose "Advanced" and enabled Javascript.  That allowed me to log in with the user email and password I usually use for Facebook though I don't go there often.  BUT sometimes the site is busy and you have to try again.

(This all works far better with the Kindle 2 than with the Kindle 1, as the latter requires the silver scrollbar's pop-up menus and many more menu choices just for input, and even I don't have the patience for it with a place like Facebook.)

The 5-way button did allow me to navigate Facebook's stream of personal news from everyone and to read what I wanted pretty quickly, but the goal was to post a note.

  I went to the profile of a friend and followed the instructions to post a message to his space.  When I finished typing a short note (you don't want to type long ones on small devices), I clicked on 'Post' and got a notice that I had to sign in first.  I was already signed in or would not have had access to see my private areas!  Nevertheless, I dutifully logged in again, and after I did, I was taken back to that page and saw that the note was posted, as you can see here.  (I did remove the user ID from the photo.)

I later went back to try again.  This time, after I wrote a note, I was again told I had to log in.  So I obeyed, but it then told me that the site could not be accessed and to try again later.  This is the type of false alert that I described in the Kindle webbrowser guide.  The failure alert pops up when sending email or posting to a forum.  I went to my computer and found that the note HAD been posted. This false failure-message for posting/sending from the Kindle seems to happen consistently.  I'll report this to kindle2-feedback@amazon.com.

  The upside is that the message does go through and is posted.

Not the best experience in the world, but useful if really needed and you're away from computers.  As many know, you can Twitter away at m.twitter.com

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US: Kindle Fire  7" tablet - $199 Kindle NoTouch ("Kindle") - $79/$109 Kindle Touch, WiFi - $99/$139 Kindle Touch, 3G/WiFi - $149/$189 Kindle Keybd 3G - $189, Free, slow web Kindle DX - $379, Free, slow 3G web

UK: Kindle Basic, NoTouch - £89 Kindle Touch WiFi, UK - £109 Kindle Touch 3G/WiFi, UK - £169 Kindle Keyboard 3G, UK - £149   Keybd: w/ Free, slow 3G WEB

OTHER International Kindle NoTouch Basic - $109 Kindle Touch WiFi - $139 Kindle Touch 3G/WiFi - $189 Kindle Keybd 3G - $189   Keybd: w/ Free, slow 3G WEB

Check often: Temporarily-free recently published Kindle books
  Guide to finding Free Kindle books and Sources.  Top 100 free bestsellers.  Liked-books under $1
UK-Only: recently published free books, bestsellers, or £5 Max ones
  Also, UK customers should see the UK store's Top 100 free bestsellers.

  *Click* to Return to the HOME PAGE.  Or click on the web browser's BACK button

Bezos: Color version of Kindle is "multiple years" away

The story, by Physorg.com is here.  The statement was made at Amazon's annual shareholders meeting in Seattle.

In the meantime, Plastic Logic is demo'g its business model due out in 2010 and a flexible display version. Here's a video of the demo by Plastic Logic's CEO Richard Archuletta.  Here's another video demo at D7.

Engadget's Joshua Topolsky reports some "lust" for this large grayscale reader:

"... but we noted a fairly slow screen refresh (way slower than the Kindle), which is kind of a downer -- along with that fairly distant 2010 launch date..."

  Also, though it will have WiFi and built-in 3G data capability, a report May 10 on, in part, a talk by Plastic Logic's Sarah Geata, reminded us that Plastic Logic doesn't plan to have email or a web browser on this.

Highlight-copy-paste to a note on Kindle 2

Update: Also see Searching a book for a name without typing the name - added on June 14, 2009.
This is older, for Kindle 2 and earlier.
  See the Newer Copy-Paste article that includes the Kindle 3 method.

The Kindle 2 keyboard is no speed demon unless we're counting the speed of mistakes that can be made on those little keys.  I've gotten used to it and use the keyboard often now because I'm forever searching in a book when I see a name and can't, as usual, remember who the character is, first introduced maybe 70 pages back.

  Searching on a name brings up a listing of each Kindle page or "location" on which the person is mentioned, along with surrounding paragraph (and a link to the location).   Because the often multiple results are listed in divided rows down the screen, I can also get more context for the character by perusing the several paragraph summaries.
  Since I'm currently riveted by a new account of Columbine by Dave Cullen (which I'll report on later but the link includes the Washington Post review of the wholly different take Cullen has on the incident) and there are a lot of people involved, I do want to remember who they were and the circumstances.

HOWEVER, I didn't intend to talk about the book-search at first.  But it's a great feature that many don't use.  We have choices of searching the book or the entire Kindle or Wiki or the Net, using the 5-way button to select from all the options at the right.

In connection with Amazon's new feature that lets us see, on a private webpage for our Kindle books, all our highlights and notes for each Kindle book we own, I noticed I'd done a lot of highlighting which is helpful for discussions, or as memory-joggers, but I'd typed very few notes.  Why?  It's because it takes a while to type on the small keyboard, accurately.

Notes we make are ALSO copied into our "My Clippings" file, which we can copy or move to our computers to print or edit.  So are highlighted sections.

 However, sometimes I'd like to add a thought about something from a passage.  I really don't want to type the passage, so I've wished for a way to copy and paste an excerpt to my book's "Notes" box and add, to that Note, shorthand thoughts, on the Kindle.  This can be expanded on a computer later.  Wish granted.

  1.   Begin to highlight the sentence(s) you want to reference in your note by pressing down the 5-way button where you want to begin the copy.

  2.   5-way down, and at the last line to be excerpted, 5-way right, to the end of the referenced passage.   Do NOT press the 5-way button down to end the highlight.

  3.   Instead, press the space bar.  That'll bring up a search field.

  4.   Your now-highlighted passage is pasted into the search bar.

  5.   5-way to the right, through several options, until you reach "note"

  6.   Press down the 5-way button on that, and you'll see the passage entered automatically into a Note box.  You can now add to that Note by typing an entry.

Tip: Anything you highlight, copy and paste this way, you have options to, instead, Google or search in Wikipedia or your Kindle's dictionary or on the Kindle itself.  But we've chosen "note" here because this makes notes about designated passages quite a bit easier.

( If this was helpful, please check the "Interesting" (or "Cool") box so I can get an idea of the level of interest for entries like this one.  Thanks for taking the time. )
  7/5/09 - I've eliminated the 'Interesting/Cool' Google widget because it caused the page to take too long to load, but on the Tips/Guides, it did give me good (easy to rate) indication of interest in those. Thanks to those who took the time to let me know.

Going from the Kindle 2 to, or adding, a DX

When Amazon released the Kindle 2 in February, many Kindle 1 owners decided to sell their Kindle 1's to get a Kindle 2.
  Soon, some Kindle 2 owners will move to or add Kindle DX units.

Amazon has a terrific feature which allows one person to share Kindle books purchased from Amazon with up to 5 other Kindle units IF the other Kindles are under that person's account -- meaning the account owner pays for all Amazon Kindle books ordered by any of the other Kindle users.

However, when it comes to subscriptions to Kindle versions of newspapers or magazines, this can't be done. Amazon explains that publishers have demanded that a newspaper or magazine be allowed on only one unit. A subscription owner can't share a morning newspaper with another household member, even, except to give up the Kindle for awhile.

Books purchased from Amazon are backed up and kept on their servers for owners to re-download when wanted if these had been deleted from the Kindle to save the mind from the sight of too many books in the listing.  Amazon even backs up (with approval) any highlighting or notes made so that these are also downloadable with the book as needed.

Preparation by Amazon
Amazon will need to address one area of confusion that will arise (and already has caused some unhappiness when an owner receives a Kindle replacement for a defective or malfunctioning unit).

The problem is the inability to open, for viewing on the replacement or subsequent Kindle, any older magazine or newspaper issues that were purchased more than 7 issues past.
  In the non-Kindle world, owners like to stack up older magazines to read individual articles later or to revisit them.

For Kindlers who buy magazines and want to keep them for reference (the library concept again, including the NY Sunday Times with its book reviews and its Sunday Magazine), the benefit is the ability to search their Kindles for references in those older book reviews or world news.

This traditional use of older periodicals is possible currently only if a Kindle owner keeps these older issues on the current Kindle and also keeps the current Kindle -- but it's not possible if wanting to view these on a replacement Kindle, even when upgrading and spending more for the next unit.

  When the old Kindle (even a malfunctioning one) is gone, so are the older issues.

The reason for the problem
Newspapers and magazines are kept on Amazon servers for only the last seven issues or so.  But these issues can stay on the original Kindle and of course they can be backed up onto the owner's computer(s) -- and therein lies a problem that will be seen more when customers add a DX to the household or move to the DX from the Kindle 2.

Why? Because many have decided to order a DX for reading the newspaper at home or for reading PDFs while at the office - while using the Kindle 2 as a more portable device outside the home for reading current news and books.  Or they are selling their Kindle 2, with old subscription issues on it.

Decision to be made
An individual who owns both a Kindle 2 and a DX will have to decide which unit will get the periodicals -- the one used when commuting to work?  Or the big one at home, which is marketed as better for newsreaders and PDFs?

As before, the DX is better for reading newspapers but older magazine articles won't be openable on the DX even if the user's Kindle 2 is sold.
  As mentioned, this happened to many when moving from the Kindle 1 to the Kindle 2.

There IS a solution, and I hope Amazon addresses this before the situation is a surprise to new DX owners moving from the older Kindles:

SOLUTION:
Allow Kindle owners to upload, to an Amazon area, the older magazine issues - those older magazine files have fields that give the specific ID of the older Kindle unit and, as a result, the older issues can be read only on the unit that has an ID matching the device ID number in those fields.

  Amazon could have a batch process in place that would replace the files' fields for device ID information with the ID for the owner's new current Kindle device.

This is a DRM (Digital-Rights-Management) or copyright issue - a very hot topic right now in the e-books area.  Respect for Copyrighted works is important to most creators of work, and to their publishers.
  However, there's such a thing as unnecessarily restrictive execution of copyright protection procedures that don't permit an owner of a purchased magazine to be able to read older issues except with one device which may no longer be functioning or which has been sold to another person.

  I've talked with customer representatives about this but they have received no information as to how this will be handled for the DX purchases.  I'm hoping Amazon will have a solution in place before the release though.

  A post to a forum today reminded me that Customer Service, while very responsive to any problems with individual Kindles, moves slowly on some issues important to Kindle owners such as the long standing one in which customer Ted Inoue has requested that Amazon let him know if his darker fonts installed by many happy Kindle owners might void the warranty.  He presented the recommended font-set sampes to the Developers via Customer Service some time ago.

  The Kindle-1 customizable-screensavers-installation (similar in scope of external modification) received assurances from Customer Service that the install would not void the Kindle 1 warranty.   Inoue is still awaiting word on his recommended font-sets (they exist as trials or tests) for use by Amazon, as are other Amazon customers, hoping to keep using the added fonts that help with screen-contrast issues for some.

The Kindle wireless subscription model for Sprint

"ARPU" is the average amount of revenue a company, wire carrier especially, collects from each user per month, and it's been a metric used to measure the financial performance of such a carrier.

  Nielsen Wire has an interesting morsel or two for Kindle watchers in its report that telecoms are experiencing a lift from ad hoc subscription models such as the one used for the Kindle.

' [The Kindle]...also represents the first example of the long-predicted ad hoc subscription model for Sprint, which provides the wireless access for Kindle as subsidized by Amazon.  Sales of the Kindle drove a majority of Sprint’s 394,000 wholesale additions in Q1.

But because Kindle is included in Sprint’s overall subscriber numbers, the carrier will see pressure on its average revenue per user (ARPU) numbers going forward if ad hoc subscriptions become a significant business.  We estimate that Kindle may only represent $2 ARPU compared to approximately $56 for a postpaid Sprint subscriber, however. '

GigaOM expands on this, quoting Nielsen's Roger Entner:

' "...There are two segments left for penetration: people who don’t have money and the ones that you cannot persuade to have a wireless phone.”

' So, for growth, carriers have to turn to machines and build the cost of the wireless subscription into the price of the service or content ... As the paradigm shifts and networks change, perhaps analysts worried about the health of a carrier should start focusing on the profitability per gigabyte of data transferred instead of ARPU. '

Murdoch wants more money for Kindle-WSJ

Well, Robert Murdoch wants more money for all his other news deliveries too, in general.
See the earlier article about Murdoch "rebuffing" the Amazon Kindle business model.  He said that Amazon wouldn't be getting his content, while others pointed out Amazon already had the Wall Street Journal content and books by Harper Collins.  If he didn't already know that (seems so), he may have gotten even more perturbed that this was a done deal in his case.  The sudden 50% increase in the Kindle pricing of the Wall Street Journal was made about 2.5 weeks later.  No other increases have been seen on the other Kindle newspaper offerings.

The Amazon Kindle Community forum response is something less than delight (with numerous reports of WSJ cancellations) over the WSJ price increase from $9.99/mo. to $14.99/mo. and one can wonder if Murdoch won't see a net loss on this.  He had bristled over the idea of the 30% or so said to be alloted to publishers while probably assuming that Amazon got the balance.
  As mentioned here in an entry posted on May 10

"According to a reliable source in the know, The New Yorker's Kindle split is divided 33% New Yorker, 33% Amazon, and 33% wireless carrier."

At Washington Post's paidcontent.org, Staci D. Kramer wrote, on May 6:

' Murdoch put it simply ...“We will not be ceding our content rights to the fine people who created the Kindle.  We will control the prices for our content and we will control our relationships with our customers.

' Any device maker or website which doesn't meet these basic criteria on content will not be doing business long-term with News Corporation.”

' Take this one of two ways: News Corp. will keep pushing other possibilities until Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN) backs down on its controls (good luck with that) or News Corp. will opt for a device it either owns or at least controls and can use in a proprietary way. '

But then, WP's paidcontent.org added:

' (The perils of writing live about Murdoch.  In further comments, he brushed off the idea of News Corp. investing in a device, saying the company may invest in something experimentally: “We're not appliance makers.”  A spokesperson later explained that the decision about how News Corp will handle this literally hasn't been made yet.
' But in nearly the same breath, Murdoch bragged about 360,000 downloads of the free WSJ iPhone app over the past three weeks; that would be from the App Store operated by Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) with the same lack of control for News Corp.  It's as contradictory as offering the content-rich app for free and complaining about how the online business model has to change.

'   Then again, he promised that as soon as the technology is there, readers will be asked to pay “handsomely” for access. (It will be fascinating to see how many “free” readers pony up—and how much the WSJ charges.) '

  On May 11, Kramer wrote

' And, in today's reality, DJ [Dow Jones] is looking at any and every way to get more people to pay directly for access to the WSJ in a variety of forms, while encouraging current subscribers to pay even more by expanding offerings... '

For the WSJ-disenchanted who still want a good paper for financial news and analysis, try the Financial Times subscription, at $9.99, as they get an average of almost 5 stars from a good number of Amazon customer reviews.  The WSJ never did better than 3 stars in customer satisfaction.  The 14-day free trial applies to this also.

Nikkei Elec teardown-comparison of Kindle 1 and 2

Nikkei Electronics Teardown Squad takes apart the Kindle 1 and Kindle 2 and examines and compares them.

  The article is written in five parts.  Some choice observations:

' "The old model adopted the reference design, without making any changes, that drives E Ink's electronic paper," he said.  "They probably thought, 'we have to drive the device by all means.'  As a result, the number of parts increased, and the design became complicated. On the other hand, looking at, for example, the microprocessor, the circuit architecture of the new model was designed from scratch.  It's like they adopted a design concept used for a mobile phone."

' In other words, the engineer pointed out that the new model grew out of the reference design and was designed to make the main board simpler.
. . .
' It seemed that the number of tones and the response speed were improved by replacing the controller IC.
. . .
' "I think the power consumption of the Kindle was reduced by improving the driving method like changing the controller IC of the electronic paper," the engineer said.
. . .
' "the design of the new Kindle's main board was sophisticated as if it employed a design concept used for a mobile phone. So, it is likely that design engineers were more involved in the design of the Kindle 2 than in the design of the Kindle. '

This article, posted May 18, after the introduction of the Kindle DX, ends with this:

' "The next version, Kindle 3, is now under development behind the scenes." How will the Kindle 3 look like? We will continue to keep an eye on it. '

Video of Case Western's Q&A with Amazon rep

The first part of this youtube video is of the Case Western Reserve University's announcement of the Kindle study and explanations of how they'll use the Kindle in their programs.  They'll be comparing relative effectiveness of learning via the traditional methods vs using e-books on the Kindle, will study useability and will videotape students to watch how they navigate... etc.

  There's a Q&A session on how this will work.   The Amazon rep talks about how the Kindle has a web browser that they call "experimental ... we're constantly working on it," that "it's an important thing to remember that it's free... no wireless charges...we cover all ...that..." Says you can use online resources without having to get up and go to a computer.

He also answers a question about the absence of color for textbooks which have charts and labels based on color.  He explains that while they've seen color displays in the lab they're "not happy with it" and it's not up to their "standard of readability" ... they've not seen a "color screen that you can read for a long time on."  Most color displays are backlit and it's like someone shining a light in your eyes, he says.  They'll "obviously keep investigating that," he added but it has to meet their standard. He thinks "there are creative solutions around some of the charts and labeling" in the short term until you have color."

The segment is 18 minutes.  The rest of the 32 minutes are about other programs.

A bad-apple decision and other news

The Net is abuzz with Apple's strange iPhone App Censorship of a reader app (Eucalyptus) because people can search the Project Gutenberg and find (gasp) the Kama Sutra and even download and read it.  The Wired article by Brian Chen includes Apple's explanation in its rejection letter, and a later email from Apple requested that access to the Kama Sutra be removed, despite its actually being a part of the Project Gutenberg and not the app.  So the beleaguered author, Jamie Montgomerie, has installed a filter to block that particular search.  Will Apple approve it?  Why not?  And Montgomerie couldn't have bought that kind of advertising.

  In the meantime, Technologizer's Harry McCracken writes, "Judging from its Web site, it’s more or less comparable to Amazon’s Kindle application–except all the content is free, and the interface looks to be prettier. The asking price is $9.99–steep for an iPhone program, but I’m tempted."

Well, actually, the Project Gutenberg books are available to all Kindle owners, free, direct to their Kindle, since the catalog can be placed on the Kindle, and the Kindle search feature within that book/catalog for the author or title plus a click on the found title will download the book to the device, though that might cost 15c with Amazon's new Whispernet charge for "personal documents" (meaning documents that don't come from Amazon).  These primarily-text books are usually less than one megabyte each, but if a stray one is 2 megabytes then it's 30c for the wireless delivery.
  There is always the option to instead download it to your computer from the Project Gutenberg site and transfer it to the Kindle with the included usb cable if 15c is a problem.

See the earlier entry on this blog for instructions on how to get that catalog onto the Kindle, thanks to James Adcock.

OTHER NEWS:
. Those awaiting an Apple announcement in June '09 about a Kindle-challenging Apple Tablet will have to wait until the "first half of 2010" for whatever it is that'll use a 10" screen and cost between $500 to $700.  If the product includes wireless access it'll certainly also cost at least another $30/month for that, judging from Apple's history.
  Thoughtful article at ITworld.

. Kindle owners who have iPhones and like to sync their reading between the two will be happy to see that Amazon has put the Stanza team to work already, improving Amazon's Kindle app for the iPhone and iPod so that the Kindle books can be read in landscape mode; you can tap on either side of the device to NextPage or PrevPage; and change the colors of the background and text.  The latter's especially useful for dimmer light.  A look at the black against white example made me realize it looks very nice but I was surprised to have to squint my eyes after a bit because of the energy of the white while the gray is easier for a longer period of time.  It's been documented that a gray background is easier on the eyes, but that of course is dependent on how dark the foreground text is.

. Will Kindle sales crash Nielsen Bookscan?.  In an earlier entry here, it was noted that Jeff Bezos claimed that when Kindle titles are available, they now represent 35% of those books' sales.  Bookscan can't include those sales, for reasons given in the article, and this would have a rather large impact on their reports.

. And if Amazon hasn't given publishers enough to worry about lately, they now have Amazon Encore:

'AmazonEncore is a new program whereby Amazon will use information such as customer reviews on Amazon.com to identify exceptional, overlooked books and authors with more potential than their sales may indicate. Amazon will then partner with the authors to re-introduce their books to readers through marketing support and distribution into multiple channels and formats, such as the Amazon.com Books Store, Amazon Kindle Store, Audible.com, and national and independent bookstores via third-party wholesalers.'

. Is the Kindle hurting Barnes and Noble sales?

UPDATE - 5/27/09: Apple relents and allows sales of Eucalyptus app. (Surprise)

Working with the Kindle 2 and DX Web Browser

The experimental Basic Web browser on the Kindle 2 can be used from almost anywhere a cell phone works and at any time.

Expectations for it should be in line with what you'd expect from any mobile phone except for how much of a web page you can see on the screen (considerably more with the Kindle 2) and no color.  Mobile unit web browsing is best done on sites which make versions for mobile units' small screens.

 With a Kindle, you don't have to hunt for a WiFi hotspot and hope that it's free, because Wireless access is almost always available where there's Sprint cellphone coverage, but it's slower than WiFi, which is slower than your normal cabled Internet experience.

  Most of the steps below (but not the 5-way button portion) work on a Kindle 1 also, though the Kindle 1 is slower in response time and doesn't always finish rendering a page with larger photos.

The key is knowing how to choose between several settings offered by the Home page's Menu option for "Experimental" which gets you to "Basic Web" (which you just click on, as the other options are not available there, only described).
  The Kindle will ask you if you want Wireless 'On' if it's not on already and then you can OK that.

  You are then taken to the Kindle's Bookmarks page with a choice of websites for mobile unit access.  Press the Menu key there and choose Settings.
  These are all toggled options.

  The most used Settings to choose from when browsing would be:
    1. "Switch to Advanced Mode" (if you're in "Basic Mode)
          ("Desktop" mode on DX's)
          or "Switch to "Basic Mode" (if you're in Advanced Mode).
    2. "Enable Javascript"
    3. "Disable Images"

Choosing Modes:
. Basic mode, Disable Images - Fastest.  Use when you just want data quickly and don't want to wait for images to load.
. Basic mode, Enable Images - 2nd fastest.  Best with simpler websites and small photos.

  With Basic mode, article bodies will be in B&W rather than the harder to read gray shades that emulate color gradations.
  You'll need to remember that on pages with columns of links or ads, all of the first column's text will show up first, going down and you have to "Next Page" (or down-arrow) through them before getting to the center column for the article.

. Advanced Mode - Use this when you want to see the full width of a web page and all columns showing.
   The browser will then make the fonts TINY to fit it all in and will emulate colors, giving harder-to-read multi-gray shaded text and sometimes the background may be too dark.
  With some sites, it can be surprisingly readable though some will want a magnifying glass.
  With this mode you won't have to page through several Kindle 'pages' of a website's left column.
  The Kindle often chooses advanced mode, and when I want to read an article in the normal sized font, I'll switch to Basic and do the NextPage thing.

. Advanced Mode, Enable Javascript - the Kindle browser often switches to this when it knows javascript is needed to load the page at all.  This will be the slowest mode.
  Sometimes the javascript is needed just for an ad and you can do without it, and at those points I have sometimes tried "disabling" javascript to speed things up.  But most won't bother as it doesn't make that big a difference.  If javascript is needed but isn't enabled, the page never loads, so I tend to leave it alone.

Other web browser options:
. The browser Menu lets you "Enter URL" to go to a specific page you want.
. You can "Bookmark This Page" if you're on a webpage you want to return to without having to type the URL again.
. There's a (current-session) "History" page so you can jump to a webpage you want to revisit.
. You can "Go to Top" of the webpage.

Moving around the webpage
You can move around the page with the 5-way button, which will take you to areas for input, or links to click on for another web page or web-page area, and allow you to scroll down (instead of having to use 'NextPage' if you're on a long page.
  To get back to the previous "jump" (from a link) press the "Back" key.

. You can generally change the text size but not the line spacing on a web page.
. You can download some files offered, usually "TXT" files and unprotected MOBI, PRC ones.  The Kindle format is AZW, and you can download that and AZW1 files, though I've never seen these offered outside the Amazon store.

See an example of links on a Kindle webpage.   For other webpage examples for both the Kindle 1 and 2, see the screen comparison page that I made for these.

For more information and screen samples, see Section 6.1 "Using Basic Web" in the "Kindle 2 User's Guide, 2nd Edition" -- this is at Location 834,

Caution: Using wireless for browsing will drain the battery faster during a session than reading a Kindle document will.  It'll be a shorter time before you need to recharge.  Here are customer service advisories for how to keep the battery in good shape.

TIP: When sending an email from gmail.com or yahoo.com, you'll get an alert that a connection could not be established with the website's servers.  98% of the time, it's a false error alert.  The email goes through (but typing on this unit is arduous, at best, so I e-mail rarely), and the same thing occurs with posting a reply to a forum.  The reply does go through and is posted despite the alert.  Do log in before posting, though.

The Basic Web browser on the smaller Kindles is extremely handy for quick lookups when away from your home/office computers.  It isn't something you want to do at length, though I was surprised that Wired can come through so well, with good resolution on the photos on the Kindle 2.

FILE DOWNLOAD - BOOKMARKS
You can download a file of bookmarks I collected for mobile-optimized sites, which will load faster.

( If you find blog entries like this one helpful, please check the "Interesting" box so I can get an idea of the level of interest for how-to's for features not often used -- judging from what I read on the forums.  Thanks for taking the tme. )
  7/5/09 - I've eliminated the 'Interesting/Cool' Google widget because it caused the page to take too long to load, but on the Tips/Guides, it did give me good (easy to rate) indication of interest in those. Thanks to those who took the time let me know.

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Check often:  Latest temporarily free non-classics or late-listed ones.
  Guide to finding Free or Low-Cost Kindle books and Sources.  Top 100 free bestsellers.

Presenting the large-screen Kindle

A video presentation of the upcoming large-screen Kindle that skips a few generations to offer highest readability.  (I did love this.)

Kindle DX PDFs MIGHT/Might NOT accept added-notes

UPDATED 5/18/09:  Amazon's public relations department replied today with an offer to get an official Amazon response to the questions discussed Friday (below), in connection with whether or not the Kindle DX will have highlighting and note-adding capabilities for PDFs, even if only for pages rather than paragraphs.

  The manual's illustration of the menu options on Page 66 for an PDF page implied (heavily) that these options would not be available for PDFs while there was no text actually stating this anywhere that I could find, and many prospective DX customers in the Amazon forums and some Kindle blogpages have wanted some definite word on this.

 I'd mentioned at the bottom of Friday's article below that, if the capabilities were not to be implemented for the DX, there are 3rd-party options to convert any non-digital rights-protected text-based PDF file to a MOBI/prc version readable on the Kindle DX (as is done for the K1/K2), which would then allow global Kindle searches plus highlighting and note-additions - while keeping the original PDF with its formatted layout as a reference.  Amazon should provide an option to do this conversion for DX customers who need that on specific PDFs.

  Note 1: The User's Guide states on page 44 that PDFs sent to a DX would be wirelessly delivered directly [rather than converted] for a fee.  We can transfer these via included USB cable though.
  On the Amazon Kindle help pages, they list e-mailed conversions of PDFs only for the first-generation Kindles, at this point.

  Note 2: Conversions from image-scanned PDFs (vs text-based PDFs) for text-searching won't work for ANY device unless using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software to convert the squiggles to characters.

Here's the official Amazon statement I received today:

"A bookmark can be added in a PDF, but you cannot highlight, add a note, perform a lookup, or sync to last location.  A converted PDF can do all of the above."

That's exactly as implied in the 1st edition user's guide except that the official statement adds that a converted pdf [text-based] will allow these actions on the text.

 It'll make sense if they offer a conversion option as they do now.

  What Ryan, the technical person described being able to do (page-oriented notes) is possibly something that they're not comfortable implementing at this time.

End of Update 5/18/09

---

Originally posted Friday May 15, 2009
  Amazon customers in a couple of Amazon forums and on at least two blogs have brought needed attention to a passage in the currently distributed Kindle DX User's Guide "1st edition" which quite clearly implies that highlighting and note-adding are not options with PDFs.

 On page 66 of the DX User's Guide (1st edition), we see:

  "The options available while reading a PDF file are slightly different than when reading a book or a periodical on Kindle.  Options that are not available in PDF files are grayed out in the menu."

  Then the screen-shot of a PDF menu shows the "Add a Note or Highlight" options grayed out.

  Since then, forum and blog talk has included concern over the possible lack of a notation feature for PDFs.  Since PDFs are often used heavily by legal, medical, and academics these days, this is an important area for them.

I called Amazon to ask about this and got a very helpful representative ('P') who, though concerned, was reading from material after asking others about this.  After she took care of my other questions, I asked to speak to a technical person so I could ask, for clarification for others, why a note could not be appended to a separate file as is done now for regular files, as it shouldn't interfere with the PDF file.

Reaching representative 'K' who sounded very capable, I asked to speak with someone who has some technical knowledge of PDF files specifically; after the quick transfer, I was now talking to 'Ryan' who said he is with the technical team and gave me permission to quote him on what he was saying.  I confirmed with him my understanding of what he said.

Ryan said that a couple of them had discovered, while working with PDFs on the Kindle DX just a couple of days before the DX announcement, that although a PDF file is different from the regular text files and one cannot highlight a specific passage nor isolate words on a page, there were a couple of things you can do with PDFs on the DX:

1.  You can highlight a page though not just a part of a page, and
2.  You can add notes for the Page but not for specific text on the page.

The PDF pages on the DX are essentially functioning as images  He said you can highlight the 'image' which is the entire page and, as mentioned, you can add notes FOR the page (but not on it, of course).  Ryan said he had been able to do this himself and will take a look at the manual, as he had not seen page 66.

 This makes sense to me since I knew that any notes we make on regular Kindle documents are put into a secondary file associated with the main document (and also put into the "My Clippings" file). This apparently may hold true for PDFS for the Kindle DX.

HOWEVER:
Earlier the same day, 'P' who's not in the technical area, had read some material on this, after asking an associate about it, and said she found out we could highlight text that was not included in charts or illustrations or other images, but she added that no notes could be made.  That was an odd combo of capabilities and I then talked with Ryan.

When I mentioned to Ryan that customer service had said that notes for PDFs were not possible, he said that customer service was in another area and it takes time for information to get to everyone.

I called back to try to ask him one more question but they have no way of getting you back to the same person.  Only P was recorded in the log as talking with me.  The next person I talked with ('S') went to Engineering, he said, who told him, "No highlighting, No notes." They're the ones who should know, but ...

I asked S to check with a manager, as would-be buyers need a clear idea of what can and can't be done, and his last relayed message to me was given by the customer service manager rather than by the technical support manager.

  Ryan had at least tried it out on a PDF and he could, more or less, highlight the page (which changed shades as he did) and successfully add notes for a page.

  A big feature of PDFs is that pages are defined very strictly and reliably for most output, so Ryan's experience with it as a page-based operation makes sense.

  He added that, for the same reasons, the PDFs are not searchable for text when searching the entire Kindle, though you can search within a PDF for text.

  It seems somewhat likely (being optimistic here) that there are older notes saying things can't be done on a PDF (which would explain the conflict between the user's guide info and Ryan's experience) and that later work with pdfs resulted in more encouraging information.

  In the meantime, I wasn't able to get any specific person who might be responsible for being an authoritative voice on features of the DX.  The referral was always to the basic Customer Service number.  I have one more dept to ask about this but am reporting what I've found, as it is somewhat encouraging.

It could be that the DX capabilities are evolving as we head into the summer.

Side note:  Princeton University, part of the upcoming study, intends to scan material in Optical Character Recognition form to produce flowable text that's searchable and to allow easy annotations.

Side note 2:  It's occurred to me that when someone wants to add highlighting and notes to a PDF document, they can convert it to a MOBI/prc file via Kindle's auto-conversion (but in the case of a DX target, Amazon will probably not convert the file) or choose one of several (free) methods to easily convert one for that purpose.

Customer service note: I want to add that P had to handle several other questions from me and she was really very patient and said she would follow up on a couple of areas. Customer Service was easy to get on the phone and patient about questions and the time it took.

(See the later update at the top of this entry.)

Pros and Cons of the $9.99 Kindle book price

New York Times - Pros and cons of e-book pricing.

"Publishers are caught between authors who want to be paid high advances and consumers who believe they should pay less for a digital edition, largely because the publishers save on printing and shipping costs. But publishers argue that those costs, which generally run about 12.5 percent of the average hardcover retail list price, do not entirely disappear with e-books. What’s more, the costs of writing, editing and marketing remain the same."

  While consumers don't find that argument particularly credible, publishers worry that Amazon is subsidizing the $9.99 price - as a loss leader - but won't want to take any such losses for long and will then pressure publishers to accept lower payments.

  Competition from other e-book readers can be a mitigating factor for them, but there's also the real possibility that cheaper e-books will result in readers buying more titles.  The NYTimes cites the success of cheap, mass paperbacks at airport bookstores and grocery checkout racks.

  From what I've seen on Kindle forums and from my own habits since getting my Kindle, the hope of publishers and writers that e-book-owners will buy more titles if they cost less, compensating for the lower margins, is not an unrealistic one.

Earlier article on $9.99 boycott

The value of 24/7 wireless, as shown by MiFi 2200

UPDATE - 5/17/09 is at the bottom of this article.
  Original posting: 5/12/2009 08:00:00 AM

The New York Times's David Pogue is excited by "Wi-Fi to Go, No Cafe Needed" though I have a memory of Pogue finding the Kindle 2 pricing unfathomably high (his editors had omitted the price), but that paragraph is gone and the price is there now.

That article explained the outstanding Kindle feature (wireless 24/7) and the cost of this normally.

'The big Kindle breakthrough was its wireless connection. Thanks to Sprint’s cellular Internet service, the Kindle is always online: indoors, outdoors, miles from the nearest Wi-Fi hot spot.

This sort of service costs $60 a month for laptops, but Amazon pays the Kindle’s wireless bill, in hopes that you’ll buy e-books spontaneously...

As a bonus, the Kindle includes a simple Web browser, great for quick wireless Wikipedia checks and blog reading.'

That $60/mo. x 12 = $720! Not much mystery in the pricing, on a unit with the expensive e-ink screen.

Pogue really knows the Kindle's features, unlike most columnists covering a wide range of gadgets.

With the article on Novatel's MiFi 2200 'Personal Hot Spot,' he sings a strong tenor on the amazing ability of this small gadget to provide cell phone style wireless wherever you are.

'But imagine if you could get online anywhere you liked — in a taxi, on the beach, in a hotel with disgustingly overpriced Wi-Fi —without messing around with cellular modems. What if you had a personal Wi-Fi bubble, a private hot spot, that followed you everywhere you go?'

Kindle users don't have to imagine that.  I use the Kindle to go online to read sites like Wired (with excellent photo reproduction) anywhere I happen to be.  But I've described that in previous posts.  Pogue continues:

Incredibly, there is such a thing.  It’s the Novatel MiFi 2200, available from Verizon starting in mid-May ($100 with two-year contract, after rebate). It’s a little wisp of a thing, like a triple-thick credit card... When you turn on your MiFi and wait 30 seconds, it provides a personal, portable, powerful, password-protected wireless hot spot.

The Mifi uses Verizon's 3G for its signal.  Pogue writes:

'If you just want to do e-mail and the Web, you pay $40 a month for the service (250 megabytes of data transfer, 10 cents a megabyte above that)... And if you don’t travel incessantly, the best deal may be the one-day pass: $15 for 24 hours, only when you need it.
  In that case, the MiFi itself costs $270 [rather than $100].

So that's another illustration of the often ignored value of the wireless feature of the Kindles.  There should be huge interest in the MiFi, because it also has a 30-foot range and up to 5 people can share this "Wi-Fi umbrella."

  The drawback of netbooks for me is the lack of wireless, but this will be a big help here, with the minimum $40/mo being more attractive than AT&T's program of wireless for netbooks, which starts at $50/mo. and is probably most useful at the $60/mo. level, and the Mifi unit can be used with any of your devices, including cellphones, the iPod touch, as well as the usual laptops.

  Be sure to read Pogue's full details and entertaining descriptions on this, and there's a video demo there.

Update - 5/17/09: The MiFi unit is being released Sunday.  Gizmodo wrote today that the $40/mo. wireless plan was "useless" and EVDOinfo writes, after their thorough review (including cons):

"...$40/mo plan that offers 250MB allowance, but only those who access the internet very infrequently should consider that option as 250MB is typically used up by most customers in less than a week of normal internet usage...

and JK On the Run's long review and replies to commenters says he already has the $60 Verizon plan.  Wireless and Mobile Reviews reviews the many reviews and it's a set of raves.

Colored Kindles ? For that price ?

Color your Kindle for a pittance?   'Only' $200 to redo your current Kindle 2 and $600 for a new one (and try turning that one in within the 30-day period).  I thought this story was just a joke at first, but apparently not.

They do this for all kinds of gadgets but the Kindle 2 was added to the bunch on May 1.  Did someone say something about a recession?

For those with less $ to toss, try DecalGirl skins - Average $15, very popular with Kindle users, and you don't have to be stuck with one color.

UK's budget 'Cool-er E-book' reader debuts in June

Interead's Cool-er E-book will be released in June.  At $250~ it'll be, at 6 oz., 40% lighter than the small Sony reader, have an e-ink screen like the smaller Kindle's, and will have 1-gig of storage plus an SD slot.  It handles EPUB and PDF files (are you watching, Amazon?), supports 8 languages, and has mp3 playback for audiobooks.

  Summary of PC World's Melissa J. Perenson:  featherweight but somewhat inelegant, with stiff buttons;  an update with information on how it works is planned.  Interead has launched an e-book store with over 250,000 e-books, with plans to sell these at 25% discount to Cool-er Reader owners (what an oddball name) and 20% off for others.  The Kindle versions of NYTimes's bestseller list notables are usually 40 to 60% lower but prices on other Kindle books have been inching up.  The player will come in several colors.

  No wireless, of course.
  No keyboard input (no searches, dictionary, highlighting, or notes) but at $250, intriguing with the file types supported and pocketable size/weight if you don't care about the rest.

Wired's Priya Ganapati notes that the reader offers the choice of portrait or landscape mode.  She adds that Interead is "also open to working with software developers to create apps for the device which runs the Linux OS..."

UPDATE - 5/19/09: Forbes reports on how quickly Cool-er Reader's founder put this together.  I would look at warranty, servicing or replacement possibilities, and would look for a period of reported reliability.

  The article points out that this product and Bookeen's Cybook Opus both put pressure on Amazon to upgrade its file-format reading capabilities on the Kindle 2, wihch is larger than either of the new models.  Both read PDFs and ePub files.  The Cool-er Reader rotates the screen, allowing landscape mode and has an SD slot, while the Cybook Opus supports folders.

  Both are lacking serious book-reader benefits such as Searches, highlighting, note-adding, dictionary lookup, as well as the 24/7 wireless though.

  In the UK where Amazon does not have wireless, I can see the draw although a price like the one that Cool-er Ebook has set is steep for what both of these units don't do.

UPDATE - 6/7/09: CNet review of Cool Reader, June 2009

Disabling of Text-to-Speech by Random House has begun

Bruce S. Woodcock has alerted us to a MobileRead Forum notice by KarlB that Random House (Knopf) has begun disabling the Kindle-2 text-to-speech feature, which is computerized speech that has almost no appropriate affect, often mispronounces words, and doesn't pause between paragraphs, headings, or chapters on its Kindle books - and it's unclear whether or not the author gets a choice in this disabling.

 The above link takes you to Bruce's announcement and the forum discussions on this.  While forum members are a small percentage of Kindle owners, they tend to know other Kindle owners and there has been a resulting resistance to Random House's policy, in the form of plans to not buy Random House Kindle books while they are doing this.  They also proposed using the Amazon tagging system to add a "No tts" tag to alert other customers to an author who chose disabling this feature.

The disabling of TTS on a book hurts the disabled most, since most Kindle owners use the computerized voice only for brief periods (while cooking or commuting in the car) and they don't buy the book to 'listen' to it, especially not via a monotone voice.

Does Random House appreciate the fact that the Kindle owner has purchased the book to read?  Do people who buy hardcopy books to read THEN go buy the audiobook ?  Where is their loss on this?  Kindle owners can't share their Kindle books except with someone ON their account, so just what is the problem for Authors Guild and Random House?

There is a Kindle book titled The Disabled Deserve to Read: The Controversy Over the Amazon Kindle's Voice, by Bufo Calvin, for 80 cents.
  The product description says: "The author's proceeds will go towards purchasing Kindles to donate to non-profit organizations."

  From what I remember, the Authors Guild has proposed tests they will put disabled people through to see if they 'qualify' for getting a computerized voice reading to them.  To me, there's something quite dark about that.
_______
  Related blog article on "Tom," the Kindle-2 voice

Sony reader screen comparisons and the Kindle

The enlarged version of the photo at the left, from the article by Simon Cohen at syncblog.com, shows the significant loss in clarity and readability with the touch screen technology used for the Sony PRS-700's e-Ink screen.

  After lamenting that the Kindle isn't available in Canada yet Cohen explains the touchscreen's effect on clarity:

'...Because Sony's engineers had to layer a capacitive membrane over the E-Ink display to enable the 700's touch-screen features, they reduced the amount of ambient light the eInk receives, and thus the amount it can reflect.  The result is (when compared to the 505) like reading through a thin layer of onion skin paper.  Contrast is reduced and some crispness at the edge of letters is lost.  Worse still, this top layer is quite reflective and depending on where your light source is located, you need to tilt the 700 slightly backward to avoid the glare...'

In this comparison of the two Sony Readers, there are also caveats that will be familiar to some Kindle users when it comes to the e-Ink screens, which most reviewers find far easier on the eyes for any length of time than reading from an LCD screen (which can do color and backlighting at a cost to battery drain in addition to eye fatigue, though with better refresh rates).

'Some people might be aware of the light gray background of the screen itself – indeed this is probably the cause of my perception that the ink could stand to be a little darker.  We're all used to seeing black ink on a white page, or at least off-white and there's no escaping the fact that the light gray doesn't provide as much contrast as a piece of paper.

The good news is: you get used to it quickly and after a few chapters you barely notice it at all.'

Then he explains the black flash between page turns:

'Turning pages on the Reader produces a momentary flash of black before the ink resolves itself into the new set of words. This happens anytime the display needs to change what it's showing.  While a little disconcerting at first, you again grow accustomed to it. The transitional effect is caused by the nature of eInk displays.  The "pixels" work more like an etch-a-sketch tablet than like a typical LCD display.  With LCDs, each pixel can change on it's own, very quickly, and go from one colour to another in an instant.  eInk on the other hand exists in more of an ON or Off state.  To switch between these states, an electrical charge is needed.  Moreover, it seems that the entire area that is to be re-drawn must be first "cleaned" by turning all of the pixels on, then off.  Only then can the final image be rendered.  Odd as it is at first, I'm so used to it now that I wonder if a transitionless page turn would be an improvement.'

Cohen goes on to detail quite thoroughly the many differences between the two Sony readers.

Costs of delivering a newspaper on the Kindle

While reading an article by John Tartakoff the other day and responding re Kindle DX vs The Plastic Logic eReader, an interesting comparison, I saw the link to Mark Glaser's Mediashift and his account of the recent "Digital Publishing Alliance" meeeting at U of Missouri's journalism school.   Very timely.  He writes a summary on what each speaker had to say that day.

  In addition to his report on a talk by Plastic Logic's Sarah Geata, which reminded me that the Plastic Logic won't have email or a web browser, he listed some details from the talk by Guy Tasaka from LibreDigital, formerly NewsStand, who gave a breakdown of costs for delivering a newspaper on the Kindle:

> Avg. file size = 1.2MB
> Bandwidth cost = .12 cents MB
> Selling price = $13.99 month
> Monthly bandwidth cost = $4.32

That eats into monthly cost of serving content into Kindle. So Amazon is probably losing money on some of the lower cost publications it sells. This cost doesn't even include advertising in the mix.

Amazon has just recently started charging 15c per megabyte (rounded up) to send a converted personal document direct to a Kindle via Whispernet, which includes also the cost of converting the file sent to them, so this was of interest in connection with the new charge and gives a vague idea of how much the bandwidth could cost in general per Amazon Kindle user on the average. Or not.

As mentioned the other day in the "Stats" entry here,

"According to a reliable source in the know, The New Yorker's Kindle split is divided 33% New Yorker, 33% Amazon, and 33% wireless carrier."

That does makes sense when you use the numbers by Tasaka above.

iPhone 3G upgrade reactions and the Kindle

I just read some interesting stories about 1) the new iPhone 3G's features and pricing and the free upgrading of older iPhones at the same time (some companies do this for even large changes in system capability; and 2) the server-chaos that resulted from up to 6 million iPhone users attempting upgrades at the same time that first-time buyers were trying to get one.

  This did remind me of reactions from the Amazon Kindle community when Amazon said Wednesday, in response to reporters' questions, that there was no upgrade path for early Kindle users to the Kindle DX.

Two Kindle-owner requests I've read, in response:
  1) a question as to why the native pdf support for the DX is not made a firmware update for the Kindle 2 released late February so that inaccurate conversions don't have to be accepted (the small screen viewing affects conversions also) when Sony's 6" models can do this already (including even DRM-protected ones form the library, along with reading ePub files).

  2) some new Kindle-2 owners just past their 30-day trial period have requested the ability to update to the DX for the difference in price.  Many owners using their Kindle-2s since March (we are talking mainly April as an interval) are requesting some kind of upgrade-path at all, but Amazon's customer service responses are that Amazon's policy is that the Kindle-2 owner sell the unit, used, and then buy a new one.  Doable but some customers feel uneasy about the response.

 A key factor, as I've said before, is that with Kindles, as with cable-tv-program providers and their receivers, there is an ongoing $$ relationship with the vendor that involves the customer regularly buying (even eager to buy) the vendor's main products to use on that vendor's receiver.  So there is a disconnect there when Amazon shows no interest in upgrade paths.

Native PDF support
  I can understand the resistance based on publishers' concerns re DRM situations, but the Kindle 2 (with a faster processor than the Kindle 1) really should have the native pdf support for non-DRM'd PDFs as a feature when Sony was able to do this in 2008.
  Kindle users should also bear in mind though that some PDFs made for 8x11 pages will not be particularly readable on 6" screens,  and in some cases a conversion to a MOBI or prc file could work better for readability on text-based PDFs - which is still an option even when a unit has built-in Adobe support for PDFs.

  The Sonys have their drawbacks and lack of features though: no 24/7 wireless, an unclear PRS-700 screen and, on the PRS-505, no search feature whatsoever, no inline-dictionary, and no highlighting and annotation functions.

iPhone 3G rollout problems
With up to 6 million owners wanting to upgrade while new customers were in lines overnight for the new unit, and a new certification process put into place before the 3G capabilities could be accessed, many old phones stopped working and new phones could not be activated, to the degree that there are many stories about this.
  I'm surprised that Apple didn't foresee this though.  Their servers were hammered.  The best scenario for luckier users was not being able to update the old phone though it still worked otherwise.  iPod users can upgrade also, for $10.

iPhone 3G Pricing
  A plus for new iPhone users would be the drop in price.  Barely a year ago, the 8-gigabyte iPhone would have cost $600; the new 8-gigabyte 3G is $200. However, as David Pogue points out:

"The basic AT&T plan — unlimited Internet and 450 minutes of calling — now costs $70 a month instead of $60 (plus taxes and fees), and comes with no text messages instead of 200. (Adding text messaging costs at least $5 a month more.)"

Well, those who complain about the Kindle's price should note that the actual one-year cost of the iPhone with Internet (before taxes and without text messaging) is:

  $70/month x 12 months = $840 + $200, or a total of $1,040.00 for that first year.

Kindle-2 pricing
  The Kindle 2 with its 24/7 wireless access to the web is $360, and after you add up the Internet charges, the total cost the first year is ... $360.
  And in the 2nd year, no cost for Kindle use, while the iPhone would cost $840+ for the 2nd year.

  While some may not want a clear and good-sized e-reader with 24/7 wireless access to the Net, it's foolhardy to say, when understanding the costs of wireless and an e-ink screen, that a total cost of $359 is "too expensive."

Kindle-DX pricing
  And now an extra $130 total cost for the Kindle DX gets you a reading screen that is 2.5 times the surface area of the Kindle 2.

Kindle and the iPhone
Many have both the iPhone and one of the Kindles.  Makes sense to me, as long as you can afford it.  Especially with the KindleApp on the iPhone now and sync'd access to the Kindle library.

I do like the iPhone but AT&T's reception is not good here and and there are features I prize in my own cellphone (video recording with 3.2Mpixels that is quite good, voice dialing, business-card info-autoread, phone-to-phone photo-sending, and a memory card slot which I do use as the main space), which aren't included with the iPhone.  Apple's iPhone App Store has a terrific set of apps though that don't require transfers from the PC and no 'hacking' of the unit to run them.  I'll be interested to see what Apple and Verizon (my cellphone servicer) have in mind in June.

Some Kindle stats lost in the main stories

Gizmodo writer Mark Wilson was at first aghast that Amazon would offer newspaper publishers only 30% of the revenues, which left 70% for themselves.  He updated his article to say this:

"Maybe the NYT doesn't have a better deal than the Dallas Morning News.  According to a reliable source in the know, The New Yorker's Kindle split is divided 33% New Yorker, 33% Amazon, and 33% wireless carrier. Without ad subsidies, it's hard to view this model as sustainable."

Business Week's Dan Frommer noted a statement from Jeff Bezos' announcement last Wednesday (the 6th) during his live-blog of the event and wrote:

"[Bezos} said that when Kindle titles are available, they now represent 35% of those books' sales.  There was a huge spike when Amazon started shipping the Kindle 2 earlier this year"

Kindle DX's Unsung Ways and a Guided Tour

PD World's Melissa J. Perenson lists
'5 Unsung Ways' by which the Kindle DX will
"transform reading."

'But make no mistake: Kindle DX represents far more than merely more of the same. Kindle DX is a game changer for e-book readers, and one that has a chance to transform how we consume content.'

Her listing includes large print books; children's books; English as a 2nd Language; manuals [one of my own favorites]; and self-publishing as the 5 not normally considered.  Her summary:

'The DX is far more than just the larger premium-priced "hardcover" version of the "soft cover" Kindle 2.  Instead, when it comes to the various different types of content the DX can display beautifully the Kindle DX has the potential to re-write the e-book rules -- digitally of course.'

Here's PC World's Guided Tour by Perenson, with some very good photographic examples of how useful this unit will be in many areas.  Two which stood out for me:   1)  the native PDF capability preserves the original visual layout of a document, retaining readability even with a complex layout, and 2)  an example of highlighting in a biology textbook with an illustration with small, precisely placed text that is far more readable than it would be on the 6" screen of the smaller Kindles and often not correctly converted to even make sense.

  Side note:  Wondering how the iRex iLiad and the Kindle DX fared in a comparison, I found a review which said that using the only type of input available (a stylus) means a wait of .5 to 1 second for a response when drawing and that the bootup time is 40 seconds.  Along with other points made in the review, including its *horrendous* technical support, it looks like no competition there at that price.  Here's an Engadget image of the iLiad, which averages about $860 now.

UPDATE:


Princeton University will provide students
with free Kindle DX's
in three of the courses this coming semester.

Murdoch Rebuffs Amazon's terms for Kindle model

Financial Times's Kenneth Li and Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson report Murdoch's strong resistance to Amazon's Kindle business model.

Proposing a new revenue stream for newspapers, Amazon apparently wants as much as 70% of any subscription revenues earned through the Kindle, per a statement by James Moroney, the chief executive of the Dallas Morning News during a Senate hearing on the future of Journalism.  Moroney mentioned that Amazon also wants "the right to republish the newspaper’s stories on other portable devices," per the FT writers.

 It's been established (but not mentioned in the FT article) that Amazon offers Kindle book publishers 35% of the List price but can discount their own selling price to $10~ while still paying the publisher 35% based on the publisher's price.
 So, if a publisher sets the List price at at $25 and Amazon sells a book at $10, Amazon pays the publisher almost $9 from the sale and keeps about $1.

Murdoch is quoted as saying that though News Corp could make money from customers' interest in using a mobile device to read the news, "We will not be giving our content rights to the fine people who created the Kindle."

At the same time he said one of his general newspapers will start charging for its content online, within the year.

The New York Times and the Washington Post are backing the Kindle model (though the pricing could vary somewhat for each company).  And the FT adds that "Textbook publishers Pearson, owner of the Financial Times, Cengage Learning and Wiley are also to offer some books on Kindle."

UPDATE 5/8/09: - Financial Times is puzzled by this, since Wall St. Journal and Harper Collins are part of his operation and are already on Kindle.  Is he threatening to withdraw? (Not ultra likely)

Kindle DX and its target audience

So this is not the anticipated 'K3' but the 'DX'?

  Has the lower price than was expected confused the presupposed division of target audiences for Kindle-1&2 users?

  It's still packable and there is less room used by the keyboard.

  These are first reactions on the day the DX was announced.
  Online mags are showing the "first official pictures" of the DX which are all pics from Amazon's own Kindle DX page, which has a large video demo and 'guided tour' of its functioning.

  Re DX vs K2, think K2 enlarged beyond purse-size, with no buttons on the left side (favoring lefthand-users for one-handed use) and less vertical space given the keyboard (long a wish of many).  So what else does it do besides let you see content better or see more of the same while also being heavier to hold when reading books?  The Amazon page has charts showing the differences between the DX and the K2.  

  Unfortunately, they blare that it can read PDFs natively while the K2 cannot, which means they likely don't intend to provide a firmware update that will provide native PDF support for the K2 even if it would be on a smaller screen.  Not an admirable move.
  But for those who like to stockpile and miss their K1 SD cards, it will hold an average 3500 text-based books.

  And there is said to be more RAM (no figure given) which usually means faster processing capability and definitely better ability to handle web-browsing of complex pages while the auto-rotating feature (which is optional) ensures better visual displays of webpages, especially online-newspapers.  While I would not want to replace my K2 as it is always with me and fits well into my purse, no extra carrying care needed, I may sell my K1 finally and ultimately get this for home and special use outside.

  I would not get it for just books.  Nor want to hold something that large for my daily reading of books and my newspaper feeds and subscriptions.

  But even if native PDF support were to be included in the K2 later, it would be, on a 6" in screen, unreadable when the pdfs are image-scans of small text.

  So for me it's not a 'replacement' for the K2, for K2 owners.  An addition maybe, for those with enough spare change.  New buyers may be attracted to it over the K2 though, but they'll need larger carrying cases and it'll be a separate item to remember to carry or pick up unless one uses a briefcase or backpack or quite large purse.
  Those with poor eyesight, who have problems with the smaller e-readers, will also find it an attraction.

  They don't seem that different in size in some photos (though the difference is large enough for those who carry their K2s everywhere with them), but this image and this one as well both show otherwise.

 And then there's THIS! ---)   Whoa!  I've never carried around a book that size but do have them for home-use.

  For those whose primary focus is carrying books or a library of books wherever they go, the segment of that group that carries Kindles in their purses will find this less attractive, but for students and business professionals, it will be quite doable in backpacks and briefcases -- and much better for technical textbook reading as well as business presentations.  I expect professors and business users will find the PDF support and larger screen well worth it to handle papers and presentations.
Peter Glaskowsky, writing for CNet, opines that this unit will not be ideal for textbooks for the natural or formal sciences, and it's the lack of color differentiation that is most key there.

But soon the full 8x10 screens will be (and some already are) offering the ability to write directly on the screen, with touch screen control, and able to show a normal multi-column newspaper layout.  The Kindle DX still displays newspaper articles as contained text (which has been fine for readers like me).

With two units this similar though, offered only 3 months apart -- ironically with the pricing being barely more than a $100 difference and with PDFs natively read in the unit (which means that they should be able to incorporate this as an upgrade to the Kindle 2) -- it can cause some people to hesitate more before deciding what to buy - one of the Kindles or a simpler, less capable and less expensive e-reader by anyone while the market settles down. (Nevuh happens.)  Still, for me, the more options and capabilities offered, the better.  

Since PDFs, even formatted correctly, are not ideal when scaled down to the Kindle-2's 6" screen and therefore no threat to sales of the DX if readable on the K2 also, Amazon should make PDF native support upgrades to the Kindle-2 now or customers will likely wonder at what some could consider bait and switch tactics.  I'm hoping they'll do the right thing.  Or explain why it can't be done.  A competitor can do it, why not Amazon?

In the meantime, many bought the K2 for the small size and 24/7 wireless factors and won't be overexcited about spending yet another $130 for a larger version they can't as easily carry around.  The paperback-size feature has been a large attraction and I'm sure it will continue to be.

 A quick look at the Amazon forums shows less interest (at the moment) in the new model than I'd expected to see from current Kindle-1 and Kindle-2 owners.
 My next purchase of $350 or over will likely be a 10" Netbook - for now, likely the Samsung, but that can change in a matter of days in this world.  The Asus I had been planning on before reading about the Samsung, is now available for $100 + a wireless contract (not WiFi but 24/7 wireless for about $50-$60/month.  So much to consider in this rapidly changing world.

Nevertheless, business professionals and some students will find the $489 a good price when 24/7 wireless is included (for how long for free?) and if textbook publishers are sane about their pricing for Kindle textbooks.  As some have pointed out earlier, textbook publishers have been making customized books for universities under special agreements that still give them a decent margin.  Would those be willing to do a general Kindle version instead and price it appropriately?  In this economy you'd think printing companies would take stock and seek survival rather than grossest margins :-)

But Amazon has done well, where other companies haven't, in this recession and if they do well by all their customers who have already invested money in their Kindles, they'll stay ahead of the game.  An important If.  The Kindle is not like a separate TV purchase, it's more like a cable-TV subscription cable-tv-program receiver unit.  The unit, for the vendor, is about the content that can be sold.  That's something for Amazon to keep in mind.

In the meantime, if I had to make a decision between the two units today, I would still choose the K2, for its size, as I'm one who carries my Kindle everywhere and I love reading on it anywhere I am.  But if not interested in books that much or in just reading news on the run, and very active in sharing paperwork and presentations, and with no Kindle already, I'd spring for this.

UPDATES:
To get an idea of the DX features and functioning, here is a a copy of the Kindle DX User’s Guide 1st Edition in PDF format, readable on any computer.

Here's a good report, with good photos, of Jeff Bezos' announcement/press conference today, by FastCompany's Chris Dannen.

  Gizmodo's Brian Lam reports first reactions to a very brief hands-on experience with it.  This includes Gizmodo's own photos and their video of this.   They mention that it's almost twice as heavy, with somewhat stiff action in the buttons and a response-time that is almost as fast as with the K2 because although the DX has a faster processer, it has much more data to process for a page.  Brian was unhappy with the autorotate's relatively slow processing.

  Wired's Brian X. Chen weighs in with a hands-on assessment and more photos and echos Gizmodo's hands-on re the slow roundtrip for an inadvertent auto-rotate (7 seconds) while finding the 5-way wheel not to his liking on either the K2 or DX (I like its direct navigation though; even if it's sluggish it saves us from the many dialog-screens of the Kindle-1 before getting where we want).  He also finds the web-browsing slow but doesn't say relative to the K2 or to a normal computer's browser.

  Good, varied screen examples by Engadget's Joshua Topolsky during the live event.

  Hmmm, they'd almost have me (if I didn't already have a purseable Kindle2) with the note in their press release that sheet music can be used with this and page-turns done with a press of a button).

  Thinking...if the DX had been first, many would jump at the 'new' 'COMPACT' K2 :-)