I just purchased a Kindle from Amazon, and I’m surprised at how much I like it. After about 10 minutes of reading on it, I forgot it was there and just enjoyed the text. The convenience of being able to buy a book instantly is amazing.
The screen is very readable and easy on the eyes. I also appreciate the feature that allows you to adjust the size of the type. The text to speech feature is pretty good, but still has a bit of that computer-voice stiltedness.
The only cons I can see are that you do need power. Granted, it uses little power and the battery lasts a long time, but if you were on an extended hike in the wilderness, power would be a concern. The B/W screen is good, but I’m anticipating future models will have color. Finally, if I lend it to someone to read a book, I’ve in fact lent them my entire Kindle library which I, then, would not be able to access.
With the recent difficulties experienced by the Boston Globe and many other newspapers, I’ve been following the discussions centered around the larger format Kindle. Some are heralding this device as the saviour of the newspaper industry, but I don’t think that will happen. Newspapers are dying because readers can get more information online, and the online version is updated regularly. Why read a sports page when you can get all the updates on ESPN and you can follow endless sports blogs (including the players) online? Why read the want ads when Craig’s list and Monster are online? Newspapers simply can’t deliver enough content fast enough.
Last word: People often draw comparisons between the Kindle and the iPod. I can see these to some extent, but I think there are also some significant differences. The ipod can be used in social situations. Hook it up to your car radio, attach some speakers, run it through a PA and lots of people can enjoy it. The Kindle is a solitary user device. The ipod can be used in the background- at the gym while you’re working out, while you are driving, while you are cooking, etc. The Kindle is the focus of what you are doing. It will be interesting to see how well it catches on.
I attended a panel discussion today where 6 of the panelists were present and one called in using Skype. The audience was primarily high school seniors, and it was quite obvious that the Skype speaker had an advantage. Students tuned into the screen better than they tuned into a live speaker. In fact, student walking by the room stopped to check out the screen, but once that speaker had signed off, no one else stopped to hear the others.
Obviously these students have been interacting with screens their entire lives. There is also the cool technology factor. It suggests to me that live speakers have to be brilliant to capture this audience, or else they will be treated as moderators to get past in order to reach the interesting stuff.
In this article Jeremiah Owyang makes the case the physical media is inferior and heading towards obsolesence. I couldn’t agree more. So much of what we pay for a CD or DVD is the plastic, the packaging and the shipping, and such physical devices can wear out or get lost. As the ability to distribute media across the internet and wirelessly continues to improve, it will raise some interesting questions about ownership of information.
I just read an article in celebration of the 20th anniversary of Nintendo’s Game Boy. It made me realize that these gaming devices have always been a part of our students’ lives. Likewise, a colleague recently observed that k-12 students today have pretty much always had the internet at schools and at home. It won’t be long before we can say the same about Tivo, iphones, ipods, and more.
It makes me wonder about the impact of such a media-rich environment, about our ability to keep abreast of ever-changing technologies, and about what’s coming next.
In this New Scientist article by AC Grayling (see my earlier review of his book, “Among the Dead Cities), the author makes the point that the recent deployement of military robots raises some serious ethical questions. Visit the article for an interesting discussion and to see my comments.
Here is some great advice from Seth Godin on how to get people to watch your YouTube video, and of course it applies to much more than YouTube. He mentions BlendTech as a great example of taking something that might be boring (a blender, for crying out loud) and making it engaging with its infamous “Will It Blend” videos.
We have available to us now more books than we can read in a lifetime, more music than we can listen to in a lifetime, more videos, more blog posts, more….. For the creators of all this media (and we are all potential creators) the key is to stand out.
Here is a very cool development out of the MIT Media Lab. Siftables allow the user to physically manipulate data as one manipulates blocks. Here is a link to a more detailed presentation on TED.
Amazon is now intending to make its ebooks ipod friendly. (see NY Times article) With the recent launch of its Kindle 2, Amazon was apparently trying to take control of the ebook business. However, a furor over the copyright implications of the Kindle’s read aloud feature, caused them to backpedal a bit on this feature, and now the move toward Apple friendly devices is another bold step by Amazon. I admire how nimble Amazon has been in the past few weeks. The ability to adjust quickly is essential in today’s marketplace and Amazon appears to be doing it well.
Robots interest me. The video below reports on robots as warehouse managers. The operation is fascinating, and it causes me to consider the implications surrounding labor saving devices. Surely we are displacing people from jobs. In some cases, these jobs might be dangerous, or tedious, or lead to chronic injury or disability, so it can be argued that such displacement is good. Bringing down costs is also a benefit. On the other hand, there is a cost in increasing the unemployment of humans, both for the individual and society. Generally we do not retreat from labor-saving technological advances, and I believe this trend will force us to redefine the concept of employment for the future.
I've decided to do some reorganizing to help focus my writing. I've created two additional blogs, one about the singularity and one about my music. Bear with me as I move things to the appropriate location. Visit them at the links below:
