Like Portland? Like mobile stuff? Like tech and Web stuff? Then get mobilated. Cell-webbed. Textoclicked.
Cloud Four (that’s my awesome company!) is helping to organize a new Mobile Portland group, where mobile people can get together and yak it up and make great leaps in ideas for mobility.
Keep an eye on Cloud Four’s blog for more information, or sign up at mobileportland.com.
See also coverage on Silicon Florist.
I am all wrought up today over Amazon’s new Kindle device.
As you probably know, I take my reading pretty seriously. But I also take my technology seriously. That’s why I’m all clenched about this.
Amazon’s $400 device is specifically for reading stuff: books, newspapers, magazines. It has an e-ink display, which mimics the look and contrast of a printed page. OK, I appreciate the focus (there is a lot of bellyaching in various tech-centric blogs and forums today about how reading should really be done on multi-purpose devices and cell phones–I totally disagree.). I actually appreciate the eschewing of other wingdings like a full-blown Web browser, in a strange way.
But here’s where the problems start.
What do you guys think? “Revolutionary” as they claim, or just another piece of garbage to throw on the e-book heap?
I blogged this thing today too. I’m pretty baffled by the design — your TNG reference is right on. WTF?
Personally, I’m gonna wait and see. I’m very interested in seeing one in person — I want to better understand the screen contrast, for one thing. I don’t mind the “books in the cloud” thing so much (there will soon be a breaking point where I need to stop buying physical books, or deal with my existing book problem) but only because I believe Amazon will be around for a long time. I very much like the notion that they’ll let me re-download stuff — I think that’s a big failing of the iTunes Store.
Another interesting thing I saw is that you can have up to 5 or 6 Kindles on one account, and multiple units can read the same book simultaneously. Imagine getting a couple of them (ouch, spendy…but still) and sharing books with your friends. Sort of neat, no? Not quite as neat as literally handing the book to a friend when you’re through with it, but still.
Anyway, I’m kinda meh. In some ways I hope it works, because I think it’ll benefit small publishers (the long tail blah-blah), but I also really like physical books. As soon as we start seeing Kindle-only content, I’ll start worrying.
;Chris
1. Can we hype something when it’s actually hype-worthy? E-readers are so 2003. Amazon has broken no new ground here, this has been tried before. (See: sony, etc)
2. Who cares about wireless connectivity? Books take time to read. I don’t need to download a new book RIGHT NOW. Leave it off, make it cheaper and have longer battery life.
3. Why is there a keyboard? Maybe I’m missing something, but all I really need to do is turn a page. See interface for PDF readers.
4. Hardware: I think everybody can agree that nobody at amazon has any taste. Look at their website. Couldn’t they have made it look more like, oh I dunno, A BOOK?
5. Accent the usefulness of electronic reading; don’t try and be a book replacement. Allow sharing and commenting on favorite passages, uploading of comments from scholars to help you through difficult passages, dictionary lookup of words, cross references, full text search, etc. Stats on which passages you read the fastest, etc. There’s all kinds of interesting stuff that could be done, but Amazon seems to have missed it all, and is simply hawking a book replacement.
-Brett
February 14th, 2008 at 5:15 pm
Jason’s presentation was great last night!
Congrats on the new group. Hope it takes off!