Is Kindle II slower than 1st gen?

Just back from a long weekend in Bermuda, where we met three (!) Kindle readers at our tiny beach. One couple (She: The Girls From Ames, on her Kindle II; He: a thriller, can’t remember what, on his 1st gen.) told us they buy several books per week between them, and report that the Kindle II has much slower download speed.

My wife and kept our manuscript-laden Kindles safely packed away, while I dug into a good old-fashioned paper copy of David Grann’s THE LOST CITY OF Z and a galley of the new Jonathan Tropper novel THIS IS WHERE I LEAVE YOU.  (I’m a new fan).   She read & loved the very creepy Stieg Larsson’s THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATOO, in paperback.

Bezos Commits to Losing Money On Kindle Editions On Multiple Devices

The NYT reports more remarks from Jeff Bezos at the Wired conference:  (boldface comments mine)

“The device team has the job of making the most remarkable purpose-built reading device in the world. We are going to give the device team competition. We will make Kindle books, at the same $9.99 price points, available on the iPhone, and other mobile devices and other computing devices.”

In other words, he both perpetuates the $9.99 is our top price fallacy, and commits the company to losing money on Kindle files even when it isn’t making money on the device sales. As for why they don’t sell the Kindle reader at a discount in exchange for an agreement to purchase content, “My opinion, and so far the market has responded to our approach, is very simple. Instead of driving the cogitative complexity of a two-year commitment, tell people, “This is the actual cost of the device.’”

He also states that the Kindle will be able to read other ebook formats in the future:

The latest Kindle model has better support for Adobe’s PDF file format, and he said that in the future, Kindle readers would support other formats as well. (He didn’t say anything about Adobe’s protected format, which competes more directly with the Kindle format.)

from publisher’s lunch

New Kindle announcement on Wednesday?

Publishers Marketplace reports that this Wednesday, May 6th, Amazon is holding a press conference – presumably to announce a new Kindle

Amazon will hold a press conference on Wednesday morning at a Pace University building (on the site of old NYT offices), presumably to debut a version of Kindle with a larger screen. At one point the media had decided the rumored bigger Kindle would be aimed at the educational/textbook market, but now they’ve decided it’s focused on displaying magazines and newspapers, trying to beat Plastic Logic and other devices in development to market. “People briefed on the plans” tell the NYT that the New York Times is “expected to be involved in the introduction of the device,” but a spokesperson for the New York Times declines to comment.

(however,  Pub Marketplace links to an NYT page which doesn’t mention the news conference at all — so your guess of its accuracy is as good as mine.)

Here’s hoping for some much-needed improvements to the Kindle, including:

1. Notes organization:
   1. All notes, bookmarks, and clippings are mixed together in the text file called “My Clippings” by the date entered;  I’d like to see them sorted by book and book page (or even chapter heading!).
   2. All notes are cited only by location in the text.
   3. I’d like to email my notes on one document to myself – or otherwise retrieve them without jumping through the hoops of importing my clippings
2. Book organization:  I have 14 pages of books right now.  I’d like to put them in folders:  new submissions, client books, pleasure reading.
3. Page numbers:  My colleague would very much like to be able to tell how long a book or proposal is – while within the document as well as looking at the Home screen.    Book page numbering is not yet obsolete, when we as readers go from kindle to book to computer screen every day!
4. Chapter headings on our own documents would also be useful. Particularly if page numbering isn’t possible.
5. Faster text entry.  The keyboard has a painfully pronounced delay, which makes making notes difficult.
6. Gifts: I’d like to be able to send a gift to another Kindle user
7. I’d like it to be easier to switch credit cards for Kindle purchases – even to be able to on the device itself.

and an anti-wishlist:

1. Do NOT increase the cost for sending your own documents — particularly if none of the above innovations for working on our own documents are made available.

Addendum:  news of the announcement can be found here, at All Things D.

Amazon increases fee for sending documents

Amazon has announced that they will increase the fee for sending your personal documents to your Kindle — and apparently they’ll start charging for it at all!

Starting May 4, in addition to the existing list of supported file types (DOC, HTML, JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP, TXT, AZW, MOBI, PRC), you can send RTF files to your Kindle email address for convenient wireless delivery. In addition to the existing experimental support of PDF, you can also send DOCX files for conversion. Some complex PDF and DOCX files might not format correctly on your Kindle.

We have also modified the fee associated with sending personal documents wirelessly to your Kindle. This fee is now based on the size of your file. The fee for Personal Document Service (via Whispernet) is 15 cents per megabyte rounded up to the next whole megabyte.

Until this point, Amazon’s official policy was to charge 10 cents — but formally and in practical terms, Amazon did not apply any charge.    In a meeting with agents, Dan Slater at Amazon announced that they didn’t charge for sending documents, and they expected never to do so.

Personally, I’m quite disappointed in this policy – and that they announced this over their (largely book publicity) blog, with no email sent to Kindle owners.

If Amazon does put this into place, I would expect at minimum these files to be converted in better formats — the metadata changed to reflect the author and title, chapter headings and a table of contents indicated, and other functionality edits available.   I would also hope that Amazon makes a better home converter for personal documents available – not just unofficially relying on Mobipocket’s PC only document creator (or Calibre for Macs).

From Gear Diary via Publishers Lunch

Kindle-holder: The Pursuit of laziness

XKCD creator Randall Munroe was bothered by having to exercise two or three muscles to hold his kindle up while reading in bed, lying on his side, so he created this lovely Kindle-holder:

(via Boing Boing Gadgets)

Screensavers for Kindle 2

The smart bloggers over at Blog Kindle have made up a download&edit process to add your own screensavers to your shiny new Kindle 2:

Before you continue with the instructions below, please understand that you are doing it at your own risk and this can potentially void your warranty. On the bright side, the update seems small, straightforward and reversable and several people (myself included – see pictures below) have successfully applied it to their devices.

To enable custom screensavers:

1. Download kindle_screensaver_hack-0.3.zip. This seems to the latest version now and I’ll try to keep this post updated with more versions as they become available.
2. Unpack it.
3. Connect your Kindle to your PC via USB. Go to the Kindle drive (usually K:\)
4. If you don’t see system folder, you need to configure Windows to show hidden files and folders. Otherwise go the next step.
5. Go to the \system folder and create sceen_saver subfolder in it.
6. Copy all of the images you want your screensaver to randomly cycle tough. Both PNG and JPEG formats are OK. While Kindle will resize images it’s best to resize them to 600×800 beforehand. Definitely don’t try putting 10 megapixel photos from your camera there as screensaver would then take long time to load and image will not display right. Good freeware tool to edit images is Paint.NET
7. Copy Update_kindle2_user_screen_savers.bin that you’ve unpacked in step 2 to the root directory of your Kindle 2.
8. Unplug the USB cable.
9. Press “Menu”, select “Settings”, press “Menu”, select “Update Your Kindle”.
10. It normally should take under a minute to update and reboot your Kindle. And you’re done!

If you did everything right you should see the following in at the bottom of your settings screen.

via blog kindle

The Secret Voice Behind Kindle 2’s Automagic Book Reading is…

The NYTimes’ David Pogue says the Kindle 2’s reading mysterious voice is Tom Glynn, an emo folk singer dude with beautiful hair.

via gizmodo via Tom Glynn via Pogue’s twitter via Jalopnik’s Wert

Seth Godin’s latest riff

Marketing guru Seth Godin thinks Amazon can turn the Kindle from an e-reader into a cutting-edge tool for marketing books  — and offers some thought-providing suggestions.   Among them: allow publishers to include a pass-along credit, so you can share the book with a limited number of Kindle-owning friends; link to Facebook so you can see which books others are sharing (not a bestseller list – a “most-shared” list), allow Friends to view your margin notes — great for reading groups.

Pogue reviews the new Sony e-reader

David Pogue of the New York Times tried out the Sony PRS-700 — and found that it’s much prettier, but all of its improvements make the reading experience worse.

First, it’s gorgeous. It’s made of sleek black metal, which is a better margin around the light-gray reading screen than the Amazon’s strange off-white plastic. And the Sony Reader does away with the vestigial thumb keyboard that makes the Kindle look strangely elongated.

What is it with Amazon, anyway? Why doesn’t it seal the deal by making the Kindle look stunning and sleek? The Kindle 2 is better than the original, but it still looks like it was designed by the makers of the Commodore 64.

Second, the Sony Reader 700 has two things many people sorely wish the Kindle had: a touch screen, which lets you turn pages by swiping your finger, and built-in illumination, so you can read in the dark. (The Kindle screen requires external light to read–like a book.)

So it’s a total Kindle-killer, right?

Actually, not in the least.

The beauty of the E-Ink screen on both the Kindle and the Reader is that it simulates the look of ink on paper. The black particles that form the images on the page are right there on the surface of the glass, as though printed there; it’s extremely satisfying to read at long stretches.

But in order to add the touch screen and the lighting, Sony had to add new layers on top of that screen–and it totally ruined the effect. Now you’re painfully aware that you’re looking at the words through a couple of transparent layers, and contrast suffers as a result; worse, the touchscreen layer introduces an annoying reflective glare that’s almost impossible to eliminate in any light. It’s deeply frustrating.

…

Second, Sony’s bookstore is priced higher and contains far fewer titles (under 100,000, compared with Amazon’s 240,000). Both devices also accept text, Word and PDF documents, meaning that you can fill them with the tens of thousands of copyright-expired, free e-books from the Web (at Gutenberg.org, for example). Sony says that the Reader also works with “other eBook stores and sites that offer PDF or EPUB eBooks — with or without copy protection, for purchase or for free.” But I’m not aware of any e-book store that’s better stocked or organized than Amazon’s.

This is for everyone wondering whether to get a Kindle or a Sony e-reader.   You probably figured out my opinion long ago — but now it’s proven: I’m not alone in considering the Kindle above and beyond.

The Kindle 2.0, deconstructed

The folks at ifixit.com have taken apart their brand new Kindle 2.0, and boy does it look cool inside!

Kindle 2.0

Fascinatingly – even when you take it apart, the e-ink screen still works…