michael’s thoughts

collected

Disappointed About Kindle Newspaper Options

Thursday, January 28th, 2010

I am taking a journalism class this semester as a way to ease back into the academic world and finish up my degree.  Part of the class is to stay on top of the news, which I am generally good about.  I listen to the BBC World Service, NPR, and have a subscription to The Economist.  But I do not read a daily newsprint newspaper.

I’m not overly excited about the idea of subscribing to a paper edition of The Washington Post or New York Times and I’m also not a big fan of reading the paper on a computer screen.  I was hoping this might be a good push to motivate me to pick up a Kindle.

Unfortunately from reading the reviews of the New York Times on Amazon’s Kindle store, it appears that the Kindle edition is abridged.  I could understand that some photographs and perhaps even charts wouldn’t translate well to the Kindle edition, but it turns out that they don’t even publish all of the stories in the Kindle edition.  That really disappoints me as I’m not going to buy a Kindle and pay the somewhat expensive monthly subscription charge for an abridged edition of the newspaper.

If they change that in the future I will be a customer, but for now I think I’ll stick with the web edition.

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Kindle DX is the Kindle I’ve Been Waiting For

Sunday, May 17th, 2009

I have been excited about the prospect of eInk readers for a long time.  Back in January of 2006 I wrote about looking forward to the Sony Reader but expressed that a tabloid sized version that would allow me to read periodicals is what I really want.  It looks like Amazon’s upcoming Kindle DX will finally realize that dream.

I’m a fan of books.  I read a fair amount and I like having a bookshelf of paper volumes.  I’m not sure that I would use an eInk reader to take the place of my paper novels.  The value for me in an eInk reader is in periodicals and PDFs of technical manuals.

I have a paper subscription to The Economist but there is no value to me in having piles of previous weeks issues laying around my house.  I wouldn’t mind switching that to an eInk version.  And as I wrote back in January 2006 I’d love to be able to get trade press such as Daily Variety delivered electronically.

I also download a lot of PDF manuals for various technical products.  I don’t like to print them out as it’s a waste of paper.  On the other hand, I am not thrilled with reading lengthy documents on an LCD or CRT screen.  The main reason I haven’t bought an e-reader so far is that they have not had good native support for PDF.  The Kindle DX does support PDF without having to convert the file which is a must-have feature for me.

I haven’t preordered a Kindle DX but if the user experience reviews are positive once it’s released I think I may purchase one.  The selection of periodicals available in the Kindle store is limited but I hope it will expand over time.  It really seems like an excellent platform for regional trade papers.  If I could get Variety and the Hollywood Reporter on the Kindle I’d consider renewing my subscriptions to those papers.  Digital delivery is the future of news.  At least for me.

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Amazon Should Launch a Desktop Kindle

Friday, March 13th, 2009

Amazon recently launched an iPhone Kindle application that allows you to read your purchased books on the iPhone.  In fact, you don’t even need to have a Kindle to use it.  It seems to me that the next step would be to launch a desktop or web based Kindle interface.  I can think of a lot more use cases where people would want to have access to their Kindle purchases from a computer when they might not have their Kindle available.

In other Kindle speculation, Tim O’Reilly mentioned the idea of marrying the Kindle with O’Reilly Media’s Safari book subscription service.  I think this is a great idea.  In fact, it’s such a great idea that if they do it I may buy a Kindle.

Call me old fashioned, but I don’t really love the idea of buying digital copies of novels, biographies, etc.  I really enjoy having a printed book.  I think a better model would be a “dual use sale”.  If I cold buy a physical book on Amazon and pay a small charge, perhaps $2, to also have it available immediately on the Kindle that would interest me.  I still want to have the physical book and I’m not interested in purchasing the content twice for different formats.

Barring a business model change in the publishing world that would facilitate that, I would love to have a Kindle for reading technical material.  Books, journals, conference proceedings, etc.  If Amazon can get the PDF support on the Kindle to the point where a PDF technical document looks as good as their proprietary e-books, I would buy one.

Having Kindle access to the Safari library would be similarly appealing.  So much so that I expect I would buy a Kindle and subscribe to Safari if that integration were available.

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