"Kindle" entries
Apple, the Boomer Tablet and the Matrix
I have written about Apple's inevitable assault on the Tablet market before. What I hadn't factored until recently is how symbiotic such a device would be for Baby Boomers. Why Baby Boomers? Well, for the same two reasons
that this demographic is unlikely to embrace the palm-sized iPhone en masse. One, such a bookish-sized tablet device — I'll call
it the Boomer Tablet — would be tailor-made for home Wi-Fi setups, thereby
obviating the mobile access costs associated with iPhone, a significant barrier
for a generation that is programmed to keep mobile bills within a tight
spending range. Two, because a larger-form factor device would offer Boomers a bigger viewing screen and "lifestyle" settings, like fatter keys and a more forgiving
keyboard to ease input, and wizard-like shortcuts to simplify recurring tasks.
Undocumented Kindle "Clippings" Limit?
O'Reilly author Shelley Powers is a heavy user of Kindle's "clipping" feature, and has run into an apparently undocumented clipping limit imposed by Amazon: I tried to find information about the clipping limit in the Kindle TOS or User Guide, but nothing was covered. I also tried to find out if one can "delete" items from the existing clipping file,…
Amazon's Physical vs. Digital Dissonance
In March of 2008, I wrote about the frustrating experience of trying to get this blog added to Kindle. Fourteen months later, apparently that “rather large ingestion queue” is still full, because the blog never showed up, and I never heard another peep about it. (There is now a self-publishing feature for blogs, but as with their self-publishing book feature (known as DTP), the standard terms of service you must accept to participate aren’t something many commercial publishers will be willing or eager to swallow.)
Report: Large-Form Kindle to Target Textbooks and Newspapers
The Wall Street Journal says a large-form Kindle — rumored to make its debut tomorrow — will be partially targeted at the textbook market: Beginning this fall, some students at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland will be given large-screen Kindles with textbooks for chemistry, computer science and a freshman seminar already installed, said Lev Gonick, the school's chief…
Reinventing the Book in the Age of the Web
There’s a lot of excitement about ebooks these days, and rightly so. While Amazon doesn’t release sales figures for the Kindle, there’s no question that it represents a turning point in the public perception of ebook devices. And of course, there’s Stanza, an open ebook platform for the iPhone, which has been downloaded more than a million times (and now has been bought by Amazon.) But simply putting books onto electronic devices is only the beginning.
Amazon Acquires Lexcycle
Lexcycle, the company behind Stanza, has just announced it's been acquired by Amazon: We are not planning any changes in the Stanza application or user experience as a result of the acquisition. Customers will still be able to browse, buy, and read ebooks from our many content partners. We look forward to offering future products and services that we hope…
Over 160 O'Reilly Books Now in Kindle Store (without DRM), More on the Way
I’m happy to announce that more than 160 O’Reilly books are now available on Kindle, and are being sold without any DRM (Digital Rights Management). Though we do offer more than 400 ebooks direct from our website, the number for sale on Kindle will be limited until Amazon updates Kindle 1 to support table rendering (“maybe this summer” is the most specific they would get). We expect to add another 100 or so titles in the coming weeks; those have needed a more detailed analysis of the table content to identify good candidates. There were two main reasons we held our books back from sale on Kindle: poor rendering of complex content and compulsory DRM.
Readers Boycotting Kindle Titles Priced Above $9.99
Pricing is a red-hot topic among publishers when it comes to ebooks. As I said in a Q&A for Forbes.com last week, cost-driven pricing (especially when the costs in question are calculated based on printed output) is a poor approach for ebook publishers. Readers simply don't care how much it costs a publisher to produce an ebook — they only care how much it's worth to them. (This is especially true for the iPhone, where books must compete alongside games, music, movies, and other "apps" primarily priced well below $10.)
Sony-Google Deal Adds 500k Public Domain Books to E-Reader
Sony is adding 500,000 public domain EPUB-based titles to its Reader catalog through a partnership with Google. Paul Biba at Teleread examines Sony's rationale: Sony's apparent intent, meanwhile, beyond adding value to the Reader, will be to use public domain books in ePub to entice people to install its software and in time buy its reader devices. In the…
Jakob Nielsen: Kindle Content Must be Kindle-Specific
Jakob Nielsen offers an in-depth look at Kindle formatting best practices: For Kindle, it's certainly unacceptable to simply repurpose print content. But you can't repurpose website content, either. For good Kindle usability, you have to design for the Kindle. Write Kindle-specific headlines and create Kindle-specific article structures. [Link included in original post.] (Via Joe Wikert's Twitter stream) Related Stories:…