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Amazon Kindle Endorsed By Oprah
Oprah Winfrey enthused about the Amazon Kindle on her show today — it's her "new favorite thing" — and had Jeff Bezos on to announce a $50-off offer good till Nov. 1. A plug on Oprah is ordinarily a sign that a product has crossed over into the mainstream. But her show's audience has been slipping lately, and it's unclear how many cash-strapped citizens will be willing to part with $309 (after the special offer) for a new techno-gadget, for which they then have to shell out more money for DRM-encrusted content.
She's also on an infomercial selling it as a weight loss device.
I want one, but not bad enough to watch Oprah to find out these things...
Show this to your friends and family that don't know what a real hacker is
You can use free tools to convert PDF ( and other formats ) into the e-book format that it eats. ( at least for the Gen1 Kindle.. )
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Formerly known as Stedman.
Now that Oprah has given the go ahead for this I'll run right out and buy one!
...but the fact that she of all people is recommending this makes me not want to buy one...
Over 9000 penises anyone?
Bit of a disingenuous statement to make when you have a book club.
Let's face it, the Kindle is a one trick pony that needs a lot of help to ever make it mainstream (like the iPhone). It's like the Hulk, who can only punch and smash, except the Hulk is cool and the Kindle is pretty much the polar opposite of cool.
The Oprah show does a lot of good for people (so my mother defends), but this may be the defining moment when Oprah jumped the shark.
The New Book That Could Pay You Back -100 Times Over: www.Economtricks.com
One can only scratch their heads!
I will continue to use my N810 for ebook reading, and BAEN BOOKS and others for ebooks with no DRM at reasonable prices.
Paperback book - $10
Amazon Kindle from Oprah - $300
Overusing a Mastercard commericial as your template for every joke - Priceless....
How this would have been written if it were about the iPhone:
Oprah Winfrey enthused about the iPhone on her show today â" it's her "new favorite thing" â" and had Steve Jobs on to announce a $50-off offer good till Nov. 1. A plug on Oprah is a sure sign that a product has crossed over into becoming the greatest thing ever made. Her show's audience has been brilliant lately, and it's clear that even cash-strapped citizens will be willing to part with $399 (after the special offer) for a new techno-gadget, for which they then have to shell out more money for DRM-encrusted content.
To those who tagged this "so what?" I would like to pose a question in response. Have you seen what happens to products that get endorsed by Oprah?!?!
They become over night best sellers, most of the time. She has a cult like following that will buy up most anything she recommends. This is why it's interesting. We will now see if something that has failed to take off for quite a number of years will now do so, just because a pop icon gave it the thumbs up.
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order." -Ed H
for which they then have to shell out more money for DRM-encrusted content.
Nonsense. There are a ton of drm free books out there. I subscribe to Analog magazine for example, and get more drm-free books than I have time to read from fictionwise.com. If something is released only in crippled formats, then that's their loss, as it means I read one of the many other things on my list instead, or, if I *really* want to read it, as happened recently, I buy used paper. That's only happened once though, and I've been ebooking now for about 3 years (albeit my Treo and Sony Reader, but I know the Kindle supports drm free formats too).
Got to put hands on one a couple months ago and had to admit it's pretty cool. The display is quite good, very readable. My only fear was if the battery went dead or it got old. What happens to all the books you bought?
I could just see it in the bottom of some box five years from now, dead as a barn nail, battery shot. Then what? Can you replace the battery and recover the books? What happens when Amazon stops supporting them?
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Of the many, many years I've been reading Slashdot, the articles almost always say who submitted the article. It appears from this article that maybe Oprah submitted it. Maybe it was kdawson. What gives?
Slashdot's first reaction to VMware
I read the article on why Oprah's ratings have been dropping, and I find them extremely disturbing. Why do people have to be Christian in order for American's to think that their show is any good?
The OLPC XO is what, half that? (Okay, so you have to buy two.)
Let me know when they're $25, and the "books" are $1.99.
Amazon is meant to balance out iTunes. The Music industry is afraid Apple will become too powerful as a distribution scheme, and so they offer much better agreements to a rival to counteract the popularity of iTunes. If Amazon was well marketed or well branded enough to stand on its own against iTunes, it would never be allowed to sell DRM free music. Book publishers don't have to worry about that.
I was home sick one day and decided to destroy my soul with daytime tv. Along came Oprah, I caught about 20 minutes of it and it came across as a giant plug to get this fitness centre to sign up these "overweight" ladies waving a contract in the air that they were going to sign in order to lose some weight. How real the contracts were or how much it was going to cost them I don't know but Oprah must get some giant kickbacks.
Analytic & algebraic topology of locally Euclidean meterization of infinitely differentiable Riemmanian manifold
I own one of these myself and I like it quite well enough. http://www.ebookwise.com/ebookwise/ebookwise1150.htm
You get between 10 and 20 hours of battery power depending on the backlight settings. It is LCD and not E-paper, BUT it also has a touch screen and hyperlink capabilities to make up for it.
My sister was a die-hard Oprah fan and I thought she would be so for her entire life. Lately though, she's become entirely disappointed with Oprah's use of her "new" image to sell stuff. She won't watch the show anymore. No real news here for many of us, but it's really, *really* sad to me to see yet another person use their reinvented-celebrity status just to keep raking in cash.
To me, it's always been the same story: "Here, come watch my show so you can feel good about nice things *I'm* doing with my life, when what you really care about is 1) what gift people find under their chairs and 2) that you don't have to expend any energy to get that warm, fuzzy feeling." Sigh.
It's great. No need to rage about DRM, most of the files I have on it are not from Amazon. Though I'm sure they would like to fix that. You can basically email yourself any text file and it's there.
Another great feature is the wireless internet, which is now free (through the sprint network I believe), though I doubt it will stay that way forever. But while it lasts I enjoy looking at web pages while traveling on the train for free. It does fairly decent job of converting most pages.
Oprah also gave away a Kindle to everyone in her audience on Friday, which oddly enough, caused one woman in the crowd to tear up.
I read for hours every night on my iPhone instead of anything else. Why buy yet another specialized technodoodad to worry about when you have a complete, powerful, handheld computer that you can dial the brightness up and down on at need?
The only problem is Safari's scrolling mechanism, which sucks on a 250-page PDF document, or a long text document.
I wrote a PHP script that chunks larger books down and serves them chapter-by-chapter, and find this utility really convenient for that use.
Kindle = looks crappy + expensive in every way.
I'm planning on getting one, but waiting because of rumors of newer models of the Kindle coming out soon that are smaller/lighter.
My only drawback is that when I purchase a regular book and read it - I can then give away or sell the book. One I read a DRM e-book, that's it - can't legally do much with it....
I'm planning on using it for technical computer programming books - so I can have a large library with me at work....
I also like the fact that it has limited web browsing/email with no monthly charge - at least no charge yet....
You can buy a laptop for about the same price.
I liked what Amazon had to say about the Kindle when it came out; that they recognized that DRM limited what you could do with your content, so the tradeoff they were trying to make was that if you were willing to live with DRM, you could get your ebooks at a discount price. I can live with that idea. You want to make it worth my while to put up with the inconveniences of DRM? Okay.
However, when I started looking at prices to see if the deal had held true, I found that the ebooks I was interested in (at least to start with) all seemed to have either an insignificant discount or no discount. If you want to offer me the DRM encrusted ebook version of a $5.99 paperback as a $2 ebook, great... but don't offer it to me for $5.50, or even for $6.00 . In that case I have no incentive to use the ebook instead of the paper version except convenience, and frankly, convenience isn't worth *that* much to me.
It's rather a pity, too; the hardware is nice. (I've had one on loan for a couple days.)
it's the best! do it now! don't wait!
Did Oprah warn her faithful viewers that if Amazon ever abandons the kindle or the content, that there's a good chance all their "book collection" will be gone forever?
I still have books I bought 20 years ago. Who could possibly be confident your kindle and all those books would be working 20 years from now when DRM schemes are dropping like flies. Can you imagine what's going to happen when studios stop wanting to produce the "old" DVDs?
I've had my Kindle since last December, and I like it overall, I have sometimes thought about putting it up on eBay -- the hype sometimes gets to be a bit much.
Pro: Non DRM files from Gutenberg, ManyBooks, and others. I've been able to read "The Wizard of Oz" and lots of other books I've always wanted to read. You can email them to the device or hook it up via USB, and it's much better to read this way than on my computer/laptop.
Con: Batteries must be charged. I've had the Kindle in my bag for a while, take it out at lunch, and the battery is dead. If the Whispernet/Cell phone is turned off, it will last over a week, but if it's left on, the battery will only last for a couple of days.
Pro: Online access. With "free" built in data cell service (Whispernet), it's really cool to be somewhere, get an urge to read something, and download either the fiction or non-fiction. Free stuff comes from Feedbooks, and the Amazon store is pretty cool too.
Con: DRM, although it's not as bad as it's made out to be. Most books I read only once, so I don't mind paying a few bucks to get instant access, read it, and move on. If I plan to keep anything for reference or permanance, I'll buy a real copy. Many pop books are quick reads, I get it now, I don't have to wait at the library, and I'm OK that I may not have access to it in a couple of years.
Pro: Ease of reading. The display is nice to read, and I can read it for hours. I can with a regular book to, so I guess this is a wash.
Con: Fragility. I already broke on screen, and Amazon replaced it. This, along with the battery issue, makes be think before I throw it in the bag. A regular book doesn't have these problems.
There, my quick review. I like it, am keeping it, and it's not the earth-changer. Books aren't going anywhere anytime soon.
--Lance
which while it is Linux based, doesn't seem to let you access the OS :-(. I have mounted it on my Ubuntu Desktop and a Windows machine at work. Which gives you access to the internal storage. Which means you can back up your files. The internal storage is expandable, comes with 200M, I added 8G.
You can e-mail "documents" to an assigned e-mail address and if it is of a type they understand, they will convert it to their internal format and automatically download it to your Kindle for the price of 10 cents. Or you can e-mail it to another address and they will convert it and mail it back for free. Then you can mount the Kindle and drag the files over.
And the Amazon selection is supposed to be huge (~180,000). When I want a new Sci-Fi book, I shop the Amazon Store on the Kindle buy it and it downloads it to my Kindle and bills my One-click account. It also has newspapers and magazines that you can subscribe to. Which are also automatically downloaded.
It has a web browser, but the screen is electronic paper so it updates slowly and has a limited set of pixels. I would think that websites make for a phone would work well with this. You can search Google, Wikipedia or any other site you wish. And since Amazon picks up the tab, web browsing is free.
It also plays music, except that it only plays them randomly, so you can't cue up a list.
Since it uses "e-paper" it is on always, so unlike a laptop, you don't have to boot it and wait. Which is very convenient. I can be reading something at home, put it down, take it to work and pick it up and continue. And it keeps track of where I am in each book or magazine that I am reading.
And while I don't particularly like the DRM, it doesn't seem to be an issue. And if you don't like them you can download from the Gutenberg, et. al. projects.
Amazon comes up with another completely boring, not original enough to matter, useless idea and markets it as something 'revolutionary'. And works out an endorsement deal with Oprah, as if people who watch Oprah would give a crap.
Give me two wishes and I will wish away Microsoft and Amazon. Give me three and I'll also do away with world hunger.
FAQs are evil.
Enthusiastically endorsed by Oprah. Not to seem too cynical, but don't celebrity endorsements generally vary directly with the size of the kickback, er, honorarium?
Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, I have others.
For those of you are are just bitter about life in general and need to complain. Just to clear a bit of fog and confusion. Unlike most of the people responding, I own one so I'm not totally full of crap. 1. $309 seems a bit pricey but then the books don't cost as much as paper book. In fact they cost quite a bit less. Most of the books I've purchased have cost less than $3. Some less. That price also pays for lifetime access to the EVDO network which is used to deliver the content within 2 minutes of purchase to the book. Yes you can do some web browsing as well though that's a bit painful given the interface. The device also plays MP3 files for music while you read or audio books. The screen is electronic paper. No backlight. It can be read indoors or in the brightest sun. No problem. So far the price doesn't seem that bad. 2. If you buy books from Amazon they are DRM encoded. If you don't want to buy DRM books, download any of the thousands of free books available online and email them to the Kindle. That's really all there is to it. If you have PDF files then email them to the Kindle. That works too. 3. You can buy additional batteries. 4. A copy of all of your purchases is archived at Amazon and can be downloaded to a replacement device at any time. They can also be shared with anyone in your family with a Kindle on the same account. Finally, you can keep copies on an SD card that slips into the Kindle or on your PC via the USB cable. (which can also be used to load content.) 5. The battery charge lasts about 2 weeks with the radio off and about 3 days with the radio on. 6. It can do full text search across all of your content. 7. It can look up and define words and phrases. 8. You can annote the books. 9. you can clip content for use elsewhere. 10 etc. etc. etc. It's not a bad deal just because Oprah likes it anymore than it is a good deal becasue she likes it. It's just a decent device at a decent price
I always wait for Oprah's endorsement before buying technical products. Any idea what she thinks of the iPhone?
What about Amazon's EC2? I was thinking of building an online application around EC2, but obviously I wouldn't consider that if Oprah didn't like it.
I wish I had mod points so I could mod this redundant.
If you buy rent books from Amazon they are DRM encoded.
Fixed that for you.
And BTW, no thanks. If I want to BUY a book, I'll buy it. I'm not interested in RENTING applications, music, or books.
Interested in a Flash-based MAME front end? Visit mame.danzbb.com
Although the price for the Kindle will presumably fall over time, the bigger problem is still the DRM'ed content -- and Oprah is unlikely to change that. I write a book/lit blog and discussed the implications of the Kindle here and here. It's an impressive technical achievement that lacks--and might lack for a long time--the unrestricted books needed to make it a success.
Electronic books ruin the whole idea. I'm not against technology, but I like my books the old fashioned way. Sure, you may be able to electronically annotate things, but what happens when you delete it to make space and reload it later? Does the annotation remain? Also, I like to have all my books at the ready. I own thousands of books, which I would not be able to store and sift through electronically. On a book shelf (many books shelfs), I can scan quickly, pull up three or four books I need and go on my way.
Plus, if I loan a book and don't have it returned, I'm out $20-$50 (typically). If I loan the kindle and don't get it back, that's a more expensive mistake.
So, she's suffering the same problem as /.?
Controversy erupts as it is found that Amazon's memoir "A Million Little Kindles" contains false material.
Oprah's "Book Club" is go to the library and get the book. Only that. Either she does not recommend books for profit, or the publishing houses pay her.
It really depends on which books you're intending to read. You probably aren't saving that much compared to mass market paperbacks, but you are compared to trade paper or hard back. Where Kindle really shines is for stuff that's out of copyright. You can get really impressive collections that would be very expensive- not to mention heavy and taking up a lot of shelf space- for $1 or less.
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.
"Oprah also gave away a Kindle to everyone in her audience on Friday, which oddly enough, caused one woman in the crowd to tear up."
I bet she was expecting something nicer from the rich woman. How sad.
how the hell does Oprah make it onto the front page?! Besides, Oprah will promote just about anything
ok, you can mod me down now
You can at least get loads of DJVU books at archive.org
20,000 leagues under the sea just got all wet.
The question was about english text. I have read Spanish, Swedish, French, and Italian on my Kindle, all of them have characters that are not available in English. I have never used eastern, or cyrillic scripts.
It displays diacritics without any problems, however I have never used eastern, or cyrillic scripts.
... by a very large margin ($50 mil last year versus $12 mil for the runner up). Given that, I'm willing to excuse her hyping some toys.
she's always pimpin' skype on her show (I know this cause my gf watches it on the mythbox, honest ;) )
This bugs me more, skype is becoming huge and it's a proprietary network instead of people using SIP for voip.
A while ago there were rumors that a new version of the Kindle was coming out in October. Maybe there is something to the rumors and the discount is to help clear out old inventory?
This is the way Bi-Coloured Python-Rock-Snakes always talk.
She also endorsed Obama. The Kindle must be shit.
"A plug on Oprah is ordinarily a sign that a product has crossed over into the mainstream."
Remember back in 2000 when Oprah told the world how cool 3com's Audrey internet appliance was, and within a year nearly every family in America had one? Man, those things were sweet! Oh, wait...nevermind.
Still, given the success of her book club, I wouldn't be surprised if Oprah did good things for Kindle sales.
I'm as much of a gadget freak as anyone, but I'm old school about books. I like the tactile pleasure of actually having pages in my hand. I spend enough damned time on electronic screens during the day. I want to relax when I read a book. I couldn't stand to read anything but short texts on an electronic device. Give me a musty old library or a book store any day.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
You realize of course, this is the reason the iPhone doesn't have cut and paste. Steve doesn't want to see this sort of thing happening here.
Think that's stupid? YOU come up with a reason for no cut and paste.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
A $10 dollar book shared between 10-15 friends is no more than a dollar a book.
Never run out of batteries, never worry about dropping your book and breaking it and then having to send it in to get fixed.
You miss place a book some where, no big deal get another.
You can buy a $100 netbook that'll do the same thing and more.
I'm definetly not sold on the idea.
As an editor and writer who saw his first published story set in hot metal, I marvel at Amazon's Kindle reader and its role in the future of the "printed" word.
I'm thrilled to see Oprah endorse Kindle!
No traditional book can offer the interactive platform I've created for the Kindle edition of my novel Brazil or open the door to actively sharing the magic that goes into the making of a monumental novel.
I've linked the e-text to an online guide with 200 images and illustrations, providing an indispensable companion on a fictional journey through five hundred years of Brazilian history. Plus my working notes and the journal kept on a 20,000-kilometer trek across that vast country.
You can see the guide at my website: http://www.erroluys.com/
Were Gutenberg here to see the Kindle, he would have one word to say: "Bravo!"
Oprah is one of the biggest overrated hypes in the world along with Harry Potter and Golf... seriously.. what does she know about Kindle..? just stick to your lame ol'stuff Oprah..
...shouldn't it be "jumped on the couch"?
n/a
Oh well.
is there anything in the market similar to the kindle that can read pdf's or regular txt files and is really cheap ?
Women listen to Oprah. Women do what she tells them to. It's sort of frightening actually.
For years I was telling my wife how neat TiVo was. All the stuff it could do (and this was before TiVo had competition, before MythTV, etc.) and how we should get one. She ignored me. I don't think she was even listening. I think she heard "blah blah blah I want to spend money on gadgets" and tuned me out.
Then one day Oprah had a show where she went on and on about how cool TiVo is. Suddenly my wife wanted one. And mine being a typical marriage, that's when we bought one.
Sure her ratings are slipping but Oprah endorsing something is significant because how all the women who watch her show will buy one and do as she says.
Schnapple
my wife wants one for xmas now -- damn you oprah!
Nine thousand penises
You gonna read it on the subway? I love paperback books. They're cheap, you can stick one in the side pocket of your cargo pants, and if they are lost or damaged, you're only out a few dollars. yes, I have a laptop. I have two laptops. I'll soon have three. I don't use my laptops on the subway, standing in line at the DMV, or waiting to buy my ticket to the show. I do read some in a pb while waiting. Paperback books, they make my list of TOP TEN BEST INVENTIONS EVER.