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Reading the New York Times On a Kindle 2
reifman links to his thorough and thoughtful review of the experience of reading a newspaper on the Kindle 2. "I've been eager to try The New York Times on the Kindle 2; here's my review with a basic video walk-through and screenshots. I give the Kindle 2 version of The Times a B. Software updates could bring it up to an A-. Kindle designers should have learned more from the iPhone 3G. Unfortunately, my Kindle display scratched less than 24 hours after it arrived. As I detail in the review, Amazon customer service was not very accommodating. Is it my fault — or will Kindle 2 evolve into an Apple 1G Nano-like $22.5M settlement? You can read about Hearst's e-reader for newspapers from earlier today on Slashdot."
Is this a review of the Kindle itself? Or the Kindle experience? Seems to be a bit wishy washy to me.
A friend of mine bought one for reading in the subway. He finds it great, and he points out correctly that for avid readers it's wonderful just from the standpoint of space conservation. For Manhattan-dwellers especially, that's a major selling point.
It's a pretty good product--the only bad thing about it is from the publisher's standpoint, since IIRC it requires you to prepare your books in a new format (which is a not-insignificant undertaking) and Amazon has near-complete control over the pricing structure. (The pricing structure thing hurts authors, too.)
Countering that is that it will make some books more accessible. It doesn't take much work to get books now, but the ability to have them in front of you and easily readable right away combined with sample chapters gives you at least part of the convenience of actually walking into a bookstore, only you get it anyplace you can get the data connection.
I can't speak to the durability, though, because it's still a new toy. Give it a year and see how it holds up in different conditions. But overall, this is definitely a shiny product, in the good sense as opposed to the coefficient-of-specular-reflection-is-too-high sense. It'll probably really help Amazon once the economy picks back up, since more people will have the income to spend on a Kindle and they'll have had a chance to improve it.
--- Thousands are enslaved every day.
'' Once your promotion expires, seven day home delivery of the New York Times costs $58.06 per month or $697 annually. A Kindle 2 sells for $359. The New York Times via Kindle costs just $13.99 per month or $168. You can buy a Kindle 2 with a one year subscription to The Times for only $527. Then, you can use the $169 savings to take your friend out to a very nice dinner - the one whose sister has the dogs who get their waste dumped in your blue plastic Times delivery bags (I guess I'll find out soon if she reads my blog when she asks about that dinner).
BusinessInsider mused that it costs The Times twice as much money each year to provide home delivery than it would to buy every subscriber a Kindle: "What we're trying to say is that as a technology for delivering the news, newsprint isn't just expensive and inefficient; it's laughably so." ''
Wow. That puts the kindle price into perspective!
Also, who spents 700 a year on newspapers any more? News, even good news, is no-cost online, right?
You assert it was easily scratched yet you do not know how it was scratched. If you don't know how it was scratched, then how can you assert it was easily done? You didn't properly protect the device so I don't see how it's Amazon's fault. You should get the extended warranty so that they will fix it or quit whining. Either way, I don't care.
Are agnostics skeptical of unicorns too?
What did it scratch?
I don't see this as an issue, or I would have returned my cat.
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
Will you hand me the sports section to read while you browse the NYT magazine?
Hey, where's the crossword?
That video is unwatchable ... why don't you try to focus your camera next time? and why the random use of italics in the text?
I am going to sound like a broken record. While I am very interested in Kindle 2, I am still waiting for these books to be DRM free. It's just so much easier and "thought-free" when I don't have to worry about DRM and how I use something. The higher the resolution, the better it is too. We are nowhere near true 300-dpi but that's a technical limitation at this point.
Speaking of DRM-free, Amazon does have an awesome MP3 store that is DRM-free with a large selection and often good prices. It would be nice if they had the same thing with books.
On the note about Amazon, I recently came across an interesting table that details the discounts on Amazon. Maybe someone will find it useful too. It is at http://www.uberi.com
Anyway, Amazon appears to be quite serious this time. We will probably see faster advancements in this area in the near future as competition heats up.
Here is another idea, why not charge subscriptions like regular paper (in the case of NY Times) but subsize for the Kindle 2 or other ebook readers, similar to the cell phone model...
Seriously? Every time with this shit?
Let me summarize the obvious: reflective display, not an LCD, ie you can actually read on it; first more-or-less practical generation of a new technology, as with everything else in the entire history of all technology, price will come down as it becomes more popular.
What is so fiendishly difficult to grasp?
sic transit gloria mundi
Just received a Kindle 2 for my wife, and she loves it. I'm waiting for Kindle 3, but I hope it has a few of these innovations: http://www.innovationinpractice.com/innovation_in_practice/2009/01/the-lab-innovating-the-kindle-with-task-unification-january-2009.html
and... you can't read text on an LCD?
and... you can't read text on an LCD?
LOL. Allow me to chime in with the OP for folks like you that refuse to get it.
Of course you can read text on an LCD, just like you can also read text on a CRT with 60Hz flicker, in giant lights at softball game, or hand scrawled on a bathroom wall with really bad kerning. You can also rub lemon juice on paper cuts to keep them from getting infected, but the majority of us choose not to.
The point is that e-ink is easier on the eyes, which makes what you're reading ... wait for it ... easier to read.
In Jeff Bezos' interview on The Charlie Rose show, he used a flashlight analogy, saying thta reading on a convential screen is like staring into a flashlight. The light may not be as bright as a typical flashlight, but it's a helluva lot brighter (and different) than the light reflected off a piece of paper. Or a Kindle. Ergo, Bezos opted not to use a LCD screen, while being aware of the tradeoffs of doing so. The reaction to his decision has ranged from praise to amazement to a shitload of Kindles being sold.
Amazon does have an awesome MP3 store that is DRM-free
Some of that might be true, but...
I am a longstanding customer of Amazon, and I have bought dozens of CDs through them. But the other day when I thought to buy a few tracks as MP3s, I was disappointed to get a message that the service is only available to US customers. (I am in Australia.) I can't think of a single good reason why they would need to pursue that strategy other than to enforce DRM in some way. They were happy to sell me a CD of the same thing, but they had made me grumpy, so I took my business elsewhere.
Pay by the page for what exactly? And how do you know what pages you might need without a comprehensive index - and even then unless you can see what you are getting, how do you know you'll get what you want?
You don't pay for 'part of a song' - likewise, I can think of no logical place you might pay for 'part of a book' either. I'm sure you'll hit me back with a list, but seriously, it's going to be a short one.
Pay by the page for what exactly? And how do you know what pages you might need without a comprehensive index - and even then unless you can see what you are getting, how do you know you'll get what you want?
Give the razor for free, sell the blades. Give the index for free, sell the pages. Hide all but the heading and first paragraph of every unpaid chapter so the reader can get an idea of what pages they need.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I don't have any inside information, but I can think of a couple very good reasons why they might not be ready to allow DRM-free MP3 downloads outside the US: non-uniform copyright laws and uncooperative copyright holders. For Amazon to actually allow MP3 downloads is not as simple as deciding they want to do it and then doing it. They need to be sure that they are not breaking copyright laws by doing so, which takes lots of lawyers lots of billable hours. They also need agreement from the copyright holders to license them to sell a downloadable copy of the MP3, which takes negotiation. If the copyright holders say no for whatever reason, their hands are tied.
It sucks, but it doesn't necessarily mean that Amazon is at fault or involved in anything more nefarious than not wanting to jeopardize their relationships with their content providers.
I'm sure someone else posted this and I can't find it, but you do pay for 'part of a song' - if you're buying a ringtone. If that's the only part that you need (i.e. you don't want the whole song) then it fulfills what you want. That said, I agree. I'm not sure why you'd want only some of the pages ... unless Amazon has started selling porn for the Kindle? ;)
Bark less. Wag more.
What if amazon goes under? All those ebooks that I may have bought will be gone. If you look at some of the music DRM services, what happens when Amazon decides not to support the format anymore?
I want an e reader because my books are piling up. But I want the same rights I get for paper books and until I get that I will not buy one. I have some books that are older than me. Now I see people with this e-reader or that e-reader and then a year or two later they have a new one and re-buy all their books.
I want all the benefits of paper books but without wasting all the space on books. Also as a society, what happens if in years people dig up our society and just find these e-readers with a proprietary format? All of our knowledge will be lost whereas with books/tablets at least they can get something to try to translate.
Whether or not reading on an LCD is painful depends on the LCD.
My REB 1100 e-book has an LCD screen and it's a pleasure to read on. It's nothing like "staring into a flashlight"; the backlight is adjustable and can be turned off entirely for many lighting conditions. In fact, for my primary reading usage I think it's a better approach than e-ink. I like to read in bed at night, and the REB's backlight set to its lowest setting is just enough to read comfortably in a dark room, but dim enough that it doesn't disturb my wife.
It also works acceptably in full sunlight, though it works better in the shade.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Also, people should be able to pay by the page for content rather than buy the book. Just like paying for songs instead of albums, this is the future of reading.
Are you serious? What sort of sick demented world do you live in? Why would someone want to buy one page unless it were for a sample, which is usually given out free?
Aside from the above speculation, here are ten solid, in-depth, good reasons why you're completely wrong. 1. Y
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Come on batteries to read a book (well maybe at night time, saves on flashlight batteries).
The Kindle, like just about all eBooks, uses an e-paper screen, which doesn't have its own light source. You would still need to provide your own. Not sure if the glare from a flashlight would be a problem though.
"Our opponent is an alien starship packed with atomic bombs. We have a protractor."
I was looking into buying a Kindle as soon as it becomes available here (Rightpondia), but after reading the license agreement on Amazon, I'm not sure anymore.
Do I understand it correctly, that..
- in case the Kindle should be lost/broken or I buy a newer model, then all books are lost, too?
- in case I switch to a different brand of ebook reader, I'm stuck with a load of unreadable books?
- I cannot loan a book to a friend, except by giving him the whole device?
- I cannot try to remove the DRM, otherwise Amazon will kill my service?
- Amazon is snooping what documents I have on my reader?
If that's correct, then - sorry to say that - it looks like Amazon is telling me: "HA! WE SCREWED YOU!"
Also, who spents 700 a year on newspapers any more?
People who know how to spell "spends"?
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
I've been an Amazon customer since 1998. I haven't had them screw up a single order. Not one.
Hell, I just bought a Plasma TV from them.
Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
It ain't difficult, you're spreading FUD.
You better watch out, there may be dogs about . .
Of course you can read text on an LCD, just like you can also read text on a CRT with 60Hz flicker, in giant lights at softball game, or hand scrawled on a bathroom wall with really bad kerning.
Most of us don't have workplaces where we're expected to stare at a bathroom wall for 8 hours straight, except for yo mama, and yet LCD screens seem to be good enough for the purpose.
Jeff Bozos' complaint about LCDs seems to be primarily with the backlighting. So why not use a transflective or even purely reflective LCD technology? The screen on my OLPC XO-1 is extremely comfortable to read with the backlight off.
albeit heavier and larger than a kindle, but still doable, the tablet, or something like the nokia N series. Wouldn't those work to read most any format?
Apparently not.
If it were a copyright issue, that would prevent them from selling certain CDs (which indeed it occasionally does), just as certain books are only offered for sale in particular countries.
I just went back and had another look at the message, and it seems to be a blanket operation:
"We could not process your order. The sale of MP3 Downloads is currently available only to US customers located in the 48 contiguous states, Alaska, Hawaii, and the District of Columbia." Not very useful.
Waaa, my kindle 2 screen got scratched, and amazon.com needs better customer service! Oh yeah, and reading the times on it is ok, so long as the articles aren't boring.
Um, they do allow Authors to give their content away. I downloaded a free e-book from Amazon over the weekend.
The sheer amount of ignorance on this forum has been STAGGERING. What the hell is wrong with you people?
And if you look up the Kindle Wikipedia page, they list off a dozen stores that sell and give away books that are readable on the Kindle.
Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
In Jeff Bezos' interview on The Charlie Rose show, he used a flashlight analogy, saying that reading on a convential screen is like staring into a flashlight. The light may not be as bright as a typical flashlight, but it's a helluva lot brighter (and different) than the light reflected off a piece of paper. Or a Kindle. Ergo, Bezos opted not to use a LCD screen, while being aware of the tradeoffs of doing so. The reaction to his decision has ranged from praise to amazement to a shitload of Kindles being sold.
Well that's true of a TRANSMISSIVE LCD, but not of the REFLECTIVE type. Reflective LCD's don't work out very well for color since the light has to pass through the filters twice, but a monochrome reflective LCD would be another story.
Buy books from fictionwise.com in DRM-free .mobi format.
Copy books onto Kindle via USB.
Problem solved.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
No copyright infringement. You aren't copying it. :-)
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
My REB 1100 e-book has an LCD screen and it's a pleasure to read on.
Yeah, I have both a REB 1100 and a REB 1200, and I think they're both great. What that clown Bezos fails to note with his smug "flashlight" analogy is that LCD backlights are adjustable. E-ink in bright sunlight is putting more light into your eyes than an LCD with the backlight turned off.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
The sheer amount of ignorance on this forum has been STAGGERING. What the hell is wrong with you people?
(steadfastly ignores the UID) Ah, you must be new here!
Buddha says, "Shut your karma hole."
How'd you buy anything from Amazon, genius? Yeah, with your account. Same with every fucking website in the world these days.
You better watch out, there may be dogs about . .
I understand eInk. What I don't understand is people like you who think they have cornered the market on understanding.
First of all, about LCDs and Jeff Bezos. You heard all that shit Bezos told you, like looking into a flashlight? Remember one thing Jeff Bezos is selling you something. Of course he has phrases that make the competition sound like getting bamboo shoved under your fingernails. That doesn't make them true. I've worked with computers for quite some time. I've spent far more time in my life starting at computer displays than staring at pages in a book. I can safely tell you that if LCD is worse than reading eInk, it's at least good enough that I can do 10-12 hours of it easy. So that makes LCD a-ok in my book.
And yes, I've used a Kindle. I even used a Kindle 2 last Tuesday, the day it came out (have friends who work on it).
What people like you are refusing to understand is some of us don't like buying a separate device for each task. You're talking about a world where many people don't even wear watches anymore. I could buy a watch, a pager, a cell phone, a PDA and a music player. But I didn't. I don't want to pay for them, don't want to carry them. I've got one device, which although not perhaps perfect at all these jobs, can do them quite well.
And this same thing applies to Kindle, especially when it's more expensive than anything I mentioned in that list above. eInk is pretty, great. But I fail to see why I should spend $360 for what it offers. And others telling me "I just don't get it" doesn't change my mind.
BTW, the cover/case for the new Kindle 2 is really nice. It's ridiculous Amazon thinks they can charge extra for it. They should ship it with a cut-down, non-leatherette cover or something, because that display does not feel like it will last uncovered. It's just too big for starters, it increases the possibility of it coming into contact with the one piece of metal swimming around in your bag that you forgot about.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
I was going to say something similar, as I have also never had a problem.. Not to say it's not possible though, especially with the items that don't actually come from Amazon themselves.. used books come to mind.
waiting for ad.doubleclick.net
This reviews reads a bit like "Misdeeds of the tobacco", by Anton Tchekov.
We are promised a review of how well the Kindle is suited to read the new york times on a daily basis, but the author spends a few paragraphs right off the bat informing us that he shoved his kindle in a bag with other junk (candy bars?) and scratched the screen, and then is surprised Amazon will not outright send him a new one to compensate. He even repeats it in the "the screen" section.
I don't know, but I spent a while thinking "yeah that's good to know and all, but where's the New York Times in there? Why is he trying so hard to justify how he scratched the screen?
Sure the author meant to say "Unfortunately I scrathed my Kindle display after less than 24 hours." I'm pretty certain that if you left the device sitting on the table scratches would not start appearing like some bad stop frame animation horror scene.
If I have a PDF --> MOBI converter (do they exist? dunno) I could conceivably do it without involving Amazon.
I was actually incorrect in my original post, as you don't have to email Amazon if uploading TXT to your Kindle. (you can, of course, if you'd like to zap it straight into the Kindle instead of connecting it to your computer)
*shrug* They're offering a conversion service, but it requires sending it along to Amazon.
Now, you can dislike the Kindle for the DRM or lock-in; I understand that. The objections raised here, however, aren't really accurate. Plus you're watering down the real issues (DRM, lock-in) with horseshit issues.
You better watch out, there may be dogs about . .
The objections raised here, however, aren't really accurate. Plus you're watering down the real issues (DRM, lock-in) with horseshit issues.
Again with the insults. Why was it "horseshit," by universal agreement, to be forced to use Sony's proprietary transcoding program on .MP3 files, while it's perfectly cromulent to be forced to email .PDFs to Amazon?
My understanding is that no, there's no conversion app that you can run yourself to put .PDFs on your Kindle. If this is incorrect, then my bad. If true, then I stand by my assertion that it's stupid to release an e-reader that won't read a more-or-less open, universally standardized document format. It makes no more sense than releasing a portable music player that can't handle .MP3 files natively.
The equivalent is complaining that iTunes encodes everything in AAC format. Sure it does, but you can change it to MP3 if you wish, and iPods play MP3s without batting an eye. (MOBI is a supported Kindle format)
The PDF issue - I'll concede the point that the Kindle should read PDFs somehow that doesn't involve mailing them to Amazon. The bigger issue is that the Kindle has trouble with PDFs, period. The whole email shenanigans is really a side effect.
You better watch out, there may be dogs about . .
The laws that cover reselling a CD are very very different (or, rather, in some cases are very very different) from those that cover selling a digital copy of a CD, so it's not that simple. Operating any operation internationally is very complicated. You have to ensure compliance with differing laws, shipping systems, customs, etc. The benefit of selling to a market has to outweigh the substantial costs of legally doing business in that market before it makes sense. Furthermore, even within the US, the actual interpretation of the laws that govern digital music sales has not been settled, adding risk-based costs to the assessment.
Add on that selling digital music is still a business in its infancy and I don't see why there has to be talk of anything more complicated than proving a model in one market before taking on the complexity of carrying it into other markets.
Moderate it all you want. I'm still right
I know you're an AC and I'm replying to a way dead article, but I have to say:
The GP specifically said "books" not newspaper, but "books".
If he had said newspaper, not book, I would have let it slide.