Apple will take any of their old hardware off your hands and recycle it/dispose of it correctly- just drop it off at an Apple Store. If you're trying to dispose of an old iPod, they'll give you a discount towards the purchase of a new one. Apparently they also recycle stuff from other manufacturers if you buy a new replacement item from them.
Amazon also has a recycling program available for their Kindles- you mail it in and they take care of it from there.
I'm pretty sure Sony has a similar program for their many electronics offerings.
I personally would only take advantage of these programs if the device in question was completely borked. An old iPod or computer can be resold easily enough on craigslist or eBay, but a nonfunctional one is just junk, and I have enough of that in my house as it is.
Some links:
http://www.apple.com/environment/recycling/
http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=200197550
http://www.panasonic.com/environmental/recycling-electronic.asp
http://www.sonystyle.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/CategoryDisplay?catalogId=10&storeId=10151&langId=-1&categoryId=8198552921644513777
I can vouch for this. My rocket scientist dad met my electrical engineer mom when they were both riding motorcycles on the 405 in LA, and got caught in a traffic jam. 30 years later, they don't have bikes anymore, but they are still together and happy.
That's another important point- Amazon's international support is nonexistent at best, and if all the computers you have access to are thumb-drive disabled (like anything belonging to the DoD), then you're SOL.
This is a major problem for one of Amazon's target demographics, the business traveller. If all of your travel is in the states, then great, but many people do end up doing lots of international travel.
Seriously? I would think leaving those out would be a huge mistake, except for maybe crosswords and sudokus, those would be hard - but maybe worth it in the end.
I don't know why they do it, just that they do. I'm glad they do, since ads suck and Craigslist got me 3 of my last 4 jobs, where newspaper classifieds have failed me, but I don't know that it was a wise business decision.
I like Google News, but I would never use it as a primary news source; it's inherently sensationalist. Whatever lots of people are writing about is what makes it on the front page. You're just as likely to see Jon&Kate drama as you are to see Iran protests. That's the downside of using an algorithm instead of human editors.
What I do use it for is getting the whole picture on a particular event. Read articles on the same event from Fox, CNN, BBC, AP, Al-Jazeera, NYT, and Daily Kos, and you're likely to understand a) what actually happened, b) the possible outcomes, and c) what the nutjobs on all the various extremist sides think, and what they might do about it.
They are all single column. The Kindle 2 screen is too narrow for two columns, in my opinion.
They are SUPPOSE to be providing multi-column, more traditional newspaper layouts for the DX, but they have not yet. I do know that the Kindle 1 and Kindle 2 actually receive different versions of the newspaper to handle their different navigation schemes; the same newspaper downloaded on a Kindle 1 will have Next Article-Previous Article links at the beginning and end of every article. The K2 does not, as a left or right push on the joystick will achieve the same thing. Content does not differ. So, it's not a big jump to assume that whenever Amazon/the newspapers are ready, you'll see columns on the DX, while the Kindle 2 will remain single-column. No guarantees on when or if they'll deliver, though.
"The Front Page" includes any article where the headline is on the front page of the print edition. There's normally only 5 or so articles.
To be fair, articles on/. are chronologically ordered. EVERY article has it's turn at the top. In a newspaper, the real news could be on page 3, but the editor isn't interested in it or doesn't think it's important.
I rather like my newspaper on the Kindle, just for the fact of the small size and not having to crawl under the car to retrieve the paper. In addition, articles are in one piece, not continued on page A28. The articles are not abridged. The rest comes down to the individual paper and their publishing habits, and how much effort they're putting into the Kindle edition.
I get the Washington Post on my Kindle. It never has more than one picture per article, and sometimes when there are multiple pictures in the print edition, the wrong caption is attached to the picture in the Kindle edition. There are no ads, classified, comics, crosswords, sudokus, or horoscopes. All of the local sections and once-a-week sections are included. It is delivered every morning while I stand on the metro platform. The download takes about 30 seconds. Make sure to get it on the platform- Sprint doesn't have towers in the tunnels in DC.
There are separate sections for "The Front Page" "Politics & Nation" "World" and "The Fed Page," which I believe (not sure) are all rolled into the A section in the print edition.
You can clip a whole article with two clicks, which copies the whole article into a text file that can later be moved to a computer.
Periodicals are automatically deleted when they are more than seven issues old. You can flag any particular issue to be saved, and it will not delete it, although once seven issues have passed (a week for newspapers, seven months for magazines), you will no longer be able to re-download that issue from Amazon, although if you have stored it on your computer, you can always re-load it by USB. This is a demand on the newspapers part, as they make good money selling back articles. It's also largely moot, as most people throw away their newspaper when they're done reading it anyways.
The Kindle newspapers are no less timely than print newspapers, as they ARE the print paper in content. For breaking news, there's the NYTimes Breaking News Blog, which I don't subscribe to, and Google News open on my browser during the day at work.
The Washington Post has made huge leaps over the past year and a half on their Kindle edition. Every couple months I notice something in the layout has changed, and always for the better. When they made that big deal about the Business section being rolled into the A section, it has remained separate for Kindle users- the change was made to save on printing costs, after all.
I read my news on the Kindle 2. The Kindle 1 has a different set of behaviors (never automatically deleted old newspapers, leading to memory filling up, no joystick for easy navigation). The DX is just a Kindle 2 with a larger screen and (reportedly poor) native PDF support, so newspapers should not be any different than on the K2.
It's REALLY EASY to go get a single issue of a different paper, if you want one that day. Today I want to read the LA Times and see what's happening in my parent's area? It's kinda hard to find newsstands selling the LA times in DC, but I can do it easily on the Kindle.
No periodical that I know of has TTS disabled, although it's a terrible idea. The TTS software is terrible with proper names.
The main issue with newspapers on the Kindle stems from- what else?- DRM. A normal book purchase for a Kindle is available on all devices associated with that account (up to 6). A periodical subscription is tied to one device only. That means if you have His and Her Kindles, then you'll need two subscriptions for both devices to get the same paper. Also, this means that if you are backing up back issues on your computer and your Kindle breaks and is replaced, you will lose access to those back issues, unless you break the DRM. Switching which Kindle a periodical is assigned to is easy, but if you change your settings twice a day every day, you are likely to attract attention. Periodicals can only be assigned to Kindles, not to iPhones/iPod touches, although iPhones have their own methods of newspaper-getting.
Anyone have any questions about the actual implementation of Kindle newspapers? Nothing like actual facts to base a discussion off of!
The problem with that idea is that you're a lot more likely to feel bitter after sinking $60 on a crappy game. If you bought 5 crappy games on an iPhone, and each of them cost anywhere between $0 and $5, you may have lost a total of $10-20.
Most of the games I've purchased for my iPhone range from crappy to mediocore. However, I'll never regret that $.99 on Solebon Solitare, and I won't mourn the $.99 spent on that crappy Zuma clone. It amused me for about an hour, which is not bad for a dollar.
I spend about $10 on iPhone games a month. Most of them get played for a few hours and deleted. They serve their purpose as short-term amusement while waiting in lines or downtime at work. Of course,/. is free, and consumes far more work downtime...
Yeah, the Mobipocket thing is a bucket of bad news. Amazon should have rolled it into the main Kindle store or something, but they are just stifling the PC ebook market instead.
You email/call customer service within 7 days of purchase. They don't even ask for a reason, although if you provide one they will attempt to address it. For example, when they process a return based on formatting errors, they will include in the refund notification that they have informed the publisher of the problem (it's the publishers problem to fix, not Amazon's.)
When I tried to get a refund for a 7 month old book based on TTS disabling, I got a) a refusal because it had been quite a bit longer than 7 days, and b) a rather large description of why TTS had been implemented. In addition, I was notified that any books purchased BEFORE TTS was disabled on that book will remain TTS enabled, and I have observed this to be true.
What the iPhone needs are FULL SIZE games, not these cheap, quick, and shallow things currently available. There's a lot of arcade style stuff, puzzle style stuff, and very flat approximations of every other genre of game.
In fact, the only games on the iPhone outside of the puzzle/arcade variety that I'd term full-size are Myst and Wolfenstien. That's not to say that the only possible good games on the iPhone are ports of old games, but that if you want to fit a full size game on an iPhone, you need to give up on the super-detailed graphics.
That goes for xBox 360 and PS3 games too, actually. I like to play games, not watch loading screens!
I read this as Bezos saying that they'll support Amazon Kindle ebooks on other "mobile" platforms (a la various smartphones, etc), but that they won't support them on anything that is a direct competitor (a la E Ink-based reader devices) to the Kindle. This view is totally consistent with the words he said.
I agree with your interpreation. In Bezos' opinion, the iPhone does not compete with the Kindle, it complements it. In my usage, I've found this to be true. I do MOST of my reading on the Kindle, but I do get in a page or two of a book on the iPhone while in the bathroom. It's entirely possible for the iPhone to offer some competition, but I don't think it's a big concern for them- iPhone only customers are still buying their books, after all.
There's no way a Sony Reader would complement a Kindle in a similar way. They compete, plain and simple.
Amazon didn't shut them down, someone just noted that it could be construed as against the TOS, but efforts at contacting Amazon for legal clarification have not been returned.
There was a website that did this- it picked up stuff from RSS feeds, compiled so many articles into a document and emailed it to your Kindle. I never used it so I don't know the name or if it's still running (Amazon may have shut it down?).
Another factor to consider when trying to ferret out the "true price" is the pricing of similar products. The most expensive component is the screen, so limit your search to other eInk products:
Sony Reader $270-350
Amazon Kindle $360-500
iRex iLiad $600-850
Digital content has no intrinsic cost, so it's not much of a subsidy on their behalf.
While I'm a huge fan of free stuff, I would like to point out that they still have to pay the authors and publishers for use of the copyrighted material.
I have one book in Topaz (not a statistically significant sample, but it's all I have), and it renders fine.
Of course, you have to remember that the purpose of Topaz is to embed your own fonts. Most author/publishers will use this feature because they "don't like" the default font. My Topaz book has used the embedded fonts to display foreign characters (Chinese, Arabic, Japanese, Linear B, the whole lot of em) inline, without having to resort to using images. It all displays fine, both in terms of actual artifacts, and in terms of the foreign characters themselves.
Without seeing the specs for the file format itself, I am disinclined to term it broken or bad. Rather, it's a tool that is used more often used badly, incorrectly, and for the wrong purposes. Is the FONT tag in HTML inherently evil (CSS aside) because people misuse it more often than not? (FONT is debatable, but MARQUEE and BLINK are the devil's work for sure)
If you go to the AT&T website, there's no mention of the iPhone on the front page. If you go to Customer Service and it asks for the model and make of your phone, Apple/iPhone isn't even listed. It's like AT&T is pretending the iPhone doesn't exist.
Add in the Tethering/MMS issues (my 4 year old, $25 flip phone that doesn't even have a camera can send and receive MMS messages, and not my iPhone?!) and as an iPhone user, I feel like I'm paying a premium price to be a second-class citizen at AT&T.
At least my contract expiration will roughly coincide with the expiration of the exclusivity agreement, and I will be able to take my iPhone and go play with someone who treats me better.
There's an iPhone game for every major TV/Movie/etc release nowadays- including one for the Sarah Conner Cronicles, in which players from PCs and web browers (the machines) place traps and ambushes for the iPhone players (the resistance).
It seemed like a cool idea, except for the broadcasting my location all the time. That's kinda stalker-rific.
Slashdot Mirror
It has a scraper to scrape the bugs off of the paper and into the bug-digesting compartment. I guess that would be the stomach?
Apple will take any of their old hardware off your hands and recycle it/dispose of it correctly- just drop it off at an Apple Store. If you're trying to dispose of an old iPod, they'll give you a discount towards the purchase of a new one. Apparently they also recycle stuff from other manufacturers if you buy a new replacement item from them.
Amazon also has a recycling program available for their Kindles- you mail it in and they take care of it from there.
I'm pretty sure Sony has a similar program for their many electronics offerings.
I personally would only take advantage of these programs if the device in question was completely borked. An old iPod or computer can be resold easily enough on craigslist or eBay, but a nonfunctional one is just junk, and I have enough of that in my house as it is.
Some links:
http://www.apple.com/environment/recycling/
http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=200197550
http://www.panasonic.com/environmental/recycling-electronic.asp
http://www.sonystyle.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/CategoryDisplay?catalogId=10&storeId=10151&langId=-1&categoryId=8198552921644513777
I can vouch for this. My rocket scientist dad met my electrical engineer mom when they were both riding motorcycles on the 405 in LA, and got caught in a traffic jam. 30 years later, they don't have bikes anymore, but they are still together and happy.
But beware: Nerd boy + nerd girl = nerdlings.
That's another important point- Amazon's international support is nonexistent at best, and if all the computers you have access to are thumb-drive disabled (like anything belonging to the DoD), then you're SOL.
This is a major problem for one of Amazon's target demographics, the business traveller. If all of your travel is in the states, then great, but many people do end up doing lots of international travel.
Seriously? I would think leaving those out would be a huge mistake, except for maybe crosswords and sudokus, those would be hard - but maybe worth it in the end.
I don't know why they do it, just that they do. I'm glad they do, since ads suck and Craigslist got me 3 of my last 4 jobs, where newspaper classifieds have failed me, but I don't know that it was a wise business decision.
I like Google News, but I would never use it as a primary news source; it's inherently sensationalist. Whatever lots of people are writing about is what makes it on the front page. You're just as likely to see Jon&Kate drama as you are to see Iran protests. That's the downside of using an algorithm instead of human editors.
What I do use it for is getting the whole picture on a particular event. Read articles on the same event from Fox, CNN, BBC, AP, Al-Jazeera, NYT, and Daily Kos, and you're likely to understand a) what actually happened, b) the possible outcomes, and c) what the nutjobs on all the various extremist sides think, and what they might do about it.
They are all single column. The Kindle 2 screen is too narrow for two columns, in my opinion.
They are SUPPOSE to be providing multi-column, more traditional newspaper layouts for the DX, but they have not yet. I do know that the Kindle 1 and Kindle 2 actually receive different versions of the newspaper to handle their different navigation schemes; the same newspaper downloaded on a Kindle 1 will have Next Article-Previous Article links at the beginning and end of every article. The K2 does not, as a left or right push on the joystick will achieve the same thing. Content does not differ. So, it's not a big jump to assume that whenever Amazon/the newspapers are ready, you'll see columns on the DX, while the Kindle 2 will remain single-column. No guarantees on when or if they'll deliver, though.
"The Front Page" includes any article where the headline is on the front page of the print edition. There's normally only 5 or so articles.
To be fair, articles on /. are chronologically ordered. EVERY article has it's turn at the top. In a newspaper, the real news could be on page 3, but the editor isn't interested in it or doesn't think it's important.
Some information for informed discussion:
I rather like my newspaper on the Kindle, just for the fact of the small size and not having to crawl under the car to retrieve the paper. In addition, articles are in one piece, not continued on page A28. The articles are not abridged. The rest comes down to the individual paper and their publishing habits, and how much effort they're putting into the Kindle edition.
I get the Washington Post on my Kindle. It never has more than one picture per article, and sometimes when there are multiple pictures in the print edition, the wrong caption is attached to the picture in the Kindle edition. There are no ads, classified, comics, crosswords, sudokus, or horoscopes. All of the local sections and once-a-week sections are included. It is delivered every morning while I stand on the metro platform. The download takes about 30 seconds. Make sure to get it on the platform- Sprint doesn't have towers in the tunnels in DC.
There are separate sections for "The Front Page" "Politics & Nation" "World" and "The Fed Page," which I believe (not sure) are all rolled into the A section in the print edition.
You can clip a whole article with two clicks, which copies the whole article into a text file that can later be moved to a computer.
Periodicals are automatically deleted when they are more than seven issues old. You can flag any particular issue to be saved, and it will not delete it, although once seven issues have passed (a week for newspapers, seven months for magazines), you will no longer be able to re-download that issue from Amazon, although if you have stored it on your computer, you can always re-load it by USB. This is a demand on the newspapers part, as they make good money selling back articles. It's also largely moot, as most people throw away their newspaper when they're done reading it anyways.
The Kindle newspapers are no less timely than print newspapers, as they ARE the print paper in content. For breaking news, there's the NYTimes Breaking News Blog, which I don't subscribe to, and Google News open on my browser during the day at work.
The Washington Post has made huge leaps over the past year and a half on their Kindle edition. Every couple months I notice something in the layout has changed, and always for the better. When they made that big deal about the Business section being rolled into the A section, it has remained separate for Kindle users- the change was made to save on printing costs, after all.
I read my news on the Kindle 2. The Kindle 1 has a different set of behaviors (never automatically deleted old newspapers, leading to memory filling up, no joystick for easy navigation). The DX is just a Kindle 2 with a larger screen and (reportedly poor) native PDF support, so newspapers should not be any different than on the K2.
It's REALLY EASY to go get a single issue of a different paper, if you want one that day. Today I want to read the LA Times and see what's happening in my parent's area? It's kinda hard to find newsstands selling the LA times in DC, but I can do it easily on the Kindle.
No periodical that I know of has TTS disabled, although it's a terrible idea. The TTS software is terrible with proper names.
The main issue with newspapers on the Kindle stems from- what else?- DRM. A normal book purchase for a Kindle is available on all devices associated with that account (up to 6). A periodical subscription is tied to one device only. That means if you have His and Her Kindles, then you'll need two subscriptions for both devices to get the same paper. Also, this means that if you are backing up back issues on your computer and your Kindle breaks and is replaced, you will lose access to those back issues, unless you break the DRM. Switching which Kindle a periodical is assigned to is easy, but if you change your settings twice a day every day, you are likely to attract attention. Periodicals can only be assigned to Kindles, not to iPhones/iPod touches, although iPhones have their own methods of newspaper-getting.
Anyone have any questions about the actual implementation of Kindle newspapers? Nothing like actual facts to base a discussion off of!
The problem with that idea is that you're a lot more likely to feel bitter after sinking $60 on a crappy game. If you bought 5 crappy games on an iPhone, and each of them cost anywhere between $0 and $5, you may have lost a total of $10-20.
Most of the games I've purchased for my iPhone range from crappy to mediocore. However, I'll never regret that $.99 on Solebon Solitare, and I won't mourn the $.99 spent on that crappy Zuma clone. It amused me for about an hour, which is not bad for a dollar.
I spend about $10 on iPhone games a month. Most of them get played for a few hours and deleted. They serve their purpose as short-term amusement while waiting in lines or downtime at work. Of course, /. is free, and consumes far more work downtime...
As a recovered WoW addict, the thought of this makes me weep.
Yeah, the Mobipocket thing is a bucket of bad news. Amazon should have rolled it into the main Kindle store or something, but they are just stifling the PC ebook market instead.
The Sony Reader models are all touchscreen and they cost less than the Kindle or iLiad.
The Kindle DX has a 9.7" screen, and costs less than the 8.1" (cheapest) iLiad.
You email/call customer service within 7 days of purchase. They don't even ask for a reason, although if you provide one they will attempt to address it. For example, when they process a return based on formatting errors, they will include in the refund notification that they have informed the publisher of the problem (it's the publishers problem to fix, not Amazon's.)
When I tried to get a refund for a 7 month old book based on TTS disabling, I got a) a refusal because it had been quite a bit longer than 7 days, and b) a rather large description of why TTS had been implemented. In addition, I was notified that any books purchased BEFORE TTS was disabled on that book will remain TTS enabled, and I have observed this to be true.
What the iPhone needs are FULL SIZE games, not these cheap, quick, and shallow things currently available. There's a lot of arcade style stuff, puzzle style stuff, and very flat approximations of every other genre of game.
In fact, the only games on the iPhone outside of the puzzle/arcade variety that I'd term full-size are Myst and Wolfenstien. That's not to say that the only possible good games on the iPhone are ports of old games, but that if you want to fit a full size game on an iPhone, you need to give up on the super-detailed graphics.
That goes for xBox 360 and PS3 games too, actually. I like to play games, not watch loading screens!
I read this as Bezos saying that they'll support Amazon Kindle ebooks on other "mobile" platforms (a la various smartphones, etc), but that they won't support them on anything that is a direct competitor (a la E Ink-based reader devices) to the Kindle. This view is totally consistent with the words he said.
I agree with your interpreation. In Bezos' opinion, the iPhone does not compete with the Kindle, it complements it. In my usage, I've found this to be true. I do MOST of my reading on the Kindle, but I do get in a page or two of a book on the iPhone while in the bathroom. It's entirely possible for the iPhone to offer some competition, but I don't think it's a big concern for them- iPhone only customers are still buying their books, after all.
There's no way a Sony Reader would complement a Kindle in a similar way. They compete, plain and simple.
Found it! http://kindlefeeder.com/
Amazon didn't shut them down, someone just noted that it could be construed as against the TOS, but efforts at contacting Amazon for legal clarification have not been returned.
There was a website that did this- it picked up stuff from RSS feeds, compiled so many articles into a document and emailed it to your Kindle. I never used it so I don't know the name or if it's still running (Amazon may have shut it down?).
Another factor to consider when trying to ferret out the "true price" is the pricing of similar products. The most expensive component is the screen, so limit your search to other eInk products:
Sony Reader $270-350
Amazon Kindle $360-500
iRex iLiad $600-850
That's quite a distribution.
Digital content has no intrinsic cost, so it's not much of a subsidy on their behalf.
While I'm a huge fan of free stuff, I would like to point out that they still have to pay the authors and publishers for use of the copyrighted material.
This isn't true, at least not 100%.
I have one book in Topaz (not a statistically significant sample, but it's all I have), and it renders fine.
Of course, you have to remember that the purpose of Topaz is to embed your own fonts. Most author/publishers will use this feature because they "don't like" the default font. My Topaz book has used the embedded fonts to display foreign characters (Chinese, Arabic, Japanese, Linear B, the whole lot of em) inline, without having to resort to using images. It all displays fine, both in terms of actual artifacts, and in terms of the foreign characters themselves.
Without seeing the specs for the file format itself, I am disinclined to term it broken or bad. Rather, it's a tool that is used more often used badly, incorrectly, and for the wrong purposes. Is the FONT tag in HTML inherently evil (CSS aside) because people misuse it more often than not? (FONT is debatable, but MARQUEE and BLINK are the devil's work for sure)
The book in question is: http://www.amazon.com/Writing-Systems-A-Linguistic-Approach/dp/B000VSSG9S/ref=ed_oe_k
If you go to the AT&T website, there's no mention of the iPhone on the front page. If you go to Customer Service and it asks for the model and make of your phone, Apple/iPhone isn't even listed. It's like AT&T is pretending the iPhone doesn't exist.
Add in the Tethering/MMS issues (my 4 year old, $25 flip phone that doesn't even have a camera can send and receive MMS messages, and not my iPhone?!) and as an iPhone user, I feel like I'm paying a premium price to be a second-class citizen at AT&T.
At least my contract expiration will roughly coincide with the expiration of the exclusivity agreement, and I will be able to take my iPhone and go play with someone who treats me better.
There's an iPhone game for every major TV/Movie/etc release nowadays- including one for the Sarah Conner Cronicles, in which players from PCs and web browers (the machines) place traps and ambushes for the iPhone players (the resistance).
It seemed like a cool idea, except for the broadcasting my location all the time. That's kinda stalker-rific.
http://terminatorambush.com/
I imagine after all this has blown over and settled down, we can expect a strongly-worded letter, then?
draftable daughters,
You're not in the US, I presume?