More fodder for the “what were they thinking?” (I was tempted to say “kindling”, of course, but chickened out at the last moment…)
Daring Fireball: DUM
Barring physical catastrophe, I expect that the real books I own — the ones printed on paper — will remain in good condition long after I am dead.1 With digital Kindle books, I’m not even sure they’ll be available 10 years from now. They’re only useful so long as you own Kindle-compatible hardware. What happens to these e-books if Amazon, having lost money on the endeavor, stops producing Kindle readers a few years from now? What are the odds that these files will be readable 50 years from now?
This device’s tech is beginning to look as bad as it’s industrial design. That’s unfortunate. If it survives long enough to get to 2.0, let’s hope they learn the same lesson every other company is destined to re-learn: it’s not better to suck and be in the market, it’s better not to suck before launch. (Looking at you, Zune 2)
The Future of Reading A Play in Six Acts [dive into mark]
Act I: The act of buyingWhen someone buys a book, they are also buying the right to resell that book, to loan it out, or to even give it away if they want. Everyone understands this.
Jeff Bezos, Open letter to Author’s Guild, 2002
You may not sell, rent, lease, distribute, broadcast, sublicense or otherwise assign any rights to the Digital Content or any portion of it to any third party, and you may not remove any proprietary notices or labels on the Digital Content. In addition, you may not, and you will not encourage, assist or authorize any other person to, bypass, modify, defeat or circumvent security features that protect the Digital Content.
Amazon, Kindle Terms of Service, 2007
The below signifies just how hard it will be to bring the book into the same electronic age as the iPod. Despite the move of music, video, and short-form text to the mobile gadget platform, nothing has thus far threatened the sheer curl-up-and-read form factor of the book.
For content creators, the ability to push media directly to consumers (from burning your own CDs or DVDs to putting up downloads) is the final empowerment. Now authors could potentially enjoy the same.
That is, if Amazon’s new Kindle manages to ignite (sorry). If not, well, at least it keeps pushing.
Amazon: Reinventing the Book | Newsweek.com
“Technology,” computer pioneer Alan Kay once said, “is anything that was invented after you were born.” So it’s not surprising, when making mental lists of the most whiz-bangy technological creations in our lives, that we may overlook an object that is superbly designed, wickedly functional, infinitely useful and beloved more passionately than any gadget in a Best Buy: the book. It is a more reliable storage device than a hard disk drive, and it sports a killer user interface. (No instruction manual or “For Dummies” guide needed.) And, it is instant-on and requires no batteries. Many people think it is so perfect an invention that it can’t be improved upon, and react with indignation at any implication to the contrary.
While fiendishly clever from an ease-to-purchase perspective, the security ramifications are startling.
(via Daring Fireball)
InfoWorld Gripe Line | Ed Foster | InfoWorld | Amazon Makes You Lie to Log Off | October 2, 2007 12:10 AM | By Ed Foster
In other words, while Amazon admits staying logged in to your account is probably not a good idea, they nonetheless want to make it as hard as possible for you to sign out. And it’s pretty obvious why Amazon and other e-commerce sites would prefer you stay logged in all the time. If a search engine or online ad leads you to an Amazon page selling what you think you might want to buy, they want to make it as easy as possible for you to indulge the impulse. If you don’t have to log in to your accounts, it’s far more likely you’ll buy from them. So it’s a pretty simple equation: the fewer clicks it takes to buy, and the more clicks it takes to log out, the more money for Amazon.
« Previous Page