I love my Kindle. It really is a great machine. The Kindle 2 made all the right changes to the original Kindle, which is why I forked out a hefty $359 for it. It contains literally thousands of books - which has completely changed my reading habits (more reading, less lugging around of books). It is glorious and if you are a serious book reader you should invest in it.
Now so sure at the moment though about a new Kindle that Amazon just announced - the Kindle DX. It’s the same as the Kindle 2 but with a much bigger screen - just a little smaller than a magazine. I get the logic straight away - a bigger screen is much, much better for reading on. Particularly if you are reading PDF documents or magazines. It doesn’t matter with books - you want something you can shove in your bag and pull out.
But clearly Amazon has found out that alot of people are using their Kindle to read documents - probably work documents - on a device that doesn’t have a backlit screen and which doesn’t require you booting up a computer. I can see the logic, although I’ve not go into this habit yet.
Twitter has just hit a crucial milestone for becoming a long-term viability rather than an Internet flash-in-the-plan: it has started generating its own sub-market.
Part of Twitter’s beauty is the fact that it restricts posts to 140 characters, forcing you to have to be economic with your words and making it easier to quickly digest others posts. The problem with the domain name system is that it produces long Web addresses (URLs) so if you want to point people to a certain webpage, you lose almost all the room you have just posting the URL, leaving little or no room for an explanation of why people should click on the link.
URL shortening applications have been around for years but they tended to be used only for ridiculously long web addresses that could often break in emails and IM messages. Twitter has given them a new lease of life.
And this was made clear this morning when the usual URL shortening site that I use - Tiny URL at http://www.tiny.cc - stopped working properly due to demand. The website wouldn’t load. More crucially someone Twittered me to tell me that an earlier link I had posted was now pointing somewhere completely different.
So I had a look about and found a new service: Trim, found at http://tr.im/. This has several advantages over Tiny URL. For one, it produces shorter URLs - the name of the game. But also it lets you lets you create an account, plus post directly into Twitter, and it provides stats on how many times the link has been clicked on.
One thing I’ve always disliked about US tech journalism is the willingness to get drawn into corporate hype to the extent that even the possible news of a new product is deemed worthy of news articles.
But that said, it does look as though tomorrow in New York, Amazon will announce a new version of its ebook reader, the Kindle. And, I have to say, I am looking forward to it for the simple reason that the Kindle is what will finally break the ebook barrier to mainstream use and that will bring with it a fantastic revolution in book and information consumption.
A press conference is being held at the Morgan Library and Museum (although I haven’t been able to find an official press announcement of it), and in the past week pictures of a new Kindle have leaked out onto the Net (which is hardly surprising as to do such a big launch of a new product, the images would have had to have gone through at least one PR agency and have a wide distribution internally). I’ve grabbed the pictures and posted them below.
According to online reports, the expected launch date is 24 February.
Michael Smolens is the platinum guide for the revolution that is going on right now with video over the Internet. As the CEO of DotSub - a company which enables people to simply and easily transcribe and translate film online - he is on the cutting edge.
Which is why it is such a pleasure to talk to him: because he always has some video project or program on his mind that he tells you about, incredulous that you haven’t heard of it yet. So when Michael called me yesterday to tell me he’d be in Los Angeles in early February and did I fancy meeting up, I was delighted to hear about another extraordinary and inspiring use of film the likes of which make me want to pick up my camera right now and get filming.
I check it out online this morning and then also dug out some other recommendations he had made to me and then it occurred to me, buzzing with hope and energy, that it might not be a bad idea to share this knowledge with whoever reads my blog.
So here is a quick guide to the most inspiring films and movements around at the moment. Why be medicated with nonsense television when you can be uplifted and inspired with Net marvels?
I’m writing this in that neverworld of an airport waiting for a slightly delayed plane.
And, of course, as it always is, that airport is Heathrow. I hate Heathrow. I’ve always hated Heathrow. Even as a kid, I remember the sensation of life ebbing away from you as you sit in uncomfortable chairs next to grumpy people, eat dreadful food and get annoyed with snooty staff. It’s Heathrow, it’s British Airways, it’s delayed, and I’m flying economy, seat 49J, which means no sleep, cramped legs, and an incredibly frustrating effort trying to do work on my laptop for the next nine hours.
I’m quite excited about the fact that Amazon has brought out a new ebook reader that it calls the Kindle. I haven’t seen one in the real world but I am assuming with the effort they’ve put behind it that the screen technology is what it claims to be - easy to read without straining your eyes.
I believe ebooks are the inevitable future. It’s just another step along the digital revolution. But - and what a but - have you seen the state of the “Kindle”? It looks like a prototype. A prototype designed by 18-year-old students back in the 1980s. Here is good technology and big demand with crappy design - i.e. the perfect opportunity for Apple.
For those interested in Internet things - and in this case the sexy side of the Internet, Facebook and all that stuff - there is an interesting conference due to start in two hours in Ottawa, Canada.
I know because I’m here and I’m on of two official bloggers. See can see the full agenda here, and the front page to the blog, which I will be updating all day can be found here.
This has to be good - I note that Amazon.com is now selling my book - Sex.com.
Unfortunately there is still a four to six-week delivery date on it, which leads me to conclude that my publishers have yet to strike a deal with a US publisher. I also note on a quick perusal of the Net that the Sydney Morning Herald and ran a whole extract in its edition today - Chapter 3, I believe. And I’m pleased to see that Techworld - where I was news ed - ran an extract last week. Alot has happened since I’ve been away.
I’ve also got a lovely review on Amazon.com. Although this doesn’t appeared to have helped my ranking much - it’s still way down at book no 186,461. Anyway, the review:
Three weeks ago, I added a translation module to this blog as an experiment with automated translation software.
The technology worked although thanks to some readers of different nationalities, it quickly became clear that the translations were not great - and in some cases barely comprehensible. Part of the reason is that I write in a very chatty fashion in English, complete with slang, odd sentence construction and often an idiosyncratic style. There’s no way a computer can accurately translate that sort of material. And it would seem that Google has decided not to bother at all.
