I smell a change in the winds.

Amazon.com – Reinventing the Book

Today the Amazon Kindle was officially announced to the public.

Feel free to take everything I say with a grain of salt — I will be the first to admit I have a bias — but I honestly think that if anyone could make ebooks a successful business model, it’d be Amazon.

When I learned Amazon was developing an ebook reader, I was pretty dubious. I didn’t think it was the way of the future. Once I actually had one in my hands for training purposes and was able to put it through its paces, I found myself nothing short of a convert. I love it and I need one and I get tetchy at people who dismiss it or insult it when they don’t know what the hell they’re talking about.

There is something astonishingly seductive about it.

* Yes, my first reaction to the name is that it’s some kind of Fahrenheit 451 reference. I’ve gotten over it. It’s not about burning books, it’s about (re-)igniting a love of reading in the digital age.
* The e-ink takes the eyestrain out of long-term reading. It’s also about as readable as paper in regular daylight.
* The capacity is more than enough to carry an entire suitcase full of books — in a package smaller than a single paperback. Without even adding an SD card.
* With an SD card you can put a metric fuckton of books on the thing — or fill up with music to make your reading experience more enjoyable. The music playback is still being worked on and improved; currently it’s much like a Shuffle in that you start it, it plays random tracks until you stop it.
* No PC/Mac needed. You can shop for content right from the device.
* The general web access is not spectacular, but certainly comparable to a cell phone — and being able to search Wikipedia at the drop of a hat is sheer brilliance.
* Yes, the design could be improved on. But for all the reviews on the site complaining about how ugly it is, how many are from people who have actually seen and used one? Maybe one or two out of over 200. Far more reviewers who have one are at least as thoroughly converted as I.
* It is very flexible in terms of supported formats. .txt, .doc, Mobi, .htm/.html as well as .jpg and .gif for images and even experimental .pdf support — only experimental because it doesn’t quite meet Amazon’s quality standards for conversion. Most .pdfs are going to be perfectly readable when converted.
* Sending yourself documents. Letting other people send you documents. Having Daily Lit send you documents (which I just thought of last night as I read the Newsweek article). This is awesome.
* That said, I plan to upgrade mine (when I get one) with an Eye-Fi SD card so I can use it with my home network, hopefully.

Agh I hope that demonstrator guy was on a set because if he was wandering around SEA or SLC waving that thing around for the world to see I want to punch him.