Amazon’s Kindle
I have to admit it — I don’t get the idea of e-books. At all. And the hype-seeking Thanksgiving release of Kindle didn’t do much to help.
A book is too much of a tactile thing, too much of an investment in time to compromise on comfort. I just don’t see myself reading anything over 10 pages this way, let alone a novel. Then there’s the cover art, the bookmarks…
I caught Amazon’s Bezos on Charlie Rose this week and I was intrigued. The thing I found interesting was the idea of the device allowing writers to return to a form of serialization (chapters could be released as they’re written, subscribed to as one would subscribe to an RSS feed). Instinctively this made sense to me… I think there is potential here, but I’m not sure exactly what it is: I wouldn’t want the first chapter published until the last was almost finished. Too much can change. But some writers may be able to pull it off.
For now, the appeal of Kindle to me lies in reading magazines, blogs and .pdfs. I would love to be able to download all of my RSS feeds onto a device and thumb through them on the road or in a coffee shop, sort of like I used to do back in the early days of AvantGo and Palm V. But do we need another device to do what a smartphone already does? Why lug around 2 devices instead of one?
I do think that Amazon’s pricing of the books is to be applauded, taking into account the greatly-reduced costs of e-publishing, in a way that Sony still hasn’t (though Kindle’s $399 pricing makes me wonder if Sony subsidized the pricing of the reader by upping the price of the books?). And you gotta love the free Whispernet. But I just can’t help but wonder how many people will take advantage…
I’m all for disruptive technologies, and I think there is definitely potential here. As an independent publisher, I’m watching the space closely, but ultimately I just don’t get it… yet.
The answer probably lies in something like a clam-shell iPhone, that opens up to give the real-estate of the Kindle. Something like that can’t be too far away. Sony already has a wafer-thin display that could easily be unrolled.
I don’t get it yet. But I’m excited to see if readers will prove me wrong.
Reich: The Splurge Is Over, Folks
In the twilight of the last century, when Fight Club was in theaters a friend and I were in the Boston area visiting his family for Thanksgiving. We dropped into a theater near Harvard to catch the film, and low and behold, who walks in but Robert Reich tailed by a cohort or two, still fresh in everyone’s mind as the ex-treasury secretary.
Not sure why Fight Club would be of interest to him, and not sure what he ever thought of the film (I loved it, though sadly I still have yet to read Palahniuk.)
The memory came back when I happened to catch a few minutes of an evening episode of NPR’s Marketplace on Thursday:
Also available on Reich’s own blog, November 12, 2007
KAI RYSSDAL: New York Stock Exchange CEO John Thain has decided to jump from the rough-and-tumble of the trading floor to a place that’s arguably rougher: Today, Merrill Lynch picked Thain to lead the way out of Merrill’s self-inflicted subprime troubles.
His peers at other Wall Street banks have their own problems. Bank of America said today it’s looking at a $3 billion write-down. Europe’s biggest bank, HSBC Holdings, says the U.S. housing slump will force it to take a $3.5 billion charge.
With home prices dropping, the dollar sliding and consumer confidence way down, commentator Robert Reich says it isn’t just banks that are feeling the pinch.
Robert Reich: We may yet avoid a recession — Bernanke and company may make bigger cuts in interest rates. Congress may enact a payroll tax holiday on the first $15,000 of income, as I’ve urged. But look beyond the business cycle and the consequences may be larger.
For years now, America’s middle class has lived beyond its paycheck. Middle-class lifestyles have flourished, even though median wages have barely budged. The reason is we’ve been able to borrow so, much so easily.
With housing prices rising, home-equity loans have financed renovations and home improvements. With credit cards raining down like manna from heaven, we’ve bought plasma TVs, new appliances, vacations. With dollars artificially high because foreigners have held them, even as the nation sank deeper into debt, we could summon cheap goods and services from the rest of the world.
But now the era of easy money is over. The housing bubble is bursting, and home equity is drying up. Credit card debt is next. Personal bankruptcies rose 48 percent in first half of 2007, likely even more in the second half — which means a wave of credit-card defaults. If you think the trillion dollars in subprime mortgage debt carried by big banks is large, think of the record $915 billion Americans hold in credit card debt.
Meanwhile, as foreigners begin shifting out of dollars, we’ll no longer have access to cheap foreign goods and services. For starters, you can forget that long-awaited European vacation. The splurge is over, folks.
As the days of easy money come to an end, what will America look like? Maybe we’ll see a recession in the short term. But more importantly, over the long term, the American middle class will have a truer understanding of what it can and cannot afford, a truer sense of what’s really happened to its paychecks, and a more realistic view of where — and to whom — the economic gains of the last dozen years have actually gone.
RYSSDAL: Robert Reich was secretary of labor for President Clinton. His latest book is called Supercapitalism.
Recently, I’ve heard from many friends they’re feeling unsettled. Could be war, could be the holidays (strangely like war), or it could be the coming struggles of America’s middle class. One way or another, it looks like we’re in for difficult times ahead.
Chin up, lads!
On blogging
For years, I had pooh-poohed the bloggers but now I am one of them.
To me though, what’s interesting is the almost infinite variety of engines, plug-ins, themes, consultants, ways to monetize, etc — and the time it takes to get it all working. It’s quite easy to become a blogging geek and the urge must (mostly) be resisted.
This blog is based around the theme Modius Remixed, a fantastic little gem by Brad Maheffey of ArtCulture.com which is a pretty substantial reworking of UpstartBlogger’s Modicus. What I liked was mostly the simplicity, but also the freshness– many themes are overused, or fall into a sort of genre, where they begin to all look the same. I also wanted something that felt professional, but not lending itself to a huge amount advertising widgets, etc. Magazine and News themes obviously didn’t make sense either. ArtCulture.com has since moved on, so I very much discovered this in a narrow window of opportunity, but Brad’s new theme is quite impressive as well and in fact works much better for his site. Check it out.
I made several changes, almost entirely cosmetic (colors, icons, graphics), and pimped it out with all sorts of nifty plug-ins, all of which somehow seem to play together quite well. It is very much a work in progress.
I hope you enjoy it.
