Wednesday, November 21st 2007

Kindle

The Kindle is Amazon’s e-book reader, gifted with an e-ink display and (initially) EV-DO connectivity:

  • Newsweek cover for first version
  • Revision 2
  • The DX large format version

Resources:

Date Link Notes
2010
Jan 21 Amazon Opens Kindle to Developers, Changes Royalties They saw the freight train coming.
Jan 20 Amazon hikes Kindle royalties to 70%, with a catch
Jan 06 Amazon Kindle DX with global wireless: ships January 19th for $489 I keep wondering what’s keeping them from shipping these babies from the UK or Germany…
2009
Dec 27 Kindle most gifted item in Amazon’s history, e-books outsell physical tomes on Christmas Day Hardly a surprise.
Dec 25 Amazon Kindle gets its DRM stripped Predictable.
Dec 23 Hackers break Amazon’s Kindle DRM unswindle is already getting popular…
Dec 07 Amazon beefing up Kindle’s functionality for vision-impared users as B&N’s Nook stays silent Seems like a logical step forward,
Dec 06 Questions for Jeff Bezos 48 e-copies for each 100 sold… Not bad.
Nov 30 Kindle is the biggest selling item on Amazon, bests sliced bread I wonder if it sells better than whole wheat bread.
Nov 26 Kindle 2 finally gets native PDF support, screen rotation A lot more info on the updates.
Nov 25 Amazon promises update to better ‘organize Kindle libraries’ I suppose they expect to have people buy hundreds of books.
Nov 25 Kindle 2.3 software update available, generation 1 owners need not apply I’m still waiting for a completely European DX edition.
Nov 25 Kindle firmware update promises 85 percent battery boost, native PDF reader Okay, so there was something clearly wrong with power management after all… Nevermind PDF support (which ought to have been there all along), I’ve always found it weird that my friends with a Kindle complained about battery life…
Nov 12 Will Amazon’s Kindle Software Kill the Kindle Hardware? No. I sometimes wonder if jkOnTheRun was added to the GigaOm network just to ask obvious questions and grab page-views by replying to them at length, but that may be just my cynicism creeping up on me.
Nov 11 Amazon Kindle for PC: Now delivering books to your desktop US-only. How quaint.
Kindle for PC adds flexibility, but not a whole lot more Summary: not worth the trouble.
Oct 24 Kindle software coming to Mac OS X I’m frankly curious, but use too many computers for comfort and, given the issues about international pricing, won’t spend a dime over what a regular Amazon purchase would cost me.
Oct 23 Amazon Kindle for PC available ‘soonish’ Not that I expect this to be as useful as the mobile versions, but it’s an interesting twist.
Amazon Hobbles Features For International Kindle The bit about their delivering content without any photos just has to be a bug – otherwise, they’re just killing their own product.
Oct 22 Amazon’s international Kindle surprises owners with $20 refund, limited web browsing So they’re coming to their senses – to some extent. Let’s see if the international edition of the DX will have proper browsing, otherwise I’ll certainly go for the burgeoning competition…
Oct 21 Who Named the Kindle (and Why)?(and-Why) Interesting.
Oct 14 International Kindle won’t let you use terrible web browser overseas I wonder if they will change this if they do a decent Euro version
Oct 9 Amazon confirms international Kindle DX is on the way too A lot more interesting. Now they only have to make the pricing more sensible.
Oct 7 Kindle now $259, available worldwide with wireless delivery I’ll wait for the DX and full integration with the UK store…
Amazon Cuts Kindle Price, Offers Internation Edition
Oct 1 Kindle coming to the UK in October? Amazon might just tell us next week Of course they will. It’s been brewing for months.
Jul 24 Jeff Bezos issues humble apology over pulled Kindle title Might not be enough to save face, though.
Jun 19 Amazon Kindle DX Review Bigger. Faster. Stronger. Worse keyboard.
May 25 Kindle formatting for web geeks Some interesting notes on how it handles HTML markup.
May 7 Dallas Morning News To Senate: Amazon Kindle Is Not A Business Model For Newspapers Me, I like their business model.
May 6 The Kindle Lets Amazon Make a Lot From the Few The ARPU from Kindle users must be amazing.
Amazon Kindle DX announced: $489, ships this summer Includes a gallery.
Amazon Kindle DX first hands-on Not that exciting.
Amazon supersizes Kindle for textbooks, newspapers No Wi-Fi, no expansion, and I wonder why it doesn’t have a 2-up mode when rotated, but the PDF support is a nice add-on.
May 1 Informal poll suggests nearly 70% of Kindle owners are over 40 Strange. Here’s a copy of the graph:
Click on the image to zoom in
Apr 22 iSuppli: $359 Kindle 2 costs $185 to build, Whispernet says shhh The overall value seems about right, although the Novatel module price is for a fairly high-volume tier
Mar 9 Kindle 2 Usability Review Jakob Nielsen weighs in.
Feb 28 Amazon Gives In To Ridiculous Authors Guild Claim: Allows Authors To Block Text-To-Speech Just sad. But the enlightened ones won’t be stupid and stingy.
Amazon sorta capitulates, will let publishers decide text-to-speech availability
Amazon Caves On Kindle 2 Text-To-Speech
Feb 26 Evolution yields revolution: the Kindle 2 Pretty thorough review.
Why Kindle 2’s Screen Took 12 Years and $150 Million Interesting discussion regarding this interview on E-ink.
Amazon Kindle 2 review Nice gallery and close-up shots.
Feb 25 Kindle‚Äôs Text to Speech Under Fire And it just goes on and on…
Further signs point to an international Kindle Now this is a lot more interesting…
Feb 24 Kindle 2 dissected, found to contain space for a SIM card Of course, it’s not that simple – you need a lot more electronics than just a card reader…
Kindle 2 First Look Complete disassembly, with loads of pictures.
Feb 11 Know Your Rights: Does the Kindle 2’s text-to-speech infringe authors’ copyrights? This has got to be the stupidest legal issue regarding ebooks, ever. What about visually challenged folk?
Feb 9 Hands on with Kindle 2: what a difference a screen makes Apparently, the screen is improved. However, there are mixed opinions on that.
Kindle 2: Slimmer, Smarter In which we read that 10% of Amazon sales seem to be Kindle books
Amazon Announces Kindle 2 Ebook Reader Good (if biased) overview
Amazon revamps Kindle, hints at bigger things to come Not much to come, really, but comprehensive article nonetheless
Kindle 2 first hands-on! Nothing much to see, really, although the response time seems good.
2008
May 18 Amazon Kindle Review Very detailed review
2007
Nov 23 Bookishness On the device’s lack of ergonomics and style
Nov 22 Amazon Kindle sells out on debut Sold out, sure, but how many?
Nov 19 Amazon Kindle first hands-on A small gallery
Nov 19 The Future of Reading – A Play in Six Acts Mark Pilgrim, in his inimitable style, rips through the TOS.
Nov 18 The Future of Reading The Newsweek piece that started it all.