Amazon Kindle (ebook thingy)

New Orleans Sketches is the only Faulkner available from Amazon at this point. That truly-free site linked above had a couple, but I can't get to the site right now to verify. I do hope some Pynchon gets released, because I don't want to haul Against the Day around.

IF you have an actual Kindle, you can download the Feedbooks meta-book. This thing has links to a ton of Kindle-formatted public-domain books, and even takes the meta a step further with a link to the latest version of itself. All of the books download for free.

With the iPhone app, you can only read books from the official Kindle store.

Amazon announces Kindle DX

This enormous document reader will kill us all, said newspaper sources.

native PDF reader is nice and tempting....but I'm still waiting to see what Apple can offer. For almost $500 I'd like more than just a way to read books and papers.

If it can integrate with Papers or Sente, annotate and bring those back into the above, VPN into the campus library, search academic databases download papers over the air and work with knovel. I might be interested.

imna design one of these kindle book bitches - its basically just stripped down html right - im designing in indesign for print and then converting to pdf for one ebook format but then id like to convert to the native kindle format as well - anybody got any tips for me

the coming huge iphone tablet thingy is obv gonna be amzing - itll be way more expensive than the kindle tho - more like a iphone/laptop/kindle hybrid - the kindle will still hav its niche likely

yeah, it's not really the price of this thing that's my problem, it's the price for what it can do, which is just display books. Yeah, you could bitch about the original iPod also "just" being a music player, but it was easy to get digital music for no cash, either from ripping your cds or.... But with the Kindle I guess you could scan books into PDFs, but it's a lot more work to get right than ripping a cd.

There is a decent piece of free software for Windows called mobipocket creator, and on the Mac, there is something called Calibre, I think.

thx dude calibre looks promising - ill check out mobipocket in parallels if that doesnt work out

lol

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_bc5-zw3yTPk/Sfi9PAQVgvI/AAAAAAAAAGE/FjuUKw1-8Fw/s400/kc-chart1.jpg

u got to think the the ebook piracy damn is abt to break - people just hav to crack whatever drm is on there - right now theres not really enough people reading ebooks to hav a critical mass but once all those college kids get readers for text books its over

tho obv there are so many fucking out there especially when u consider out of print titles that prob a huge % will never make it to file sharing - i could see piracy driving down prices to something more like $5 - which seems reasonable when u consider how much publishers are saving on printing/distro/wholesaling - this should be pretty interesting def - every book ever published at a mouse click - plus tons of people self publishing

I think the graph is more interesting than lol. Amazon's selling a lot to older people who struggle with reading regualar books because of the small type size.

i can lol if i want to
i can leave e-books behind

Are they ever going to sell this fucker in the UK?

its interesting the oldies are early adopters here - says something def for the simplicity of the device - also young people just read bloggz

this is pretty nuts http://www.businessinsider.com/henry-blodget-kindle-sales-now-a-shocking-35-of-book-sales-when-kindle-version-available-2009-5

I think they also have the cash and are more willing to pay for the luxury of adjustable font sizes and not having to carry a pile of print around. The kindle's lack of fashionability, butt-ugly grey facade and inability to mod probably drives away the younguns and mothtoflames the seniors

yeah that is nuts!

irl i have only seen kindles in the hands of old(er) people on planes

i hav never seen a kindl :(

an older woman on my bus has one, she seems weird. she wears old school walkman headphones and listens to a discman and for awhile i swear she listened to static for white noise purposes. now i'm not so sure. i heard music, real music the other day. she's the kind of person who on an empty bus will place her bag next to her so no one sits next to her. not sure what this says about the kindle. i sometimes sit next to her. she was reading some book about thomas jefferson last week. the print was clear and easy to read, i'll say that much. kindles make it much easier to see what yr fellow bus rider is reading.

also dude in one of my classes had one. youngish guy but he's super geeky and dorky and stuff.

i have never seen anyone using one on the bus but someone would probably punch you in the face and steal it and run off the bus like with iphones

actually lol who am i kidding no one would steal one of these things

theyd take it and then be like wait wtf is this thing a really old ipod

why does this ipod have a keyboard

this isn't an etch-a-sketch?

lol

maybe they would just punch you in the face and *not* steal it

*punch* what, regular books aren't good enough for you, fucker?

They might punch you in the face and then hand you a Sony eReader

I'm interested in how the textbook thing plays out. Textbooks are damned expensive due to the resale issue and this removes that but whether you have to buy individual titles for this thing or universities will get a site license as they do for journals and things like knovel. I suspect the latter so I wonder if schools will be doling out kindles and they were doing so with ipods a while back. It will be interesting to see apple and gookle duke it out for this space if the ipod tablet surfaces.

apple tablet w/full keyboard would be pretty much the best thing for college - read yr books - bring it to class as yr laptop - txt on there - whatever

itunes

im thinking youd hav some sort of fold up dock that has the keyboard and angles the tablet up and has ports and power supply - then when u want to just take it out and read or whatever u go to the touch screen - the doc could hav wifi so u could connect to harddrives phones or whatever while yr in wireless mode

Amzon, not google, possibly a prescient freudian slip.

all the classics are available

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51F19998D6L._SL500_AA246_PIkin2,BottomRight,-12,34_AA280_SH20_OU01_.jpghttp://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51jE0LfTCYL._SL500_AA246_PIkin2,BottomRight,-10,34_AA280_SH20_OU01_.jpg

etch-a-skindle

i finished my iphone kindle Animal Farm in like three subway rides and a few in-between-bands-glances. I know it's a small book, but i honestly think i read MUCH FASTER on my iphone app than with a regular book

Its these little blocks of text that you can just gulp down in one bite and flip past, instead of staring at entire pages of words.

Ever since I was a kid I would space out while reading long passages. I get as much two pages ahead and realize that I haven't actually READ anything paragraphs, I just LOOKED at the book while I thought about other things. I didn't do that at all with my lil phone--and when i did, i was just stuck on a little page with 40 words and i could just reconnect in 2 seconds. I'm totally into reading books on my iphone.

Next I'm gonna do White Noise, which I only got through half of last time because I left my book inside the Tate Modern and never got a new one.

friend of mine is thinking of getting one since he's gonna be going to africa for a few months and wants to bring hell of books with him

what a big fat bald baby this guy is

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/jacketcopy/2009/06/for-jeff-bezos-the-great-run-for-books-is-over-really.html#more

Levy: For a special book, do you still want to read the physical book?

Bezos: No. No, in fact, I now ... I kind of am grumpy when I am forced to read a physical book. Because it's not as convenient. Turning the pages ... I didn't know this either, until I started using the Kindles a couple months ago, I mean a couple years ago, I didn't understand all of the failings of a physical book, because I’m inured to them. But you can’t turn the page with one hand. The book is always flopping itself shut at the wrong moment. They’re heavy. You can only take one or two of them with you at a time. It’s had a great 500-year run. [Audience laughter.] It’s an unbelievably successful technology. But it’s time to change.

I wish they'd release it here. I still prefer actual books though.

lol at that bezos quote; surprised he didn't bitch about paper cuts

I think this thing may finally be catching on in "middle America" (lol whatever that is). I mean, all of my Mom's friends (Midwestern middle/working class) are buying these and raving about them.

can't wait for the nyt article about whole houses with no bookshelves and the great bookshelf bust as demonstrated by a trip to an ikea and a west elm.

... and container store; takes three to be a trend, remember?

I think this thing may finally be catching on in "middle America" (lol whatever that is). I mean, all of my Mom's friends (Midwestern middle/working class) are buying these and raving about them.

Fair enough, but it's gonna make book burnin's a lot more expensive now.

Fahrenheit 488