Not only was it Father’s Day, but yesterday was Eliza’s 6-month birthday. Her two bottom teeth are finally through the gums, and that seems to have helped her mood enormously. Now the top two are on the way, but we hope they won’t be the hell the bottom two were.
Can’t believe she’s a half-year old. I know that everyone says time flies, but to experience it is something different. She’s completely awesome, though, and only gets awesomer. 🙂
Two days before I received my Kindle, Roy Tennant published an article on his Digital Libraries blog entitled “Prediction: The Kindle goes down in flames“. I normally agree with Roy on lots of things, but this is a topic where I’m going to pick on him a little.
Let’s rewind to October of 2001, where a plucky little company named Apple released a strange new product called an iPod. With 5 gigabytes of storage, this pocket-sized marvel cost….$399. What did it do? It played music. That’s all it did. Moreover, it only connected to your computer via an esoteric plug called “Firewire” that 90% of the personal computers in the world didn’t have.
It took Apple 3 financial quarters to sell over 200,000 of them, and it wasn’t until 2004 and the cost per gigabyte dropped under $20/GB and the iPod was on it’s third generation that sales really took off.
The Kindle, for all the publicity it has garnered, is only 8 months old. Is it the perfect reading device? I’m not sure yet. I’ve been consuming ebooks for years, beginning with reading them on my Handspring Visor Deluxe in mid-2000. I’ve read them on cell phones, computer screens, and other PDA’s. And I can say without any reservation that after 24 hours with the Kindle that it is a completely new and better reading experience.
The advantages for the Kindle are twofold: a device customized for reading makes reading easier, and the device comes from Amazon. The Kindle is great for reading, not suffering from the issues that, for example, the iPhone might…primarily the issue that an LCD screen just isn’t very good for reading in any form of bright light. The device is driven by Amazon, who has the reach and power in the publishing industry to get books for the device (take a look at the difference between any other ebook provider’s numbers and Amazon’s). Amazon also has the infrastructure to support immediate electronic delivery of any ebook they carry, directly to the device. Anyone else doing that?
The Kindle does several things (it does not, contrary to Tennant’s assertion “only read books”). It allows for reading, annotating, bookmarking, dictionary lookup, and other common reading chores. It also comes with permanent free cellular internet service. Amazon Whispernet gives you, while not a full web experience, a browser and access to the ‘net anywhere you can get a Sprint cell signal. For no additional cost past the cost of the device. Seriously, how much is that worth over a year?
With all that said, I’ve only had the Kindle for less than 48 hours. I wasn’t going to buy one so early in the development cycle, but do I regret having one now? Hell no. It’s a marvelous piece of technology for readers, and I fully expect that in a couple of years I’ll still be toting it around from conference to conference in lieu of a few pounds worth of wood pulp.
If anyone wants to take a look at the Kindle, find me at ALA Annual, and I’ll happily let you play with it. Just holding it, seeing the screen, and seeing how much thought went into the design will make a difference, I promise.
Steve Lawson, in the comments, pointed out something that I wanted to address. Tim O’Reilly, in a comment on Roy’s post, says:
“I also struggle with Amazon’s DRM and sole-source approach, which seems to me to be a flawed copy of Apple’s iPod strategy, missing not only Apple’s brilliant design but also the positive externality that consumers could easily add their own music collection to the device by ripping mp3s.â€
I am no fan of DRM, and I admit that it gives me pause regarding the Kindle. That said, the “sole-source” approach isn’t true…the Kindle happily ingests any .mobi file you want, and there are plenty of places sourcing native Kindle files of public domain books. First thing I did was put a few dozen of my favorite classics on there, for free. As well, if I had an easy way to digitize the books I already own (in the same rough manner of the digitization of my CDs) I would be doing it, and adding them. The issue there isn’t with the Kindle, it’s that there is no easy digitization of dead trees.
Gonna be hard to top this Father’s Day present next year, but for my very first Father’s Day, Eliza and Betsy got me a Kindle! (yes I know it’s not quite Father’s Day…sue me, they gave it to me early.)
So far, the thing is really intriguing. The display is magical, the closest thing to paper I’ve ever seen for readability, and it took me about 3 minutes of using it to get used to the controls. The UI could be slight springier, with just a bit of lag between button press and effect, but again, I think something I’ll get used to quickly.
The downside? No EVDO service in Sewanee, which means no impulse buys while laying in bed. That’s actually probably not a downside, now that I think about it.
Anyway, if anyone wants to play with a Kindle, find me at ALA…I’ll have it with me.
Eliza fed herself for the first time yesterday, some rice crackers that dissolve in your mouth and get really, really sticky. It was more for play than for nourishment, and she definitely needed a bath afterwards. We’ve found that she’s not happy watching us eat dinner…she wants to eat with us. So these little crackers are a good way to keep her occupied. Granted, they became toys instead of food by the end of our dining experience. Especially fun was the game where she pushed them off the Bumbo tray onto the kitchen table so mommy and daddy had to get their hands sticky picking them up and putting them back on the tray.
Ellie had a great day exploring downtown Chattanooga today with Betsy’s family. Her brother, sister-in-law, and nieces all came to visit, so we spent the hottest day of the year running around downtown.
After visiting the aquarium and having some ribs, we went across the river to Coolidge Park, where Eliza loved the fountains and carousel. She even managed to get sprayed a little to cool down. Elze is quite the trooper when we’re running around, and seemingly loves everything and everyone.
I announced it on the Twitter, but thought I should record my latest questionable decision here for posterity: I’ve been named Chair of the LITA Program Planning Committee for 2008-2010.
Hopefully this blog won’t devolve into a bitchfest regarding this decision.
Eliza plays with her first toy from Uncle Kevin… a bubble machine.
Eliza made her first big trip to Kentucky over the weekend. She met more people in three days that she had met in her life so far. Great grandmother, great grandfather, aunts, uncles, cousins, friends. Everyone fell in love with her, of course, and she seemed to have a great time.
Here she is with cousins Drevin and Hannah, happy to be the newest member of the group.
Very quiet around Pattern Recognition these days, and I apologize. I’m still trying to find the balance between the microblogging I’m doing over on Twitter, and the longer form stuff I’m now writing over at TechSource…not to mention the family-oriented, Eliza-centered writing/photography over at Brand New World. I’ve fractured myself!
So, my goal is now to use Pattern Recognition as something between Twitter and longer-form, at least for now. There’s a lot of stuff percolating, as always, and I’m never quite sure where it will end up. Stay tuned, though. I promise it won’t be quiet forever.
