This thing will change the world. This screen technology has been around for a few years and it’s nice to see it working its way into mainstream product development.

What sets the Kindle apart from the competition is Amazon’s Whispernet service, which invisibly uses cellular connections with no service fees to download blogs, news, and books right to the device. This is also what made it instantly appealing to me. Service fees are baked into the cost of the services, I’m sure, but prices are competitive as always. It is Amazon after all.

The screen technology allows a panel to behave like a computer and look like paper. While most screens (LCD, for example) create an image by constantly flowing electricity through one scheme or another (crystals, mirrors, you name it), electronic paper uses power only to change the image, then it stays that way until more power is pushed through it. In this way the battery is said to last for weeks.

I also just love the name, Kindle. I was working on a branding project last year for a client and tried to get her to go with jobkindle.com for a site (for many of the same definitions/reasons Amazon cites on the packaging). She went another direction and we ended up with Ditch The Flip Flops, the title of the matching book, which was a good move. But kindle is such a nice word.

It’s unfortunate to hear someone with as much influence and tech savvy as Steve Jobs dismiss the Kindle by saying that 60% of Americans read 1 or fewer books in a year. If this is true, then I put it to the Kindle and similar devices to help reverse this trend. I, for one, know that I will read more just having one device to carry around. I can’t count the number of times I’ve been sitting on a train or in a doctor’s office and resort to the magazines they have. Rather than 20 choices, I have 90,000. But he’s really missing the point. The kindle gives you all your read media. Magazine, newspapers, and most importantly blogs. This may very well be the ultimate portable blogging tool (color images would help), but what about commenting?

Or I’m wrong.

It would be more appropriate to raise the point that many people will never give up paper.

This raises the convenience question. Do Americans love convenience? Of course they do. The busier our lives get the less we want to have to worry about remembering where the book or magazine we were reading is. And it’s not a bad thing, it’s just life.

And that doesn’t even get us into third world situations, where distributing tens of thousands of books is impractical, if not impossible. These things are pricey, but when the price goes down, we’ve got a real solution on our hands. America is hindered by its embedded telecom infrastructure. Newer economies are developing wireless infrastructures that are far more flexible and would handily support devices like the Kindle to encourage reading.

I do feel the urge to touch the screen. Who wouldn’t after having Palms for years then wonderful implementations of smartphones, the Samsung i500, Palm Treo 650, then the iPhone? But people tend to miss the point. The beauty of this thing is that is only does books. Just as the iPod was so extraordinary and wonderful because it only did music. It did one thing and did it extremely well. I love Apple products, but I have a hard time thinking they won’t take the book a little overboard, with music and loads of other features you don’t need when reading. Unlike music downloads though, the quality of the book that’s delivered to your brain is not lessened by this experience, unless the tactile sensation is really that worthwhile.

Brief Product Review:

The styling, fit, and finish is no Apple product, but they did their damndest. White cords and all. And there is something timeless about the form. As much as I love every iPod ever released, you know there is a built-in obsolesce with those puppies in design and performance. It’s hard to imagine this thing becoming obsolete. Who could need more memory, longer battery? Of course these things will always come up, but when you’re just concerned about reading text, who would ever want a color screen, even if you could read it in the sun? It is a little sluggish in terms of network and processing power/response time. But for its main purpose, reading, I think it’s right on the money.

Do I still love my iPhone? Of course, I’m a sucker for a sexy touchscreen. But I’d never want to read a book on it. Paper still beats it up against a straight reflection of a light source. But otherwise this stuff is the real deal. It reminds me of the first time I saw something print out of my Apple Stylewriter many years ago (one of the first inkjets in a world of dot matrix banners). It’s just liquid.

The scroll bar bugs me a little. I’m sure there was a reason to make it reflective, but it just seems a little annoying. The same ink technology is used, though, which just makes me giddy. The page flash when switching screens is also a little off-putting, but I understand this is part of the technology.

The built-in dictionary is very nice. The optimist in me thinks this might increase vocabulary.

Best product for writing smaller than a laptop that doesn’t make significant compromises. In fact, in many ways I feel liberated using something that doesn’t offer me a thousand distractions.

“Save Page as Clipping” feature makes this a killer app for me.

Small fee to deliver your files to the Kindle via the network. No fee to send files back to your account. I think they would have been better off doing all of this for free. I doubt I’d use it much either way, but this seems like a little bit greedy for Amazon. There is a way to convert files to the Kindle format and sync them via the USB port, but that’s a bit more laborious.

Pretty lame that it doesn’t take me back to where I was (blogs) when I purchase something and want to go back

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Andy Swindler Categories: Gadget, Social Media, Technology