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Wikisummarizer Context Discovery Inc

Waiting for Amazon's Kindle Tablet

Amazon’s Kindle Tablet Is Very Real. I’ve Seen It, Played With It.;

Again, the device is a 7-inch tablet with a capacitive touch screen. It is multi-touch, but from what I saw, I believe the reports that it relies on a two-finger multi-touch (instead of 10-finger, like the iPad uses) are accurate. This will be the first Kindle with a full-color screen. And yes, it is back-lit. There is no e-ink to be found anywhere on this device.

Why Amazon's Kindle tablet can succeed where others have failed.

Should I wait for the Amazon Tablet

Publishing News: Amazon and the sub-$300 tablet

Assorted Art and Design Blogs

The World's Best Ever

Deanna Templeton

buzzmuseaum

Gear Petrol

Unscathed Corpse

Sisilia Paring

Assorted websites

Please Rob Me [don't post on Facebook that your houses are empty for the weeken]

Graphy Your Inbox

Cool and Creative Assorted

Top 45 Creative Anti-Smoking Advertisements

Google Calendar's Smart Rescheduler: Great for Sneaky Secretaries or Lazy People

The Design Inspiration

Google Fast Flip

Google Fusion Tables

Google Reader Play

Kinetic Shadows

The Apartment Therapy

Blog of the Day

Think Geek

Useful Tool for the Day

Convert For Windows

Convert is a free and easy to use unit conversion program that will convert the most popular units of distance, temperature, volume, time, speed, mass, power, density, pressure, energy and many others, including the ability to create custom conversions!

Costs and Benefits of Amazon Kindle

Megan McArdle is loving it;

I've got about 50 books on it, and I love always having something with me to read. I also love the ease of using it one handed, and checking my email from anywhere. As far as I'm concerned, it's better than a book. The biggest downsides are that not everything I want to read is on it yet, and conversely, that it's awful easy to spend a hell of a lot of money browsing. But there's so much cheap content from the public domain that this is not a huge issue.

Arnold Kling has mixed reactions;

It turns out that my reading style is to scan. Sometimes I'll be in the third chapter of a book and start asking myself what the author is getting at. So I'll flip to the conclusion. Or I'll jump ahead to what I think is a more important chapter. Although one can use the Kindle that way, it takes a lot more thought and effort than with a paper book.

My main concern continues to be with what is available on the Kindle. The typical semi-academic nonfiction that I read tends to be unavailable. My guess is that if I stick with the Kindle it will skew my reading in the direction of more popular nonfiction.

I'm not the first one to say this, but it's probably bad to try to replicate an older media experience using a new technology. Instead, if a new device is going to have real impact, it has to be adapted in unexpected ways. For that purpose, the proprietary Kindle format and the closed operating system are its most serious flaws. If it could be hacked, I could imagine it being used for email or blogging. Or it might become a vehicle for new scholarly journals, or cheaper textbooks.

But as a closed system, you have to compare it to book technology. It is easier to purchase, carry, and store books on the Kindle. But it is harder to read them.

Steven Levitt has yet to try;

I’ve never actually read an e-book (after all, I am hopelessly behind when it comes to technology), but this new development is encouraging me to finally try. I would be interested to hear from readers who have tried both the Sony Reader and the Amazon Kindle as to which they prefer.

David Friedman on Kindle

Kindle Economics

Why Amazon's Kindle is revolutionary

Big Picture on Kindle

The Future of Reading

Kindle is interesting but …

Kindle-nomics

Initial Kindling reactions- Krugman

Experiencing The Endowment Effect

Amazon's e-book reader has clunky design, good performance, and a couple of annoying quirks

So on second thought it seems I should wait around for a while (6 months?) before buying a Kindle.

Help me decide

Should I buy an iPod or Amazon Kindle

Gadgets for Lonely Girls

20 toys for girls that don't look like, er, toys for girls

The end of paper?

After rising steadily in the 1980s and ’90s, worldwide paper consumption per capita has plateaued in recent years. In the richest countries, consumption fell 6 percent from 2000 to 2005, from 531 to 502 pounds a person. The data bolsters the view of experts like Mr. Kahle who say paper is becoming passé.

Many companies, like H-P, Fujitsu, and Canon, have leapt into the paperless home market with new scanners for personal and home use, which is the fastest-growing sales segment. Worldwide shipments jumped to 623,000 in 2007 from 354,000 in 2005, and sales are expected to top 1.1 million by 2010, according to IDC, a market research company...

Some people prefer to bypass the purchase of a scanner and instead farm out the scanning — to India, where it can be done on the cheap. ScanCafé, which specializes in digitizing and retouching photographs, has an office in the San Francisco Bay Area, but most of its employees are in Bangalore. They will take a shoe box full of prints or a photo album and return the originals with a CD and your own online digital library. They scan paper documents, too, for about 40 cents a page....

Robert Burdock, a student at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, carries a digital camera to class so he can take a picture of any handout and immediately turn it into a text-searchable document on his laptop.

“Say I’m writing an essay on Edward III. A quick input of the term in Google Desktop and I’m presented with everything I have on the subject,” Mr. Burdock wrote in an e-mail message, which had a note at the bottom asking the recipient to consider the environment before printing. “This is a massive time saver when compared to manual searching and sifting.”

-Pushing Paper Out the Door

Related;
The Social Life of Paper

The Paperless Undergrad