Living Digitally

Review of the Amazon Kindle

I've been waiting roughly 10 years for a good eBook reader. In fact, I've even tried several times to make them myself out of ultra-mobile PCs, tablet PCs, various Linux-based devices, phones, and old disused laptops. Once I accepted that I would probably never come up with a solution that I could stick with for more than a few days, I started eyeing technology from Sony and Seiko. And then just as I came to the conclusion that the world simply wasn't ready for eBooks yet, Amazon launched the Kindle. I had one in my cart and scheduled for next day delivery before I even fully knew what it was.

The Kindle is Amazon's new wireless reading device. Interestingly, they don't call it an eBook reader. They use the term "wireless reading device" which is actually very accurate, and much more descriptive. All marketing and buzzwords aside, Kindle is a device for wirelessly downloading and reading eBooks, newspapers, magazines, and blogs. It uses electronic ink for a high-contrast and power-thrifty display, and it even hints at music and web browser functionality, as well.

I've only been using my Kindle for about four hours, and most of that time has been spent reading, but here's what I have to report so far:

Using maps to tell stories

I recently moved from San Francisco back to Northern Virginia where I'm from. I've always wanted to drive across the country, so a friend of mine and I took the opportunity to tour a bit of the US. We spent 7 days on the road, drove through 13 states, and covered roughly 3,500 miles along the way.

I was planning on writing a long blog entry to document the trip, and creating a custom Google map as a supplemental visual aid. Creating the map seemed like the fun part, so I did it first. I used Google's new "My Maps" feature which, in addition to being a little buggy, is also very powerful. I ended up adding so much detail to the map that eventually I didn't need to write the blog entry anymore. Everything I was going to write as a boring old blog post, I added as annotations to the map, instead. Not only did telling the story as a custom map force me to be more succinct (which almost all writing can benefit from), but I also provided unique visual and spatial context that I would never have been able to capture in an ordinary blog post.

If you're interested, you can check out my first custom map entitle Cross-country Drive. As a bonus, my friend created his own map documenting his perspective on the trip. It's interesting to contrast the two and see what different things stood out in our minds.

Why all the recent movie news isn't good news

Lot's of interesting movie news lately. First of all, Toshiba has released the first HD DVD players in Japan, and will soon start selling them in the US for $499 and $799, depending on the model. The debut of HD DVD will soon be followed by Blu-ray technology backed by Sony and Samsung (the new Sony PS3s will have Blu-ray built-in), and we'll all get to relive the Betamax / VHS format wars all over again.

So what's wrong with first generation DVDs? First and foremost, they aren't selling like they used to, so it's time to revitalize the market by updating the format. According to Toshiba, however, people are asking for them since television resolution has surpassed that of DVDs. Personally, I think Sony, Samsung, and Toshiba have a lot of challenges ahead of them.