The Kindle Chronicles

News – A Lab 126 job posting for a browser engineer prompts David Coursey of PC World and Peter Kafka of All Things Digital, among others, to speculate on exactly what sort of “innovative web browser” may be in the works for the next version of the Kindle.

Tech Tip – My personal system for active reading, in this case to prepare for an author interview. The secret sauce is this handy cache of all your highlights and notes on books you’ve bought from Amazon.

Interview – Elif Batuman, author of The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them, found herself in the midst of a Kindle Kerfuffle which she handled gracefully on her blog. In this interview recorded on March 8, 2010, she considers how literature is different on a Kindle.

Content – The New York Times plans to offer its great Book Review section as a separate digital eReader product for the Sony Reader, Kindle and nook.

Your Comments – My friend Kes Woodward reports on a wintry stress test for his Kindle in Denali Park. Listener Gib Wallis helps listener Bob Anderson with a tech problem. Two questions from Patrick Scott.

Kindles for Kandahar – What a week! More than $600 in contributions will enable the purchase of at least two Kindles to be distributed in Afghanistan to active-duty troops by Army Sgt. Andre Corbin, who will be in country by the end of the month. Listener Ken Clark is helping me set up a nonprofit and a web page. Click here for the genesis. M-Edge Accessories CEO Patrick Mish and his team are planning their sponsorship activity to support the project.

HOW TO WIN A KINDLE AND ACCESSORY – Click here to check out out my new Facebook “Reading Edge” page. If you become a fan, you will automatically be entered to win a 6-inch Kindle and one accessory from Octovo. The drawing will take place at noon Mountain Time on April 1, 2010.

News – An interview with Army Sgt. Andre Corbin, who is headed for active duty in Afghanistan next month. His gear will include a new Kindle and accessories in a sponsorship by M-Edge Accessories. Andre describes how well-suited eReader technology is for military personnel serving in remote areas, and he announces his intention to blog about his experience in Afghanistan at Corbinistan.com . Also, comments by M-Edge CEO Patrick Mish on why he and his team were so enthusiastic in their support for this project.

Tech Tip – Click here if you have not yet received the latest slight update for your Kindle or DX software. Listeners’ comments on my Facebook page indicate the update is a pretty good tuneup for the Kindle’s operating system, increasing reliability and speed for some actions.

Interview – Scott Stossel, deputy editor of The Atlantic magazine, describes the genesis of an innovative partnership with Amazon to provide two high-quality short stories each month for $3.99 each. Scott also tells what reaction to the program has been so far from readers and authors alike. If you’d like to provide feedback to him on the program, you can email Scott directly at ScStossel AT TheAtlantic.com – and feel free to let him know you heard about The Atlantic’s Kindle short stories on The Kindle Chronicles!

Content – I’m holding over until next week’s show a good way to organize your Kindle comment using Instapaper AND Calibre. For an advance peek, check out Dave Slusher’s blog post describing his method.

Comments – This week I’ll post your comments as a separate episode.

HOW TO WIN A KINDLE AND ACCESSORY – Click here to check out out my new Facebook “Reading Edge” page. If you become a fan, you will automatically be entered to win a 6-inch Kindle and one accessory from Octovo. The drawing will take place at noon Mountain Time on April 1, 2010. Thanks to Octovo for sponsoring this contest!

News – Amazon releases the Kindle for BlackBerry app. Lance Ulanoff worries about the screen size. Motoko Rich of The New York Times gets a scoop: Perhaps rumors of Apple’s opposition to discounted prices for bestsellers was a tad exaggerated?

Tech Tip – How NOT to uninstall your screensaver and fonts apps in order to update your Kindle 2 to the new 2.3.3 . I make some errors and am rescued by a member of KindleBoards, who pointed me to this folder of up-to-date tools for installing and uninstalling hacks. Thank you, Heather!

Interview – Stephen Windwalker’s Kindle Nation is the third-bestselling blog at the Kindle Store. He’s also just released a new, comprehensive survey of Kindle Nation citizens, which has information the major publishers AND Amazon ought to be paying attention to. I interviewed Steve in person on Feburary 17, 2010, in Arlington, Mass.

Content – EduKindle creator Will DeLamater is beta-testing a new tool for creating content for the Kindle with Wikipedia and other sources. It’s named eReadUps and you can submit a request to become a beta tester. Nice!

Comments – Richard Fischer, Heather Hollick, Marie Sotiriou with a podcast recommendation, Maurice Lawles, Bob Anderson, Brian Rupert, Craig Scarberry, Sean, and Bruce Kessel.

HOW TO WIN A KINDLE AND ACCESSORY – Click here to check out out my new Facebook “Reading Edge” page. If you become a fan, you will automatically be entered to win a 6-inch Kindle and one accessory from Octovo. The drawing will take place at noon Mountain Time on April 1, 2010. Thanks to Octovo for sponsoring this contest!

ONE MORE THING…. With this episode, I’m announcing that a fan of the podcasts on my Reading Edge Facebook page, Sergeant Andre B. Corbin, will be taking a complimentary Kindle and accessories with him when he deploys for active duty with the U.S. Army in Afghanistan next month, courtesy of M-Edge Accessories. I saw that Andre had expressed the hope he’d win the Octovo drawing for the Kindle on April 1st (see above), so I contacted Patrick Mish, CEO of M-Edge Accessories, to see if his company might be interested in donating a Kindle and accessories for Andre. Patrick quickly agreed, and they are working with Andre on the details, which I’ll have for you next week. Congratulations Andre, and thank you for your service!

News – Item 1: Will Random House align with Amazon in the Great eBooks Price War? Bufo Calvin does some sleuthing on a Random House executive who worked for 18 months on the Kindle team, then returned to Random House. RH’s Madeline McIntosh actually spoke out against the idea of publishers’ setting of retail eBook prices, so maybe there’s hope that the biggest of the Big Six publishers will break ranks with the Apple Five. MobileRead and Gear Diary have more, including links to the Random House Twitter stream and Facebook page, places you might want to add words of encouragement. Click here for members of the Apple Five. Item 2: Is Amazon planning to give free Kindles to every Amazon Prime member? Michael Arrington of TechCrunch thinks so.

Tech Tip – Inkmesh is checking each hour for new non-public-domain eBooks content. Sweet!

Interview – Steve Garfield of SteveGarfield.com has been videoblogging since January 1, 2004, and as of January he is now a Kindle author. His new book, Get Seen: Online Video Secrets to Building Your Business, came out in Kindle and other eBook format as well as paper, published by Wiley. We spoke on February 9, 2010, by Skype (including a video recording I’ll post separately) and discussed how eBooks in the future may succeed in providing what I found myself describing as Engaged Social Reading. Steve’s next event promoting his book will be February 25 at 6:30 p.m. at Fenway Park, Boston.

Content – Amazon and the British Library team up to offer for free 65,000 newly scanned literary gems from the 19th century. Coming this spring to a Kindle near you! Note: I was only off a hundred years in referring to the 18th century on the podcast.

Comments – From anonymous, Jean Remple, Greg Montague, James T. Atkinson, and Sean Adams.

HOW TO WIN A KINDLE AND ACCESSORY – Click here to check out out my new Facebook “Reading Edge” page. If you become a fan, you will automatically be entered to win a brand new 6-inch Kindle and one accessory from Octovo. The drawing will at noon on April 1, 2010. Thanks to Elle Moran and Octovo for sponsoring this contest! And thanks to all 165 of you who have signed up as fans of the podcast.

Note: For a guest blog post I wrote at e-ReaderFeeder, titled “How I Learned to Love the Kindle and Start a Podcast,” click here. Thanks to James Zakaria for the invitation!

News – Amazon beats expectations by reporting a whopping 71-percent increase in net income for the fourth quarter of 2009 and offers its first-ever information on how many Kindles the company has sold. Apple presents to the world its gorgeous tablet, the iPad. In the long-running soap opera known as “Who Will Kill the Kindle?” Steve Jobs’s presentation had plenty of pundits declaring “game over.” Not so much on Wall Street, or among four leading Kindle bloggers – Andrys Basten, Stephen Windwalker, Abhi, and Bufo Calvin.

Tech Tip – How to keep track on your Kindle of words you’ve looked up using the built-in Oxford American Dictionary or another dictionary which you’ve set to the default dictionary.

Interview – Brad Stone, New York Times technology reporter in San Francisco, is one of the lucky few who not only touched but had a chance to try out an iPad at Apple’s debut extravaganza on January 27. I spoke with him that night about his impressions of Apple’s new creation, and about what he thinks the impact will be on the Kindle and other dedicated eReaders. This episode contains the first portion of our conversation. The conclusion is posted here, at my new companion podcast, The Reading Edge.

Content – Harvard Business Review and Amazon launch an innovative use of the Kindle Store, selling HBR titles by chapters as Short Cuts. I sampled the $3.16 book summary of The Innovator’s Dilemma: Why New Technologies Cause Great Companies to Fail, by HBS Professor Clayton M. Christensen.

Comments – Because of the volume of terrific comments prompted by the release of the iPad, I have created a separate episode for the comments this week. Click here to hear from Pastor Mark Pierce, Mary McManus, Bob Anderson, Jim Jones, Kipp Poe, Jean Remple, Marie Sotiriou, Dan Meyers, John Halkias, Candy Yates, and Stace Wile.