The Kindle Chronicles

Intro – How was Las Vegas? I ruminated on our stay for CES here.

News – Can the Kindle really account for 90 percent of all eBook sales? TBI Research says yes, according to unnamed sources. Abhi says it’s not totally crazy. Are you getting tired of HarperCollins delaying eBook releases? Some of us got rowdy at the Amazon listing for Game Change, leaving one-star reviews that maybe will get someone’s attention. Stephen Windwalker notes the book is still selling well. Marion Maneker muses about how much easier it would be to match supply to demand if publishers took advantage of the eBook platform instead of delaying eBook versions. The National Federation of the Blind settles with ASU. Amazon makes it easy to send support to Mercy Corps to help victims of the earthquake in Haiti.

Tech Tip – Via Andrys Basten, here’s the official word on whether you should turn your Kindle all the way off at the end of the day, or simply put it in sleep mode.

Interview – Harvey Chute, webmaster and owner of the fast-growing Kindle Boards forum, sat down for a visit at CES in Las Vegas. He was busy learning about all the rival eBook readers, and he told us about what surprised him most in the eBook TechZone. Check out some of his photos and commentary on eBooks here.

Content – Thoughts on Michael Seringhaus’s recently published “E-Book Transactions: Amazon ‘Kindles’ the Copy Ownershhip Debate” in the Yale Journal of Law & Technology.

… and lots of comments!

News – The Kindle iPhone and iPod Touch app 1.3 now works in 60 countries. Via the New York Times, Stephen Covey — not Stephen King — makes the e-deal heard round the publishing world. Anne Rice wonders if it’s a good idea. The nook is rooted, the nook is rooted! Audio interview with Robbie Trencheny, the California high school student who started NookDevs. Click here to follow him on Twitter. Mr. and Mrs. GeekTonic post their must-read reviews of the nook.

Tech Tip – Len’s 2Doo list 2.o, with help from Larry Goss. Also, your host proves to be a dim bulb in the mysterious matter of a Mighty Bright clip-on light that wasn’t getting the nightime job done.

Interview – Eric Engleman, senior tech writer at TechFlash, pretty much covers just one company – Amazon. That gives him a lot of time for hard work the development of good sources, which gives him unusual insight into what’s ahead for the Kindle and its competitors. We spoke by Skype/landline on December 15, 2009.

Content – Via Bufo Calvin’s blog, I learn that Barnes & Noble’s Fictionwise has a Kindle store!

Comments – Esmerald deTrafford’s downloading woes down under, Bruce Bouchard on Babylon Dictionary software, Vern Elmore on eBeam, Ted Inoue on Kindle version 2.3 fonts (click here for the one I use for darker, larger font on my Kindle-US), Craig Findlay’s net additional cost to upgrade from a Sony PRS505 to a Kindle International is 20 pounds thanks to eBay, Alex Bowman looks forward to the next meetup, Craig Scarberry on Cory Doctorow, Al MacDiarmid’s very bad time updating to 2.3, Peggy Poellot speaking up on behalf of the original Kindle, Blair Savin’s sunlight 2.3 problem, and Richard Fischer on the Magic Catalog of Project Gutenberg.

Next Week: Will TKC staff succeed in their (her, actually) reasonable request for one week off a year? Stay tuned….

News – Second looks at the Nook: Staci D. Kramer at PaidContent asks “what else do we need to know about the Nook?” Will publishers cripple the LendMe feature? Joe Wilcox cancels his Nook preorder after comparing eBook prices between Barnes & Noble and Amazon. Bill Keller, executive editor of The New York Times, lets slip a reference to the “Apple slate”. Click here for the “off the record” video obtained by Neiman Journalism Lab.

Tech Tip – My personal method for creating a To Do list within a book I’m reading on my Kindle.

Interview – Michael Koenig, director of MBA operations at the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia, has been a prime mover of Darden’s pilot program testing the Kindle DX in a test involving 60 MBA students. Click here for Darden’s very good BusinessCast, which interviewed Robert Carroway, associate dean for MBA education, in June after he and Koenig had attended the press conference unveiling the DX. Koenig makes clear that Amazon is serious about its test of the higher education market for Kindles, and that there are areas for improvement of the current design of the DX. Did anyone say “folders?”

Content – Stephen Windwalker notes that the new Barbara Kingsolver novel, The Lacuna, is available for pre-order for $9. And Karen Oland reports the same is true for Pirate Latitudes by Michael Chrichton, due for release in hardcover and Kindle on Nov. 24th, and Under the Dome by Stephen King, set for Kindle release on Dec. 24th – more than a month after the hardcover release on Nov. 10. Grrrr.

Comments – Craig Findlay from Scotland, Steve Gold relays Kindle news from Japan via the Mainichi Daily News, James Palmer and Rick Limpert note USA Today’s coverage of the Cushing Academy digital library, Linda Hopkins on the Nook, Allen MacDiarmid on the large-fonts hack for Kindle 2, Jesslyn Hendrix on the 2.0.4 firmware, Ann Miner on Bookmarks Magazine, Melissa Gann and John Halkias on Kindle for PC (and Mac and Blackberry).

News – Google Editions is coming to a cloud near you, by June 2010. Click here for Abhi’s analysis. A Kindle DX – International is also coming, sometime next year. Citigroup analyst Mark Mahaney revises his Kindle sales estimates upward. Brett Arends of the Wall Street Journal, bucking the conventional wisdom, argues for a sell on Amazon and a buy on Barnes & Noble.

Tech Tip – Courtesy of Mike Detlefsen, you might try Bookit, a FireFox plug-in that enables you to create eBooks with Calibre. Not that I could get it to work, but you may be more successful.

Interview – Stefaan van Gerven is product manager for embedded speech at Nuance Communications, which provides the Text to Speech capability of the Kindle 2 and DX. I spoke with him in Belgium via Skype and phone on October 13, 2009 . He tells how embedded speech works. As a footnote, I discovered that my Kindle DX can pronounce Obama’s name correctly, but the Kindle 2 can’t.

Content – Check out Books on the Knob for bargain Kindle books and lots more.

Comments – Warwick Head on Oberon Design, James Garland, ProlificProgrammer, and Rick Askenase on Disney Digital Books.

News – iRex Technologies teams up with Best Buy and Verizon to form the newest challenge to the Kindle’s dominance of eBooks. Engadget gets its hands on an iRex DR800SG and is not impressed. Other smart commentary here and here. Meanwhile, Amazon announces the winner of its Your Amazon Ad Contest. Click here to watch the whimsical “Kindlicious” video that won $20,000 in Amazon gift cards for Angela Kohler.

Tech Tip – Another handy little keyboard gem from Andrys Basten of Kindle World.

Interview – Brad Stone, technology reporter in The New York Times’s San Francisco bureau, talks about secrecy at Apple and Amazon, Dan Brown, a Kindle developer apps store, and the brilliant description his 22-year-old daughter had of his Kindle recently.

Content – Jan Zlendich of Kindle Reader highlights a promising list of new historical fiction titles for the Kindle.

Comments – Mary McManus on True Compass, Al MacDiarmid on Adrienne Cousins’s cool set of web links for the Kindle, and Len Charnoff on the mysterious 2.0.3 firmware update to the Kindle 2.