I think that it’s big, it’s ugly, and I shouldn’t need a keyboard to read an eBook. I also think it would be a lot better at a much lower price point without the wireless broadband. Designs like that tempt me to make a t-shirt with Messrs. Ives and Miyamoto on the front, and that old quote about a design only being finished when there is nothing to take away on the back.

Kindle=esuck.

>With wireless capabilities, a hard drive, and the ability to have any book written in history at your fingertips in less than a minute, this could get interesting.

How’s the type? Is it Sony-good (Bitstream Dutch) or Microsoft-good (Frutiger and Berling) or better?

The end of print is nigh! Oh, no!

Gizmodo has the lowdown on Kindle right here, with plenty of photos, too.

Oh, and don’t forget that there is also the Sony Reader...

Coke or Pepsi?
Sony or Betamax?
Mac or PC? ;-)

First iPod invented in 1930, from Modern Mechanics & Inventions, August 1930.

I think we entered the post-Gutenberg era around mid-fifteenth century.

Gerald

Oh wow, I found out that for for just $.10 per file I can transfer a PDF to the kindle. After I buy it for $400. Wait, there’s some serious logic problem there, sort of like having a keyboard on an ebook.

Seriously, this thing is just a crappy DRM locker. Why Amazon has managed to do DRM-free music so well and then turns around and does this is lost on me.

Anyone else want to raise some capital to hire a few RISD students to design a DRM-free, not sucky e-ink based reader to replace all the models on the market now?

When they make an e-book that feels and smells as nice as a real book, I will consider buying one.

Oh wow, I found out that for for just $.10 per file I can transfer a PDF to the kindle.

Exactly. Who’s gonna want that?

I think we entered the post-Gutenberg era around mid-fifteenth century.

:-D

Sii, I touch on this in my yesterday’s post. The font is Noordzij’s Caecilia, so I’m afraid it’s neither like Sony or Microsoft ;^)

Anyone know how good of an ebook library exists on amazon?

Daniel, go to this link and scroll down... You’ll find them near the bottom of the page.

“Seriously, this thing is just a crappy DRM locker.”

Yep. The product was stillborn.

Caecilia? You’re breaking my heart! ;-)

Intersting that we were looking at fonts that would work well under ClearType last month and Caecilia came up.

Anyway I’d put that somewhere in between Sony and MS - but it shows that someone at Amazon at least thought about it, and someone at Amazon signed a pretty-sizable check.

Cheers, Si

@Don

Forget about the feel and smell. Can you use it outside? I.e., in the bright, bright sunlight where the contrast on most screens goes to die?

>Can you use it outside?

That’s where the “e-ink” comes in - it’s worth checking out in person.

> That’s where the “e-ink” comes in

What? Does it get pixels all over your hands and clothes if the e-ink isn’t dried?

Does it get pixels all over your hands and clothes if the e-ink isn’t dried?

It’s worse than that, Don. It causes static electricity!

It’s not that bad. Whatever mess you make with e-ink you can clean it up by pressing CTRL+Z

Cheers, Si

Has anyone tried reading books on their iphone/touches? I really like the reader which switches everything to black blackground, white text. It’s very pleasant and not straining at all.

It’s very pleasant and not straining at all.

I hear non-electronic books will be switching over to white-on-black soon. ;-P

e-books won’t really take off until Apple releases the iPod Reader. I’ll bet that this’ll not to use Chicago, Myriad, or Helvetica for text, either. But some sort of crazy-legible serif. Just wait.

Dan, do you mean this?

No, I mean the yet-to-be-created super app that will turn into the vehicle that will finally make e-books portable and cool. Just like the iPod did for MP3s.

Dan you’re forgetting that music, music videos and downloadable episodes of Battlestar Galactica are cool - books are not cool. Apple won’t go near this with a 10ft pole.

>I hear non-electronic books will be switching over to white-on-black soon.

Printing and books went black on white to mimic the scribes but economics of ink consumption must have played a part too?

On-screen white on black requires less juice on LCDs and CRTs (I think) so the economics are reversed if you want to conserver battery life.

“On-screen white on black requires less juice on LCDs and CRTs (I think)”

Just CRTs.

>Just CRTs.

That seems to be correct... http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2007/08/is-black-new-green.html

Does—would—any of you really prefer reading an e-book on an electronic device, rather than an honest-to-God book? If so, just why?

Actually, being able to read white-text-on-black-page would be a nice perk of the ebook (I find that it helps make floaters less annoying). I sometimes use ctrl+opt+cmd+8 to get through long passages of onscreen text.

>downloadable episodes of Battlestar Galactica are cool - books are not cool.

Actually, Universal pulled their shows from the iTMS. How am I supposed to see the upcoming tv movie and next BG series now? I have British telly, but not Sky One :(

And books, books will become cool the day apple releases the iPod Reader ;-)

That’s a real dilemma - is there a Reading Uni sci-fi club you could join that organizing a screening? Although the thought makes me shudder, it might be your only chance. So say we all?

>And books, books will become cool the day apple releases the iPod Reader ;-)

True. They could announce the iTurd and get people lining up for it :-)

“They could announce the iTurd and get people lining up for it :-)”

They would need DRM toilet paper though to take a-swipe at that comodety :-)

ChrisL

More toilet humor on Typophile - gotta love it.

>They would need DRM toilet paper though to take a-swipe at that comodety :-)

You’re on a roll! All the type would be flush left of course.

“Does—would—any of you really prefer reading an e-book on an electronic device”

Yes.

“If so, just why?”

When it’s documentation/instructional in nature. When I need to look at the pages without propping the book open. When I need to search quickly. When I need to cross-reference multiple texts.

Reading a novel? I’d probably stick with paper.

“he day apple releases the iPod Reader”

They could call it the iBook! Oh. Wait...

>>They could call it the iBook! Oh. Wait...

Speaking of device names, did anyone else get the impression from “kindle” that it was somehow implying that paper books are now as good as kindling?

“All the type would be flush left of course.”

Unless all the Johns in the UK flush on the right side, then you might be justified to do it 2 ways :-)

ChrisL

More toilet humor (humour, in this case) from Dezcom! :-D

How am I supposed to see the upcoming tv movie and next BG series now?

Dan, the (extended, uncut version of the) BSG movie Razor is being released on DVD this coming December 4 — in the U.S., at least. So you could purchase it from Amazon.

I am still waiting for the release of the Season 3 DVDs here in the States! But then again, the shows are available through iTunes.

I prefer the 1.99 shows on the iTMS. Much cheaper than the DVDs. I collect the DVDs of other shows that I like to watch again and again, like Doctor Who. Galactica is good, but not that good…

dezcom is here. Now the party can begin ;-)

A little bit on readability: Kindle’s resolution is on par with Sony reader (167 dpi) and slightly higher than iPhone (160 dpi), so I think that reading will be no problem. An interesting touch would actually be if it will let you invert the display (white-on-black) and change the typeface. Like Haley said, reading on iPhone is indeed very pleasant, and I’d like to try that with Kindle.

Also no reader/handheld device that I know (or any operating system interface) had used a slab before, so Caecilia is a welcome touch.

Expensive. It’ll be awhile before I replace traditional books with the likes of the Kindle.

“Did Amazon create an ebook reader that stands to crush our printed page?
Some of them. I think you’d need to own one for it to crush some of your pages.

“Could we finally be entering a post-Gutenberg era?”
What were the previous ones again?
“I think we entered the post-Gutenberg era around mid-fifteenth century.”
The first one was when his successors tossed around his sorts then?

“On-screen white on black requires less juice on LCDs and CRTs (I think) so the economics are reversed if you want to conserver battery life.”
That is what we are seeing in lots of applications as well as red on black.

“Kindle’s resolution is on par with Sony reader (167 dpi) and slightly higher than iPhone (160 dpi), so I think that reading will be no problem.”
This is the rub: does a pda need to be made for this purpose? Is 160 dpi needed to get that one font “right”?

I’ve not actually touched a Kindler, (and I read left-handed, so I guess I might not), but I’m sure it works quite nicely (for righties) or they wouldn’t have actually gear’d up and made ’em. But while they were at it, you’d think maybe they’d think that user’s’d think one font might be skimpin’.

Cheers!

Since it’s come up, reversing text to white-on-black does not save energy on an LCD display. All LCD pixels are always on, and shutters filter what gets out in a backlit display, or reflected in an unlit display.

I’m surprised no one has commented on the Kindle’s horrible full-justified type with no hyphenation. I mean, is programming hyphenation THAT hard? As you can see in the Kindle demo video, the no-hyphenation result is some very gappy text.

” ...is programming hyphenation THAT hard?”

...this is The Story of this decade so far, really — everybody waiting for post-Gutenberg III. MS the only one willing to build a chase good enough. Falling asleep waiting. Yawn. . . while we watch and play an extended game of pin “that-one-good-font” on the device, (no not that font, that one!). Waiting for the next device, yawn. Maybe next decade, our good buddies over at w3c will recognize the importance of form, all the way to the user’s machine. Maybe?

cheers!

David,

I would think that a slab like Cæcilia would render better at a lower dpi than a serif (which is what all the previous eBook reader used)—but I don’t think that you can’t go wrong with having a higher dpi value, no? While I haven’t touched a Kindle myself, Helvetica on iPhone is gorgeous.

But I agree that having only one display face isn’t a great idea. After all, isn’t what supposedly made Kindle different was that it is designed to supposedly emulate a physical book? I would think that allusive typography is a big part of a physical book, so why not have it in the device?

Here’s an idea: why not embed a font in whatever-file-format that Kindle will take? You’ll get the variety and you’ll get the text.

Am I too far-fetched? PDF had been able to do it since a long time ago.

Dan, Simon is right: Apple doesn’t care about reading.

hhp

ok, limited choice, but what’s to stop you downloading project gutenberg hosted files straight to your iphone, blackberry, whatever? oh and there’s still rather a large book case to choose from.

Dan, NBC Universal just launched their web TV property http://hulu.com where you can get your BSG fix. Universal can get more control and more cash from ad revenue than an Apple revenue share is my take.

The digital content/delivery game is just now getting interesting and the “walled garden” and DRM are not helping any of the players. True openness will win.