The Kindle Diaries - Part 6

I don't expect my opinion here to change the way you feel about owning a Kindle. I suspect that the early adopting, forward thinking Grey-Area-reader-about-town is on to their second or third Kindle by now. You've seen how cute the new ones are and even though the first one is just fine and there's nothing wrong with it at all... hey wait, is the screen staying a bit greyer than it should? Is that a tiny but visible amount of retention from the previous page I can see on the next page? No? Are you sure? Better get a new one just in case.

I am very happy with mine. It gets hours of use every day and it goes everywhere with me. There is the odd formatting niggle with some books, not enough to really detract from the enjoyment, just enough for me to think, "I would fix that if I was them," but on the whole, I couldn't be happier - except for one industrial design "feature" in one of the major accessories. The Kindle reading light.

The second most used thing in the house after the eBook, is the little reading light you can get for it. I'm not a world-class sleeper and get a lot of reading done in the small hours. The little light has been a boon. If you stick a good quality battery in it, like a lithium, it lasts for months. Like I said, hours every day and I've had one battery change since August last year. But, there's one bit of design on it that really gives me the poops - The on/off switch. It's particularly silly.

If you are using a reading light, it is very likely because you do not want to disturb the person asleep next to you. I would have thought that was probably its raison d'être but the on/off switch goes against this design imperative. Mounted on the flexible head of the light (the little bump you can see in the picture) it's a slider switch with pretty stiff notches to get between the three settings. These settings go from left to right: High - Off - Low. For those of you hip to this sort of thing, you will know the folly in placing the "off" position in the middle of settings.

Applying enough pressure to slide from one of the "on" positions inevitably fires the little switch from low to high and back again. Getting the pressure right, on a flexibly mounted head, to just get it into the off position usually requires a bit of back and forth. So what you are doing is lying there next to your slumbering partner, performing a miniature dance rave before finally getting it right and hoping you haven't woken them. I also can't believe that it would be that hard to correct. Emergency Contact's is the same model and it is wired in reverse. Low - Off - High. How hard can it be to move the off to the first position?

This is the thing that I find odd about this sort of boo-boo. These basics in usability have already been covered in other parts of the manufacturing world. If you look at a well designed modern gas stove, the circular regulating dial will go; off, then highest to lowest. This allows you to set your cooking to a simmer without the dial being knocked into a position where you're gassing yourself. Good, simple yet thoughtful design. 

A Grey Area - continuing to worry at the big issues in 2011. 

 

The Kindle Diaries - Part 5, Complete With Snacks

It’s been a week of disappointments, and some of them I am duty-bound to share with you.

For those of you who were interested in The Kindle Diaries, I have an update.

One of our Kindles died. Emergency Contact got one as a present and it needs to be replaced after only making it through five months of, not particularly strenuous, use. The mode of its demise I find interesting and will be handing on to Amazon.

She was sitting on the apron of Bangkok airport, waiting to take off, when the reader went into an uninterruptable software update. Mine did one at much the same time in Australia, and it was most annoying. I was reading and it just flicked over to a ‘busy’ screen and there was nothing I could do about it for some minutes. Hers flicked over to the busy screen and then she got thrown into the sky and out of range of the update by a couple of healthy jet-engines. The Kindle never recovered. It just got stuck and she had no book for the entire leg between Thailand and Australia. Now, if Amazon warn you that it might happen and give you the option to delay the update until you’re safe in your home territory, that’d be alright, but we didn’t get a say. It just went and did it. (The wireless connections weren't even on.) And there can be no excuse in the fact that she was out of her home Whispernet territory for the update (Whispernet is what they call the 3G connection). The thing is designed to be ideal for travellers. That’s the whole point of being able to get a ton of books on one small contraption. No good if it’s completely baffled by changing locations.

Anyway, this all happens as my boss strikes up an arrangement with me to sign for his replacement Kindle. I need to open it, re-register it from Australia and post it on to Singapore, where he can go back to downloading his books onto his computer and then onto the device. His stopped working as well, but Amazon don’t ship, or have Whispernet, in Singapore. In my book, that’s not a good week for the eReaders.

In fairness, the customer support and interactions with Amazon have been very positive. I will wait with interest to see how this all pans out.

But that leaves me with the real bummer of the week. I bought a packet of Burger Rings with no flavour on them. It was really weird. They were the templates of Burger Rings. Just the shapes; no colour, no flavour, no nothing. I saved them. I was going to complain and keep them as proof, but now they sort of interest me. It’s like wanting to keep the runt of the litter, or something. Maybe a kindly spider will come and write advertising on my roof eaves and people will come from miles around to see the amazing albino burger rings.

Come to think of it, I think eight legged creatures are the ticket, here. What I need, before I make any rash consumer decisions, is an octopus. They never get it wrong.

Kindle - Part 4

I try to keep a sane approach to cleanliness versus neatness. Clean is quite important, neat not so much. The outside of the car closely resembles a potato farm, the inside is fine. I sit in there, so that needs to be clean. I only look at the outside.

The bed is rarely made (why bother? I’m only going to be back in there in a few hours) but the sheets are clean. Same principal. “In” versus “look at”. But I break that rule and become a bit compulsive when it comes to the cleanliness of my display screens.

The TV is clean. The laptop is pristine. The PC screen has been officially disowned as it has a spot on it that I can’t get off. Don’t touch my screen, man. Don’t touch my screen with your grotty, greasy little paws.

So, imagine how ripe for disappointment I am, owning an eBook? By my own admission I am tough on books and once I sneeze, spill wine on, or in some way ruin the glorious expanse of the eBook display screen… well it’s not like I can turn the page and forget about it. It’s always going to be there, taunting me.

So, there’s the first problem with the hardware. You don’t get to move on when you’ve splodged it and I am inevitably going to splodge it. You spend a lot of time with books doing leisure things. Leisure things equals splodging.

Second problem – you can’t confidently take your book into the bath. This I consider a real blindspot in design and they better seriously be working on waterproof Kindle for the 3rd or forth generation. How hard can it be?

And finally, a big one. You can’t lend your book to your partner when you’ve finished. I just finished something that I wanted Emergency Contact to read, and realised I couldn’t lend it to her. How am I going to read my next book, if she’s got my eBook? I know what you’re thinking – get another eBook, but there’s a slippery slope. Next she'll want gifts for birthdays and Christmas and stuff.

My Idea. Part 2.

In My Idea. By A Grey Area. Aged Eleventy Oneteen. I laid out the foolproof method to being a rich, lazy inventor.

But two things needed filling in. The idea and the leak.

Well, here's the leak and the plug (so to speak). I've had the idea and now I have to get it out there. What better way than to tell you guys?

Witness to an invention.

Dear (Concerned Party),

Please receive, witness and archive somewhere safe, an idea I've just had. When the evil forces of international retail conspiracy inevitably 'disappear' me and seek to profit from my work, you will be able to go to the authorities and media, and expose the plot... and I can't remember how to copyright without the use of a self-undressed antelope and registered mail.

(I authorise you to use the above, to write blockbuster film in the vein of Enemy of The State. I should be played by Morgan Freeman or Cate Blanchett)

The idea?

A bed friendly cover for an eBook. (I know! Genius! I can't believe I have so many ideas like this and remain so poor.)

It has a stiff, adjustable "spine" (the bendy bit between the front and back covers). Once opened, either to an obtuse or acute angle it doesn't matter, it stays there with enough friction/force to hold the weight of the eBook.

Why is this useful?

Well, someone is lying in bed. If they open the cover 270 degrees, they can have the eBook resting on it's left side, facing towards them (they are on their left side, so reading down-to-up = left-to-right) the inside of the front cover is now the base, sitting flat on the sheet. When the reader turns over, they will need the book resting on it's right side. The cover holds its angle of openness and rests like a stiff tent.

It also allows you to stand the book upright in front of you.

All of this no hands business is especially important in cold countries where it's nice to keep you hands under the covers for most of the time, rather than holding the book.

I have also come up with a little wire, prop-stick (like what you hold a car bonnet up with) that can be added to existing covers that will make them behave the same as above. They will be available next to paper clips and erasable pens at your local newsagent and will turn me into a millionaire.

So long, suckers! Ahem.

Thanks for listening.

Kindle - Part 3

Ok, so, I’ve spent a bit of time with the Kindle eBook reader thingy, and I have the following observations.

It is an excellent bit of hardware and I actually read faster with it. For those of us with the attention span of a kitten, you may recognise the following scenario when you’re reading.

1. Time to turn over the page
2. Might as well make this time to turn over in bed
3. Notice that the mug on the window sill is making the blind stick out asymmetrically
4. Move mug
5. Holding the mug reminds you that you are thirsty
6. Get up to make tea
7. Get frightened by killer dust-bunny in hallway
8. Go back to bed
9. Pick up book
10. Re-read last page to remind you what had just happened (it’s been a distracting and trying time, after all)
11. Time to turn page
12. Might as well make this time to turn over
13. Notice that Emergency Contact has been very quiet for a while, might want to prod or “help” her with something…
14. Ad absurdum, infinitum, and finally, snorrum

With the electronic reader, there’s no real page turning. Your thumb just rests on the ‘next page’ button and you click when ready. I’ve even got it timed so that the very slight delay that the device exhibits as it retrieves the next page, is dealt with by hitting the button as you get to the last line on the display.

The battery life is not quite what they are promising I suspect. I don’t have a definitive answer on this yet, as you do get much better life out of the thing if you turn the wireless off when you’re not surfing, and I've only just started to do that reliably.

But here’s the kicker. Here’s where it’s all going to come tumbling down.

If they don’t make big headway into improving the library that is available to the owner, they are going to get me shouting in the streets.

I have been keeping a tally of the increase in the library, as reported by the device. You can see that it looks like a pretty good jump each day. (Over there under the search field.)

Yeah, well, with not much evidence other than to say that I’ve seen this on more than one occasion, I don’t think that six different versions of the one book should really count. It’s not like I get the choice between hardback and softback, colour or black and white.

And without wanting to thrust myself too deeply into the maw of the self flagellating beast that is America’s reading habits, is all of that religious content really necessary? And why isn’t it under fiction?

Kindle - Part 2

First, a short, non-nerdy explanation of the device (Aus facts only), followed by how to justify the purchase when there are so many arguments against getting one, floating around in the meme-set.

What is a Kindle?

It is an electronic book. It is chained to Amazon.com and you can buy books on it from their library. The book content is delivered over the “Whispernet” which is a jumped up phone network.

It has a black and white screen that does not project any light and it measures 15cm diagonally across. It is as inert as a piece of paper and can manage 16 shades of grey. It uses what I call “Growed up Magna-Doodle” technology.

In a nice leather cover, it is the size and thickness of a 300 page, new release paperback. In the same case, it weighs 450 gm, 170 more than the paperback. It has noticeable heft. I like that sort of thing, but then again, weight equals quality when it comes to my primitive quality assurance criteria.

Justifications.

I live with another inveterate reader in a two bedroom flat. We are out of bookshelf space.

When we moved out of our last suburb, we were excited because we were getting a new library catchment area. To our tastes, we’d finished the local ones. Sure, there were stands of bodice-rippers and Mills and Boone to get through, but we decided it was easier to change pads, than palates. I started thinking about electronic books a few years ago. It seemed a sensible way to store the pulp, one-off reading.

I used to subscribe to the fetishist arguments about the niceness of owning “the book”. The artifact itself was important. The book wasn’t just the words, it was a full sensorial thing (including the smell… that often comes up) but I had to examine my beliefs on this, and they were just beliefs.

I’m tough on books. I don’t treat them with reverence, and the only thing that needs to work are the words. If I’ve read a book, there will be no mistaking it for new. I loan them out and never get them back and I've got used to that. I’ve re-bought tens of titles over the years for one reason or another. I’ve lost count of the times I’ve said, “Never read Hitchhikers?! Take this.”

The whole thing about having them up there, so that there is a collection, doesn’t really bear scrutiny, either. What are we collecting? Ideas? No, I keep them in my head. What exactly are we displaying? “Look how smart I am. I’ve read all these books.”?

I’m not in the dating game, so I’m not actively advertising my intellectual credentials. And to be honest, I enjoy some outright crap, as well. Probably an even bet as to what you would think of me if you peeked at my bookshelf. If I mention in conversation that, “I was once reading…” or “I just read…” or “Yeah, I liked that one,” I’ve never once had to furnish proof. (Trusting bunch, my friends.)

I just want to enjoy the words and in most cases, I will not re-read the book. So what am I keeping it for? Expensive and dusty wall paper? I know when I’ve read a book. I don’t need to prove it to anyone else.

Another argument against electronic books is how hard the screens are to read for extended periods. I will say this for the Amazon Kindle - without a breath of hesitation - they have licked that technological problem. It reads like a page. In fact; it’s better. You can magnify on a whim and change the number of words per line with a click.

“But, my book never runs out of batteries.” With the battery life they are advertising on this thing (something I will be testing and reporting on) you shouldn’t ever be caught without something to read, either. You got used to your mobile and your iPod, what’s so challenging about this?

To me the battery argument is akin to, “But, in an emergency you can’t wipe your bum with the torn out pages of the Kindle.”

No, you can’t, and there are just some situations grown adults should be able to avoid.

So, I’m not going to throw out my coffee table books, my rare editions, my classics and anything else that fits into a vaguely ‘valuable‘ bracket. I simply want to convert the torrent of titles that damn up against the walls of my place, the books that I don’t particularly want to display, to a flow through. A passing electronic stream. Now, that’s gotta be good feng shui.

Kindle - Part 1

Eddie Izzard has a condition called techno-joy. It’s the opposite of techno-fear. It doesn’t necessarily mean being good with technology, but being unafraid to chuck the instructions out the window while trying to make the new computer work better… with a hammer.

I have a touch of techno-joy. I am a hapless gadget junky, early adopter and Australian. This lethal combination means I have a disposable income in the lamentably tiny market of a first world country populated by what can only be described as an idiosyncratic bunch.

This can be upsetting to someone who finds that six months after a brilliant, life-changing purchase, the spare parts are no longer available, the consumables never got shipped, or the broadcast network the device is designed to work with has just gone into receivership and fallen out of the sky.

How unpredictable is the Australian market? How badly can it go wrong for big venture in this country? Well, as one small example, Starbucks had to close nearly 70 stores after failing to spin our beanies. (Between you, me, and the unfilled cappuccino mug, it actually makes me a bit proud and, perversely, no less risk averse.)

But I’m taking another risk. I don’t go in completely blind, but I will admit to going in a bit half-arsed. I got a Kindle and I’m going to review the device for all of you less reckless, more, can-we-just-see-what-happens-when-you-feed-it-after-midnight, type folk. (If you don’t know what a Kindle is, don’t worry, I’m going to explain in the next blob.)

Just a mention or two in the coming days and weeks, and we’ll see how you feel about getting one.

Who knows? We may change the landscape in the Australian market to a more egalitarian playing field. Scoff. Choke.