Kindle everywhere

There are reports today that Amazon's Bezos sees the Kindle devices as more of a means to an end – with that end being more electronic sales of books. That means that applications like the current iPhone Kindle app could very well compete with the company's dedicated Kindle devices.

I'm all for it. I use my Kindle app more than I use the 1st Gen Kindle, which suffers from enough industrial-design issues that I don't use it as often as I did in the past. Who am I kidding.... I just want the newer flatter one. I've even considered the larger DX version so that I can get native PDF support – something very important to me and my workflow.

The one major thing missing from the Kindle app is the ability to annote and add notes to certain passages in the book. I love this feature and really feel its absence in the app. Bookmarks just don't cut it. I hope the next version of the Kindle app adds it.

Hat tip [MacNN via Electronista]

Font joy - Meta Serif

I love fonts. I don't know why. It started with the advent of desktop publishing so many years ago and that love of serifs and sans serifs never went away. I stumbled upon a very cool font blog that has become part of my daily reading. Most of the fonts showcased are great for a sign or headlines but little else. This book font called Meta Serif is gorgeous. Reminds me of the font that Monocle uses and I wouldn't be surprised if it was one and the same.

Kindle, newspaper of tomorrow?

Interesting article on the NYT reaching 10k subscribers on Kindle devices

I purchased a Kindle two months ago and I really love it. I travel a fair amount professionally, although thankfully not as often as I used to. The Kindle is perfect because I can read whatever I feel like reading whenever I want to read it. I'm the type of person who when I'm in reading mode, I have three or four books going. Invariably the one I take with me is not the one I want to read. 

People have asked me about it a lot since I've purchased one – more than my iPhone. The biggest 'objection' to the Kindle appears to be its' electronic nature. If you are someone who reads a lot, you probably get a lot of joy from the act of reading – turning the pages, the smell of paper, the artwork, marking it up etc. 

I admit that I'm an electronic fetishist so I'm always looking for gear that replaces something in the physical world. But I think electronic books are so much more convenient. They weigh less than books. No trees have to be sacrificed for my enjoyment. I can have many books with me at once. With the Kindle, I can get a book almost instantly, thanks to the built in net connection. 

I have tried the eBook on the iPhone thing and it doesn't work as well for me. I wish I could turn the accelerometer off sometimes because I like to read lying down on my side. I can't do that on the iPhone since it rotates automatically. That said, I've downloaded Stanza and will see how I like it. I don't take my Kindle everywhere so Stanza seems like it can be a decent substitute for short periods of time – e.g. the subway. I can't really use it as a full-time reader since battery life is just too precious. 

Back to this article. I do have to say that I prefer to read books and upload documents on my Kindle. I haven't really gotten into the newspaper thing and I'm not sure why. One morning this week, I will take myself to a cafe with the Kindle and see if I get into the 'paper' and breakfast thing. I'll let you know.

A sample of what I'm enjoying right now on my Kindle:

Warren Buffet's The Snowball 

Obama's Dreams of my Father

Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers