Network access: Where the books come from…

By the process of elimination you can easily figure out that the Kindle connects to some sort of cell network, the question is who’s? Sprint’s EVDO network! Of course, and it’s commendable since Sprint is more on the open source bandwagon than anyone else. I think I heard somewhere that they have more licensed devices on their network than any other. Not sure how roaming works, but I’m sure it does. We’re not talking huge amounts of data here… it’s just a book.

The screen:

The Amazon Kindle’s screen is an LCD screen as you might suspect. Nothing special here, except for the fact that it only displays 4 shades of gray. It has been “optimized” to be more readable (less glare, more like paper) than other devices though.

Competition:

A few years ago the Sony Reader came out, and I actually wanted it pretty bad at the time. It didn’t originally have network access, but the new Sony Daily Reader is licensed to work on AT&T’s 3G network, just like the iPhone does. You can check out the latest edition’s of the Sony Reader and the Amazon Kindle at eWeek and CNet respectively.

Commentary:

A recent podcast by the guys over at Stack Overflow focused on Craigslist and how it is contributing to the downfall of the press, and therefore a part of our democracy. They stated that Craigslist holds probably over 90% of the market at this point and because of the fact that it’s free, it’s destroying value. Let me re-phrase.

The newspapers used to charge a lot for a classified ad or a job posting. Craigslist doesn’t charge except for in rare cases where they need to in order to prevent spam and other BS e.g. in the Job postings section of several U.S. cities including SF and Chicago.  The fact that these ads are moving to Craigslist raises some problems, two that were brought up in the podcast were: A. The free press is dying, therefore we are less aware of what our government is up to, and B. Craigslist basically took a billion dollar industry and made it free, thereby destroying it. If Craigslist didn’t want the money, they could still do something with it that would benefit society as a whole.

I think this relates to these mobile-reading devices like the Kindle and the Sony Reader. If the trend continues, almost every book and publication in print should be available on-line at some point. That would mean that hopefully, we as consumers will have a decent choice in products and we’ll be able to eliminate our bulky text books, magazines, newspapers, et cetera and replace them with a device that can hold as many as we want, and will allow us to buy them for cheaper and where and whenever we like.

If things move in the right direction, it should be fairly easy for anyone to publish to the world instantaneously which could prove to be a more efficient, and less biased free press. I really hope it works out that way, because without a free press we don’t have much of anything.

-Dan

See also: previous video on the Kindle (kind of) – “Casual Discussion of Amazon’s Kindle”

We’d love to have your feedback on this one. The trend towards an electronic press is a very controversial one, especially when Amazon pulled thousands of copies of 1984 right off of the Kindle – an ironic action for sure. Do you like lugging around textbooks, or would you rather pay $300 for a Kindle? Do you think publishers would charge less for books if they were distributed electronically? There’s so many questions, and so little answers.