henry sztul

8th March 2009

Text reblogged from Dan Kantor with 1 note

Kindle on the iPhone

I just downloaded Kindle on my Touch… and a book.  I will say more if I get through the book on the Touch, but so far I really like it and thought Dan’s post below was spot on… a Kindle seems appealing of me all of a sudden!

dankantor:

I’ve been interested in eBook readers for a few years now. I have never purchased one though because I haven’t seen one yet that gives me everything I want. The Kindle 2 comes close, but it is still too expensive and doesn’t have backlighting which means I can’t really use it in bed while my wife is sleeping (a major use case of mine).

Amazon recently released the Kindle as a free software app for the iPhone. The iPhone is my preferred way of accessing the web these days. I spend most of my time in Google Reader and find the experience first rate - I am lying down, the lights are off and my arms and eyes do not get tired after long periods. So I was incredibly anxious to try out the Kindle app.

So far the experience has been great. The text is very large and adjustable. My favorite feature is that when you turn the iPhone the screen does not flip. This allows for lying on my side while reading - something I cannot do with Safari and love doing with books. It’s a little weird that you can’t buy books within the app itself but I guess that is Apple’s fault, not Amazon’s.

One main critique of eBooks is that you cannot put them in your book case, show them off to friends or lend them out. I agree that these are serious drawbacks but think technology will come to solve these issues. I used to feel the same way about my wall of CD cases. Then last.fm came along and provided a way to show off my music collection which actually was a lot better than anything my wall of CDs could do.

Overall, the advantages of eBooks far outweigh the disadvantages. I have a feeling that this week was a turning point for me in how I will read books the rest of my life. Like in 2000 when I ripped my entire CD collection to my computer. I never went back.

Tagged: kindleiphoneipodcool