code meets music

In a couple of days time (November 21) Amazon are launching their ‘Kindle’ e-book service in the US and it looks like it might be worth a look- if not straight away, certainly in the not too distant future.

The Kindle itself is touted as a ‘Wireless Reading Device’ but it is the service that comes with it that will be just as, if not more, important.

The device will allow you to download entire books, with free sample chapters available for most, from the service’s 88000 title collection “whether you’re in the back of a taxi, at the airport, or in bed.” The product description states that it has “EVDO”, a wireless technology used by mobile phones thus not requiring wi-fi for connectivity. If a UK version is 3G-capable, that would be a good selling point.

This continuous connectivity will also allow Amazon to offer subscriptions, both to traditional newspapers and magazines (unsurprisingly only US publications mentioned so far) and to a variety of blogs, charging $0.99 for a month’s access.

This, at first, seemed to me like a nice idea but looking at the list, it seems to consist mainly of localised versions of “Metroblogging” and “SportsBlogs” that have little appeal. In addition, one of the big trends at the moment is towards offline-access to web sites and applications. Google, with the help of their Gears project, have given people the option to enable offline-access to their (free) Reader service. The device also apparently comes with an ‘experimental’ web-browser that is free to use, so unless services like Google reader are blocked, I’m not quite sure why anyone would be willing to pay for the RSS.

Joel Johnson at Boing Boing Gadgets has posted 15 Things he Just Learned About the Amazon Kindle some good, some not so good.

I’ve heard a lot of good things about the reading-ease of some of the newer ‘E-ink’ devices and wouldn’t mind trying one out at some point but until there’s a convenient way of getting hold of things to put on it (magazines and newspapers as well as books) the cost of the devices themselves is prohibitive.

Searching amazon.co.uk for “Kindle” only brings up other e-book readers, which suggests we might not be seeing it over here any time soon, which is a shame as I think the market needs somebody like Amazon to help it take its first steps.