Go to the Official Amazon.com Kindle Page

An open letter to Jeff Bezos

Pictures showing how I hold the unit - what works, what doesn't and a first shot at changing the layout.

Additional pictures and comments - more assorted reading positions.

Keyboard shortcuts - existing key-presses to know that streamline the operation of the Kindle 2

Ideas for Future Enhancements - a running log of ideas for future incarnations of the Kindle

Software Enhancement - software specific enhancements for the existing Kindle 2 (mostly suggestions for keyboard shortcuts).

Bolded small text - much clearer! - Examples taken from an actual Kindle 2 display, showing that it is capable of displaying bold small text

Font samples - microscope images of Kindle 2 display showing the magnified text at different font sizes

General description of font rendering and several samples

Examples just showing: font size 1     font size 2     font size 3

Skins - How the kindle looks with a dark skin and where to get them.

Link to a library of screen captures showing examples of the fonts vs. the native fonts. You can download these to your own Kindle to see exactly how different the text displays.

Additional images showing the full Kindle 2 with a page of text using the sans-serif fonts versus the serif fonts.

Amazon customer service - Q&A discussion with Amazon's CS reps.

A secret for making the screen contrast better
Please make the text darker - extensive discussions about the fonts and screen display

While this may seem like I'm negative on the device, I'm not. I think it's a very cool, bleeding-edge product. I'm enjoying using it and they've done some things very well. But there's definitely room for serious improvement, in button and key layout and in the general user interface.

 

Friends asked me what I thought about pricing. Here's my thoughts:

 

It does seem a bit pricey for newspapers, since so much of the content I just read on the free websites.  NYT: $14/month; most other papers are $10/month. Given that they have no printing and distribution charges, I'd think they could do better. Plus, the content is limited - it doesn't match the printed paper. Maybe half that cost would be fair and would encourage more to subscribe.

 

Books all seem under $10 which seems very reasonable to me. That's less than a CD, so it seems pretty cheap in comparison.

 

Blogs - Charging for free blogs seems very cheesy. They should include those for free as a perk to buyers. If it's a matter of having to pay for wireless transmission, then they should just have an iTunes like program that manages blogs and podcasts and synchronizes when you have a wired connection. But Amazon completely left out any sort of computer based synchronization manager. They're married to the completely wireless aspect.

The unit itself, I really don't think it's expensive. It's a relatively low-volume product that's leading edge. You don't pay a monthly wireless fee like you would with a cell phone, but you get the service and some (minimal) ability to web surf. As such, I think it's fairly priced.

Data Transmission - Lots of people complain that it costs money to send files to the unit. In fact, you can just drag and drop (converted) documents onto the Kindle. They charge $0.10 to email documents wirelessly to the Kindle, which seems extremely fairly priced since you'll pay that much for a 10 character text message on a cell phone. I don't like the conversion process. They should just supply a PC based converter, built into the (nonexistent) synchronization manager.

Devices like this need to be designed for the frequent user, not the beginner. Often, there is a clear distinction between such designs, with those devices meant for the casual user being oriented towards a shallow learning curve where efficiency is unimportant - beginners just want to be able to use a device. Frequent users are different. They want a device to work as an extension of their body/mind. Sometimes, this entails designing a device that takes some learning, but once learned, it works highly efficiently. A car is such a device.

To this end, the Kindle should have keyboard shortcuts for commonly used operations. People will have to be taught the shortcuts, but once learned, they will greatly appreciate them because it streamlines the operation every time the system is used.

I was excited to see that the Kindle 1 had an assortment of such shortcuts but was terribly disappointed to learn that the Kindle 2 disabled these, forcing users to have to scroll through menus to do something as simple as inserting a symbol! This is a huge design flaw, as it leads to long term user dissatisfaction by making the system feel awkward for anything but the most basic use. Hopefully, Amazon will come to their senses and re-enable these features in a future software upgrade. NOTE: some shortcuts found. They are listed here.

Along these lines, I was also dismayed to learn that they had removed the location awareness features of the original device. The original had keyboard shortcuts that would jump to Google maps and display your current position or show local gas stations. These seemingly trivial applications cracked open the door to some highly useful features. If I'm going to be carrying my Kindle wherever I go, it would make it all the more useful if I could press a key and see a map of the area, maybe highlighting the local pharmacies or coffee shops. Yes, the device is "just a reader", but taking advantage of the intrinsic capabilities of the system to move it from a luxury to a necessity should be their goal, as long as it doesn't detract from its primary use.