As you may have heard, the Amazon Kindle has finally come to Canada. Chalk up another late victory for the digital content ghetto that is our sprawling nation. We join the likes of Kyrgyzstan, Libya and Oman as countries able to use the gadget.
I’ve played with a Kindle a couple of times, and they’re pretty nifty things. You can store about 1500 books on them (have I read that many books in my life? Surely not) and the battery apparently lasts for two weeks worth of reading. Amazon offers about 300,000 books at US $12 or less, and you can get a bevy of newspapers and magazines online as well.
And yet, I don’t want one.
Cost, Backlog and Snobby Appeal
First there’s the cost. With taxes and import fees, the Kindle is going to cost at least CAN $325 before you buy a single book. Given that you might save an average of $10 per book by buying digital versions, you can start realizing cost savings after buying about 30 books. I wish I read more, but 30 books represents at least two years worth of reading. And who knows what options will be available by then?
Yes, it’s thrilling that I could carry a ton of books with me on the go. But, I don’t have a too-many-books-to-carry problem. I have a not-enough-time-to-read problem. I have at least five or six Audible credits waiting to be used because I’ve got a backlog of audio books which I haven’t listened to yet.
Plus, I’m totally unexcited about yet another electronic device which requires recharging. Plus there’s the ‘valuable object’ problem. If my bag gets stolen and there’s a book in it, then no big deal. If my Kindle gets stolen, then that’s a bigger problem.
Finally, there’s the snobby appeal of having your walls lined with bookshelves, and those bookshelves lined with books.
It’s a cool object, and I can see why lots of people want one. If I ever go back to school, for example, the idea of having all of my text books on one device sounds awesome. Still, I’m not salivating about yesterday’s announcement from Amazon.
It includes a rented movie, three video and audio podcasts, two thousand songs, five Amazon Kindle ebooks, 10 games, 125 unread RSS items in NetNewswire plus dozens of cached articles in Instapaper, the New York Times and WSJ apps. It would literally take me months to go through it all. Plus once I landed my magical pocket computer filled up with even more - emails, tweets, feeds, etc.
Travis, likewise, itemizes what’s on his devices while taking a train to Denali National Park in Alask:
Instead, here’s what I had to content myself with: On my computer: hours of video: movies and TV shows and Web documentaries. Entire books, downloaded from Amazon. Computer games with shifting maps and dozens of levels. Yes, my battery would run out; there was undoubtedly an outlet on the train for me to recharge. But I wouldn’t bother Why would I, when I also had….
My iPhone: thousands of photos, hundreds of songs and a few audiobooks. And of course, offline email, SMS and a phone. Even if you hobble it: no Internet, no phone access, no GPS, there’s still plenty there to amuse and distract and fill your time.
I’ve been on six flights in the past week, and, like Travis and Steve, I’ve got a box of anti-boredom tools. I previously wrote about FORLORM: fear of lack of reading material. I used to carry an armload of books and magazines to combat the tedium of flights. Now my tools are a mix of the analog and the digital.
My usual regimen is, in order from boarding lounge to landing: read newspaper, complete crossword, read half a magazine, watch an hour of TV on my laptop, review notes (as I’m often flying to or from a speaking event), play games on the iPhone (mostly RSoccer09, a remarkably deep soccer game) then read the other half of the magazine. That’s usually more than enough for any domestic flight.
We are witnessing the death of boredom. On the other hand, we’re in an age of distraction. I don’t necessarily want to get all contemplative on an airplane. But we do need to be aware of the habits we’re forming, and how they might discourage healthy introspection.
Every time I hear Clay Shirky speak or read something he’s written, I think to myself “he’s an order of magnitude smarter than everybody else in the room”. Today’s blog post, on the fallout of the #AmazonFail business, is just the latest example:
Here’s how stupid that belief made me. I have been thinking about the internet as hard as I can for the better part of two decades, and for the latter half of that time, I’ve been thinking about the problems of categorization systems, and it never occurred to me that the possible explanation for systemic bias might be something having to do with a technological system instead of a human one, that a changed classification in the Amazon database could trigger the change in status of tens of thousands of books.
From the moment this particular controversy broke, it felt like Motrin Moms 2.0. Just as Twitter enables us to rapidly raise money and inspire positive action, it’s also exceptionally good at fostering reactionary fury. As Shirky writes, Amazon unquestionably got some stuff wrong, but they’re not nearly as guilty as the web was making them out to be.
Speaking as an occasional lynch mob member (and as someone put it a while back, a friend of the gays), we need to moderate our furious impulse to propagate scornful messages until we have enough of the facts. It’s only going to get easier and easier to direct angry online attention at something, so we need to get better and better at thinking before we retweet with vengeance.
So, it was with great surprise and dismay when we discovered that one of our employees may have posted a number of queries on the Amazon Mechanical Turk website inviting users to post positive reviews of Belkin products in exchange for payment.
Belkin does not participate in, nor does it endorse, unethical practices like this. We know that people look to online user reviews for unbiased opinions from fellow users and instances like this challenge the implicit trust that is placed in this interaction.
This is the standard corporate line:
We had no idea this was going on.
It was the act of a single (often ‘low-level’) employee (the Lone Gunmen Theory of Corporate Deflection).
It is, in no way, a reflection of our organization.
The letter itself is pretty goofy. First, why say “may have posted”? If there was any ambiguity, the company’s president wouldn’t be writing a letter on Sunday afternoon. Additionally, the guy worked for Belkin. So to say that “Belkin does not participate in…unethical practices” is inaccurate. If a Belkin employee promotes Belkin unethically, in the course of his work day, with Belkin’s money, then there’s no question that Belkin does participate in those practices. And “great surprise and dismay” is protesting a bit too much, isn’t it?
In the so-called age of conversation, surely we’re all tired of companies acting unethically, and then deploying waffling, corporate language to deflect or evade blame.
I’m buying more and more audio books these days. I’m choosing audio books because I can consume them while I’m exercising or walking from place to place. Plus, of course, it eliminates the environmental costs of manufacturing, packaging and shipping the book to me.
I went to iTunes to purchase the “Hot, Flat and Crowded”, and was a bit shocked at the price. Then I compared it with Amazon.ca and Chapters:
I’m usually happy to pay a ‘green tax’ for more sustainable options, but this is a bit ridiculous. I’d have to pay more than twice the hardcopy cost for, ostensibly, less value. It’s ironic, too, given the subject of the book. Why do you suppose the audio book is priced where it is?
Back in the eighties, Vancouverites would frequently made odysseys across the border and visit the foreign temples of capitalism. At that time, there were a ton of brands which didn’t have a presence north of the border: Old Navy, The Gap, Banana Republic and so forth. People felt thrilled and sophisticated to be wearing clothes that you couldn’t buy in Canada.
Times changed, and we have more than enough of those once-exotic stores up here. However, there’s a new segregation in town, and it’s digital. Canucks can’t watch Hulu, the popular TV on demand service. Likewise for a lot of BBC programming.
Personally, I’m frustrated by the fact that I can’t use Rhapsody’s or Amazon’s DRM-free MP3 services. I’d happily pay ten bucks for an album, but not if it comes with DRM or in some proprietary format. So iTunes is out. I already subscribe to eMusic, but they often don’t have albums that I want (Hem, for example).
Canadians are second class citizens, I assume, because these services haven’t negotiated deals with Canadian rights holders. And they’re probably in no hurry–there’s only 30 million potential buyers up here.
In the meantime, my only alternatives are going to a store and buying a hunk of plastic (unreliable and not very green) or illegally downloading the albums I can’t buy on eMusic (sometimes unreliable). I trust we’ll get MP3s on Amazon.ca eventually, but hopefully it takes less time than for The Gap to come to Vancouver.
It’s a fantastic idea, to apply the navigation model of Google Maps to other virtual representations of atoms and bits. I include ‘bits’ because Zoomii will no doubt extend to MP3 downloads and ebooks, which have no real-world equivalent. I’m slowly reading Everything Is Miscellaneous by David Weinberger. I wonder how he feels about a virtual representation of the space-limited physical world? Besides the obvious retail goods, what else could we Zoomiize? Voting records for Members of Parliament?
As I zipped around the Canadian version of Zoomi, I note that an author named Stephenie Meyer has no less than five books in the top 20 bestsellers on Amazon.ca. Can I get a WTF? They’re apparently vampire love sagas for the young adult crowd. Them kids–no accounting for taste.
They toured with this husband-and-wife duo of an indie band called Mates of State. I liked what I heard, so I figured I’d purchase some MP3s and give them a more extended audition in my music collection. But which songs to buy?
First stop: Wikipedia, which indicates that they have five albums, dating from 2000 to a May, 2008 release.
Next stop, eMusic, where I’m a subscriber. eMusic only offers their first three albums. eMusic says their most popular songs are, in order, “Ha Ha”, “The Kissaway” and “Fluke”.
To Amazon. Amazon claims to stock four albums, but one is, in fact, just an EP. Plus, they say that the 2004 album is Mates of State’s “latest release”. Clearly this is not the case. Top songs on Amazon: “Goods”, “Along for the Ride” and “Jellyman Kelly”.
Next, the iTunes store. I don’t usually buy from them, but I figured I’d have a look. iTunes lists six albums (including the EP). Confusingly, one album is listed twice. Assuming the 2008 album isn’t out yet (though why isn’t it available for pre-order?), iTunes has the most exhaustive catalog. Most popular songs: “Goods”, “Along for the Ride” and “Fluke”.
On YouTube, the top videos are for the songs “Fraud in the 80s”, “Get Better” and “Fluke”.
Finally, there’s Last.fm. The most popular songs there are “Ha Ha”, “Think Long” and “Like U Crazy”.
Finally, I visited the band’s website. Why did I go here last? Because band websites are often lousy, and rarely help me to answer the question “which songs should I buy?”. I see that their forthcoming album isn’t out to May 20th, 2008. Their first single is out, though, and the video features a scooter rider in rabbit mask:
There’s clearly little consensus out there on the best three Mates of States songs. Is there a market out there for a website that just answers that question? It could be FirstThreeSongs.com. It could grab data from the above (and other) sources, and produce a reasonably definitive three song starter list for every band on the planet.
I found some time to read some books over the holidays, and here are some very brief reviews:
Divisadero: Michael Ondaatje is the most elegant contemporary writer I know. With the exception of Anil’s Ghost, I’ve read all of his books (I took a class on him in university) and I’m a huge admirer of his craftsmanship. The Collected Work of Billy the Kid remains my favourite book of poetry (though I, admittedly, don’t read much poetry). The plot of Divisadero isn’t as compelling as, say, The English Patient, but reading Ondaatje is a bit like watching Gretzky. They’re a joy because they do so many things right.
The 4-Hour Workweek: This book’s subtitle is “Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich”. He’s preaching to the choir in my case, but it’s still a fairly inspirational read. He’s got quite a bit of wisdom to deliver on streamlining your work, generating passive income and so forth. That said, the author Tim Ferriss comes off as a bit of a self-important douche bag. Some of the strategies he recommends are ethically dubious, and though he’s living an exotic life, it seems strangely unexamined. To put it another way, The 4-Hour Workweek is one of the least mindful books I’ve ever read. That said, I did finally join Amazon’s Associates affiliate program, to try and make some extra cash off Amazon sales. Wanted: a WP plugin that scans my blog for links to Amazon and replaces them with appropriate affiliate links.
Wintersmith: I grabbed this young adult novel off the shelf for a quick read at the resort in Marrakech. I’d never read a Terry Pratchett (he’s sadly got Alzheimer’s, at 59!) book before, and I enjoyed this one. Much like the Harry Potter books, Wintersmith derives from and builds upon a bunch of existing myths and fairy tales. However Pratchett seems to have a much better sense of humour than J. K. Rowling, for Wintersmith was a more enjoyable (and not to mention concise) read. Judging by this reading order chart, I started on Pratchett’s Discworld books in the wrong spot.
– It costs $399.
– Kindle is a 10.3 ounces device, with dimensions of a paperback, with a tapering of its width that emulates the bulge toward a book’s binding, the story says. Kindle’s six-inch screen uses the display technology from E-Ink, which mimes the clarity of a printed book.
– It can hold as many as 200 books on the device (with more on the memory card), gets as many as 30 hours of reading on a charge, and recharges in two hours.
– Also, it has wireless connectivity, via a system called Whispernet, which is based on the EVDO broadband service offered Sprint, (NYSE: S) allowing it to work anywhere, not just Wi-Fi hotspots.
Here are Robert’s and Seth’s reactions to the piece. I like what Seth has to say about promoting the thing:
My thought was to use it, at least for a few years, as a promotion device. Give the books for free to anyone who buys the $400 machine. (Maybe you can have 1,000 books of your choice, so there’s not a lot of ‘waste’.) You’ll sell more machines that way, that’s for sure. And the people willing to buy the device are exactly the sort of people that an author like me wants to reach. No harm, no foul, all three of us win.
Reading in the Bathroom
We don’t have a printer here on Gozo, but we haven’t really needed one. Occasionally back in Vancouver I’d print out a long document to read offline (not very environmentally friendly, though I’d always recycle the paper).
Yesterday I was just thinking that it would be great to have a comfortable offline reader. Ideally, it would have a Firefox plugin or bookmarklet where I’d just move stuff–web pages, PDFs and such–to my Kindle (or whatever) with the click of a mouse.
The Kindle might fit the bill. I like that it’s incredibly lightweight–10.3 ounces is about 300 grams. What weighs 300 grams? A paperback book, maybe? And obviously I like that I could use it anywhere and that it has a robust battery life.
I don’t like the price. I’m pretty sure that it’s going to have to come down in price. If you buy it at US $400, you’re paying the early adopter tax. I also don’t like that it seems to be (thus far at least), a closed shop. It’s early days, but I haven’t seen any talk of third-party applications or APIs. Here’s the most problematic ‘feature’, and the one that Amazon’s going to get abused on:
Via the Amazon store, you can subscribe to newspapers (the Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Le Monde) and magazines (The Atlantic). When issues go to press, the virtual publications are automatically beamed into your Kindle. (It’s much closer to a virtual newsboy tossing the publication on your doorstep than accessing the contents a piece at a time on the Web.) You can also subscribe to selected blogs, which cost either 99 cents or $1.99 a month per blog.
Er, what? You want me to pay to read what I can get for free online? After paying $400 to buy your gadget? Sorry, but that’s not going to fly. Not for The New York Times or Boing Boing.
In short, I’m a potential Kindle customer. I’ve got to get one in my hands first, and I’ve got to see a price reduction before I’d consider buying one.
: Michael Ondaatje is the most elegant contemporary writer I know. With the exception of Anil’s Ghost, I’ve read all of his books (I took a class on him in university) and I’m a huge admirer of his craftsmanship. The Collected Work of Billy the Kid remains my favourite book of poetry (though I, admittedly, don’t read much poetry). The plot of Divisadero isn’t as compelling as, say, The English Patient, but reading Ondaatje is a bit like watching Gretzky. They’re a joy because they do so many things right.