The holiday season has been over for awhile, and the sales boom that goes with it has leveled off.  January and February are kind of a let down after the excitement of getting new gadgets for the holidays.  Kindle Fire sales are proof of this conclusion.

Does the slipping sales show signs of being short or long term? I’m not a business person by any means, but a little research and common sense shows that it is a combination of sales cycles and the novelty of a new gadget wearing off.

November and December usually have to carry a big chunk of the sales numbers for the year. Now that the Kindle Fire is in the hands of its users, it will be up to the Kindle Fire apps and accessories to carry the weight of sales revenue.

That leads into the whole “why Amazon sold the Kindle Fire at a loss” debate.  They more than make up for it in the books and other extras available on the tablet.  This model is applied to all members of the Kindle Family.  The focus on the software rather than hardware has been a trend for awhile now.

By selling cheaper devices, Amazon opens up the opportunity for more people to purchase the tablet or e-reader, then it leaves them some cash left over to buy books, apps, covers, lights, you name it. So, I can definitely see the Kindle hardware get cheaper and cheaper while sales numbers for books and accessories go up.  The key is to do cheap without compromising functionality.

But, back to thoughts on the slipping sales.  The Kindle Fire recently got an update that included some much needed bug fixes.  The update overall brought much better reviews for the tablet.  But it is still leaving its consumers wanting more.  Camera, 3G, bigger screen, and longer battery life are examples of features that would be good to have.

All of those things cause the price to go up.  What balance can be struck to still provide a cheap tablet, yet give consumers what they want?  With that said, I’ll be very interested to see what the next update, and subsequent generations of the Kindle Fire look like.

The image on the right is a really creative marketing strategy by Milwaukee Public Library.  I like how they mention sites that just about everyone is familiar with.

The amount of technology including social media, e-readers, tablets, computers, and more, is overwhelming.  Technology is a very good thing because it puts the world at our fingertips.  Social media has formed a global community of users.  It has also helped us keep up with the lives of our friends and family more easily.

Social media can be used to share what we are reading.  We can share passages from our Kindle via Facebook or Twitter.  We can also follow Amazon or other Kindle related users to keep up with the latest news and reviews.

The drawback is that it is all a major time suck.  The time we used to spend curled up with a book or playing outside is now spent on Facebook.  More and more of our interactions with others are done online rather than in person.

So, how does this all relate to the Kindle?  Well it is more of a topic for discussion than anything.  If you could take a break from social media for a period of time, would you do the same for your Kindle?  I am excluding the Kindle Fire from this question because it is more tablet than e-reader.

In my personal opinion, there is something that sets the e-ink Kindle apart from other gadgets.  It is considered electronic, but it is built in a way that simulates that feeling we get when we read a real book.  I curl up on the couch and escape into my Kindle books often.  Does anyone ever say they’re addicted to the Kindle?  If so, do you consider that a bad thing?

I think social media also affects the quality of what and how we read.  We are exposed to so much information that we have to filter it out.  So we spend less time reading more in depth material.

So, how can we use the technology more effectively?  We will have to actively allot time for various things. Check e-mail or Facebook twice a day, get outside for an hour each day, etc.  Read for an hour a day.  Those are just examples.

It is amazing to me that just 10 years ago a majority of what is out there now wasn’t even invented yet.  However, books have been around for a very long time.  Now e-readers add another medium for reading them.  Happy reading!

It comes as no real surprise that Amazon’s bestselling Kindle Fire tablet is going to make the company some money despite estimates that say the hardware is being sold at, or even slightly below, the cost of manufacturing.  They basically brought eReading to the mainstream at a time when people barely understood what the idea meant, after which I tend to give them the benefit of the doubt when it comes to identifying profitable ways to create content sales.  What has come as a surprise to many is exactly how much average profit the company many stand to make on each unit.

Ross Sandler, an analyst from RBC Capital, has managed to estimate that your average Kindle Fire will be the source of around $136 of income for the company during its lifetime.  Naturally this is speculative to a certain extent, but it was based on an independently conducted survey of over 200 Kindle Fire owners regarding their spending habits thus far.  The findings are actually somewhat surprising to me and I have to wonder if they don’t reflect a certain amount of skewing due to early adopters with narrow expectations of the tablet’s potential.

Personally, despite having had the Kindle Fire since the day it came out, I can’t imagine sitting through so much as a single book on it.  It works for the occasional article or academic publication when needed, and I couldn’t be much happier with the PDF functionality for my own purposes, but owning E INK eReaders has left me with higher expectations.  It was therefore interesting to find that the most popular use for the Kindle Fire among those surveys was eBook reading by a wide margin (71% citing this as among their most frequent uses.

Also interesting is the fact that video streaming, which has seemed to be Amazon’s primary focus with the Fire so far, is relatively unpopular with only 13% of those surveyed reporting it as a frequently used feature.  That seems to include all video streaming, including things like Hulu Plus and Netflix, which works against Amazon even further given their efforts to built the Instant Video service into something impressive.

So where is all of this money that the Kindle Fire will supposedly earn coming from?  It looks like the current numbers support an estimation of around 5 eBooks per quarter, 3 apps per quarter, and a noticeable but unaccounted for increase in the number of general Amazon purchases each quarter.  My inclination would be to say that this is an overestimation of eBook purchasing and an underestimation of app appeal that will turn around once people get more comfortable with the capabilities of the tablet, but that is admittedly a matter of personal observation with no backing in numerical research.

The problem with any survey of this sort is that it the recent surge in Kindle Fire owner numbers has led to potential inaccuracies.  This is especially the case since all those surveyed came to own the Fire during 4th quarter 2011, nearly half of them as gift recipients.  It is hard to know for sure if things will change once the primary pool of new owners is made up of people buying for themselves.  Even so, chances are good that the numbers will level out somewhere along these lines.  Amazon clearly made a smart move here, and the Kindle Fire is going to pay off big in the long run.

Apple launched a new e-textbook service last week that is claiming to “revolutionize the textbook industry.”  With major partners as McGraw-Hill, Pearson, and Houghton-Mifflin on board, the service is poised to offer a robust collection of e-textbooks in the updated iBook store.  In addition to purchasing textbooks educators can create their own textbooks using iBook Author.  The lure of lighter backpacks is a pretty good one.

My initial question is, how are schools going to be able to afford an iPad for every student?  Will this be an expense put on parents?  If Amazon starts a competing service with the Kindle Fire, price would not be as much of an issue.  The Kindle Fire is less than half the price of an iPad 2.

Prior attempts at using the Kindle for textbooks have been somewhat successful with a few schools here and there using it for pilot programs.  There were also attempts at using the Kindle DX to hold college textbooks because it has a bigger screen.  Despite positive reviews on the programs, they never really took off.

Right now, the new e-textbook service seems to be focusing on the K-12 market with high school textbooks going for $14.99 or less.  What about college textbooks?  They’re the ones that students have to fork over the money for themselves.  They can also be expensive.  Professors have a lot more leeway on what they can teach so they will probably benefit more from iBook Author than K-12 teachers will.

I think that e-textbooks are going to play a larger role in the future, but I don’t see it taking off just yet.  Aside from the price still being steep for the iPad, there is still a learning curve and adjustment period for both teachers and students.  Tablets are already being  used as valuable tools in education through apps.  It just takes time figuring out how to utilize them the most effectively.

Will Amazon launch an e-textbook service to compete with Apple, or will it continue to appeal to the “masses” with the vast collection of books available in the Kindle Store?  I would say the latter for now, because Amazon’s strategy is to reach out to everyone, not a niche market like Apple does.  As e-textbooks become more mainstream and in higher demand, it will be more in Amazon’s best interest to provide them for the Kindle platform.

Over the past several weeks several people have informed me that the most up to date reviews they were able to find regarding the Kindle Fire were a bit outdated, to say the least.  Looking over the links I was provided, it definitely seems like there is still some misinformation floating around.  This is mostly a result of failure to update after the performance patch, which did a great job of addressing complaints and ensures that new users won’t have nearly as many annoyances as they might have on launch day.  In the interest of clarifying, here’s what I would say is worth knowing if trying to decide on a Kindle Fire purchase today:

Pros:

• Highly portable (noticeably lighter than any hardcover book I own)
• Durable (Check out Andrei’s scratch/drop test)
• Powerful for the $200 price
• ~8 Hour battery life (I average 7 hours with WiFi on and brightness at a comfortable level)
• Amazing video quality through Amazon Instant Video
• Seamless integration with Amazon Cloud Storage for Amazon Purchases
• Large, well-moderated App Store
• Access to Amazon’s Customer Service
• Easy WiFi Setup

Cons

• Only 8GB onboard storage (6GB or so available, with just over 1GB reserved for Apps)
• 2 Finger Touch screen not perfect for extended typing (not a netbook replacement)
• Back-lit screen not great for reading
• Some Kindle eReader functionality missing (collections, real page numbers, X-Ray)
• No Text to Speech (in Kindle Edition eBooks, though some apps may make up for this)
• No access to Android Marketplace by default
• Netflix video currently only allows SD streaming
• Limited Codec selection

Common Kindle Fire Software Complaints (Including Those Addressed)

• Choppy navigation
• WiFi connectivity limited
• Overly fast browsing/scrolling
• Unresponsive page turning
• No Parental Controls
• No way to choose favoring of mobile sites
• Unintuitive cloud integration for personal documents
• Caroussel Logs Every Activity
• Purchased Apps always present in Cloud view
• Silk Browser doesn’t live up to the hype

At this point, if you are interested in getting a Kindle Fire, I strongly recommend it.  This isn’t exactly a surprise coming from me given earlier similar declarations even before the big patch that dealt with so many complaints, but it remains true.

This is not an iPad killer.  It might have an effect on Apple, and will almost certainly spur Amazon to more direct competition, but they’re devices intended for different purposes.  If you want to watch movies, play Android games, access a wide variety of streaming content, and just generally consume media of various sorts, the Kindle Fire is the way to go.  I certainly wouldn’t replace my Kindle eReader with one, nor would it work as even a basic netbook substitute in the way that an iPad could once you get used to it, but what it does do is well done.

The tablet market is off and running and the Kindle Fire is doing very well. I have often wondered what the future of the original e-reader will look like.  Now that the Kindle, Nook, and Kobo e-readers are all touchscreen, what is the next big update?

I’m not saying they’re perfect by any means.  The page transitions could be smoother, and the page turn buttons could be arranged a little better to make things more comfortable for lefties.  Then of course, there’s always the potential for faster browsing in the Amazon Store.

Right now to me at least, my Kindle and iPad serve completely different purposes.  I have tried reading a book on both an iPad and Kindle Fire, and the screen is just too bright for me to read for a long time.  My Kindle Touch isn’t really a gadget to me that I feel like I need to separate myself from like the computer or phone.

A hybrid tablet and e-reader has been mentioned in the past, and I think this is most likely what will happen.  The trick is designing one that can create the same effect that both an e-reader and a tablet can.  I’m not exactly sure how far off this possibility is, but it would be nice to be about to just carry around one device that does multiple things.  At the same time though, if that device is stolen, you lose everything.

With the Kindle Fire out now, I’m not sure I really see a point in creating a color e-ink Kindle.  Most books, regardless of whether they are print and electronic don’t use much color.  I can see it being used for highlights and annotations, but how high is the demand for that?

In the short term, I would love to see a light built into the Kindle.  I don’t mean a backlight necessarily, but perhaps a light that is built in at the top that can flip in and out when needed.  There are a number of good clip on lights available, but having one that fits seamlessly into the device would be ideal.

E-readers are continuing to show strong sales, and now that the prices are lower than ever, many more consumers are able to jump on the e-reader bandwagon.  In the next year or two at least, I think e-readers like the Kindle and Kindle Touch will draw sales from these new consumers.

Looking ahead 5 years or so, I predict that the hybrid e-reader/tablet will emerge and take a share in the market.  But who knows, there may be something completely different around to shake things up.  Technology progresses incredibly fast these days.  To say the pace of technology competition and updates are overwhelming is a major understatement.

It’s undeniable that the release of the Kindle Fire, and along with it the competing Nook Tablet, has shaken up the Tablet PC market.  Since launch Amazon has already firmly taken second place next to the Apple iPad, selling as many as 5 million units in the 4th quarter of 2011 alone.  Barnes & Noble is also doing pretty well, having moved more than a million of their own tablet in the same time period.  The way things are going with these two, there has even been some speculation that there is no room for dedicated hardware manufacturers with this kind of competition.

Both Amazon and Barnes & Noble are selling their tablets at near, or possibly even below, the cost of production.  The goal is to get people hooked into the platform and make ongoing profits based on media sales.  Effectively, the hardware has become secondary now that it can be treated as a conduit for consumption rather than an end in and of itself. Amazon is doing a better job on this side of things than Barnes & Noble so far.

The Nook Tablet has the technically superior hardware, with double the RAM and double the storage space among other things, but doesn’t make very good use of it.  The storage is restricted and the interface doesn’t seem to run significantly smoother than the Kindle Fire‘s.  There is an SD slot to expand the available memory of the device, but to get a sufficiently large one to make a difference you can expect to add a significant percentage onto the already comparatively more expensive price.  None of this means that it is a bad tablet, it’s actually quite excellent and highly recommended, but it is worth noting that B&N has a way to go before they are really making the best use out of their device’s potential.

The Kindle Fire, on the other hand, lacks some of the power of the Nook.  What it does have is a deeper integration with Amazon.com’s storefront and content.  Unlike B&N, Amazon has their own source of video and music for customers to take advantage of, as well as a robust cloud storage service that makes up for a lot of the seeming shortcomings of the hardware.  The lower price certainly doesn’t hurt sales numbers either, especially given the inevitable comparison of both products to each other and the iPad.

We can expect sales for both tablets to be improving even more through the next year.  The Kindle line, and the Kindle Fire in particular, is one of Amazon’s biggest marketing priorities, while the Nook line is pretty much the only thing B&N has going for it right now in terms of profitability.  What remains to be seen is what effect the next iteration of the Kindle tablet line brings.  A larger tablet could cement Amazon’s place on top of tablets for the foreseeable future, second only to Apple, but it could also severely damage the company’s reputation if something goes wrong and open the door to a big push by Barnes & Noble.

Either way we have good products to work with, but both Kindle Fire and Nook Tablet are built for content consumption and that means active ongoing support.  The more popular each one becomes, the more incentive the associated company has to expand the platform, and the more valuable the tablet in question becomes for owners.  It will be interesting to see the back and forth as the competition heats up in months to come.

There is always going to be a certain amount of skepticism that has to be exercised toward online reviews of any sort.  Those who are least satisfied will also always be the most motivated to post something, and there isn’t necessarily any way to confirm whether the problem being experienced was in any way the related to the product experience that another customer might get.  With something like the Kindle Direct Publishing platform, or the Amazon Appstore for Android now that the Kindle Fire is around, this can be especially problematic for a provider.

These authors and developers often have no other major avenue through which to sell the product of their labor, which means that a misinformed negative review can have a major impact.  However much we might wish it weren’t so, the first thing many people look at when considering a new book, app, toy, etc., is the overall review.  Particularly the number of truly negative ones.  Now, Amazon has done some good by adding in a product review rating system that allows users to tag particularly helpful or unhelpful contributions, but that only matters if you actually go so far as to read them.

If you are considering a purchase, especially with regard to digital content from the Appstore, it might be particularly helpful to read carefully.  Right now, as the attempt to cater to an impressively diverse selection of Android devices can be problematic, many apps are overrun by 1-Star reviews for being incompatible with specific phones or tablets.  It is not unknown for this to be the case even when owners of these devices could clearly see that their device was not listed as compatible.  Don’t let this sort of behavior dissuade you from picking up an otherwise excellent piece of software.

If you are writing the review of an eBook or App, there are a couple things to keep in mind:

First, unlike what you might expect, anything 3-Star and below is considered a negative review.  If you rate a product below 4-Stars, you are essentially telling Amazon that this is not a product that you would recommend to anybody.  If the average product rating drops to 3-Star, that is exactly how the site will treat it and potential customers will rarely, if ever, be directed to it based on their interests.  This can have a devastating effect on the income of the creator.

Second, it is bad form to judge a product based on what you wish it did rather than how well it does what it claimed.  If a book presents itself as a romance but is actually about corporate espionage, then there’s plenty of room for complaint.  If you felt that the calendar app you downloaded would have been better if it had the ability to import the Smurfs theme as an event reminder, that would generally be considered outside the realm of what you are meant to review unless sound file importing was specifically advertised.  5-Stars means that the purchase is a good example of exactly what it claimed to be.  4-Stars means that it generally met expectations, but probably could have been more successful.  Anything 3-Star and below means something was significantly wrong with it.

Please try not to penalize authors or developers who choose to make content for the Kindle and Kindle Fire due to things out of their control.  If Amazon takes longer than you would like to deliver your files, it isn’t their fault.  If you had hoped that despite being advertised for Honeycomb an App would work on your Android 2.1 device, the failure is not the developer’s fault.  Negative reviews on individual products that Amazon.com provides will generally not have any effect on the company as a whole, and often it is likely that they never see these complaints at all unless representatives are specifically directed to them.  Keep in mind who might be affected by your criticisms.

Despite the relative technical differences between the new Barnes & Noble Nook Tablet and the Amazon Kindle Fire, I think that it is fair to say that Amazon’s product offers more right out of the box.  For the layman user, somebody with no stake in a particular platform and no desire to have to jump through hoops to pull the greatest possible performance out of their electronics, the available content and overall experience of the Fire is immediately superior.

Let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that you are not that user.  Even more, let’s assume that you are considering buying one of the new $200 Tablet PCs being released by these eReading giants with the sole intention of rooting it and making it into an all purpose generic Android Tablet.  It doesn’t take huge amounts of work under most circumstances.  Andrei already posted instructions to this Blog on how to root the Kindle Fire and there is a great deal of headway being made on the Nook Tablet.  Custom Android ROMs are sure to follow in the near future.  In the end, chances are good that the only prerequisite will be a willingness to spend the time and effort to go through a list of instructions.

Under these circumstances, the most important factor is the hardware.  Here, the Nook Tablet is the way to go.  It has twice the RAM of the Kindle Fire, as well as twice the internal storage space.  The expandable memory slot is a big incentive as well, of course.  Other than those bits, the processors, screens, size, and weight are all either exactly equivalent or so close that it won’t factor in much.  Probably the only other relevant difference is the fact that the Nook has some external volume controls that come in handy from time to time.  Before making any real decisions on this matter, however, I recommend taking both devices for a test drive.

While the Nook Tablet‘s initial setup has some major flaws, from locking up the majority of the storage space to simply lacking a halfway decent app store, it is still pretty smooth and comes equipped to take on most third-party video purchases.  You also get the added advantage of easily accessible support at every Barnes & Noble location nationwide.

The Kindle Fire, on the other hand, offers deep Amazon integration.  At a glance this is troublesome and a blatant attempt to lock customers in, but they have gone out of their way to keep the platform pretty open.  Competitor apps are in their Appstore (itself less well populated than the Google Marketplace but far better policed) and it isn’t hard to install things acquired elsewhere.  Even the Nook reader app has no trouble.  The interface is smooth, looks good, and performs better than most people would expect.  Really the only complaint here is the lack of video format compatibility, which is why it was worth mentioning for the Nook.

Either way you’re getting a good device, but keep in mind what is being bought.  These are not really intended to be all purpose tablets the way the iPad is and to treat them as such will likely disappoint.  If you do decide to break away from the cultivated experiences provided then the minimal hardware might be more apparent than it otherwise would be.  Personally, I had intended to ditch the Amazon firmware on the Kindle Fire after testing it out just enough to write about it knowledgeably.  It was good enough to change my mind and might do the same for you.

I was reading an article a couple of days ago that I thought made a good point.  It discussed how despite the surge of e-books and e-readers in recent years, there is still a place for print books.  On a personal note, I can still appreciate reading a print book from time to time despite owning a Kindle Touch, iPad and iPhone.

There seems to be a general consensus that print is on its way out, and getting an e-reader means you’ll never read print books again.  I think instead of replacing print books, digital books will just be adding to the types of formats that people can use to read.  Digital books allow more font adjustments and lighting, so they offer a more customized reading experience.

With the rise of e-readers including the Amazon Kindle, and the e-books that go along with it, many of the major book chains have faltered or have gone out of business.  Borders declared bankruptcy earlier this year, and Barnes & Noble is not doing all too great.  It does have the Nook in its arsenal however, and it has definitely provided healthy competition for the Kindle.

I think the foreseeable future still holds a big place for both print and digital materials.  Print books give a certain feel that digital books cannot.  There is really something for everyone.  You have print, e-readers, and most recently, tablets.  The Kindle Fire has taken the tablet market by a storm, and is taking a hit at the iPad sales already.

The thing that has hurt the big chain bookstores so much is that Amazon offers books in all formats so much cheaper.  Independent bookstores can also offer used books at competitive prices.  They can also offer a sense of warmth and community that you don’t get with a larger bookstore.

So, smaller bookstores have the potential to shine.  It is all a matter of addressing what the customers want.  I’ve always dreamed of owning a used book store where people can come to read, work, or just gather.  Maybe one day soon there will be more independent bookstores that sell both e-books and print books.

After all the effort that Amazon spent advertising the benefits of the Kindle Fire‘s new Silk web browser, I think it is fair to say that it has been a disappointment to a few people so far.  Not only has the anticipated speed improvement been minimal so far, but in some cases it can even take longer to browse a page using Silk with its signature web caching ability turned on than getting it normally by toggling off the accelerated page loading.  While this is demonstrably the case right this minute, however, that may not mean it is time to give up hope for the future.

There was never much of an indication that Silk would result in less data being downloaded overall, as far as I can tell.  The intention was increased efficiency, thanks to removing the need for your Kindle Fire to make connections to multiple different servers for a given page, but nothing huge in terms of simply reducing the amount of transfer.  The way it works means that the faster your internet connection is, the less you will benefit from this part of the feature.  Establishing multiple connections is less of a problem on a high speed, low latency network.  This is a large source of the most common complaints, most likely.

By maintaining an ongoing data stream, Silk will supposedly eventually be able to send along associated and anticipated site data while you wander the internet.  As more data is gathered regarding customer browsing habits, particularly in terms of large trends in behavior (visitors tending to move directly from the main page of a web site to its current headlines or daily sales page, for example) the browser should begin to perform significantly better.  There are no guarantees, of course, particularly if the majority of your browsing is through little-visited sites, but the potential is there.

The failure to meet customer expectations in this case is understandable.  The idea behind the browser is impressive enough to be worth bragging about, but the fact that the eventual results rely on Amazon’s machine learning algorithms means that it would inevitably take time to get the best out of it.

There is every reason to believe that they can turn all this around.  The Silk browser really does do some neat things compared to the alternatives.  Among other things, Amazon has proven to be pretty effective at predicting peoples’ habits based on what they look at.  There wouldn’t have been nearly as much outcry against the advertising on the Kindle Library Lending checkout page if it wasn’t at least somewhat accurate based on minimal data.

Put that together with the fact that they have clearly made a huge investment in the success of the Kindle Fire and the line of products that will surely descend from it and functionality is pretty well assured.  The big question now is whether it will be in time to drum up interest again.  Without the big initial splash of excitement that real speed improvements would have provided at launch, it might prove hard to make it happen.  Perhaps the Kindle Fire‘s larger sequel, when it comes along in a couple months, will take long enough for potential to become reality.

It was known well ahead of the official announcement for the device ever took place that the Kindle Fire would be intended for video more than anything else.  Perhaps due to that pressure and perhaps just as part of an overall trend in the market, the Nook Tablet was designed along similar lines.  While this doesn’t necessarily mean much on its own, it spurred along at least one other development that might mean a great deal more attention for the Android community as a whole.

Amazon’s intent to promote their own streaming video service is clear.  Their library has been growing quickly over time, including many titles being given away “free” with Amazon Prime.  This is naturally something of a concern for a company like Netflix that is suddenly faced with competition from somebody as big as Amazon.  Although Netflix has not commented on it, something definitely spurred them along to push forward their new tablet app upgrade for Android weeks or months ahead of iOS.

The Nook Tablet practically relies on Netflix and other streaming services to function, all the more so because Barnes & Noble currently offers nothing analogous to Amazon’s video services.  They also began advertising a uniquely deep connection with Netflix immediately following the reveal.  As Kindle Fire owners have likely noticed by now, the Netflix app in the Amazon App Store isn’t exactly lacking either.  They went for the maximum possible audience with this update and it seems likely to take.

The implications here go beyond benefits for owners of these new 7″ tablets, however nice those are to have.  This is one of the first times that the Android platform has received special attention ahead of the iOS equivalent.  That sort of thing does not happen without a fair degree of confidence in the potential profitability. If the Kindle Fire alone, or even the collection group of it and all of the competing $200 tablets springing up from companies like B&N and Kobo, is considered important enough to be prioritized ahead of the market dominating iPad then it could easily be a sign that tides are changing.

Part of the bar to Android’s widespread adoption in tablets has been the fact that quality development tends to get prioritized for the competition.  Whether you blame it on the fragmentation of the ecosystem due to frequent non-mandatory upgrades, lack of faith in Google’s offering as a whole, or the lack of a truly major name product to line up behind, the situation has now changed. With luck, this will build up some momentum.

While I have nothing against Apple or the iPad, some heated competition would go a long way toward not only improving their product but creating some genuinely functional alternatives.  The strength of iOS that everybody else lacks isn’t the iPad’s hardware or aesthetic.  Its main virtue is the functionality that primarily comes from the Apple App Store.  Neither the Kindle Fire nor the Amazon App Store is a match for Apple.  It isn’t likely that a single company or product will be any time soon.  What it does do is get the ball rolling, so to speak.

Amazon made what appeared to be some fairly big opponents in the earliest days of the Kindle.  All they had to do was decide to go with a closed format.  Unlike some companies who might have decided that a strong DRM scheme was plenty of protection, they made sure that Kindle owners were locked in by consciously failing to support the industry standard eBook format.  It struck many people, myself included, as manipulative and more than a little bit condescending.

Thinking back, many of my earliest complaints about the Kindle revolved around the EPUB format.  I was ideologically supportive of the Nook in a very strong way as a result.  They might have wanted to lock in customers via DRM, but at least things like outside purchases and library books would work if the user wanted to make the effort to access them.  MobiPocket format was already too outdated in many situations.

Oddly enough, in principle the objections remain to this day.  The difference is that now customers aren’t expected to buy into an unproven platform with no guarantee that success was ahead.  Keep in mind that the Kindle was not the first E Ink eReader.  Sony was already doing a fairly good job of fizzling out by then and has been taking a back seat in the field ever since as a result.

My own change of opinion regarding the importance of the eBook format conflict stems from purely practical matters.  We have reached a point where there is literally nothing you can’t do with a Kindle that can be done on another device.  Library books are plentiful, no author or publisher is likely to boycott the Kindle platform in favor of the competition, and on the off chance that you find a DRM-free eBook you want on your device you can convert it for free with Calibre (a practical necessity for the eBook enthusiast in case you haven’t adopted already. Google it!).  In a situation where the format itself offers no particular advantage inherent to itself, there is no longer much reason to cling to it.  There is a reason you don’t see much use of HD-DVD anymore, or Betamax before that.

As we move forward into the next generation of formats, HTML5 forms the underlying structure.  Kindle Format 8 looks to allow for as much, or as little, formatting as the person producing a given publication desires as a result.  This will improve Amazon’s ability to present their media equally well on practically any size display, which makes sense given speculation regarding future Kindle Tablet options.  Nobody else seems to have really adopted an equally versatile approach yet, and even if that happens it won’t necessarily change anything.  There is only so much you can do in order to essentially show off text in an attractive manner.

What it all comes down to is that customers will go where they get the best experience.  EPUB might be better than Mobi, but with the Kindle providing the better hardware and Amazon backing their product with strong infrastructure and a great book store that didn’t matter enough.  It’s one more format war down.

This time of year travel is anything but rare and chances are good that at some point a delay will have you sitting in an airport with nothing to do.  The obvious solution is to bring your Kindle along for the ride.  Reading is always a pleasant way to kill time, of course.  The problem comes in deciding whether or not this is safe to do.

There have been numerous reports of airport security causing Kindle screen failure in the past and it continues to be an issue.  Amazon denies that the usual sort of security scanners employed in airports have any chance of harming their eReaders.  Even leaving aside my own personal anecdotes involving extensive holiday travel having failed to do anything to a Kindle, they’re obviously correct.  The radiation being used in these scanners is simply far too weak to manage to do any real harm to E INK displays, even over the course of repeated scane.

Where it gets tricky is in the associated mechanisms.  Naturally, to speed up the processing, belts are employed to feed baggage through scanners.  We’ve all seen or used them from time to time.  These long rubber belts, constantly in motion, have the potential to build up a significant charge.  Some estimates have indicated it could easily reach or exceed 100 volts.  In instances where this discharges through a Kindle, of course it is going to freeze the E INK permanently in place.  Of course, that sort of thing isn’t particularly good for just about any piece of electronics.

While it seems unlikely that this phenomenon alone is sufficient to account for all of the reports of travel damage, keep in mind that it is travel damage.  Tight bags, rough handling, and not infrequent jostling in crowds and tightly packed planes inevitably takes its toll.  Given that the Kindle line makes use of display technology that is notoriously brittle, it is to be expected to some extent.

In order to ensure safety for your favorite Kindle, especially the eReader models since the Kindle Fire has proven extremely resilient, there are a few things you can do.  The simplest is packing carefully.  Make sure that your Kindle is in a good protective case or at least not in a position to be supporting any weight or accepting any major pressure.  This won’t be particularly helpful if you are one of the rare cases of airport scanner damage, but for general hits it makes all the difference.

If you are particularly concerned about the scanner, keep in mind that the damage likely to be the result of static discharge.  They make cheap protective products for help with that.  Many people employ antistatic bags to protect data storage devices in transit and they should work just as well for the Kindle.

The overwhelming majority of the time, you have nothing to be worried about.  What people remember are the rare exceptions and that tends to make for some rumors being blown out of proportion.  Fortunately, even if you should end up with problems all reports indicate that Amazon has an unofficial policy of replacing airport-damaged eReaders.  Enjoy your travel, bring your Kindle, and good luck with your travel this holiday season.

In the past several months, especially since the announcement of the Kindle Touch, I’ve mentioned regularly that I expected the Kindle Keyboard to be a thing of the past by early 2012.  While nothing concrete has happened just yet, there are beginning to be small indications that this is beginning to happen.

The most obvious early sign was the fact that the Kindle Touch’s 3G option did not include the same freedoms that we have come to expect in previous models.  Where up until now you could browse freely, albeit in a limited fashion due to the nature of the Kindle’s screen and experimental browser, now users are stuck with only Wikipedia and Amazon’s own store.  Given the size of the ongoing 3G bill that Amazon has to have been racking up over the past several years, this change should be no surprise.  Lifetime 3G for free is going to be hard to keep going without limitations.  What is surprising and makes this stand out is the fact that the Kindle Keyboard did not start having the same restrictions.  If this was really the direction that Amazon has chosen to go, the only easy explanation is that they were waiting to run out existing stock.

More recently, the Kindle Keyboard WiFi w/ Special Offers has silently disappeared from the Kindle Store.  You can still get the more expensive ad-free model, but somehow I doubt that is because Amazon has suddenly decided to drop their advertising subsidized eReader plans.  Not only is it gone, but the newer versions of the sales banner for the Kindle Family are now focused entirely on the newest devices and don’t display the Kindle Keyboard at all.

It would not be surprising to find that even more signs have been given that were just too subtle to be noticed at the time.  I seem to recall there being white versions of both WiFi and 3G Kindle 3 models, for example, but now that is only available for the 3G model.  Hard to say for certain at this point since the graphite frame was so appealing at launch that I didn’t bother picking up a white edition.

Will this be the end of eReaders with physical inputs?  Quite possibly!  The major competition has already moved to entirely touchscreen, though the Nook Simple Touch eReader still has some actual page turning buttons.  The virtual keyboard allows for a lighter, more compact device that is even less intrusive than previous Kindles.  I’m still dealing with mixed feelings regarding this move, having gotten used to my keyboard and not quite having had the same amount of exposure to the new design, but it does seem the way of the future.

If you are still interested in the Kindle Keyboard (formerly Kindle 3), now is really the time to buy.  Lefties will find it especially valuable since the Kindle Touch requires swiping if you want to flip a page forward with your left hand. It offers pretty much everything that the Kindle Touch does aside from X-Ray and the ease of use in highlighting and annotation, but you get the reassuring presence of buttons.  The option won’t be around much longer, I’m sure, but for now you can get either the normal Kindle Keyboard or the Kindle Keyboard 3G w/ Special Offers for just $139.

When people talk about the Kindle Fire’s shortcomings, one of the most common objections is the fact that Amazon has closed their customers into an ecosystem that has no direct connection to the general Android Marketplace.  While this is true and does mean that there are far fewer apps at the disposal of customers, that doesn’t mean it’s entirely a negative thing.

The most obvious positive, as far as I can tell, is Amazon’s inspection practices.  While they aren’t nearly as restrictive as Apple, neither does Amazon just allow anything that happens to be submitted to make its way into the system.  This becomes especially important at times like this when large numbers of inexperienced users are likely to be presented with a kind of device they are completely unfamiliar with.  Buying from the Amazon Appstore you have little to worry about, whereas the Android Marketplace has had instances of Malware uploads increase by nearly 475% since just this part July by some accounts.  Because of how Google has structured their store model, there’s no easy way for them to preemptively remove these apps.

As I’ve mentioned in the past, there is also the added benefit to users of regularly discounted or free apps.  While it is my understanding that there have been issues with this system before, such as developers having been misinformed about the potential for profit when their apps are included in the featured slot, it is nothing but a benefit to the end user.  Chances are good that eventually something you want to use will be featured, or at least something that you didn’t realize would be interesting until it popped up.

Kindle Fire owners also have the added benefit of knowing that their device of choice is likely to enjoy ongoing support.  Unlike the main Android Marketplace in which developers are often practically obligated to cater to whichever build hit shelves last, it is fair to expect that Amazon will be clinging to their highly customized build for quite a while.  This means that not only will the newest apps to hit the store be available to you, but that more developers wishing to enjoy ongoing relevance for their work will be drawn in.  Nobody likes to see something they put significant effort into be rendered incompatible a month later.

It would be ridiculous to say that this was anything but a self-serving move on Amazon’s part.  If they could have made more money by opening up their software to Google’s store, there is no doubt that it would have been the first thing done.  Less infrastructure to develop, if nothing else.  The fact is though that by keeping things in house, so to speak, the only people harmed are over at Google.

If having a pure, untouched Android build is really what you would prefer, Amazon has left it quite simple to root the device and make it so.  As it stands, though, the Kindle Fire will be a great entry level product for exactly the reasons that many existing tablet enthusiasts will find unpleasant.  Unless one is exceptionally wary about being tied into Amazon’s services, few shortcomings will be noticeable in their handling of the Appstore.

While the news of the week is certainly focused on the Kindle Fire media tablet and all of the wider implications for tablet computing that go along with it, this week also brings us the release of the new Amazon Kindle Touch eReader.  It does a few things right that other companies haven’t quite caught on to yet, but overall it’s just another iteration of the line.  Once you reach a certain point, there is a limit to how much excitement can be mustered over fractions of an inch in dimension reduction, fractions of an ounce in weight reduction, or fractions of a second in page refresh rate.  It was all pretty much great in the Kindle 3 (Kindle Keyboard) and the trend continues in the fourth generation here.

What is really important here aside from the touchscreen implementation, which I’ll talk about another time, is the way Amazon has managed to add extra value for users beyond the simple reading experience.  That’s not easy when you’re talking about something as basic as a book, and most attempts to do so up until now (i.e. video embedding, hyperlinks, etc.) have been at least somewhat obtrusive during the act of reading.

The new X-Ray feature is, at first glance, an extension of the search function.  It will find what you need in an intelligent fashion using Amazon’s own predictive algorithms to determine what the most important parts of a book are.  The name is meant to imply that by using the Kindle Touch you can see through to the “bones” of a given book.  This information is stored on your eReader, having been downloaded alongside each eBook you picked up, so it remains accessible even if you keep the WiFi turned off consistently. Accessing X-Ray will get you things like a list of proper names in the book, how often those names appear and where, as well as other extrapolated information about the form of the book’s content.

While this isn’t generally going to be a feature of major importance, it will come in handy to many.  For students and reading groups the applications are obvious.  It serves as a reference point.  Even during a casual reading, however, it will come in handy to be able to pull this up on the fly.  Forgot where you last saw a character earlier in the book?  X-Ray.  Not sure if it’s worth looking up a historical figure to understand a reference?  Check X-Ray to see if they keep coming up during important passages.  That sort of thing might not be a day to day need, but it’s nice to have handy.

In handling things the way they are, Amazon is effectively providing paying customers something that pirates don’t have access to.  Even if people figure out a good way to side-load this content, Amazon is presumably improving how the X-Ray feature determines what is important.  This means that each time you sign online with your Kindle Touch, the information potentially evolves and improves.  It’s a neat system and manages to avoid restrictive content control while giving users an incentive to stay honest.

It’s safe to say that the Kindle Fire has made an impression.  Tablet prices are dropping across the board, some major hardware developers seem to be reconsidering their desire to enter the fray, and Amazon has increased their expected sales numbers on the order of millions of units beyond what was originally planned for the 2011 holiday season.  Not only does this spell good news for Amazon’s first non-eReader (or maybe post-eReader?  Hard to say precisely where to draw the line since it technically can show you books), it means that the hardware line is sure to continue and expand as time goes on.

There is some contention at the moment about exactly which Kindle Fire followup we can expect to see next.  Some are certain that it will end up being a 10.1″ direct competitor for the iPad while a newer contingent citing supposedly inside information from the production chain has started indicating somewhere around 9″ as the next step.  Regardless of where you would place your bet, one frequent point of speculation is the potential for a Kindle Phone.

There has been speculation before that Amazon was interested in entering into cellular devices, but until recently that seemed doomed to be nothing but a rumor.  This past week, though, Citigroup analyst Mark Mahoney noted that certain checks they have done indicate that development for an Amazon Phone is already underway with delivery expected in 4th quarter 2012.

To be honest, it is hard to know what to expect moving forward.  While this seems to be fairly detailed information, it feels like there is little in it for Amazon in the end.  The tablet makes sense since Amazon is able to completely control the data end of things and sell at near cost, undercutting the competition.  In a cellular market closely controlled by carriers, there might well be less room for such tactics.  When consumers are already used to getting hardware for less than half of its suggested retail cost, budget options aren’t as shocking.

What I could definitely envision, however, is a Kindle Fire-like device with a smaller screen and optional 3G coverage along the lines of what is available for the iPad.  It would work marketed as an iPod Touch competitor but still have the hardware necessary to function as a communication device should the desire arise.  Even without the 3G, relying on WiFi availability, such a thing would make a big splash at the right price.

As much as it might be a difficult thing to enter into the smartphone marketplace at this time, would Amazon be willing to pass up a chance to grab hold of what is only going to continue to be an expanding market?  The Kindle Fire has demonstrated for them the potential of Android devices and the fact that they already have an Android fork fully developed and customized to fully integrate into their sales systems means that much of the work is already done.  Maybe it’s just optimism, but I think the Kindle Phone is definitely on its way.

Let’s face it, Amazon has not been great up until now about making sure that customers outside of US markets get access to their products and services in a timely manner.  The Kindle Fire will be a long time coming to other countries due to its strong ties to an infrastructure that hasn’t been built up anywhere else yet, Amazon Prime has yet to carry quite the same incentives for everybody, and many of the promotions that Amazon runs don’t quite make it to any of their sites besides Amazon.com.  It’s always good news when this changes, though, even if only slightly.

Amazon has recently announced that their ongoing Kindle Daily Deal promotion will be extended to the UK’s Kindle Store.  Amazon.co.uk customers will be able to enjoy specially discounted Kindle Edition eBooks on a daily basis.  Each book will be available at this price for 24 hours before reverting to its normal number.  In the US Kindle Store, it has not been unusual to see heavily discounted titles in a variety of genres and it is hopes that this trend will continue now that the offer is being expanded.

Sadly, while as I mentioned this is definitely a step in the right direction, it does little to address the ongoing problem.  The newest Kindles have not yet been given much of a presence outside of US markets.  While, for example, you can buy the new Kindle 4 in the UK you cannot order a Kindle Touch, or even a Kindle Keyboard without 3G.  Prices are still noticeably higher due to a number of factors including the lack of Special Offers integration, and this has not been changing at the rate we might expect.

Clearly Amazon is responding to a number of pressures.  I could reasonably see it being difficult to justify having a Kindle Keyboard WiFi if consumer demand in a particular country leaves them sitting on a shelf while orders come in for the 3G model.  The Kindle Touch, due in particular to its much-touted X-Ray feature, requires access to Amazon technology still in its early stages.  As such it might be worth working the bugs out before implementing it elsewhere.  The Kindle Fire relies on all sorts of media streaming avenues that will require years of time and more money than anybody likes to think about to make happen in new markets.  Each new market, in fact, will be the same headache all over again since global media rights are not exactly simple to secure.  There is a lot that goes into getting something ready for international release on any large scale.

That said, all of this is insufficient to really justify the continuance of the problem or Amazon’s lack of comment on user demands.  It is nice when they come up with something like the Kindle Daily Deal, but in the end it seems like audiences outside the US are almost an afterthought.  If Amazon hopes to secure any significant presence beyond what it already has in hand, the only option is to start pushing for more equal treatment of these customer bases.  Or so it would seem to me.

While there is a huge demand for affordable college textbooks, both purchased and rented, the Kindle eTextbook rental option has yet to become terribly popular.  There’s a very good reason for this.  Textbooks traditionally make extensive use of graphics, charts, colors, and other such methods of enhancing the text.  The Kindle’s monochrome E INK screen has not been entirely up to the task of replacing those features.  While it is great for pleasure reading, things haven’t quite clicked in other areas just yet.  That may all be changing with the release of the Kindle Fire, though.

Not only will the Kindle Fire’s display have color, which is an obvious benefit, it has a larger screen which means more leeway when it comes to properly positioning everything that needs to be shown at any given time.  This is aided, of course, by the new Kindle Format 8 release, which will allow publishers to better control the positions of things on the page.  That’s not a great thing when overused, but will prove a vital component of properly adapting digital texts.  Nobody wants this to become another iteration of the increasingly obsolete PDF format, but there are definitely situations where some rigidity in positioning important elements is to be desired.  Sadly, until now most electronic textbook renters have been forced to rely on PDF copies.  It is definitely a good time to be marketing viable alternatives.

The Kindle Textbook Rental service already allows users a chance at significant savings.  Renters can save as much as 80 percent off of the purchase price, depending on the book.  This rental can be for a period of anywhere from a month to a year, and can even be turned into a purchase should you desire in the end.  Despite this being only a temporary arrangement, users are able to bookmark, highlight, and annotate as much as desired and not only will these notes persist through to the end of the rental, they will be available in the same text should it ever be rented gain or purchased in the future.

Generally, at the moment, it is advisable to be sure that you can regularly access your rental from a computer rather than a Kindle.  It is obviously possible to use the Kindle, but it is somewhat difficult to get the most out of it, as I mentioned.  With the release of the new device, then, we can expect to be seeing a bigger push at this end of the Kindle Store’s content.  Possibly as early as late December given the upcoming semester, but definitely by Spring 2012. The Kindle Fire is extremely likely to breathe new life into a program full of potential and low on actual versatility thus far.

After some speculation about the possibility a while back, it appears that Amazon has opened up what we can only hope is the earliest stage of its Kindle eBook Lending Library to the public.  It will provide customers with a free book loan from time to time, without due date.  Essentially a Netflix for Kindle Edition eBooks, available for only a select group.  Sadly, this service is far more exclusive than anything else Amazon has put out to date.

Ever since the first Kindle came out, Amazon’s position on the line was that users could “Buy Once, Read Everywhere”.  Overall they have done a great job of ensuring this, with apps for most any system and now the Kindle Cloud Reader which when complete will allow users to access their eBooks from any browser on any system.  So far, so good.  While the Kindle Owners Lending Library does not necessarily break this rule, it walks a fairly fine line.  Only people who own physical Kindle eReaders and who subscribe to Amazon Prime will be able to take advantage of the new service.

True, this is not a purchase.  It’s really not even an amazingly useful library yet, featuring just over 5,000 titles with none coming from the largest publishing houses. It does privilege people who use Amazon’s hardware, though, which is going to come as a bit of a shock to people who have become accustomed to receiving great Amazon service when using their Kindle for Android or Kindle for iOS apps.

What would motivate this potentially alienating move?  Partly it fits in with the Kindle Fire‘s launch.  Amazon is able to push their Prime service, which they are clearly hoping to catch a large number of Kindle Fire owners with, as well as offering one more reason for people to switch to a Kindle.  To make a broad generalization, it is fairly safe to assume that people who are used to doing their Kindle reading on an Android or iOS device are used to reading on back-lit LCDs, meaning that they are potential converts with the Kindle Fire’s eReading capabilities.

It is also of major importance to demonstrate to publishers who have not yet bought in to the idea that this can serve customers without devaluing the eBook image.  By only offering the option to owners of Kindle eReaders, it is perhaps possible to maintain the eBook as something with more weight behind it than your average cell phone app.  It’s doubtful that this can make much of an impression on companies clearly predisposed to hate the idea in the first place, but time will tell.

Despite these valid uses for the program, I think Amazon has made a mistake here.  Drawing a line between Kindle owners and app users only serves to push potential customers away.  Given how important Amazon is seeing their digital content distribution to be these days, that is not a smart move to make.  The underlying concept is great and would be a valid way to push Amazon Prime, but as it stands this seems likely to hurt more than it helps.

It’s that time again and Black Friday Deals are just around the corner.  As always we can expect a slew of promos, door buster deals, extremely long lines, amazing if short lived price cuts, and loads of fun for all ages.  Well, maybe not that last part entirely, but you get the picture.  Fortunately, Amazon provides a good way to get some of these great details without lining up outside a store hours before the sun comes up.

I’m even fairly certain that there will be some great deals available for the Kindle lovers among us.  “But how?!” one might ask, given that the new line of Kindles will just finish being released on the 15th and the associated price drops will still be settling in.  The answer is clear.

Expect, for one, at least one great offer on the Kindle Keyboard.  Amazon, prior to the release of the Kindle 4 and announcement of the new Kindle Touch and Fire, had been selling the refurbished Keyboard model at a fairly large discount.  This is a move we’d seen before during the transition from the second to third generation of eReader.  We still have them up for sale though, so why bother?  Personally I have a feeling that they just didn’t sell as well as was hoped now that customers knew what to expect.  Look for some great deals on this product with the Black Friday promotions, as this should be a wonderful time for Amazon to sell off large quantities of a product that many believe is being phased out.

Also, watch for accessories!  The Kindle Fire will still be fresh in peoples’ hands after pre-orders ship, as will the Kindle Touch.  As with any piece of portable electronics, there are going to be things needed both for personalization and proper utilization.  Not much fits the bill better than Kindle cases, styluses (you never know what it might be handy), skins, etc.  Given how hard Amazon has been pushing their new hardware, even taking a loss on much of it if external analysis is to be believed, it’s unlikely that a chance to further promote the line will be passed by.

The other thing that Amazon has been pushing, though, is their digital media distribution.  Given that potentially millions of customers will be pulling out their new media tablets in the same week as Black Friday, it makes sense to expect associated digital content sales.  This has the advantage of instant gratification for customers even as it increases awareness of the potential for Amazon’s services.  Look out for Kindle Fire apps, Instant Video downloads, and Kindle Edition eBook deals sporadically throughout the sale period.

Amazon’s Black Friday Deals Week will be kicking off on Monday, November 21 and going through the 27th which is itself perhaps better known now as “Cyber Monday”.  Deals will be posted in a staggered fashion throughout each day in pretty much every category of goods that Amazon sells.  There are even some early deals posted already to set the mood for potential customers.

The Kindle will not be taking center stage in all this, unless i miss my guess.  There won’t be some sort of major promo rush.  This is the perfect time for the retailer to be presenting good deals on things with significantly higher profit margins during a sales period high on one-off purchasing.  It would be silly to have this much traffic built up without any effort to cater to what has to be considered a major source of recurring customers, though, so Kindle Owners (especially Kindle Fire Owners) won’t be left out of the fun.

Up until now, Amazon has done a fairly good job of avoiding patent lawsuits.  Sure, they’ve run into a few over search technology and such, but overall they’ve been small and unsuccessful.  With the release of the Kindle Fire, though, they may have entered into the murky world of mobile computing litigation.  What this means for the future of the company’s hardware development line remains to be seen, but there are a few things that we can be quite sure of over the next several months.  One of these is that Amazon will rise to the challenge.

In 2011 alone already Amazon has been hit with 11 lawsuits over 30 alleged patent infringements, two of which have been dismissed completely.  The majority of them have been in relation to the technology being put in place to pave the way for the launch of the Kindle Fire.  This includes cloud computing (admittedly even more useful in other areas, but vital for things like the Kindle Fire’s Silk web browser), streaming services, site personalization, and a number of things that relate to other Kindles as well.  Last year, they didn’t face a third so much attention over patents.

As the 15th of Nov. rolls around, whole new areas of vulnerability open up.  Android has thus far been a highly disputed OS.  Apple has been particularly active in using legal tactics to beat down any potentially successful competing tablets, both in the US and abroad, but they are not the only ones.  Microsoft has managed to convince Samsung to pay royalties over supposed Android related patents, for example, though MS has not as yet brought any major action against the source.  It’s possible that Google is too big to attack at the moment?  That says nothing of the increasingly common “patent troll” crowd that exists for no reason other than to acquire intellectual property and make money suing people over it.  The mobile device market is their favorite playground.

While there is a great deal of criticism of the patent system floating about at the moment, chances are good that any reform of that system is a long way off.  For the time being this is the environment we are stuck with no matter how much it would seem doomed to stifle any form of innovation in technology.

We’ll see where things go in the next year.  Some have predicted Amazon acquiring HP’s WebOS and the associated intellectual properties as a way to bolster their position in the event of extended legal battles.  Google made a similar move in acquiring Motorola’s mobile division, so there’s certainly precedent for such a move.  Whether or not that happens, though, Amazon has expressed an intent to defend themselves against all comers.  This could be enough to scare off potential complaints.  Nobody interested in repeating lawsuits for income wants such a high profile case setting precedent against them. The Kindle Fire isn’t likely to be blocked as easily as some other tablets and cell phones have been before now.

I don’t think anybody can really doubt at this point that Amazon wants to take their eReading success in the US and replicate it globally.  Amazon in general is an always expanding entity, of course, but specifically the Kindle line has been growing rapidly for some time now and is finally showing up in non-English dominated countries.  Even if nothing else had pointed in that direction, simply the removal of the physical keyboard from the Kindle, a long-standing and almost iconic part of the popular eReader, would have given some hints as to aspirations outside of US markets.  If we take that as a given, though, does Amazon have a chance to make the same sort of impression elsewhere that it has in the United States?

Probably the number one thing that Amazon has going for it when it comes to getting the Kindle Store out there is the Kindle Direct Publishing platform.  This has allowed authors to bring out work that might never have seen the light of day otherwise.  In some cases there was a good reason for that, of course, but the number of success stories from KDP authors is growing all the time and it is becoming increasingly common for new works to be self-published digitally without ever even being offered to major publishers.  There is every reason to believe that this will be a popular service no matter where Amazon makes it available and that as a result they can hope to keep their selection original and diverse in any market.

Self publishers will not be driving an entire eBook industry any time soon, though.  Customers want access to the big names and best selling titles.  Here is where Amazon will be running into some trouble.  Despite, or perhaps because of, the roadblocks that the company has hit from Agency Model price fixing, nobody can compete with the Kindle and publishing houses aren’t prospering in the new market the way they would like to.  While those two facts don’t necessarily have a direct connection, publishers are clearly unhappy with how things are going now that the Kindle and eBooks in general have taken off.  That will have an effect on how publishers who have not as of yet dealt with Amazon will approach forming a new relationship.

On top of this, there is the incredibly complex task of managing rights issues across multitudes of jurisdictions.  Amazon can’t just form a deal to sell a book, they have to make deals to sell every book in every individual country it needs to be sold in.  As any Kindle owners in Canada can attest to, that results in problems with unequal selections.

Will Amazon push through and make the attempt in spite of the complications?  Of course.  They’re already doing it.  I would guess that after this first major push to hit what they perceive to be the best potential markets, though, we see a couple years of consolidation.  When it comes to the Kindle, Amazon has proven they have a desire to deliver quality over quantity and that can’t always be rushed.

I work in a library, so I often get questions about how the Kindle Library Lending program works.  It is a new program so it hasn’t really gotten too popular yet, but it shows promise of being a great success.

The program is currently available in roughly 11,000 libraries. For North Carolina, there is a North Carolina Digital Library that is a local subset of OverDrive that includes the Kindle e-books.  I’m sure there are equivalents in other states. The Kindle Library Lending program is a partnership with OverDrive, the website that handles most digital library books, including ones for the Nook and iPad.

On a participating library’s main page, there is usually a widget or ad saying that they have books available for the Kindle. Once you click on the link, you’ll be taken to the library’s Overdrive account. For most libraries, you will need to enter your library card number. Different libraries have different ID’s needed to get in.

Click “Get for Kindle.” Then, you’ll go to the your Amazon account where you can download the book to any Kindle supported device. That includes the Kindle itself, as well as all of its apps for PC, Mac, iPad, iPhone, and Android.

One thing to note: Public Library books on Kindle can only be downloaded via Wi-Fi. They cannot be downloaded via the Kindle’s 3G connection.  Wi-Fi is easy to find these days, but if you can’t get to a Wi-Fi hotspot, you can hook up your Kindle to the computer via a USB cord.

Loan periods depend on the library.  Loan periods are usually for about three weeks for regular books, so I’m sure it will be similar with a Kindle book.  When the expiration date is up, the book will disappear from your Kindle.  So, no worries about having to remember to return it on time.

Kindle Library Lending is available in a lot of libraries in the US, but not in all of them yet. I am hoping that it will be available at my local public library in the near future so I can take advantage of the program first hand.

The role of e-books is increasing rapidly in libraries.  This goes a long way in breaking the stereotypical image of a library being a large, quiet building full of dusty books.  In reality they are constantly working to stay on the cutting edge of technology, and on new ways to reach out to their patrons.  The Kindle lending program is just one small example.

The Kindle lending program brings the library to you, and this allows people who can’t get to a library to have access to their favorite books.  For more information on the program, check out the Amazon Kindle Lending program FAQ on Amazon’s website.