Interesting thoughts (as always) from Seth on the Kindle and how it could be made more useful. I’ve been discussing it in an email thread with Kevin and some other Sonus friends. In particular I love the idea of sharing margin notes on books. If nowhere else this would be great in a corporate setting - while reading the latest business howto or tech books see what your colleagues thought about how it relates to your specific business.
The question does get raised of the longer term trend and how value is being squeezed out of the publishing industry. Interestingly I had meetings yesterday both at E Ink (the makers of the screen technology behind the Kindle and similar products), and at the classic Harvard Bookstore. On the one hand the eInk folks paint a picture of a wonderful world with foldable plastic screens automatically updated with todays news complete with active animations (think newpapers like in Harry Potter). On the other there’s just a different kind of magic to the feel and heft of a book, and to being surrounded by them like in Jeff’s store. I’m just an old fashioned boy from Ireland, but I’d hate to trade the latter for the former…
