Amazon claims that the “Kindle”, their new wireless reading device is revolutionary, because it “reads like real paper”, and I have to admit having kindle-envy from the moment I watched the video demonstration. Years from now, we will likely note the Kindle’s release as a landmark day in reading history, and will consistently place it near the top of those “most innovative gadgets of all time” lists.

I, however, despite my famous quote “Now that I think about it, I’m quite looking forward to interactive paper”, will not be one of the early converts to the Kindle… for one major reason: Money! Not only is the device $400, but you have to buy the books at retail price. Only suckers pay retail for books.

I get free and cheap books through several methods:

My Library! – I can search the county catalog online and have any book delivered to my local branch (for FREE), within 72 hours. Sure, I pay my fair share of late fees, but the money saved on books (especially ones that I borrow and DON’T like) makes it worthwhile.

Book Swapping Sites – I use PaperbackSwap, though there are a number of them out there. What I like about PBS is that there is no fee for a transaction (users pay their own shipping), and that I can gain credits by simply sending out books to any user — there is no need to find a user who wants the exact book that I have and has the exact book that I want.

Half.com/Amazon Marketplace/eBay – Unless you are looking for a niche product or something that has *just* been released, it can usually be had for less than half price on one of these sites.

So, unless there is some social reason why you need to read a book the week it comes out (i.e. Harry Potter), or it is a rare, non-mainstream title, there really is no reason to pay retail for a book.

Which brings me to the Kindle. If I pay $400 for one of these bad boys, will I also have to shell out more for everything I read? When I am done with a book, will I be able to resell the “used” version via Amazon marketplace? Will I be able to import free eBooks from other sites on the web like Project Gutenberg? Will I be able to trade Kindle “books” with other Kindle users?

One might argue that the Kindle price of books is far lower than hardcover new releases, so people who do buy a lot of those might benefit from Kindle. Sure, that is true, but at $5 savings per book (using Amazon prices), you will need to buy 80 books to break even, and this isn’t counting your ability to resell, trade and share real books that you purchase.

I realize this is just one way to look at the Kindle. There are many advantages. Firstly, the Kindle is really cool. Books aren’t. That’s worth something, right? It is also smaller and more convenient than many books. It has additional uses like the ability to preview books, get news and blog feeds, use wikipedia, etc. Features like word lookup, page and quote annotations, etc, may end up making the Kindle experience “better” than reading a book.

I’ll admit it: I want one! My only point is that they will need to address the social sharing and reuse values that regular books bring to the table if they ever want to replace them. (Or, just stop selling books. ;o)

• More info on the Kindle, including a must-watch video
  
• 17 Ways to Get Free Books Online

“I turn on my computer. I wait impatiently as it connects. I go online, and my breath catches in my chest until I hear three little words: You’ve. got. mail. I hear nothing. Not even a sound on the streets of New York, just the beating of my own heart. I have mail.” ~ Kathleen Kelly, “You’ve Got Mail”

Today I was working in Firefox, and I decided to close the ubiquitous (for me) tab that was open to Yahoo! Mail, and, as I did so, I recall thinking: “I’ll just check back later, maybe I will get something good.”

This got me thinking — is checking your email fun anymore? It sure used to be, but now I hear people complain about the vastness of their inbox far more than I hear anyone talk like Kathleen Kelly (not that anyone was ever that gushing, but, at one time, people certainly loved email).

Perhaps email has just become like regular mail, where we get mostly junk, but still get that little twinge of anticipation each time we open the mailbox, because today could just be the day where something special lies inside.

I was lucky enough to have the chance to play around with somebody’s iPhone for about five minutes the other day, and I have a few thoughts about the interface:

1. First of all, the scrolling interface for websites, Google Maps and YouTube is absolutely stunning. The ability to simply move around the page with your finger is incredibly intuitive and easy. As with anything seen in a commercial, I was a little bit skeptical about this, but playing around with it myself has me convinced.

2. Typing with the iPhone is terrible, especially for someone used to working on a Blackberry. When the phone is turned vertically, so that the keyboard keys are smaller, it is virtually impossible to type anything. Every character that I attempted to type was the incorrect one. When I turned the phone horizontally, I was able to type somewhat effectively, however the lack of physical feedback offered here was still a major problem. This phone is great for browsing the web and using fun applications, but it’s got a long way to go before it can compete with something like a Blackberry or the Treo for business productivity (i.e. email).

3. The Internet connection was incredibly slow. I tried to load eBay, I tried to load ESPN, and neither would load within about a minute. (I’m able to use my Blackberry in the very same location and load pages a lot faster.) Interestingly, however, the YouTube application that lives on the iPhone loaded relatively quickly.

4. While I used the iPhone several people hovered around me, stretching to get a look. This phone certainly is a phenomenon.

This post was dictated using Dragon NaturallySpeaking 9.

I have had the opportunity to play around with Dragon NaturallySpeaking software and I am trying it out for the first time right now with this very text. I have taken the tutorial, which took about 15 minutes to get the basics down and learn a little about how to use some of the features and tools that they have in the program. It’s cool because they have more editing than I expected; selecting words, using undo, adding capitals and punctuation is all very simple to do. For example, it was rather easy for me to italicize simple to do and the last sentence. I did have a little trouble with it because when I was finished, my cursor was in front of the punctuation mark that we use the end of a sentence which I can’t currently use because when I say. It shows a. I hope you get the gist.

For this paragraphs I’m not going to make any corrections verbally or not I haven’t typed anything us thus far but I have made some verbal correction based on the things I learned in the 15 minute tutorial to serve unfair for the Dragon NaturallySpeaking people to say that he went there program is bad because it doesn’t pick up exactly once and because it is quite easy to undo so if I wanted to change the word serves to sort of above or delete the word he in the Indo sentence people to say that he went there were hacked the word into whatever that is in the last sentence I could relatively easily just by saying the command selects into (() as you can see I’ve had a little trouble with this particular paragraph however as I said it’s relatively easy to make edits in such. It’s also relatively easy to insert bold, Caps, and other formatting.

All in all the most difficult thing for me so far is remembering to speak punctuation. Supposedly there is an autopunctuation feature, but haven’t seen anything to suggest that it is actually working now.

I’m going to continue to play around this program and I promise that I will keep you posted as I do so. Rock on.

I saw a magazine ad for HP’s new touch-screen computer the other day, and it got me wondering how soon we’ll start to see these types of PCs in every home (or, perhaps every home for people who read this blog and are probably early adopters to some extent).

Do you think you will want one soon? I’d like one in my car.

From this article, via Gino.

Well, 2006 has come and gone and my blog is still a sorry excuse for a traffic generator, but we’ve had some fun. I noticed Jeff Veen had a “favorite posts of ’06″ post, so I thought I’d steal the idea here.

My 2005 series on Evite remained popular, especially with the addition of a review of Mark Hurst’s Goovite. I even got an email from Mark saying that he liked the post and was implementing two of my ideas: from address as the sender, and allowing commenters to choose whether to share their comments.

I expanded my reach a bit this year, posting articles on both Digital Web (Preparing for Widescreen), and UPA Voice (Remote Usability Tools).

I started a feature called Topic of the Week as a way to drive traffic and commenters, but it didn’t really work. Still, these are some of my favorite posts, particularly “Do Blogs Still Matter?“, Emotional Design and Automatic Audio.

Lastly, I declared September 12, 2006 to be a landmark day in HCI history. Will I be right?

I wrote an article for the UPA Voice, the monthly publication of the Usability Professionals Association. It’s a recap of the September PHICHI meeting where two new remote usability tools, Ethnio and MindCanvas, were presented to the group.

Read it: Remote Usability: Insight into New Tools

When recruiting for usability testing, is the person’s job/profession important? If they are a UX professional, will their test still be valid? This question came up when one of my staff members told me they had been recruited to participte in a test by a local company (who probably reads this blog occasionally, btw) who did not ask what she did for a living. I had to think that as someone who prepares for an observes a fair number of usability tests, this person might not make the best test subject. Is my instinct correct, or is profession irrelevant when it comes to testing?

Mark it down. September 12, 2006. The day that changed everything. The day that brought the TV/Internet convergence era from a theory to a reality.

Amazingly enough, it came as an afterthought to a press release about the new iTunes software. While it is cool and interesting that Apple is now offering more TV shows than ever and feature length movies for download, this is not the groundbreaking news I’m talking about.

No, I’m talking about the announcement of the tentatively-titled ‘iTV’, a novel-sized device that allows users to wirelessly stream iTunes video to their TV sets. Just like the iPod didn’t invent the mp3 or the mp3 player, iTV does not invent this technology — I could rig this up on my LCD TV today quite easily. It will, however, just as the iPod did, bring this technology to the mainstream. (And I’m not even one of those crazy Mac people!)

According to Apple, the videos will also now be offered at near-DVD quality, which pretty much makes this new device and software package an immediate competitor to Cable OnDemand services and DVDs (rentals, sales and online memberships). It pretty much turns the world of TV on its head!

So, a few years from now, when the way we acquire and watch video content is totally different than it was in 2006, remember this day. And remember that you heard it here first.