January 30th, 2008 the kindle blog Posted in Kindle | 1 Comment »
PRINTED books provide pleasures no device created by an electrical engineer can match. The sweet smell of a brand-new book. The tactile pleasures of turning a page. The reassuring sight on one’s bookshelves of personal journeys.
But not one of these explains why books have resisted digitization. That’s simpler: Books are portable and easy to read.
Building a portable electronic reader was the easy part; matching the visual quality of ink on paper took longer. Read more …
January 29th, 2008 the kindle blog Posted in Kindle | Comments Off
“Is company X disruptive?” Whenever we’re asked this question–and we’re asked it often–we run through a simple mental checklist that looks at the target customer, the solution, the business model and the competitive landscape. In this issue, we use our “Disrupt-O-Meter” to analyze Amazon’s new e-book offering, Kindle.
In November, Amazon.com (nasdaq: AMZN - news - people ) launched Kindle into an e-book reader market that already had a front-runner, the Sony (nyse: SNE - news - people ) Reader Digital Book. Both devices use the same E Ink technology, but their business models differ radically. Read more …
January 29th, 2008 the kindle blog Posted in Kindle | Comments Off
Written by John Roese, Chief Technology Officer, Nortel Networks
A year or so ago, I began talking about how moving toward the 4G world of WiMAX and LTE (and UMB at that time) would enable a broad range of new devices to be connected economically to the mobile Internet. I speculated that the economics of 4G – at roughly 3X capacity (based on spectral efficiency improvements of OFDM-MIMO) and one-third of the price (based on system simplification) – would likely result in the cost of connectivity dropping by an order of magnitude. Read more …
January 28th, 2008 the kindle blog Posted in Kindle | Comments Off
Loaning the Kindle (by libraries) is a violation of Amazon.com’s terms of service!
January 28th, 2008 the kindle blog Posted in Kindle | Comments Off
A colleague of mine who is an avid reader of books (the analog paper kind) is very excited about her new Kindle from Amazon. She was kind enough to bring it in for me to play with over lunch last week; here are my observations.
The Kindle is Amazon’s first foray into launching a big time consumer electronics product. Read more …