Tag: Nook

Valentine’s Day Fun on the Web!

meandmykindle Leave a comment

Roses on an Amazon gift card

It’s Valentine’s Day all around the world — and some of the celebration has even found its way to the web. Amazon is sharing some fun ideas for last-minute Valentine’s Day gifts, and there’s also an ebook sale at Barnes and Noble, plus some special offerings from Google and O’Reilly Media!

“It’s Not Too Late” read a headline this morning on the front page of Amazon. They’re offering specially-designed gift cards with a Valentine’s Day theme that you can print out (today!) as a gift for your sweetheart. (And for some of the cards, they’ll even let you include your own picture!) But for an even fancier twist, they’ll let you deliver your digital Valentine’s Day gift certificate via Facebook — and one of their choices is a full-motion “Video Starring You”. You upload photos of yourself and the ones you love to, in Amazon’s words, “Create a hilarious JibJab video starring you or your friends.” (One of them features Sonny & Cher’s classic ’60s love duet “I’ve Got You Babe” — and the video splices your photos onto the bodies of two hippie flower children! )

Jib Jab video of Sonny and Cher singing I Got You Babe

Some of the other digital gift cards are also animated (like this lovely cartoon from Hallmark showing two doves kissing…) In fact, there’s more than 350 cards to choose from — though that’s their entire selection for the year, so some have a “birthday” theme or make specific mentions of other holidays. Of course, Amazon’s also offering a discount today on their Kindle Fire tablets. Amazon’s giving an $80 discount today on their big 8.9-inch Kindle Fire HD (or $40 off on their newer Kindle Fire HDX). And the smaller 7-inch tablets have also been discounted, too — a Kindle Fire HD now costs just $124 today, and the Kindle Fire HDX is just $199…)

For a shortcut, just point your web browser to
tinyurl.com/KindleFires

Amazon Holiday Sale on Kindle Fire HDX

But Amazon’s not the only one who’s getting into the holiday spirit. If you visit the web site for O’Reilly Media today, you’ll discover that their technology ebook sale has a special Valentine’s Day twist. Their offering a 50% discount on any of their books which have a cover that’s pink! “This year, forego the mushy cards and chocolates and get to the heart of your passion,” reads the tongue-in-cheek message on their web site. (“From Python to Git to Erlang to C — and everything in between — these titles are sure to excite….”)

And if instead you’re the kind of geek more interested in mobile gaming, the Nook Store is giving away a free app today that plays 12 different card games — all for single players — “now including special Valentine’s Day graphics!” (And their discounted ebook of the day is complete box set of the Stars of Mithra trilogy by best-selling romance author Nora Roberts — all three volumes for just $2.14.)

This morning I noticed that even Google’s getting into the fun. Their Google Play Store has discounted five “romance reads” to just 99 cents, and they’ve also got a free video from Walt Disney studios with a Valentine’s Day theme. They’re also touting a “75% Off” sale on inspiring biographies that lasts all weekend long. But there’s also a very special animation on the Google home page with a very touching message. There’s six candy hearts, but when you click on them, a poignant audio clip starts to play. “For Valentine’s Day, as people everywhere search for love — something a search engine might not be the ideal tool for — each of these candy hearts brings you a true story of love,” begins the narration by “This American Life”. But then it switches to the voices of real people, who describe when they first fell in love.

Happy Valentine’s Day, everybody!

Price Wars on Mother’s Day War

meandmykindle Leave a comment

Price Wars on Mother's Day

Is Amazon trying to kill its competition? Amazon’s been offering new $20 discounts on four of their Kindle Fire HD tablets through this Sunday — which is Mother’s Day in the United States. (For a shortcut to the sale, just point your browser to tinyurl.com/Fire4Mom , and enter the code “Fire4Mom” to claim the discount.) But what seems like a nice gift idea may actually just be Amazon’s way of remaining competitive. Because Barnes and Noble had already announced big discounts on their own digital reading device, the Nook. (They’ve lowered the price of their 9-inch, high-definition Nook by over $90, to just $179…)

And they’re both fighting competition from another digital reader — the Kobo. This week I was surprised to see some slick television ads been touting the Kobo as the perfect Mother’s Day gift. It shows heart-warming footage of mothers reading to their children, closing with an announcer reminding viewers that “She gave you the gift of reading. This mother’s day, give it back.” Of course, my first thought was that same slogan could be applied to the Kindle — and it looks like Amazon had the same idea. Last week I received a promotional email for Amazon’s Kindle Paperwhite which was using a nearly identical slogan!

“Mom sparked your love of reading. Give her the perfect thank you gift…”

What’s going on? I think the answer lies in a 2010 study, which concluded that 47% of all Kindles were received as a gift. Amazon knows there could be a one-time spike in sales for Kindles this month from all those people who are shopping for the perfect Mother’s Day gift — and apparently, both Barnes and Noble and Kobo Inc. reached the same conclusion. But the situation may be even more desperate for the Nook — at least, according to a Friday rumor. The technology blog TechCrunch reported that Microsoft may be about to purchase the Nook, adding that if it happens, Amazon’s War with Barnes and Noble “could be over.”

At first I thought the acquisition might be good news for the Nook — but most of the technology pundits seem to disagree. “Microsoft will probably simply kill it on purpose,” writes a columnist at Forbes. “The reason is that Microsoft will have no interest in continuing to sink money into a weak performing Android line of devices.” (Microsoft, after all, markets their own line of tablets that are powered by the Windows operating system.) And by the end of the day, Amazon’s stock had shot up in value by 1.3%.

“This will indeed be good news for Amazon and Apple,” Forbes continues, for the simple reason that “Killing off any competition is good.” So when Mother’s Day rolls around again in May of 2014, consumers just might have one less digital reader to choose from. Maybe that’s why Barnes and Noble offered such steep discounts this year on the price of the Nook.

This year’s “Mother’s Day Price War” may also be remember as The Nook’s Last Stand.

Are Tablets Killing the Kindle?

meandmykindle Leave a comment

Apple's iPad Mini will compete with Amazon's Kindle Fire HD

People have been worrying about this for more than a year — ever since Amazon came out with their color, touchscreen Kindle Fire tablets. Amazon’s insisted that they remain commited to their black-and-white Kindles too, but CNN is reporting that other manufacturers of digital readers might not be so lucky. “As tablets boom, e-readers feel the blast,” reads the headline in CNN’s “Games and Gadgets” section. The popularity of tablet devices may be hurting sales of black-and-white “readers”.

They point to the dramatic collapse recently in sales of the Nook. (Barnes and Noble apparently reported that for the last three months of 2012, their Nook division actually earned 26% less than it had the previous year.) At first I’d thought the Nook was just losing its customers to Amazon’s own Kindle readers. But CNN cites some technology analysts who have a different theory.

“It’s not that the Nook failed,” argues one analyst from Forrester Research. “It’s that the world of tablets exploded…” The Kindle Fire and iPad-style tablets have proven more popular than anyone expected, and they’re now becoming a regular part of our lives and the way we use computers — “not just a handy device to consume a bit of media.” It’s strange to remember that the very first iPad was released less than three years ago. But CNN gives Amazon credit for proving that other companies could also successfully sell their own tablets, inspiring even more companies to enter the market.

Google entered the tablet market soon after with the Nexus 7, and CNN believes that the Kindle Fire “likely nudged Apple” into building a smaller iPad Mini. The end result is that there’s a tablet for every budget. But that may also make people less interested in buying a black-and-white reader that’s dedicated mostly just for ebooks, the article concludes — adding “this trend has been particularly unkind to the Nook.”

But could the Kindle suffer the same fate, losing its audience to the fancier color touchscreen tablets? CNN posed the question to another well-respected technology research firm called Gartner, who acknowledged that “It’s a rough market.” But he seemed to think it was rougher for companies which aren’t named Amazon. The iPad dominates the market for high-end tablets, and in the rest of the market, Amazon’s Kindle “brand” has already established itself. If I’m reading this right, he’s saying that the lower demand for black-and-white readers actually helps Amazon, because it makes it harder for new competitors to establish themselves against Amazon.

Of course, not everyone wants a multi-functional device that does more than display ebooks. (My girlfriend refuses to install any games on her Kindle, because she’s worried that she’ll then start endlessly playing those games — instead of reading on her Kindle, which is what she really loves doing!) But on the other hand, sometimes it’s hard for me to even remember what the world was like before the Kindle came along.

Just imagine how much the world could change again over the next five years — especially if people decide to start reading more their ebooks on tablet computers!

Has the Kindle Killed the Nook?

meandmykindle Leave a comment

Barnes and Noble store with Nook department

I knew the Kindle was successful — but I never dreamed it was literally destroying its competition. But last week, Barnes and Noble told its investors that not only did their Nook division lose money for the second year in a row. They also reported that its loss this year was going to be even bigger than their losses were last year — and a company insider suggested they’ll put a smaller emphasis in 2013 on trying to sell Nook devices.

The disappointing figures covered both Nook sales and whatever revenues they were earning from selling ebooks for the Nook. And Barnes and Noble is now lowering their predictions for how much they’ll be able to earn throughout all of 2013. On Monday, the New York Times reported that’s the worst news for the company’s investors. “The problem was not so much the extent of the losses, but what the losses might signal: that the digital approach that Barnes & Nobles has been heavily investing in as its future for the last several years has essentially run its course.”

But the most interesting detail in the Times’ article is that it’s not just investors who are losing hope for the Nook, but also the executives at Barnes and Noble. Citing a person “familiar” with the company’s inside strategy, they suggest that in 2013 Barnes and Noble may try to emphasize its vast library of digital ebooks in deals with other tablet manufacturers (like Samsung and Microsoft). “They are not completely getting out of the hardware business,” the source said, “but they are going to lean a lot more on the comprehensive digital catalog of content.”

One technology blogger even wrote that the Nook was in a “death spiral,” noting that Barnes and Noble had already issued an earlier warning in January about disappointing Nook sales over Christmas and during the last three months of 2012. “Companies very rarely warn twice in 40 days about the same problem,” writes a blogger at BGR.com, adding “When it happens, it usually indicates that something so unexpected is taking place that executives just cannot wrap their minds around it.” Amazon’s got a better distribution plan for their Kindle tablets outside of North America, but Barnes and Noble seems to be having problems even selling ebooks to their current Nook customers. For these reasons, he writes, “It is hard to see how the Nook’s revenue decline is going to be reversed in 2013.

“And it’s very hard to see why any new consumer who researches his or her purchase for even five minutes would now take the betamax risk of buying a Nook.

Is the Kindle Fire Conquering the World?

meandmykindle Leave a comment

global-android-tablet-share

Who’s winning the tablet wars? Forbes magazine uncovered some interesting statistics. If you buy a tablet, and it’s not an iPad, chances are it’s running the Android operating system. And Amazon has apparently sold one-third of all the Android tablets in the world!

But wait, there’s an even more impressive statistic. The Kindle Fire isn’t available in every country. In fact, 89% of all Kindle Fire tablets are in either the United States or England, according to the statistics from a company called Localyties, which notes that the Kindle Fire currently isn’t even available in Canada. But if you look at the United States, where the Kindle Fire has always been available, Amazon has already sold more than half of all the Android tablets currently in use. There’s lots of competition, including Google’s Nexus 7 and Samsung’s Galaxy S, but in America the Kindle Fire has already claimed 56% of the market for Android tablets!

“Their US success suggests they could quickly dominate the Android tablet market worldwide,” reports Localytics — assuming Amazon can come up with the right kind of distribution — and they add that Amazon seems poised to bring their success in the U.S. to the rest of the world. “[A]t an event launching the Kindle Paperwhite to Canada, Amazon’s VP in charge of the Kindle noted that they are working hard to launch the Fire lineup worldwide.” Localytics gathered information from more than half a billion devices, so they’re working with a pretty good snapshot of the “universe” of tablet devices today.

By comparison, the Nook from Barnes and Noble seems to have just 16% of the U.S. market — and just 10% of the market around the world. And the figures from Localytics also show that the market share is even smaller for Amazon’s other competitors in the Android tablet market. The Samsung Galaxy accounts for just 15% of the U.S. market, and 9% of the world market for Android tablets — and the Nexus 7’s U.S. market share is just 13.5%, with an 8% share around the globe.

Interestingly, Localytics also found that 59% of the Android tablets in the world were located in the United States, so it’s a great place for Amazon to launch its global conquest of the tablet market. (“Kindle Fire Dominates US Android Market,” wrote Forbes in their headline, “but Seemingly Non-existent Outside the US.”) At the bottom of the article, their reporter offers a disclaimer that his family actually owns shares of Apple’s stock, but he still seems pretty bullish on Amazon.

“When the Kindle Fires become available in more countries they could take a significant amount of market share in the international Android market,” he writes, “and put some pressure on Apple’s iPad!”

The Secrets of eBook Readers

meandmykindle Leave a comment

shh - finger to lips - secret rumor

Ever wonder how other people read? It’s finally possible to know, using new data collected from ebooks. Last week Barnes and Noble leaked the patterns they were seeing among Nook readers to The Wall Street Journal, towards the end of a fascinating article called “Is Your eBook Reading You?” Citing the Nook data, the Journal reported…

  • “Nonfiction books tend to be read in fits and starts…”

  • “Novels are generally read straight through…”

  • “Nonfiction books, particularly long ones, tend to get dropped earlier.”

  • “Science-fiction, romance and crime-fiction fans often read more books more quickly than readers of literary fiction do, and finish most of the books they start.”

  • “Readers of literary fiction quit books more often and tend skip around between books. “

Some of the things they’ve determined are actually pretty obvious. For example, the first thing most people do after reading The Hunger Games is to download the next book in the series. But others have determined patterns which are even much more specific. For example, “It takes the average reader just seven hours to read the final book in Suzanne Collins’s Hunger Games trilogy on the Kobo e-reader – about 57 pages an hour,” the Journal reports. And “Nearly 18,000 Kindle readers have highlighted the same line from the second book in the series: ‘Because sometimes things happen to people and they’re not equipped to deal with them.'”

The data finally confirms something that I’ve always suspected. When people read the first book in a series, they usually go on to read the entire series, “almost as if they were reading a single novel. ” And the article got an even more specific example from the makers of the Kobe. “Most readers who started George R.R. Martin’s fantasy novel A Dance With Dragons finished the book, and spent an average of 20 hours reading it, a relatively fast read for a 1,040-page novel.”

But where is this all leading? At Barnes and Noble, there’s now a Vice President for eBooks who’s already begun sharing their data with book publishers, hoping they’ll eventually create books that are even more engaging. It’s still early, they tell the Journal, but Barnes and Noble has already begun to begun to act on the data. When they realized people weren’t finishing the longer nonfiction ebooks, they launched “Nook Snaps” to offer shorter dollops of information on hot topics like Occupy Wall Street or how to lose weight. And that might be only the beginning. “The bigger trend we’re trying to unearth is where are those drop-offs in certain kinds of books, and what can we do with publishers to prevent that?”

Amazon also offered a nice perspective on their ability to identify “popular highlights” and share them on their web page. “We think of it as the collective intelligence of all the people reading on Kindle.” And the Journal also notes that Amazon is both a seller and a publisher of ebooks. I was baffled when Amazon started selling “Kindle Singles” last year, since they basically seemed to me just like shorter ebooks.

But maybe Amazon has learned the exact same lesson — that readers tend to drift away from their nonfiction ebooks!

Amazon Offers $30 Discount on Kindle Fire!

meandmykindle 1 Comment

Amazon's new Kindle Fire tablet

Amazon “just took the gloves off,” begins an article at C|Net. Only days after Barnes and Noble discounted their color touchscreen tablets — to just $199 — Amazon announced an even cheaper price for their own Kindle Fire tablets. “Save $30 with a Certified Refurbished Kindle Fire,” Amazon now advertises on the device’s web page. “Each Certified Refurbished Kindle Fire is tested, certified, and repackaged like new…

For a shortcut to the special offer, just point your computer’s web browser to tinyurl.com/169KindleFire (“Comes with the same one-year limited warranty as a brand-new Kindle Fire…” Amazon is reminding potential buyers.) “[T]his deal first went live on Saturday,” C|Net‘s reporter notes, “and I’ve been checking all weekend to make sure they’re still in stock.

“As of this morning, they are.”

C}Net’s reporter doesn’t even own a Kindle Fire tablet, but writes that “for $169 I’m extremely tempted — especially considering that Amazon backs it with a full one-year warranty, same as new Fires…For all intents and purposes, this refurbished Fire should be the same as a new one — just $30 less. Who’s in?”

I’ve been intrigued by the extra capabilities in Amazon’s color, touchscreen tablets, and yes, they’re more appealing now that the price is cheaper. But is the discount just a hint at an even more interesting possibility? Just hours after C|Net‘s article, a reporter at PC magazine asked an even more intriguing question. Was the Kindle Fire tablet just a beta release?

“Last summer, I was one of the first to write in detail about Amazon’s Kindle Fire, expected in the fall of 2011,” writes Tim Bajarin. “My sources on this were impeccable and early on I got a good idea of what Amazon had up its sleeves. However, during my discussion with my sources on this, one interesting tidbit came up that I have not written about until now…” He reports that even while Amazon was building their 7-inch Kindle tablet, they were already thinking about a much larger tablet, and writes that he now believes “that the larger tablet will be its marquee product and the hopeful cornerstone of its tablet strategy.”

He estimates a larger tablet would cost Amazon around $300 to build, which suggests its ultimate price could come in around $299. Besides the obvious popularity of the iPad, he considers other clues that Amazon’s first tablet device was basically just a trial run. (For example, there’s the odd placement for the on-off switch, and the way that the volume controls are currently available only on the screen of the device.) “In no way was Amazon being dishonest with its customers — rather, the opposite,” writes the reporter. “For a low price, Amazon delivered a solid tablet experience… To be truly fair, many people may never want a screen larger than seven inches because of the associated weight and bulk.”

But his article still left me very excited about the possibility of a larger Kindle Fire tablet. “[U]sers must realize that the Kindle Fire is an important stepping stone for Amazon. It has allowed the company to garner key consumer feedback so it can create an even better product that can compete with the iPad and, in the end, deliver an even better user experience for its customers.

“After all, as industry insiders joke, all first-generation products, whether hardware or software, are really ‘beta’ programs disguised as initial launches.”

And remember: you can still buy my newly-released word game for the Kindle, “Throw in the Vowel,” for just $1.99!

Price War on Black Friday — Kindle, Nook, and iPad

meandmykindle 1 Comment

New Amazon Kindle gift wrapped

It’s on! Amazon’s Kindle is now engaged in a full-fledged price war on Black Friday with both the iPad and the Nook.

Amazon just slashed the price on their tablet-sized Kindle DX
to just $259, offering a massive 32% discount just before Black Friday. (Point your computer’s web browser to tinyurl.com/BlackFridayDX ) But Amazon started this war in September, by creating a new Kindle that they can sell for just $79. Now Barnes and Noble has announced that on Friday, they’ll release a special, limited-edition touchscreen Nook for just $79. That’ll match the price of Amazon’s cheapest Kindle (which does not have a touchscreen). “The Black Friday edition is the same as the regular $99 unit available in Barnes & Noble bookstores and online, except that the Black Friday edition has a white rim,” reports the Los Angeles Times.

And the Kobo is also slashing the prices on its touchscreen readers, to just $99. “That puts it at the same price as the Kindle Touch…” notes
a technology blogger at TechCrunch, but it’s still more expensive than Friday’s new sales prices for the Nook. “At the normal price, it really is kind of a difficult choice…” writes the blogger, who’s been a big fan of the Kobo. “But would I recommend it over a $79 Nook? I can’t say I would, because the Nook is a solid device too.”

And meanwhile, the iPad is also joining in the competition. Apple’s promising a “one-day Apple Shopping Event” on their web site, but one Apple blogger also received a flyer with the actual prices, according to C|Net. Apple’s apparently cutting the cost of the Ipad 2 by up to $61 (while the iPod Touch will be discounted by up to $41, and MacBooks and iMacs more than $100 ). It seems like Apple’s really feeling the pressure to compete with the low price of Amazon’s $199 Kindle Fire tablets.

Black Friday is the biggest shopping day of the year in America, and every major shopping site seems to be fighting for a piece of the action. eBay is even creating real-world shopping spots for Black Friday outside major retail destinations in New York, San Francisco, and London, according to the Washington Post. eBay is establishing a “pop-up” presence so customers can buy eBay products while they’re out shopping (by scanning bar codes with their mobile phones!) And as the Washington Post noted, “Amazon opened an online Black Friday deals store on Nov. 1.

“It’s packing the site with offers each day to keep shoppers checking in over the Web, instead of heading to the mall!”

Click here for a 32% discount on the Kindle DX or point your computer’s web browser to tinyurl.com/BlackFridayDX

Click here for all of Amazon’s Kindles (starting at $79!)

Nook vs. Kindle – the Battle Heats Up

meandmykindle Leave a comment

Amazon two-screen Kindle Android tablet

Blogger Dave Katz imagines Amazon’s next device


The Nook outsold the Kindle in the first three months of 2011.

That’s according to the research firm IDC — though there’s more to the story. Sales for all digital readers dropped dramatically — by nearly 50% — in the first three months of 2011, according to their analysis, from 6.5 million readers to just 3.3 million. And apparently, it’s normal for sales to drop after the big spike in buying before Christmas.

“IDC analysts blamed the shipment drops on a normal first-quarter seasonality,” notes one article, which also cites “slow economic conditions and supply constraints” as a possible reason for the slow-down in sales. But the research firm is still predicting 16.2 million readers will be shipped in 2011 — 24% more than the year before. “IDC sees the first quarter as an aberration, with e-reader sales picking up during the remainder of the year.”

There’s two things that make this really interesting. First, IDC says the Nook outsold the Kindle partly because they have a color version of their digital reader. And second, they note that tablets with an Android operating system actually increased their share of the tablet market to 34% — more than 8.2% higher than it was just three months earlier. Does this suggest Amazon’s future should be a color, Android tablet? If these statistics are true, Amazon’s facing real pressure to deliver an exciting new product when they release their next device.

It’s an anxious environment — filled with eager anticipating, and the delicious mystery of what Amazon will do — and it’s led to new whispers about how the next Amazon device will look. One blogger heard it will have two different screens, an e-ink screen on one side and a color/LCD screen on the other. “File this one under unsubstantiated rumor,” joked blogger Dave Zatz — and reactions to the idea were mixed, judging by the comments left on his site. “This is awesome!” wrote one reader. ” Essentially, it is a hybrid ereader tablet. Perfect for the Amazon brand.”

“Sounds absurd,” wrote a second reader. “If Amazon’s first tablet is dual screen monstrosity, there won’t be a second Amazon tablet.” And another commenter even dubbed it the Franken-Kindle. “This seems like a bad idea and/or hoax. There is no need for Amazon to mess with a good thing…”

“This is a rumor that you can write off as an impossibility…” read a post at another blog called The Kindle Reader. “I’m sure Amazon played with the concept, but I don’t see how they could plan to release one.” But on that site, another comment offered a theory that was even more interesting. “It may simply be that Amazon is developing a tablet that can in fact drive an e-ink panel and an LCD using the same motherboard, firmware, battery, etc.” Of course, they also proposed a third theory. “It may also be that someone at Amazon (Bezos?) is having a bit of fun off the rumormongers.

“I know I would if I were him.”

Nook vs Kindle: Did Consumer Reports Make a Mistake?

meandmykindle 1 Comment

Consumer Reports logo

I’ve been studying a new article by Consumer Reports which just went online Friday. “In a first, a Nook beats the Kindle in our e-book reader Ratings,” they announced in a bold-print headline.

They’re talking about the new touch-screen version of the Nook (which finally went on sale last week). “The Barnes & Noble Nook Simple Touch Reader is more than merely a worthy competitor to the Kindle…” writes Consumer Reports reviewer, Paul Reynolds. “Now that we’ve tested the device in our labs, it actually scores a few points above the Kindle in our tests.”

Except not really. The article looks like it was changed later by a proofreader, who’s added the phrase “[corrected]” at one point further down the page. And now in brackets, in the third sentence of the article,
there’s a pretty big disclaimer. “[To clarify: The Nook scores one point above the Kindle below it in the 6-to-7-inch category. But it ranges from 4 to 5 points higher than other Kindles.]”

I’m not sure what “other” Kindles they’re talking about, since the only Kindle I know that’s isn’t six inches is the Kindle DX (which hasn’t been updated in almost a year). There’s also the cheaper “Kindle with Special Offers” and the WiFi-only Kindle — but that’s not really a fair comparison. (Obviously consumers already know what trade-offs they’ve made in order to get the lower price.) And of course, Amazon has stopped selling the Kindle 2 and the original Kindle, so there’s not much point in telling today’s consumers how those devices would’ve stacked up. It looks to me this comparison is a tie — especially since Amazon has announced later this year they’ll add the ability to borrow e-books from a library. The Nook was awarded a point for already having this capability, so it’s an advantage which is going to be short-lived.

I was also really intrigued that Consumer Reports didn’t award the Nook any extra points for the supposedly longer battery life that Barnes and Noble had been claiming they’d achieved. “Despite a power struggle between B&N and Amazon over which device runs for longer, we give both equal credit for a claimed battery life of five days or more,” their reviewer writes. In fact, for several criteria, it’s a tie (including battery life), and I’ve heard that the Kindle apparently beat the Nook when the magazine rated the devices on “Versatility”. One person who’s seen the ratings told me the Nook only scored higher for supported file types, and for the way that the Nook handles page turns.

And yet both the Kindle and the Nook received the magazine’s “Best Buy” rating. (Consumer Reports notes the latest version of the Nook “continues the steady improvement in Barnes & Noble’s e-book devices since the company rushed out a glitchy first version…during the holiday season of 2009.”) So now they’re reporting that “Simple Touch” Nook “matches or bests – albeit modestly – its Amazon competitor in almost every aspect of performance. ” This comparison ultimately shows that the Nook hasn’t landed a knock-out punch to Amazon’s Kindle project.

It’s more interesting as a general comparison, a status check on the war that’s raging between these two devices. “B&N has caught up with the Kindle in large part by emulating Amazon’s focus on reading with minimal fuss and extra features,” writes Consumer Reports, noting the new Nook eliminated the color navigation screen below the reading area (as well as the easy access to the Nook’s web browser). “As a result, it (like the Kindle) successfully “gets out of the way and disappears and lets you get on with your reading,” as Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos said in praise of the Kindle during my interview with him last month.” But in the mean time, rumors are flying about the pending release of a new color touchscreen tablet device from Amazon. I’m half-expecting Amazon to announce a new version of the Kindle at the same time — so Consumer Reports may have to perform a new comparison soon.

To be fair, I’ll admit that there are things I like about the Nook. I was talking to my friend Len Edgerly again this week, and I acknowledged that it’s obviously easier to point at a choice on a menu than to first nudge your controller through each of the other choices above or below it! Although if you’re trying to look up a word, apparently you first get only an intermediate menu when you point at a word on the Nook’s screen, where you then have to indicate again that what you want is the word’s definition. But I also like the two-column layout of the Nook’s home page. (And yes, it does look easier to navigate the device just by touching the screen.)

But I’m still a big fan of my Kindle.

War Erupts Between Kindle and Nook Over Battery Life

meandmykindle 2 Comments

Amazon Kindle vs Barnes and Noble Nook Spy vs Spy cartoon

C|Net just received an angry response from the president of Digital Products at Barnes & Noble. I’d linked to C|Net’s story yesterday, so I was surprised that its facts were now being challenged. Barnes and Noble is now claiming that the Nook’s battery actually lasts more than two and a half times longer than a Kindle’s battery — at least under certain conditions.

“While reading at one page a minute, the all-new Nook battery lasts for 150 hours, where the Kindle battery, using the same page-turn rate, lasts for only 56 hours (both with Wi-Fi off)… In our side-by-side tests, under the exact same conditions, continuous use of the device resulted in more than two times Kindle’s battery life.”

If that’s true, then Barnes and Noble mangled the launch of their touch-screen Nook by botching their description of one of its main selling points. Paul Biba, a Kindle blogger, actually watched the official announcement live at a Barnes & Noble store in downtown New York City. And when the question of battery life came up, Biba reported, their official answer was that it was calculated “based on 1/2 hour reading per day with WiFi off. ”

The next day, Amazon claimed the Kindle could also run for two months on a single battery charge — if you only read it for half an hour a day.

You might wonder if Amazon was inventing new statistics — but apparently it’s the same claim that’s been around for years. In November of 2007, Popular Mechanics was already reporting that the Kindle’s battery would last for 30 hours — which of course breaks down into 60 half hours, or two months of reading just one half hour a day. (Assuming the battery isn’t also draining too much during the time that it’s not being read!)

And another obvious response is: who cares? How often would you need to read more than 30 consecutive hours without stopping to re-charge your Kindle? Obviously you can invent a few scenarios. (“What if I’m back-packing across hundreds of miles of Siberian tundra, and I’m also huddling in my tent each night trying to read War and Peace“?) But the distinction is a signal of a fierce competition between Amazon and Barnes and Noble, C|Net’s reporter points out, and “as these devices become more and more alike, marketing language becomes very significant, especially when it comes to selling points like battery life.”

Another blogger was more blunt. “Barnes and Noble pretty much called Amazon a liar for manipulating the battery life claims,” wrote Nate Hoffelder at The Digital Reader. But I’m more surprised by what Barnes and Noble was claiming about the Nook on Wednesday — since it’s very different than the performance statistics that they’d cited on Tuesday.

For example, Wednesday Barnes and Noble made an even more incredible claim. “While reading at one page a minute, the all-new Nook battery lasts for 150 hours.” Unless I’m missing something, that would come out to 300 days of usage (at a half hour a day) — which would be a whopping 10 months. I guess the battery must continue draining quite a bit during the 23.5 hours a day when the Nook isn’t running. Especially since the Barnes and Noble official also claims that the new Nook “offers more than 25,000 continuous page turns on a single charge.” But if you’re making just one page turn every minute, then shouldn’t that charge last 416 hours (or 25,000 minutes)? If so, that’d represent 17.36 days of non-stop use — but if you’re using your Nook for just 30 minutes a day, it comes out to 2.2 years.

And if the Nook can really run for 2.2 years on a single battery charge — then why didn’t Barnes and Noble just say so on Tuesday?

How the Kindle “Doubled” Its Battery Life

meandmykindle 2 Comments

Kindle 3 vs new touch-screen Nook on battery life

A bright reporter at C|Net made the discovery. Amazon says the Kindle now has a battery life of two months. Wednesday morning Amazon released a new version of the “Kindle with Special Offers” — a 3G version that’s discounted to $164. But instead of promising the usual one month of use without a battery charge, Amazon now says this Kindle’s battery will last two months!

And Amazon’s also doubled the battery life that they’re reporting for the Kindle 3 and Kindle WiFi…

So what’s going on? C|Net’s reporter has it all figured out. On Tuesday Barnes and Noble launched a brand new touch-screen Nook — and then claimed that its two-month battery life was double that of the Kindle (calling it “the longest battery life of any eReader”). “Amazon countered by magically upping the battery life of the Kindle to two months,” reports David Carnoy. But it turns out that Amazon may have had a good reason…

The Nook’s battery life was calculated by assuming just one half hour of reading time each day. “Let the math shell games begin!” joked one user in a Barnes and Noble discussion forum. “Anyone want to lay odds on who will go to 4-month battery life assuming a 15 minutes a day reading habit?”

The CEO of Kobo also took issue with the Nook’s ‘half-hour-a-day” figures, complaining “that’s not a typical usage scenario,” and arguing that the same lofty claim could be made about the battery life of the Kobo.
“It appears that [Amazon] just took issue with how its competitor was calculating and presenting its battery life numbers,” C|Net reports, noting that Amazon also updated their Kindle product descriptions with a full explanation.

“A single charge lasts up to two months with wireless off based upon a half-hour of daily reading time. If you read for one hour a day, you will get battery life of up to one month. Keep wireless always on and it lasts for up to 10 days. Battery life will vary based on wireless usage, such as shopping the Kindle Store, Web browsing, and downloading content. In low-coverage areas or in EDGE/GPRS-only coverage, wireless usage will consume battery power more quickly.”

So the Kindle’s battery hasn’t suddenly become twice as powerful as it was before. And I thought C|Net’s reporter gave this episode the perfect epitaph. “Amazon didn’t have any comment about its number changes, but it clearly shows that the competition is intensifying in the dedicated e-reader space…”

Is Amazon Planning a “Mini” Kindle?

meandmykindle Leave a comment

New Amazon small Android tablet Kindle Nano or Mini?

Tuesday the Kindle got some new competition! Barnes and Noble announced a new touch-screen version of the Nook. And there’s also a new touch-screen version of the Kobo ereader.

But is Amazon planning their own surprise for the next generation of the Kindle?

Each digital reader is fighting for an early lead against its competition. (Barnes and Noble announced their new Nook today, even though they won’t actually be able to ship them until June 10.) It’s possible that they’re worried Amazon will steal the market by releasing their own touch-screen tablet device soon. But I wonder if Amazon has another idea.

Today a technology analyst described the reactions you’d have if you held the new Nook. First you’d admire it’s form factor, he said. (Besides the power switch on the back, the device’s only button is a shortcut for reaching the home page — plus a “fast forward” page-turning bar.) And I noticed a few other mild improvements, like the ability to look up definitions just by touching a word. (Though the Nook still doesn’t have a text-to-speech feature.) The new Nook is one inch smaller than the Kindle, and it weighs one ounce less. But inevitably, the analyst notes, you’d start comparing it to the larger, full-featured tablets. And eventually you’d begin thinking that the new touch-screen Nook “shouldn’t really cost a lot because it’s basically an oversized drink coaster!”

The analyst’s conclusion? e-ink readers like the Nook and the Kindle will drop below $99 by the end of the year. But one way to do that, I’m thinking, is by making the Kindle smaller! It’s a possibility that’s at least implied by the latest rumors about Amazon’s plans for a tablet-sized device. Besides a full-sized tablet device, there’s also speculation that Amazon might also be working on a powerful but compact 7-inch version!

But I’d like to see Amazon release a “Kindle Mini” — about the size of a smartphone, but with a fully-functioning e-ink screen. I say this partly because I’ve already seen Amazon’s Kindle app on a smartphone-sized screen — and it works great! A smaller screen must refresh faster than the larger ones, and that also would extend the device’s battery life. And besides e-books, it could also store music and audio files (creating a nice alternative to an Apple iPod).

And the device could also play audiobooks — available through the Amazon-owned web site Audible.com. One technology blogger is already listing the advantages, noting that an even-smaller Kindle could be carried in a shirt pocket. And he’d like to see something like a “Kindle Nano” — modelled after Apple’s smallest music-playing device — which was actually optimized for audiobooks.

I’d had the same idea, but this blogger is so enthusiastic that he’s issued a plea to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos. “Jeff, buddy, I know you’re out there. Give us our Kindle Nano.

“Don’t worry, we’ll buy it. You know we will.”

Kindle vs Nook: More Surprising Sales Statistics

meandmykindle Leave a comment

Barnes and Noble Nook
Amazon made a stunning announcement Tuesday morning. “In just the first 73 days of this holiday quarter, we’ve already sold millions of our all-new Kindles..”

Kindle owners were the first to get the news, since Amazon quietly posted it online in a forum for Kindle owners. “Thank you, Kindle customers…” the announcement began, adding that “in the last 73 days, readers have purchased more Kindles than we sold during all of 2009.” Their post was just six sentences long, but it seemed bigger in scope — and big on gratitude. Amazon’s Kindle Team said they were “energized” (and grateful) for “the overwhelming customer response,” and the message ended with the words “Thank you for being a Kindle customer.”

It’s fun watching the reactions from skeptical technology sites. “It’s raining Kindles,” wrote The Motley Fool. They’ve complained in the past Amazon never revealed the actual number of Kindles sold, saying it’s “like having a discussion with a kindergartner or a politician. They all tell you what they think you want to hear…but lack the details you really need to know before drawing your own conclusion.”

Even then, Amazon’s announcement Tuesday didn’t completely satisfy the site. “Amazon.com still isn’t coming clean with how many Kindle e-book readers it’s selling, but at least now we know that it will be in the ‘millions’ this holiday quarter alone.” The Motley Fool called Amazon’s sales figure “impressive,” and attributed it to the better deals available. “[I]t really wasn’t until this year’s price war — driving the price of the Kindle to as low as $139 — that it all began coming together. Book lovers that figured it would take several dozens of e-book purchases to cover the cost of the $399 model can now justify the lower break-even point on a $139 reader.”

Information Week supplied some crucial context for Amazon’s announcement. Just last week, Barnes and Noble revealed it was selling its color Nooks at a rate of 18,000 a day. Publisher’s Weekly had declared the company’s CEO as their person of the year, and in a profile, he’d revealed that every four or five days, Barnes and Noble loaded up another 747 aircraft just to fly in more Nooks from China. That would come out to 1,314,000 Nooks if it lasted for 73 days — two Nooks for every three Kindles sold — but the Nook Color has only been available for less than 7 weeks.

It’s been 47 days since its release on October 28, which works out to just 846,000 color Nooks sold so far (assuming their sales rate remained constant). “All this vague one-upmanship, doesn’t answer the question on most analysts’ minds,” complains Information Week, “which is how well the Kindle is selling compared to the Apple iPad.” But at least now we have a number to work with for the number of Kindle owners in the world. We now know that there are at least two million new Kindles firing up out there in the wild.

The devil is in the details, and C|Net found something even more important that I’d missed. Amazon’s CEO is predicting that ebooks won’t start outselling all printed books for a while — saying ebooks won’t even surpass the sales of paperback books until the summer of 2011. And as far as ebooks outselling all printed books, he’s predicting it will finally happen “by 2012.”

Why Consumer Reports Loves the Kindle

meandmykindle 2 Comments

Consumer Reports buying guide cover

There’s been some excitement in Amazon’s Kindle forum. Consumer Reports magazine just chose the Kindle as the best e-reader in an early December issue. But I discovered that there’s even more good news for Amazon. At my local bookstore, I scoured the magazine rack, and found an even more positive comparison in the Consumer Reports Electronics Buying Guide!

And the Kindle had already won high marks in their special “Best Products of the Year” issue in November. It was the Kindle — and not the Nook or the iPad — which was listed in a special section called “Great Gifts for $250 and Under.” Consumer Reports wrote enthusiastically that the Kindle “offers crisp text, fine performance, simple controls, and a pleasurable reading experience.” It was just a short blurb — but the Electronics Buying Guide offered a very detailed comparison.

It costs a whopping $10.99 for that special Winter issue — but watch out. There’s a funny typo in its section on digital readers. They warn readers that prices typically range from $1150 to $500. Er, I’ve never seen an e-reader that costs $1150!

The guide starts with a section for people who have never seen a digital reader before, but are considering whether to buy one. (The magazine gave low marks to the experience of browsing the web on all the digital readers, calling them “very limited” and “virtually unusable”.) And they also warn shoppers to “be wary” of a reader which can’t connect to a wireless 3G network. But their biggest negative comment about the Kindle is just about file formats. (“With Kindles…Word documents and photos in JPEG format must be sent to Amazon for conversion before than can be loaded.”)

You have to flip towards the back of the magazine to find their detailed comparison table, where the Kindle was ultimately declared the winner. Consumer Reports named the Kindle DX “Best for Reading Lots of Textbooks with Diagrams,” while the newer Kindle 3G won the other honor — “Best for Most People”. Ultimately the Kindle came up with an overall score of 63 (or 65, for the larger Kindle DX). In fact, the Nook came in #3, racking up a score of just 52. In the number two position was the Sony Reader, which scored a 60, or a 56 for the smaller version. (Also tested were the BeBook, the iRex, and the Alluratek Libre.)

Of all the readers that they compared, only the Kindle received their special endorsements. The Kindle DX was listed as “Recommended,” while the Kindle 3G was awarded a “Best Buy” check mark. The Kindle scored the best for “readability” — receiving the second-highest possible score of “very good” (while the Nook’s readability was a rank lower, rated as “good” — along with every other reader.) The testers defined “readability” as which device is the easiest on your eyes.

In fact, the only two categories where the Nook scored higher than the Kindle were in “file support” and “versatility” (defined as the number of features available).The Kindle also bested the Nook in ease of navigation, page turning, and responsiveness. The Nook’s lowest score was for responsiveness — how quickly the screen becomes functional after powering up or returning from sleep mode. The Nook received the second-lowest possible ranking there, while both versions of the Kindle scored a rank higher — a middle rating of “good.” The reviewers also noted that for some users, the Kindle’s text-to-speech features could also come in handy. (They specifically mention the sight-impaired, but if you’re taking a long car trip, the Kindle could even read to you from the passenger seat!)

It’s a big deal, because Consumer Reports has been around since 1936, and I’ve always thought of it as one of the most well-respect consumer organizations. Their annual budget for testing is $21 million, according to Wikipedia.

But ironically, you still can’t read Consumer Reports on your Kindle!

The Secrets Behind Amazon’s Quarterly Report

meandmykindle 1 Comment

Amazon 3Q stock chart - third quarter of 2010

It’s a special time of year — when major corporations finally reveal the secret numbers about how their companies performed over the previous 13 weeks. Yesterday Amazon released their own quarterly earnings reports, right in the middle of a week of rumors and predictions about tablet-sized reading devices. Amazon reminded investors that the newest generation of Kindles are “the fastest-selling Kindles of all time.” And they’re also the #1 best-selling product on Amazon — both in America and Britain.

“A sour economy failed to slow down Amazon.com,” reported the New York TImes, “as the company’s net sales climbed 39 percent in the third quarter.” But what’s more interesting is what they didn’t say. A financial analyst in San Francisco believes that this year, Amazon will earn a whopping $2.8 billion from their Kindles and ebook purchases, according to Bloomberg news. And within two years, that number could nearly double, to $5.3 billion in 2012!

That’d break down to the equivalent of 15 million Kindles sold in 2010, and 30 million in 2012 — though some of the profits obviously are coming from ebook sales. But what’s even more interesting is the analyst’s second comment. Kindle users “will not only continue buying more e-books, but also subscriptions, accessories, [and] hardware warranties,” he predicted, saying eventually the devices would be used to deliver music and even full-motion video. Will Amazon eventually open up new stores for Kindle music and Kindle video?

And that’s where the first rumor gets a lot more interesting. While Amazon was announcing their quarterly results, C|Net also reported that this Tuesday, Barnes and Noble will reveal a digital reader with a full-color touch-screen — the “Nook Color,” priced at $249. “It’s a big step ahead, instead of chasing Amazon,” their source explained, adding that it’d be based on Google’s popular Android operating system, and would sell for half the price of Apple’s tablet-sized iPad. It’d ship with a 7-inch color screen — which is a magic dimension size that has already been generating some controversy.

“One naturally thinks that a seven-inch screen would offer 70 percent of the benefits of a 10-inch screen,” Apple’s Steve Jobs told analysts Tuesday when announcing their own quarterly earnings. “Unfortunately, this is far from the truth. The screen measurements are diagonal, so that a seven-inch screen is only 45 percent as large as iPad’s 10-inch screen. You heard me right: just 45 percent as large…
The seven-inch tablets are tweeners: too big to compete with a smartphone, and too small to compete with an iPad.”

Jobs insisted that his comments were based on Apple’s “extensive user testing on touch interfaces over many years…we really understand this stuff.” But the truth probably lurks somewhere between the lines. Reading devices have proven to be so popular, that none of these companies want to get left behind. It’s not just that Amazon’s Kindle-related profits are probably already in the billions of dollars. It’s that selling us millions of Kindles means we’ll keep using Amazon’s store for our future purchases — of e-books today, but maybe also for music-and-video purchases in the future. So while I’m casually reading my e-books, major corporations are already fighting the war of tablet-sized reading devices.

And honestly, I’m not sure how I feel about all this speculation. I just worry that someday we’ll look back with a fond nostalgia to the Kindle 1. “It didn’t offer full-motion color video on high-definition screen,” we’ll say.

“But it was really great for reading books.”

Is the Kindle Killing Barnes and Noble?

meandmykindle 1 Comment

Barnes and Noble store with Nook department

As the Kindle soars in popularity, at least one bookstore is already in trouble. Barnes and Noble put itself up for sale, and New York Magazine just ran a touching profile of the company’s founder,
69-year-old Leonard Riggio.


“I still like books,” he said, though it didn’t really need saying. All around him, in a conference room that evoked an elegant old library, were shelves lined with hardbound classics. Books had made Riggio a fortune… Books had been very good to him, and now they were dissolving into the ether…

Riggio wanted to say something, but he couldn’t quite find the words, so he burst out of his chair and charged over to one wall. “I don’t know how you can intellectualize this,” he said, “but a book is …” To continue his thought, he pulled down a copy of ‘The Count of Monte Cristo’, shook it, felt its substance. “This bound volume of Dumas is content. We have to understand people want to own this content. They want this. It’s very important.”

The magazine’s reporter visited the million-square-foot warehouse in New Jersey where Barnes and Nobles has its East coast distribution hub. (It’s “long enough to fit the Empire State Building sideways,” and stocks at least two copies of every single title that’s in print.) The article makes an interesting point: that bookstores earn more money on book sales than the publishers do. (Though Riggio once argued that “People in the world of literature tend to look down on people who make a profit.”)

Yet today, the hardware-based Kindle is Amazon’s best-selling product, and the Nook is also Barnes and Nobles’ best-selling product. “As [their new CEO] sees it, the superstores can serve as platforms for marketing their own replacement technology,” the magazine notes. “Walk into any Barnes & Noble, and the first thing you’ll see is what Lynch calls the ‘shrine’ — a counter where salespeople introduce the Nook. ”

But at the middle of this historic change is a 69-year-old man who founded a chain of bookstores. Now he’s left with a tablet-sized piece of electronics in his hand, and New York Magazine seems to
catch him showing some ambivalence.


“You know, I’m going through a thing — the record shows how old I am,” he said. “I’m going through, you know, like, ‘Oh my God, do I need this? At this period in time, to be as busy as I am…?'”

“If this was a Nook,” Riggio said as he flipped through the pages of The Count of Monte Cristo, “I just look at is as, well, here are the pages, and we magically erase the pages and another book appears.” As a business strategy, he was wagering that this convenience would inspire readers to spend more. But personally, Riggio remains unswayed. He doesn’t use his own Nook. “I like to hold the book instead of the device,” he said. “I would rather own multiple books than a single book that carries everything.”

And there you have it: The head of the company that sells the Nook doesn’t actually want to use a Nook. As New York Magazine puts it, “for all his newfound enthusiasm, he still can’t imagine a world in which the bookstore — or what he likes to call the ‘cultural piazza’ — is replicated by a piece of plastic…”

Thanks to Mike Cane for the link.

And click here to get The Count of Monte Cristo as a free Kindle ebook!

Amazon Promises Still More New Kindle Features!

meandmykindle Leave a comment

Amazon has announced even more new-and-exciting features that are coming up for the Kindle.

* When can you give an ebook as a gift? That’s the question bothering a reporter at PC World — and he took it straight to Amazon. They’d organized a press event which included executives from Amazon, and “Since I had Russ Grandinetti, Amazon’s vice president of Kindle Content, in the room, I decided to get to the bottom of this…”

Amazons’ response? “Stay tuned. We know gifting is important. We have a long experience with trying to make people’s holidays really good…” And then he’d added that Amazon is, in fact, working on making this year’s holidays good.

“He wouldn’t get into detail on how this might work,” the reporter notes, “but I think it’s a good bet that gifting novels will become a reality this year.” And he predicts that when Amazon does it — Barnes and Noble will offer the same feature for the Nook almost immediately!

* Is Amazon building a Kindle App store? Back in January, Amazon announced plans for a kind of Kindle “app store” like the one that’s currently selling fun third-party software for Apple’s iPhones. Amazon had already lined up top-notch developers, and promised there’d even be some free applications (plus apps with a one-time fee, and some requiring a regular monthly subscription). But in the six months since, Amazon hadn’t said a word.

Fortunately, BusinessInsider magazine didn’t forget, and a few days ago they phoned Amazon demanding an update. Amazon’s response? “We’re working on it. We have some great developers in the beta…”

* Are the Kindle’s competitors doomed? There’s a dire prediction from another reporter at PC World — that Amazon’s new $139 Kindle “spells disaster for other e-reader makers, who have either relied on prices or features to hold some kind of edge on the Kindle.” The argument goes that it’s almost impossible to compete…now that there’s a cheaper and multi-featured new version of the Kindle. The article then goes on to list four digital readers “whose future is now in jeopardy” — Sony’s Reader, the Kobo from Borders, plus Plastic Logic Que and Spring Design Alex.

* And finally, there’s a professional football whose name is Sergio Kindle. This has nothing to do with Amazon’s book-reading device whatsoever, but some people apparently haven’t figured that out. I swear I’ve seen feeds on Twitter which seem to automatically share the URL for any news article that mentions Amazon’s device — but that are only searching on the word “Kindle.” So sometimes instead of learning about Amazon’s ebook reader — you end up reading news articles about an NFL linebacker!

How to Play Games on the Kindle!

meandmykindle 1 Comment

Yes, it is possible to play games on your Kindle. (I even wrote a game for the Kindle, which you can try here!) Click here for my updated list of 100 games you can play on your Kindle — including eight free ones. There’s also the 10 best games for your Kindle and all my other posts about playing games on the Kindle.

But when I first got my original Kindle 1, it wasn’t nearly this easy to play games. Here’s my original post – written about my Kindle 1 – so you can see how much better things have gotten!

*                        *                        *

It turns out you can play Sudoku on your Kindle – and some other games too!

I was feeling a little jealous because Barnes and Noble had upgraded the Nook so it offered users the ability to play Sudoku. And then I discovered that it’s also possible to play Sudoku on your Kindle! That link leads to several interactive Sudoku puzzle books that you can download, and they’re played using the Kindle’s wireless web connection. Use your menu to select the row where you’ll enter a number, and then choose the appropriate square within that row.

I ordered a sample from several of these Sudoku books, and ended up with a nice collection of free Sudoku puzzles for my Kindle. Having said that, it was still a horribly clunky way to play Sudoku. (It takes almost 10 seconds to enter every number.) And on my original edition Kindle, the squares were simply labeled “Input Field”. I had to count each separate “Input Field” until I’d figured out which square I was looking for!

It’s also possible to play Tic Tac Toe on your Kindle — if you order the appropriate “book” from the Kindle Store. Tic Tac Toe (Kindle Edition) uses the same format, letting you select the row for your move with the menu — and then selecting the appropriate square. It was also a little clunky. On my original Kindle, the menu would still say “Zoom Image” if a square already had an X or O in it — while the empty squares were labeled “Follow Link” in the menu. Yes, it’s possible to play a game of Tic Tac Toe using this book. But what’s hardest about winning the game is simply navigating the menus!

And finally, it’s also possible to play Minesweeper on the Kindle. This is a free game that I’d just assumed was a hidden “Easter Egg” — a secret feature that was pre-installed, just to make users feel special when they discovered it. Hold down the Alt key and the shift key directly above it while also typing M at the same time, and a grey 8 by 10 grid appears on the screen. You use the keys on the keyboard to navigate to the square for your next guess, and the space key reveals whether that square contains a number or an exploding mine! Like the other games, it’s a little clunky.

And to tell you the truth, I’d rather use my Kindle for reading!

UPDATE: Ironically, I just discovered this blog post has become one of Google’s top matches for the phrase: “Can I play Sudoku on a Kindle!” (And “Is it possible to play games on the Kindle?”) But it turns out there’s an even more famous game that you can play on the Kindle: Jumble puzzles!

I’m sure you’ve seen these “scrambled word” puzzles in your daily newspaper. (Circles in the squares mark all the letters which appear in the final set of scrambled words — which is usually the punchline to a question asked in the cartoon.) I’ve always loved doing Jumble puzzles (which I’ve also seen called “the Junior Jumble”).

And now you can play them on your Kindle!

Instant Purchases vs. Instant Deletions

meandmykindle Leave a comment

My friend just perfectly summarized what’s so exciting about a digital reader. I’d written to him about what I like – that “It’s just so cool that you can think of a book, and then have it beamed down to your lap within seconds!” And he wrote back…


“Little bit scary in fact. Too easy!

In the bookstore I tend to wander around and think about if I *really* need a book. On the Nook, it is a few clicks away!”

Yes, he bought a Nook instead of a Kindle. But ultimately we both discovered another advantage that the Kindle has over the Nook – and as his next e-mail explained, it’s exactly the opposite problem!

Something I don’t like about the Nook: In order to delete some Barnes and Noble content, you have to do it on their website!

When the Nook synchronizes with the website, it will archive the materials. Seems complicated, mostly because it is a little complicated. You can delete files via the USB connection…but it would be easier to have a “get rid of this” or “archive” button on the user interface.

How’s that for ironic? Both of these digital readers can download books instantly. The Kindle’s advantage is that it can make them go away instantly!

(Just open the menu when you’re reading any item, and select “Delete This Item”. Or go to the Home Page and select “Content Manager” to check off ebooks to be deleted as a group…)