Over a year ago I wrote my thoughts on the first Kindle and now Amazon has its successor. From all the reviews it sounds as though it’s an improvement, although slight, over the original. My first “review” was pretty critical and admittedly made without ever actually having held a Kindle. Not much has changed in that regard especially since you can’t jump in your car and head over to Best Buy to check one out and I don’t personally know anyone who owns one.

I REALLY want to like the Kindle. However, my criticisms remain. On the other hand the Kindle does a lot of things right. I won’t rehash the specs here but instead I want to focus on what I think this means for books in general.

What’s Next

I said in my original article that the Kindle 1 wouldn’t be a runaway hit or even a modest success. So far, I think I’m right on the first and maybe not so much on the second. Amazon doesn’t release figures on Kindle sales but estimates put the number around half a million for the first model. This number seems high to me but even if it’s relatively close, I suppose you could call it a success. When you read the tech press as I do it’s hard to know when something has penetrated the tech echo chamber. I believe e-book readers will become more and more popular as time goes by, but they have a tough road ahead.

Perhaps selfishly, as a graphic designer I want to see more control over what’s possible in terms of design. The reason for not having that control comes down to smaller file sizes no doubt. It’s virtual portability is one of it’s greatest strengths and perhaps among it’s greatest weaknesses when it comes to graphics. It’s absolutely convenient but potentially closes a segment of the book market where designers are needed.

The Revolution

For publishers, the Kindle and even other e-book readers are an opportunity to stay current in the ever-changing digital landscape. Where the Kindle bests others lies in the Amazon infrastructure. They made an Apple-like move in creating the hardware and developing the format of the content. It’s not a win for open standards but the best solution doesn’t always rest there. For now, they have the best solution out there.

As I write this, Amazon has released Kindle for iPhone. This is an interesting move (a move they mentioned was coming when the Kindle 2 was announced) and one that I’m going to have to think on. I have downloaded and tested it and my gut reaction is that it doesn’t increase the chances of me buying a Kindle for the time being. Perhaps the device itself isn’t the revolution they’re after.

written by JM

Today Apple released the iPhone OS update v.2.2. My favorite addition is the ability to download podcasts over the air. This seemed like a natural to me but has taken awhile to introduce. The other big component of the release is the addition of Google Street View. This gives you ability to view a panoramic image of a location you’ve searched in Google maps. A nice update indeed.

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That’s right, the good people at the Iconfactory along with ARTIS Software don’t want me to work anymore. I know this because today they announced the release of Frenzic for the iPhone. You can pick it up here. It’s a pretty sweet implementation of the stellar desktop version of Frenzic. If you are an owner of the desktop version, you must setup a new account for mobile users. It’s probably the best way although I would have liked to have seen it integrated with my desktop account. Nevertheless, I look forward to countless hours lost playing a great game.

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Well this is just great!! Recently I wrote about Pandora’s entry into the iPhone app market. Pandora lets you create “radio stations” of your favorite music by picking an artist and then Pandora finds other music that it thinks you will like. From there you can customize the results until you have crafted the perfect station for you.

Now it sounds like Pandora may throw in the towel, much to the consternation of its users, me included. The reason being is the fees that they are now being required to pay in order to play music online.

Last year, the Copyright Royalty Board handed down a decision that internet radio stations would have to pay a performance fee to artists each time a song is played. This is something that traditional radio currently isn’t required to do. This fee coupled with standard licensing fees means that Pandora will pay 70% of its revenue toward these requirements. All this is supposedly being done on behalf of the musicians who put so much hard work into their music. I have no doubt that musicians work hard for their money. I only doubt the sincerity of those imposing these fees.

Pandora currently has ads on its website that are part of the site design and change periodically when you input feedback on music choices. This is an unobtrusive solution to displaying the ads and are often times well designed. Pandora’s founder Tim Westergren has even suggested running audio ads periodically while listening. I don’t have a problem with this either.

A TechCrunch article over the weekend suggests that maybe Pandora should be the sacrificial lamb in this ongoing battle with the RIAA and the internet. In the article, Mike Arrington says that perhaps sacrificing Pandora will show the RIAA and the artists how wrong their position has been. I definitely agree that there is greediness although I don’t know how much of it comes from the artists. To me this just seems like an area that is being picked on out of fear.

Pandora is unlike anything else out there. Short of buying every song you might want to listen to, the ability to customize your listening is an absolute dream. The problem is that Pandora and other internet radio is a great place to find new music to which you might not otherwise be exposed. As a matter of fact, I have purchased quite a bit of music that I was exposed to through internet radio. To kill off Pandora and others who play music online is not the way to go.

Our only hope is that the powers-that-be are so stupid that they will eventually cast themselves into the pit of irrelevance.

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Several news outlets are reporting this morning that Friday night’s Olympic ceremony had supposedly faked fireworks in them. There was a sequence that showed fireworks being set off that were in the shape of footprints that were approaching the stadium.

THIS IS NOT NEWS

What no one seems to be reporting is anyone who watched NBC’s broadcast would know they said these particular fireworks were not real. It was deemed unsafe to actually have a helicopter fly through the path of the fireworks and the solution was to create them as special effects.

Maybe there was other fakery, but in this case it’s not a gotcha.

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If you’re not, you should be using Pandora. Pandora is internet radio from the Music Genome Project. The Project set out to identify attributes of songs, hundreds of them, that form the song’s gene. The result is an offering of virtually limitless music based on your preferences.

I have been enjoying Pandora through my browser for some time now. I listen as I work to songs that I like as if I had my own radio station. You pick an artist that you want and Pandora will immediately begin playing a song from that artist. From that point Pandora plays songs from other artists based on the research of the Project that it thinks you will like. You can give the song a thumbs up that will then be used to further tailor music to your taste or alternatively give it a thumbs down and that song will not be played again. You can also choose to do nothing and the song will continue in the rotation of that particular “station”. Another option is to ask that any given song not be played for a month if you get tired of it but don’t want to banish it forever.

This power has now hit the iPhone thanks to the opening of Apple’s App Store. The App Store along with the addition of v.2.0 of the iPhone OS gives iPhone users the ability to install third-party apps on the phone. The Pandora app just happens to be free (and free of ads at the moment—which is at least part of what supports it on the desktop) although most require a modest fee. All your stations you listen to in the browser version appear on the phone once you login.

I don’t think they could have done a better job implementing Pandora on the iPhone and everyone else seems to agree. Web stats show that Pandora is seeing a new user every 2 seconds. Not bad at all.

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Head on over to apple.com/trailers and check out the teaser trailer for the new Star Trek film. It will be released around Christmas of this year and is directed by J.J. Abrams. Dude, I’m so there.

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So, the rumor mill is churning with word that NBC may be returning to the iTunes fold. Notably, a Financial Times interview with NBC’s Jeff Zucker sounded like a love fest.

“We’ve said all along that we admire Apple, that we want to be in business with Apple,” he said. “We’re great fans of Steve Jobs.”

Meanwhile the love continues from none other than Steve Jobs. What gives? Well, we don’t know for sure and we may never know. If NBC is coming back to iTunes, the timing is somewhat suspect. Just last week, Apple announced the update to AppleTV which would allow for rentals and purchases directly from the device. It could certainly be believed that this would be cause for a change in NBC’s tune. The easier it is for people to have on demand content, the better.

The other possibility is that NBC isn’t seeing the benefit that they were hoping for with all the many online avenues for distributing their content. Whatever the reason, it’s bound to be a gain for both companies.

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Last week, Apple debuted the ability to rent movies through iTunes. Over the weekend I gave the new service a try.

I have purchased several movies on iTunes and the experience is pretty much the same as buying music. Initially you have to jump through a few more hoops to rent movies. When I proceeded to rent the movie, I was presented with an update to the license agreement which makes provisions for movie rentals. Next, I had to enter in the security code on my card which apparently I hadn’t needed to do before. After a few hiccups, the download was underway. I attribute these hiccups to traffic although that’s just a guess. Being the first weekend after the movie rentals went in to effect, it’s to be expected I suppose.

It took approximately 20 minutes to download over a wireless connection which in my experience is typical of movies weighing in at around 1.25-1.3GB. Twice the download stopped, again probably because of traffic, but a click of the “resume” button picked up where it left off. Keep in mind this was on a laptop so I can’t offer any info on the experience of renting using an AppleTV.

You have 30 days to watch the movie and once you begin viewing, you have 24 hours to watch it as many times as you want. Movies rented on your computer can be transferred to another computer, iPod, or AppleTV. Movies rented on the AppleTV cannot be moved. The movie can only be viewed on one device at a time. Where you are used to seeing your music, tv, and movie purchases, a new section called “Movie Rentals” is added temporarily. In this window you will see the movie you rented with a synopsis and the amount of time that you have left to watch. At the end of the period, the movie is automagically deleted from your hard drive. Thanks Apple!

Let me back up a bit to say that when I went to start the movie, I fired up Front Row (Apple’s interface available on most Macs released since at least the beginning of 2006 for viewing movies, hearing music and looking at photos.) and navigated to the movies section to watch my just downloaded film. Nada. Only my purchased movies were available. Yep, you click play from within iTunes which then gives you the option of going full-screen. I found it curious that rentals were not available in Front Row, but I’m sure there is a good reason.

All in all, I was pleased with the experience which I’m sure is far more seamless with the AppleTV. As I have found out, the terms for watching movie rentals are typical in the industry when downloaded, so a change in that is somewhat unlikely for now. As time goes by, I’m sure the service and selection will improve and become the way we get our entertainment content. Us iTunes loving folks anyway.

written by JM

Heh, this is great. NBC is now providing their programming to SanDisk Corp, via their Fanfare service. NBC, USA, and Bravo programming will be available in January. It seems that NBC is willing to release content to anyone who will take it as long as it’s not Apple. Mind you none of the other “services” allows you to do anything much with this content outside of your computer. Those that do offer an experience that no one would want I would imagine.

JM

written by JM