Kindle Comic: "Dinner"

Hasn't this happened to everyone?

Kindle to Kindle: The Speakers

This photo isn't to scale, but gives an idea of what the speaker for the first Kindle (center) was like versus the split configuration that was adopted for the Kindle 2. The actual difference in sound is comparable to what the picture suggests, though still not something I've spent a lot of time listening to so far. Click on the shot for a closer look.

Longest Kindle Delay Ever?

This is a recently-released public domain photo that I had originally planned to use to compare the screen quality of the Kindle 1 and Kindle 2, until I saw what a wonderful job A Kindle World had done in that regard here. So I decided to turn it into a 600x800 Kindle screensaver instead.

USA Today...for the Kindle 1!

Talk about so 2008! A post by Matt Burns appearing today at CrunchGear reveals how completely out of the loop USA Today is with this ad touting the paper's availability...on the original Kindle.

One response chalked the gaffe up to typically long lead times in advertising and marketing. But having worked at both a major daily newspaper (L.A. Daily News) and the marketing department of a major company (The Limited), I don't think that's a valid excuse. If something like this happened on the editorial side, heads would have rolled. It makes USA Today look hopelessly clueless, and it seems likely that when the paper first launched on the Kindle on December 26, somebody there must have known the Kindle 2 was coming out six weeks later. Miscommunication = embarrassment!

Make Your Kindle Smell Familiar

One of the complaints I hear most often from book lovers who don't want to try the Kindle is a tactile one. And while it's true the Kindle will probably never feel and smell exactly like a real book, the kind folks over at DuraSport Electronics have spent some serious research and development dollars to come up with an idea that promises to be the next best (and next big) thing--the first aerosol e-book enhancer.

Okay, so maybe Smell of Books is an April Fools Day prank. You've still got to admire the dedication that went into it. The product comes in five great scents (New Book Smell, Classic Musty Smell, Scent of Sensibility, Eau You Have Cats and Crunchy Bacon) and is advertised as compatible with almost 30 file types and over three dozen eReaders, including the not-yet-announced Kindle 3.

Perhaps not surprisingly, no sooner had Smell of Books been announced than it was receiving threatening letters from the Authors Guild: "While the Authors Guild supports efforts to improve the digital reading experience, we believe this product represents a significant threat to the development of aroma rights...Allowing unauthorized third parties to provide the 'scent' for a book substantially changes the underlying work to a degree that infringes upon the author’s copyright, not to mention artistic vision."

Hmmm. Something doesn't smell right!