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catsittingstillKindle 3
Amazon came out with the Kindle 3 (they call it the "LG" for "Latest Generation" but let's face it; that's a name that's going to last less than a year and a half so let's start calling it the K3 now.)
It has wifi for when you have wifi available; the nice thing about this is it's faster than 3G; you *can* surf the web on the K2 but it requires some patience. It has blacker blacks, and faster page turns. It has highlighting and annotation of pdfs. It has 8GB of memory so you have a place to keep those pdfs (can you say scientific journal articles?)
Yum.
I still have unfulfilled wishes:
What I really want that it doesn't have at this point is cross-pdf search. It will search within a single pdf, but I want it to search all the pdfs on the machine for a certain term (RNA processing, say) the way it will already search all the azw files for that term. When cross-pdf search shows up I will be getting one (maybe a DX) as soon as I can scrape the pennies together.
Multi-tag search would be nice. Oh, maybe I'd better unpack that a bit. Okay, since the latest software update the K2 has had tags (Amazon calls them "collections"). You can tag documents with terms like "unread' or "science fiction" or "Mom recommends" and call up the tags and see all the books with that tag. A document can have more than one tag. (The e-arc of Cryoburn (now available if you don't mind the occasional typo) might be tagged both "unread" and "science fiction" for example, though in this case it won't stay "unread' for long.) But you can't at the moment call up a list of your "unread" "science fiction." Obviously this would be useful.
Epub support (it's a format--supposed to be universal, though DRM changes from device to device, which is stinky, but there is un-DRMed ePub) would be nice. Ditching the DRM on the Amazon books would be nice.
But really, this is very tempting. And at 189$ (without a case, though) it's ...not a bad price. 139$ for the wifi-only version. But frankly there isn't that much wifi here, and the 3G of the K2 has saved me once or twice when I needed to access mapquest from the car. So I would be more interested in the more expensive one.
Cory Doctorow, on DRM and the release of his new book, DRM-free, from Amazon, Barnes and Noble and Kobo:
"This led me to formulate something I grandiosely call Doctorow's First Law: "Any time someone puts a lock on something that belongs to you, and won't give you a key, they're not doing it for your benefit." " Publisher's Weekly
Amazon came out with the Kindle 3 (they call it the "LG" for "Latest Generation" but let's face it; that's a name that's going to last less than a year and a half so let's start calling it the K3 now.)
It has wifi for when you have wifi available; the nice thing about this is it's faster than 3G; you *can* surf the web on the K2 but it requires some patience. It has blacker blacks, and faster page turns. It has highlighting and annotation of pdfs. It has 8GB of memory so you have a place to keep those pdfs (can you say scientific journal articles?)
Yum.
I still have unfulfilled wishes:
What I really want that it doesn't have at this point is cross-pdf search. It will search within a single pdf, but I want it to search all the pdfs on the machine for a certain term (RNA processing, say) the way it will already search all the azw files for that term. When cross-pdf search shows up I will be getting one (maybe a DX) as soon as I can scrape the pennies together.
Multi-tag search would be nice. Oh, maybe I'd better unpack that a bit. Okay, since the latest software update the K2 has had tags (Amazon calls them "collections"). You can tag documents with terms like "unread' or "science fiction" or "Mom recommends" and call up the tags and see all the books with that tag. A document can have more than one tag. (The e-arc of Cryoburn (now available if you don't mind the occasional typo) might be tagged both "unread" and "science fiction" for example, though in this case it won't stay "unread' for long.) But you can't at the moment call up a list of your "unread" "science fiction." Obviously this would be useful.
Epub support (it's a format--supposed to be universal, though DRM changes from device to device, which is stinky, but there is un-DRMed ePub) would be nice. Ditching the DRM on the Amazon books would be nice.
But really, this is very tempting. And at 189$ (without a case, though) it's ...not a bad price. 139$ for the wifi-only version. But frankly there isn't that much wifi here, and the 3G of the K2 has saved me once or twice when I needed to access mapquest from the car. So I would be more interested in the more expensive one.
Cory Doctorow, on DRM and the release of his new book, DRM-free, from Amazon, Barnes and Noble and Kobo:
"This led me to formulate something I grandiosely call Doctorow's First Law: "Any time someone puts a lock on something that belongs to you, and won't give you a key, they're not doing it for your benefit." " Publisher's Weekly
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no subject
Date: 2010-08-04 01:09 am (UTC)Zotero does this, but I don't think it syncs to Kindles.
...there may eventually be an iPad app...
no subject
Date: 2010-08-04 03:55 pm (UTC)But--it might be possible to load PDFs simultaneously into Kindle and Zotero--use Zotero to find the PDFs that reference the desired term, and then the Kindle to read them.
It would be more convenient, though, if the Kindle would just handle the search dammit. I don't see what is so complicated about this.
no subject
Date: 2010-08-08 06:14 pm (UTC)For me the big question is whether Amazon is going to throw all the K2 users under the bus and stop software updates now that the K3 is out (disposable consumer good), or whether they'll treat kindle as a high-value platform (like Apple w/iPhone).
e.g. do we get the webkit browser or not?
I got my K2 for free and am finding it surprisingly useful, but the things that would make it really killer for me (e.g. replacing the English dictionary w/a foreign language dictionary) aren't possible.
no subject
Date: 2010-08-08 06:56 pm (UTC)It's hard to say about this one. Software updates do get issued for Kindles and some of them make a significant difference (improved pdf support for the K2 in this last one, for instance). Whether they will go so far as to replace an entire experimental browser I don't know, and sometimes it takes a while for updates to be issued, so it will be some months before I would even hazard a guess.
I am not familiar with the webkit browser; is it really that much better?
(e.g. replacing the English dictionary w/a foreign language dictionary) aren't possible.
Are you sure you can't do this, Eli?
Because it is possible to specify a different default dictionary on the Kindle. Has been since the K1 if I remember correctly. I have never bothered to do it myself because I've been happy with the default, but there are directions for how in the user's manual.
Let me see... From the Kindle 2 User's Manual (handy on my Kindle) in the "Choosing Your Primary Dictionary" section at Location 940:
Go to the Home screen, press menu. Pick "Settings" from the menu.
In the Settings screen, press menu, pick "Change Primary Dictionary"
Select the dictionary you want as primary dictionary.
no subject
Date: 2010-08-08 07:25 pm (UTC)You're right that it's possible (but not easily discoverable, e.g. the steps you mention don't seem to work unless you install another dictionary already): I see a whole set at:
http://www.amazon.com/b?ie=UTF8&node=2224239011
But not the language I'm looking for, oh well!
no subject
Date: 2010-08-08 09:16 pm (UTC)www.mobileread.com
In my opinion it's worth making an account--but then I've been reading and posting there for a couple of years.
Places you can find un-DRMed mobipocket (which works fine on the Kindle) include Manybooks.net, Smashwords, Fictionwise, and Baen Books. Manybooks is free public domain books from the gutenberg project (but better formatted). Baen has free books (to drum up interest in particular authors but there are a lot of them) and purchaseable books. From Fictionwise you want the Multiformat e-books; they are DRM-free. I haven't used Smashwords much and don't recall the particulars.
Free, DRM-free, public domain e-books are also available at Mobilread; the blue bar near the top of the home page has a drop-down menu for e-books.
no subject
Date: 2010-08-09 03:11 pm (UTC)Really appreciate it.
no subject
Date: 2010-08-09 05:53 pm (UTC)