Kindle, Its not an egg!

Hi all you blog fans out there. Just a quick post to say hello to everyone and focus on something media related. If you’ve been watching the TV or are a regular visitor to Amazon, you would have come across something called Kindle. At first I had no idea what this was. I had a feeling it was something to do with a chocolate egg with a toy inside but I was sadly mistaken. I was walking through Currys one day and suddenly, there it was, a Kindle. It is a new device which allows the user to read a book on a small screen that fits in the palm of your hand. It’s basically an Iphone without all the other features. It has interested me but somehow, I don’t see the point. It goes on the lines of what I talked about in the last post, about a collection of physical media. Surely a book would fall under this category?

The trick with it is you download a book, for free or at an expense, then you read the book on this little device. While it seems clever, it can never replace the feeling of reading a real book where you turn the pages and look at the scribbles and underlines from its previous owner. In addition to this, there are already other devices which do similar things. The Nintendo DS had a programme where it had classic literature on offer to read. The Iphone has similar apps which do the same thing.

It seems like a waste of time, it might be a fad or it might catch on. I can’t imagine the book being replaced by something called a Kindle. Where did this name come from? This is one of those devices where the name doesn’t make sense with the product. I’m sure there are cheaper products which have the same function on the market.

On the subject of actually using the Kindle, I don’t own one but I assume it is relatively simple, as with all devices of this type. The issue I would find with it is that it would be like reading off a computer screen, which can not be a pleasant experience if reading text for a long period of time.

Anyway, there is my mini rant over, now to go look through Google Books, or read a PDF on the computer!