[daffy4u]

I was reading an entry from my favorite Kindle Blog, the iReader Review when I came across this little tidbit:

Clues that Amazon might be focused solely on being the eReader device -

1. Kindle Books are only available on the Kindle and on Kindle apps.
2. The Kindle does not accept ePub and is a walled garden.
3. Mr. Bezos has said that Amazon are committed to the Kindle and there will be a Kindle 10.
4. They are keeping Kindle sales figures secret.
5. They are building out a service and an infrastructure around the device. The building out of Whispernet and WhisperSync and the patent for the Kindle Electronic Pen all indicate they are dead serious about the Kindle.
6. They are acquiring companies (Touchco) that play into making the Kindle a better device.
7. They spent the better part of 4 years designing the Kindle and coming up with it.
8. Lab126 (the subsidiary that created the Kindle) has been growing a lot and is still hiring like crazy.
9. Amazon are putting in all the effort of creating a Kindle App Store.

I'd never read anything about this pen before. Since I've been mostly away from MR for the past month, I decided to do a little Google search to see if I missed an announcement. The first thing that popped up in the search led me to another post from the same blog from June of last year.

It seems like a souped up Kindle compatible version of the Livescribe Pen.

An electronic input device such as an electronic pen is provided to annotate a paper document. The input device records an annotation and an image of human-comprehensible content in the document …

1. You can turn on or off the ink => the electronic pen can be used on Kindle screens or on regular paper.
2. The pen can capture ‘an audible annotation’. Obviously an audible file for the Kindle will get added to the kindle version.
3. The pen has a processor in-built.
4. The computer processor (presumably on the Kindle) has the capability to print the digital annotation (not clear whether its document with annotation or annotation itself).
5. There’s a camera in the tip.

Reads like a very bulky device but I'm very curious to see if this makes it to market and how it will be used.