Touch, color, and more - speculations on Kindle 2.0

[Alexander Turcic]

In the mood for some speculation? Join Brad Stone of the New York Times, who is eagerly awaiting the next incarnation of the Kindle reader. It's probably fair to say that some of his points, like the color screen, are out of reach - for now. Touchscreen technology, on the other hand, isn't far-fetched future anymore, and adding advertising to the game sounds reasonable if it could help bring down prizes. Anyway, more speculations over in Brad's blog entry.

Related: New Kindle Rumor: Kindle 2.0 in October 2008?

[BKeeper]

I don't know about Amazon. But as soon as A4 color e-ink displays become available, Apple is gonna enter the market with a dual (LCD-eink) display product. Probably a tablet.
As for content they are gonna go for magazines rather than books, since people tend to consume more mags. Mags are bigger market: easy and colorful. That's Apple.

They could sell a matching bluetooth keyboard accessory for productivity apps and just forget about the macbook air.
They'll obviously call it the MagBook.
and the year it launches Time will run a cover story on it.
The tittle: "The book of Jobs"

(But UIs are so important for Jobs that he probably won't use e-ink until he can display video...)

What do we know about Kindle 2.0.... just that it's gonna launch internationally. (hope so)

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by Alexander Turcic

In the mood for some speculation? Join Brad Stone of the New York Times, who is eagerly awaiting the next incarnation of the Kindle reader. It's probably fair to say that some of his points, like the color screen, are out of reach - for now.

Interestingly, Brad's older blog entry links to an eInk press release about color displays, with a prototype display photo... from 2005, which concludes " Mass production of color electronic paper displays is expected to start at the end of 2006, with future plans for flexible versions."

I suspect it's either harder than eInk thought it would be to ramp up for volume production, or the displays would simply cost more than anyone is currently willing to pay for an eInk device.
______
Dennis

[axel77]

I heared throgh the grapevine the new kindle will be able to cook coffee and fly to the moon.

[Daithi]

With the big A4 sized screen it transforms the Kindle into a device suitable for textbooks. Perfect for college and highschool students. No more carrying 50lbs. of books.

With the bigger screen size they should also be able to display PDFs.

If they do aim the device at students then it would be nice if it supported note taking with a stylus.

It had better support folders or some other means of better handling a large number of books. Sorting by author and title doesn't cut it.

I think they can provide improvements to content as well. For $20 or so they could provide a one click option to download the top 500 classic books that are copyright free. They should also allow the purchase of an entire series of books. For example, I like Stephanie Meyers Twilight series, so I should have a one-click option to download all 4 books (at a discount). This means Amazon also needs to get to work on filling the holes of certain popular series. Imagine if you could download the top-100 science fiction books of the twentieth century for $50 and one-click.

As to the future --

I tend to think that it probably won't support color, but I hope 3.0 does.

I also think refresh rates will improve, and at some point animated images will be supported. When that happens the line between reader/computer will become blurred.

[AMacD]

Originally Posted by Daithi

Imagine if you could download the top-100 science fiction books of the twentieth century for $50 and one-click.

You can already buy a disc for $10 that not only has all the classics in the public domain but also about 10,000 total books, so I think your $20 for 500 books is way too high. Look at Blackmask Online.

[desertgrandma]

Originally Posted by Daithi

With the big A4 sized screen it transforms the Kindle into a device suitable for textbooks. Perfect for college and highschool students. No more carrying 50lbs. of books.

With the bigger screen size they should also be able to display PDFs.

If they do aim the device at students then it would be nice if it supported note taking with a stylus.

It had better support folders or some other means of better handling a large number of books. Sorting by author and title doesn't cut it.

I think they can provide improvements to content as well. For $20 or so they could provide a one click option to download the top 500 classic books that are copyright free. They should also allow the purchase of an entire series of books. For example, I like Stephanie Meyers Twilight series, so I should have a one-click option to download all 4 books (at a discount). This means Amazon also needs to get to work on filling the holes of certain popular series. Imagine if you could download the top-100 science fiction books of the twentieth century for $50 and one-click.

As to the future --

I tend to think that it probably won't support color, but I hope 3.0 does.

I also think refresh rates will improve, and at some point animated images will be supported. When that happens the line between reader/computer will become blurred.

While I love the "entire series" option you mention, I wouldn't care for "500 Classics", or any other huge download. That would clog my Kindle with books I would never read. For me, the point is to have the books I want......not what some one else thinks should be included. I can definitely see the need for something geared towards students....but hopefully, they'll stay with its original format as well, for those of use who bought it for its original purpose, a GREAT bookreader and downloader.

[cstross]

Originally Posted by Alexander Turcic

... and adding advertising to the game sounds reasonable if it could help bring down prizes.

Advertising isn't going to happen, period.

Reason: this battle was fought and won many decades ago by authors; there's boilerplate in every single one of my book contracts expressly forbidding advertising, and this is standard industry practice. When Orbit wanted to add a simple extract from someone else's novel into my paperbacks (on a reciprocal basis) they had to come to me and ask me to sign a waiver to the contract in question.

It may work with newspapers or magazines, but there's no way in hell that Amazon could legally redistribute novels with adverts in them without laying themselves open to a lawsuit.