Digital hand held devices have revolutionized the way consumers interact with and take in virtually every media—first music, then film and now even books are going digital. Amazon released its Kindle reader in 2007 and is making waves with this year’s Kindle 2. Capable of holding hundreds of books available for download at a fraction of the cost of paper volumes, bibliophiles the world over have adopted this “iPod for books.” And with the popularity of Apple’s new iPod Touch and their wildly successful iPhone Amazon is now offering a Kindle app downloadable to these devices. This mar
riage of the world’s most popular handheld digital devices with the most renowned ebook technology promises to heat up the digital reading revolution.
Among the virtues of the Kindle is that it is not limited to books. A number of popular newspapers and magazines can be regularly downloaded to your reader and perused with no guilt over trees being slashed for your news fix. Periodicals are not available with the iPhone app, but you can use the iPhone’s internet access for most of these. Some of the other popular features of the Kindle and Kindle 2 are not currently available with the app. While the Kindle device utilizes “liquid crystal paper” technology, projecting the words without a backlight, the iPhone is backlit and this can strain the eyes. Also the text to speech feature of the Kindle 2, which allows readers to hear their books read aloud is not available with the Kindle app.
Still, the benefits of the ciPhone app are many. For one, while the Kindle 2 costs $359 and does not offer other media, your iPhone or iPod Touch offer internet access, music, games and movies and the app is completely free. If you go ahead and purchase the device any bookmarks or notes you make therein will transfer to your iPhone if you use the app as well (and vice versa). One benefit to the app over traditional books is that you never lose your place—the program remembers exactly where you left off when you return to the ebook.
In all the Kindle 2 and its iPhone app are changing the way people read and promise to do for books what digital technology has done for most other media: make more selections available in a smaller space, with less waste and new ways of interacting with your favorite words.
riage of the world’s most popular handheld digital devices with the most renowned ebook technology promises to heat up the digital reading revolution.Among the virtues of the Kindle is that it is not limited to books. A number of popular newspapers and magazines can be regularly downloaded to your reader and perused with no guilt over trees being slashed for your news fix. Periodicals are not available with the iPhone app, but you can use the iPhone’s internet access for most of these. Some of the other popular features of the Kindle and Kindle 2 are not currently available with the app. While the Kindle device utilizes “liquid crystal paper” technology, projecting the words without a backlight, the iPhone is backlit and this can strain the eyes. Also the text to speech feature of the Kindle 2, which allows readers to hear their books read aloud is not available with the Kindle app.
Still, the benefits of the ciPhone app are many. For one, while the Kindle 2 costs $359 and does not offer other media, your iPhone or iPod Touch offer internet access, music, games and movies and the app is completely free. If you go ahead and purchase the device any bookmarks or notes you make therein will transfer to your iPhone if you use the app as well (and vice versa). One benefit to the app over traditional books is that you never lose your place—the program remembers exactly where you left off when you return to the ebook.
In all the Kindle 2 and its iPhone app are changing the way people read and promise to do for books what digital technology has done for most other media: make more selections available in a smaller space, with less waste and new ways of interacting with your favorite words.
