Kindle Review – Kindle 2 Review, Books

More Kindle 2 links -

1. Joe Wikert visited eInk and talks about all the prototypes he saw, including a color screen he describes as “very attractive”.  
2. At Kindle Chronicles, Len Edgerly interviews Pam McCarthy, deputy editor of The New Yorker, who talks about how the magazine decided to create a Kindle edition.
3. Joanne Kaufman at the NY Times writes about the Kindle’s inability to show you’re reading Proust. Jezebel stands up for Kindles -
   

   … what Kaufman is missing is the opportunity for mystery and intrigue: if you can’t see what that adorable guy on the subway is reading on his Kindle, you can always take a guess, or decide in your brain that yes, he’s reading exactly what you’d want him to be reading.

4. The New Yorker endorses a similar sentiment as Ms. Kaufman’s while praising someone’s talk -
   

   He understands the simple and profound appeal of a physical book: “As far as I’ve been able to tell, there are no buttons that say mobile devices are sexy. But that’s the challenge. Make a device that makes us look smarter and more attractive than we actually are, just like books do.”

   The New Yorker has obviously never played around with – the iPhone, the Flip Mino HD, a lot of the latest cellphones, and a lot of other devices that rock.

5. Anthony S. Policastro is giving away 2 of his books for free at Smashwords. Its only till end May so get them now.
6. Mike Serbinis, chief information officer for Indigo and the brains behind Shortcovers, takes a shot at the Kindle and every other ereader -
   

   Kindle and other e-readers are missing the point. “It’s like when they first invented television they hired actors to read soap-opera scripts on camera,” he explained. “Sometimes it takes a while for people’s imaginations to catch up with the possibilities that technology has to offer.”

   Wait a minute – your product’s top feature is selling books by the chapter. You have no business knocking on companies that created electronic book readers with, among other things, easy to read, easy on the battery screens.

7. The $175,000 Espresso Book Machine is being touted as the biggest advance in publishing since the Gutenberg printing press. I wonder how they managed to fit it under the rock they were hiding under while Kindle and Sony were selling hundreds of thousands of ereaders.
8. This is how desperate publishers are – “Global Publishers eye India to beat recession“. In a country with 1/8th the buying power of the US you’re selling books for the same price as in the US and hoping that it’ll compensate for the downturn.
9. A lot more people talking about Mysteria.

It seems like not much has been happening in Kindleland.