The Professor’s Notes

With all the discussion about the Kindle, the Sony eReader, and other “digital book” devices, it is sometimes hard to remember we are at the beginning of what could be a significant transformation of how we read.  Amazon has given us the best glimpse into the future with wireless delivery of content, synchronizing your reading between devices, and offering larger (and therefore, smaller) reading platforms.

This can make for a very interesting future.  I can imagine a very fluid world with digital books, using much of the technology already existing.  Let’s discuss briefly the existing tech (in the Kindle) and the look at how we can imagine a new reading world. [Read more →]

In my last post, I put forward my argument for how digital textbooks can result in a win-win for publishers, students and authors. (Okay, so I didn’t mention the authors. I hope it doesn’t take much to realize that more copies sold by the publisher will result in more royalties paid to the authors. )

Part of my argument hinged on the elimination of the resale market in large part due to the robust DRM (copy protection) afforded by the digital books.  Unfortunately, when I presented this argument a few weeks ago, someone pointed me to a site that shared the (convoluted) steps necessary to break the DRM on the Kindle.  So much for secure. ¹

This forced me to think a bit further.

In this post, I hope to make a case for reasonably priced digital textbooks in an era of “cracked DRM” that can still result in a win-win. [Read more →]

Those who know me personally know I have a strong desire to see digital textbooks succeed.  I think it has the potential to deliver a Win-Win for most of the major stakeholders, including the authors, the publishers, the environment (potentially) and the students.¹ Perhaps the biggest challenge facing everyone in this is how to achieve that “win-win”and this involves a mix of pricing, availability, and convenience.  I hope to address that in this post. [Read more →]

As my readers may know, I like the notes and highlights feature of the Kindle, and I like the latest utility they provide, letting us view a consolidated listing of notes and highlights on a webpage.  I also like that if you have multiple “kindle-enabled” readers (Kindles, iPhones, etc) the whispernet will autosync you to the latest place you have read in your book.  The convenience is remarkable, being read a book in one device, read for a while, and then when you decide to switch to the other device, it asks if you want to go to the latest point read.  No more hunting and guessing.  Great!

At least, I thought it was.  Now I am not one to go all crazy over conspiracy theories and the like.  Personally, I like my aluminum foil wrapping leftovers, not as a hat.  But it occurred to me that Amazon is not only gathering information about our buying patterns (our actual buying patterns, and not simply what sites we look at or ads we see), but they are  now getting something more.  Amazon now is learning what we read, and how fast we read it. (Or perhaps whether we actually read them, or finish them?) But Amazon is essentially capable of gathering information on what we think is important by what we highlight, and what we think and believe by any notes we may write.

In my mind this actually puts them a step ahead of Google.

Will Amazon do anything with this?  Probably not.  But think about it–what does it say about you?  This is creating a “virtual you” that can be analyzed.  Tie this with the Google information, and what a picture it becomes.

Recently a guest on TWIT said that not only is this a virtual you, but it is a virtual you that knows more about you than you do.  It’s memory of what you read, highlight, and type is “perfect.”  Can you say that about yourself?

Would you want to learn about yourself?  Or would you (almost) be afraid to know?

UPDATED: 11 Jun 2009.  They have actually added a “view all on one page” feature. Go Amazon!

A couple posts back I noted an email where Amazon announced they are giving web access to the clippings and notes that you make in your Kindle when reading.  And as you will recall, I believe the highlighting/notes feature is the best “game changing” feature of the Kindle so I was anxious to see what they have done.  I have since logged on to the site, and given it a test drive.

I must say I am not all that impressed.

When you first log on you get a listing of the books you have purchased, called a “reading list.”  (See graphic below) [Read more →]

A while back my brother and I asked in a Survey “How do you watch TV?”  The survey came from a discussion my brother and I were having about Hulu, and our curiosity surrounding how many people, and what types of people, watch TV through Hulu.  I have become a rather large fan of Hulu watching it through Boxee and through the web interface.  (I have installed both an Apple TV and the Ubuntu Linux OS’s on several machines, making this easier–perhaps more for another post).  As we continued the discussion, I suggested we use the Google Forms feature to toss together a quick survey, asking those we follow, and those that follow us, to take part.  (We sought input from “friends” on Facebook, Twitter, and our blogs.)  We acknowledge up front that this is a sampling of people we know, and thus may have selection biased introduced simply as a function of our relationships with others.

My good friend and Colleague Dr Swartz has since asked the age old question–”What were the results!?”

Well, I am here to tell you (and I will be assisted by the rather cool graphics generated by Google as part of their Google Forms functionality.) [Read more →]

As my faithful reader will recall, my favorite feature with the Kindle is the ability to highlight (and clip) text, and add notes.  I went so far as to develop a Word macro (windows only, sorry Mac users).  Well, Amazon has made things ‘even easier’ for people to access their notes.  Their email follows:

Dear Amazon.com Customer,

Our customers have told us that they love being able to add highlights and notes to their Kindle books. We want to make it possible for you to access your highlights and notes directly from a Web browser too. So we’ve released http://kindle.amazon.com, an online tool that enables you to do just that.

To try it out, go to http://kindle.amazon.com, sign in with your Amazon account, and simply select one of your books where you have added highlights or notes.

We hope you enjoy this new feature. If you have feedback please send it to us at amazonkindle-feedback@amazon.com.

The Amazon Kindle Team

In today’s post, Seth Godin (Marketing Genius) reminds us that sunk costs (those costs already paid) are not a good reason to continue forward.

When making a choice between two options, only consider what’s going to happen in the future, not which investments you’ve made in the past. The past investments are over, lost, gone forever. They are irrelevant to the future.

He (quite properly) deals with the monetary aspect of the sunk cost (it is called a “cost” after all). In his final example he points to the sign in the photograph on his blog, and reminds the reader that, regardless of the cost of the sign, having the largest word on the sign spelled correctly is, as they would say in the Visa commercial, “Priceless.”

But another point worthy of consideration is the emotional investment.  Quite often we fail to let go of efforts gone awry for emotional reasons.  How often have you been so wrapped up in a project that you haven’t been able to step back, take a deep breath, and see the “forest for the trees”?

When we are engaged in projects we need to be able to step back, as an outside observer for advice, and change.  We need to be able to realize that, no matter how vested we feel about a project, no matter how emotionally entangled we are, it is time to ignore the “sunk costs” of emotional investment and cut the ties.

Am I arguing that we should always just “walk away?”  Not necessarily.  If the “outcome” you want to achieve is still worth achieving then strive for that outcome.  But don’t continue to spend time heading down a fruitless path.  Don’t walk down a road heading away from your destination, simply because you have paid for that road, either emotionally or with cash.

Move on. Chart a new course.

My brother and I had a discussion recently about how people watch TV, and to some extent, where.  It was, as is often the case, a conversation where one of us was driving and the other was in the office at a computer.  In this case I was driving.

I suggested that it would be a great idea to ask you, our readers, how you watch TV.  And a Google Form seemed the perfect vehicle for that.  So, while I was driving, I introduced my brother to Google Forms–and I think he did quite an admirable job putting it together.

We would love it if you would come take the survey. Thanks!

UPDATE: It’s (semi) Official–Amazon will be holding a “Press Event” at Pace University on Wednesday, May 6th.  Why choose a University?  eTextbooks perhaps?

UPDATE 2: I have the image wrong–the  one below is the rumored reader from Plastic Logic

UPDATE 3: As you are by now aware, they announced.  And it is PRICEY!

Early morning readers of the newsfeeds may notice that many news sources are writing about the possible pending release, perhaps as early as this week, of a larger (8 1/2″ x 11″?) Amazon Kindle.  This may well be the rumored “student version” but according to the article from which all others are based, the one from the New York Times, this Kindle is seen as the savior of the newspaper industry.

Brad Stone in his NYT article writes:

Unlike tiny mobile phones and devices like the Kindle that are made to display text from books, these new gadgets, with screens roughly the size of a standard sheet of paper, could present much of the editorial and advertising content of traditional periodicals in generally the same format as they appear in print. And they might be a way to get readers to pay for those periodicals — something they have been reluctant to do on the Web.Image from the NYT of the rumored larger Kindle.

This article understandably has a few missing tidbits.  Will this new Kindle be the same price as the existing Kindles (over $300?) or will the price of these larger Kindles be subsidized (similar to the cell-phone model) by subscription plans to newspapers and magazines?  In addition, will this larger Kindle also display Kindle books, or will it be only a device for reading periodicals?

These questions are quite interesting, especially since (if the rumor is true) they are releasing a new Kindle only months after the introduction of the Kindle2.

Hopefully we will know–this week!