The Professor's Notes

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 the rest of this entry »

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 the rest of this entry »

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!