You can add a note to a book. That was a way to “tag” them before we had Collections as a way to find similar books easily. You can add a rating there or say whatever you want. They can’t be seen in archives, though…you can’t access the notes there, I believe.

The trick would be for Amazon to make those display on the homescreen without having to open the book, or as you say, in the archives (which would be much more complicated…since the book is not on the device when you are seeing it in the Archived Items list on the Touch).

I have a photojournalist’s vest I wear when I’m not working…I think of it as a “utility vest” (like Doc Savage’s utility vest, the forerunner of Batman’s utility belt). A Kindle fits nicely into a pocket, and I have used that with TTS.

I understand about walking two huskies! When I was a kid, we had three large dogs, who could have been better trained…at times, it was like water skiing.

Yes, Edward, the KDX is one of the ones where you can turn down the volume on TTS (text-to-speech) for autoturning. You can choose one of three speeds, but for many people, I think that’s not enough control…that’s what I was trying to indicate. I think most people read more quickly than even the fastest TTS voice on the Kindle speaks. That’s the issue on that one…it can really throw off the flow when you have to wait for the “page to turn”. One trick? Go for the smallest text size at that point…that does speed it up some.

If they go to $129 on the current Kindle Fire, I’d be very impressed…and you’d be right. You’ve been right before on these comments, and you are always informed and interesting…a good combination.

The OLED (Organic Light Emitting Diode) is one of those things that may bring us some more morphological independence. There already are flexible reflective screens…just not for home use. They have ones that can be wrapped halfway around a pillar in a transit station, for example.

I think Amazon’s main innovations will be on pricing and in S/W — I think there’s a lot of possibilities for customizations of EBR’s on the app front from 3rd parties — rather than waiting for Amazon to do it.

Something like $199 for an 8.9″ Kindle Fire, and $129 for the existing Fire are the kinds of things that Amazon will have to do to deal effectively with things like the Google Nexus.

I seem to recall on my KDX there was a way to auto page turn using TTS, and you could control the speed of the speaker (hence the page turning speed) as well.

I think the window of opportunity for advanced reflective screens has passed. CES was all about OLEDs (they will hit like a freight train in 2013), and they deal with all the problems currently exhibited by LCDs and Plasmas. They can be bendable (ie you can drop them and they won’t break), extremely thin (like less than 10 mm), extremely low power, and color gamuts much closer to what the human eye sees. Right now they are pricey, but that will fall as volume ramps.

Reflective displays still have problems with manufacturing costs, contrast, color brightness, and motion.

Oh, yes, I meant to mention a sleep timer. That’s a problem now for some people with text-to-speech…it can just keep reading.

I’m glad you got a good deal on a speaker! I’m always happy to hear when something I’ve written helped somebody.

I picked up the little round rechargeable speaker from the set of deals, you alerted us to the other day. Definitely projects very loudly. Also glad I can use it for my laptop or my iPod shuffle.

I do think we’ll get market-ready reflective screen devices soon (we can read in full color now on tablets, of course). The problem is that color is likely to be more expensive, slower “page turns”, not be very vibrant, and take more battery charge. I mentioned, it though…I think that’s a reasonable blue sky thought.

I’m going to respectfully disagree on text-to-speech. It has some huge advantage, and has made a big difference for me.

First, I don’t like audiobooks, unless I’ve already read the book. I don’t like the reader interpreting the characters for me. I used to think that was very unusual, but I’ve had other people say that as well.

Second, you have to pay a human reader, and I don’t really see a way around that (nor do I particularly think there should be a way). That means that audiobooks have to cost significantly more than using TTS (text-to-speech), which has an initial development cost, but no ongoing salary. Indeed, excluding audiobooks read by volunteers (such as the free ones you can get at Librivox) or computer-read audiobooks, that’s clearly the case.

Third, I love being able to swap back and forth between sight-reading and listening to text-to-speech. Syncing a recording (which is what an audiobook is) with where you are visually is quite complicated. Let’s say you sight-read fifty pages at home while you listen to the recording. Then, you read twenty pages without the recording…how do you sync up the two again? That’s possible at some time in the future, but it requires location markers in the recording…which I don’t believe is currently being done.

Fourth, a recording is static…you can’t easily switch from English to Spanish, for example. That’s an option with TTS. It’s not available now, but it could be.

Nothing increased my consumption of purchased books more than when TTS became part of the Kindle line with the K2. I think that’s a big incentive.

Bundles are possible, but you would pay more for them…just as you tend to do with those Blue Ray/Digital copies. It would be more pronounced with audiobooks/e-books, since the performers of the audiobooks are not compensated from the sales of the e-books. I do think there is a possible market for that. It still seems most likely that you would have to manually “turn the page” if you were sight-reading along. Performers don’t read at a steady words per minute (wpm) pace, as they put in those emotions.

Amazon has promoted multiple-Kindle families in ads, but I agree, they don’t seem to really focus on that…yet.

Device specific archives seems possible today. I guess they don’t want to make it possible for the end user. They definitely treat multiple devices as if they are all used by the same person.