One liners #1
This is a new feature I’m going to try…feel free to let me know what you think about it. I’m not known for an “economy of expression”…I tend to use a lot of words. 🙂 I love getting in depth, and I think that has a real value…but sometimes, I just have a single, pretty easily expressed thought about something that I think would interest you. I won’t promise no ellipses (…s) or clauses, 😉 but I’m going to give this a shot.
Amazon responded to customer concerns by adding a $15 option to opt out of advertising on the new Kindle Fires…that’s good, but changing $599 to $614 not to have ads doesn’t feel like good marketing (which is why it’s not a price changer, but a fee, I think).
The publishers are taking a low key approach to promoting J.K. Rowling’s new book, The Casual Vacancy, so they can reintroduce the author without tying this book to Harry Potter…people who know Harry Potter probably know who J.K. Rowling is anyway, and people who don’t…probably don’t care who the author of a book is. 😉
Can’t wait to try out X-Ray for movies on my Kindle Fire HD 7″ this week…yes, I’m a geek like that.
Speaking of that, Jeff Bezos did a good job of showing the synergy in companies they own (IMDb, Audible) during the presser (press event on September 6)…they haven’t always done that.
It’s very interesting to see the number of people complaining about the lack of TTS (Text-To-Speech) on the Kindle Paperwhite wi-fi only, which doesn’t even have speakers…I’m passionate about that feature and its advantages for the disabled, but have been surprised to see how many other people are making noise (ironically) about the lack of “noise” on the Paperwhite.
Can anybody say “Paperwhite” without it sounding at first like “Paperweight”?
There are two Kindle Daily Deals today, and one of them is Brave New World for $1.99.
I don’t know yet if you’ll have the option to use the Kindle Fire HD 8.9″ 4G LTE Wireless 32GB with a carrier other than AT&T, but my guess is you will…it will just cost you a lot more.
I recently lowered the price on Love Your Kindle Fire from $2.99 to ninety-nine cents, since the model is now sold out…I haven’t decided yet when or if I’ll do a book on the new models.
I’m working on another book, not related specifically to the Kindle (but I think some of you will like it), which I hope to have done for the holiday season…I’ll let you know about it. 🙂
Apple has an announcement to make on Wednesday (September 12)…it could be the iPhone 5 and/or a “mini iPad” that might be the same size as the smallest Fire, and/or a bigger iPod touch…will their presenter do as well as Jeff Bezos did?
The new immersion reading feature from Amazon, where the words “light up” as they are spoken aloud, is a huge plus for people with reading difficulties…and will likely improve retention in the general population.
Amazon is just giving you a bunch* of audiobooks for free when you download a free public domain e-book and then download the matching audiobook from Audible…details are here: http://www.amazon.com/wsv.
Some of the biggest movies yet to come this year are based on books…The Hobbit and Life of Pi, to name two.
More language support, availability in more “country-specific” stores, the European Appstores…Amazon is really setting the world on Fire.
The product pages for the new devices have been changing rapidly…giving us more information that is more accurate.
The Kindle Fire HD has physical volume buttons, and the power button has been moved off the bottom edge (both have been requested changes).
I was happy to see that Amazon is introducing “Kindle Serials”, which are serialized fiction…I wrote about why I thought that was a good format for e-books back in 2009.
I feel like I did pretty well predicting Amazon’s announcement…I’ll do more detail on that later, but you can see what I said for the “year ahead” on December 31st, 2011, here: https://ilmk.wordpress.com/2011/12/31/the-year-ahead-2012/.
I bought a Bluetooth keyboard to use with my new Fire…I’m hoping that means I stop using a netbook, and I think that (if it works well), that’s a problem for netbook and laptop makers.
I find it irresponsible that so many news sources are identifying the author of No Easy Day: The Firsthand Account of the Mission That Killed Osama Bin Laden by name…regardless of what you think about the book or the politics, that seems like it needlessly endangers the author.
One of the first things I’ll check on my Fire and my new Paperwhite will be the Collections capability…even though I don’t really use them, since I keep so few Kindle store books actually on my devices.
Amazon is including author bios with books now…will that also mean book descriptions that you can read without going online?
I’m already using movies that became part of Prime streaming thanks to the Epix deal…there are some great movies in that!
Amazon is making cool automatic wake/sleep covers for their new devices…but apparently only in leather, which I don’t use. 😦
Speaking of which, I haven’t ordered any accessories yet except for the keyboard (which has already arrived)…I expect to get a cover for the Fire (but don’t see one I like yet), and maybe the faster charger (that’s not included).
Your old Kindle Fire case will not fit the new Kindle Fires.
I found out that Amazon paid to fly independent authors to the September 6th announcement…how cool is that?
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Okay, what did you think of this? Too little information? Too many topics? It would only be part of the mix, along with the Round ups and the other types of posts. I’m probably going to cut back on excerpts and short stories from public domain works…I never did a whole lot of those, but they weren’t ranked high among your favorites when I polled you recently. Feel free to let me know what you think.
* Thanks to a reader who alerted me in a private comment that I apparently overstated the number of free audiobooks…but it’s still worth noting. 🙂
This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog.
I Love My Kindle 