Questions About To Be Answered on the Kindle

Somebody here at GBM will probably be ordering an Amazon Kindle eBook reader (affiliate link) and I’ll be really looking forward to checking out first hand observations of the device. In fact, I imagine in the coming days we are going to be hearing a lot about Amazon’s Kindle. In advance we are already hearing quite a bit about the Kindle from a number of quarters, not all of it kind, the majority of it before the fact. Some of that I find intriguing, some puzzling.

For example, Steven Levy’s Newsweek cover story on the device is a good read and lays out quite a bit of information. But I find it interesting that many folks are calling the device “ugly” based on early pictures. And even more intriguingly, Levy, on his personal blog, comes out and says that folks need to wait and see the device first because the early pictures did not do the device justice. Amazon should have probably gotten off the stick and gotten other pictures out there this weekend.

Another fact I find puzzling, is that the EVDO connection will allow you to subscribe to magazines, newspapers and blogs, but, and here’s the puzzler: you’ll have to pay to subscribe to blogs. I’m not sure how that will work, since you can subscribe to any blog for free last I looked.

Last thought before the Kindle is unleashed on the world today: Rex Hammock says he’d rather have an iPod Touchbook and something that looks like size of device in this picture.

Of course, looking at the size of that device, it just makes me wonder how much different things might have been in the Ultra-Mobile PC space, had Microsoft done a little appropiate marketing featuring the eBook reading potential. Of course fixing that idiotic DRM scheme they use could have helped as well. But, hey that’s history