During my previous posts I had mentioned a list of things that needed to be changed in the Kindle in order for me to consider purchasing one. While Amazon may not have completed everything on my list they managed to hit the two big ones, PDF support and a larger screen with landscape mode for displaying textbook style documents. This was enough for me to warrant spending they money and giving the Kindle its fair shot.

Some of you might want to know how I managed to get a Kindle DX, since I live in Canada and only have Canadian credit cards and addresses and the answer is really quite simple. I have an Amazon.com account and there is a gas station just across the US border that allows deliveries and holds them for Canadians, so I used my Canadian credit card with Canadian billing address and had the Kindle shipped to the gas station, simple as that.

Now without further adieu, the un-boxing:

Kindle DX Fresh off the Greyhound

Once Upon a Time

Interior Packaging

Kindle, Meet Canada

Shiny New

The Kindle DX is Even Thinner than I Expected

Wall Plug and USB Combined... Genius

Booting up the Kindle

Welcome to Kindle

Now since I have only had the device for several hours I really can’t comment a great deal on all of the aspects of the device or any particulars to using it in Canada. So far I can only say the obvious, the whispernet does not work so you need to do all of your transfers through your PC, this really makes a daily newspaper probably more hassle than its worth, but doesn’t bother me one bit for my books. As I get more familiar with the Kindle DX I will be sure and update this post and/or answer any questions people have.

For more generic Kindle DX information you can visit the Kindle DX page at Amazon.com

First impressions: nice packaging, super slick, thin, light, attractive, and most importantly, incredibly crisp readable text with no noticeable eye strain. I look forward to getting to know my new Kindle DX.

Side Note: The kindle was entirely packaged with recyclable material and packaging was not excessive either, so kudos to Amazon for their apparent environmental conscience.

After all of my ranting about the missing features on Amazon’s Kindle E-Reader it seems that most of the features I had been seeking have finally been implemented on Amazons new large screen Kindle, called the Kindle DX.

Kindle DX provides users with free 3G wireless network support, native PDF support, a larger, 9.7 inches,  textbook friendly screen with 16 shades of gray, smart auto-rotating screen, and a price tag of $489.

This new offering by Amazon ups the ante in the EReader marketplace and finally provides me with the features I require to make the purchase make sense. I will be ordering mine soon and if all goes as planned I will never buy another dead tree reference book again.

Let me know if you think that Amazon’s latest offering is enough for you to give up paper books?

This day, which to so many developers has been all but a dream may actually be coming sooner than you think. After stealing time, money, and sanity from web developers for over 7 years the end may be near for Internet Explorer 6.

Microsoft has announced that starting the 3rd week in April they will be releasing IE 8 as an Automatic Update to all Windows users running IE 7 or less. This is in sharp contrast to the release of IE 7 as a recommended update, something that you would have to go to the windows update website and deliberately download. Using automatic updates now means that even grandma’s computer, which some grandson turned on automatic updates for, will now be upgraded to a modern, somewhat standards compliant, browser. 

May confetti rain down from the heavens and the developers of the world gather together and sing kumbaya.

With this development the only lingering remnants of IE 6 should be office computers in giant monolith corporations with archaic IT restrictions, Windows 2000 users and, the ultimately dangerous, windows users with automatic updates turned off. For these stragglers, particularly the last group, I personally endorse the subtle use of IE upgrade messages such as http://update-your-browser.com/ and my personal favorite http://www.browsesad.com/. Clearly these options are not available for clients websites so in that case I recommend developers charge a surplus (something like 15%) for providing IE 6 support since supporting IE 6 really does add many hours of extra work and extra code.

Grab your shovel cause its time to bury the beast.

Ref: http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2009/04/10/prepare-for-automatic-update-distribution-of-ie8.aspx

After the release of Kindle 2.0 I couldn’t help but feel disappointed. Few of the features I had been hoping for were implemented, the new design, though better than the old one, is still nowhere near cool enough to part the average consumer from their hard earned money, and on top of that the product was still not released outside of the US. All of this has led me to believe that if electronic ink is going to dethrone the paper , then it will be someone else besides Amazon designing the product.

But if not Amazon and their Kindle, then who? Who can break the eInk industry open and produce a product so cool that even people who don’t read regularly will buy one? Apple? Sure they make super chic products but Steve Jobs already said no, because as he puts it “nobody reads anymore”. How about someone completely new; someone dedicated completely to bringing a product to market that really satisfies the desires of consumers. Well I think that someone might be named Plastic Logic.

A quick browse of their YouTube video collection clearly shows that this is the real deal. This is what I, and I assume many others, wanted the Kindle to be. Full touch screen display, with annotate feature allowing you to interact with digital documents just like their paper counterparts. Tables, charts, images, and code all displayed on a crisp, thin, durable, DRM free device the size of a pad of paper.

Don’t take my word for it though. Watch the videos, browse the website and if you still aren’t convinced then maybe Mike Rankin’s piece, “Is This What a Kindle Killer Looks Like?” can change your mind. Either way I would like to hear back from you on this.

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