Friday, Oprah named the Amazon Kindle as one of her favorite things, introducing the Kindle to a huge new user base ... and boosting the Kindle e-book reader's popularity even more. (If you buy one from Amazon.com before November 1st or so, be sure to use Oprah's secret discount code -- OPRAHWINFREY -- to get $50.00 off the price!)
You can read my review of the Kindle here. Nine months after buying it, I still love my Kindle. Along with Tivo and the Dash GPS, it's one of those devices that really does transform your life.
Before the Kindle, I'd pretty much given up reading, except on vacations and weekends. Now, I plow through a book a week. Before the Kindle, I always worried about which books to take with me when on the go. Now, I take them all. Before the Kindle, I might debate a book purchase for weeks. Now, I summon the sample chapters with the click of a button ... and, when the mood strikes, I can buy the book and have it delivered in sixty seconds, virtually anywhere.
No device makes reading easier. No device makes buying books easier. Period.
That said: today, when I saw a link to Classics -- a reading app for the iPhone -- it occurred to me that the ultimate reading device would probably be a combination of the iPhone and the Kindle.
That ultimate device would feature:
- the imminently touchable glass screen of the iPhone for flicking pages back and forth
- the beautiful user interface of Classics, complete with color images of book covers that can be dragged and dropped and organized on a virtual shelf.
- the fast screen redraws of the iPhone, making it possible to quickly scroll or jump from the Table of Contents to the text and back in a split second.
- the virtual keyboard of the iPhone, which would ease note entry and devote more device space to a larger screen.
But it would also have to have:
- the incredibly readable e-ink screen of the Kindle (which doesn't strain the eye at all)
- the always-on wireless connection to the Internet, which makes the instant delivery of books possible
- the impressive battery life of the Kindle (with the network features turned off, I can charge less than once a week, even with heavy daily reading).
I know, I know ... manufacturing expenses and the limitations of battery technology make this particular combination of features all but impossible to deliver -- for now.
But, while perfectly happy with both my iPhone and my Kindle ... I have to fantasize just a little about how their hybrid love child might impact my life.
