Electronic Book (eBook) Readers

I'm a reader. Not just the internet, but actual real life books. Being someone that is interested in technology I've been anxiously awaiting the mass adoption of electronic books. To that end, I spent some quality time with Sony's eReader. I found that I actually liked it better than reading a paper book. While there was certainly room for improvements with the Sony product (button placement, page refresh rates), I really enjoyed reading with it. It was actually more comfortable than holding a book. The biggest obstacle I had to buying one was that I use the local Library for much of my reading, and they didn't have any mechanism to 'loan' an eBook. Therefore I would have ended up spending a lot of additional money to read books.

The latest addition to this space, Amazon's Kindle, has been widely panned in many of the blogs I read. Now, I haven't done enough research to have a well founded opinion on the product itself, but I'm excited to see additional progress in this space by someone who can be a game changer. Amazon has the power and volume to make a real difference. And while for all I know, the initial stock could have been 10, Amazon apparently sold out within 5 1/2 hours.

I hope the Kindle is a success. The cost and impact of printing, shipping, and disposing of all these books is unnecessary in the current day and age. And why shouldn't you be able to take an entire library with you on a trip, instead of one 600 page book that is larger and heavier than your laptop.

The Kindle may not be the next 'iPod', but it is a step in the right direction, and innovation in a space that has been lacking it for a long time.