I did have a chance to post a few simple Kindle shortcuts a while back. I promised that I would write about some more advanced shortcuts, and I guess I’ll have to keep that promise. But before we get to that, I was wondering if you have any favorite shortcut on Kindle. Mine is the time shortcut. I really lose track of time when I am reading, and it helps a lot to have the option to know what time it is without getting out of bed.

We reported a while back that Amazon was preparing the new Kindle for September release. It seems other news sources are catching up as Yahoo! reported this earlier today. There will be two new Kindles, one that comes with a better user interface, and the other that will be bigger in deminsions. I don’t know about you, but I am absolutely excited to see the new Kindles. I wish Amazon would offer their $100 off deal for the new Kindles just like Apple dropped prices on the 2nd genertion iPhone. Regardless, unless Amazon puts a ridiculous price on these two new Kindles, they are a no brainer for any book lover.

Kindle has been around for a while, but surprisingly a lot of people are finding about it these right now. When it was released, people were complaining about its lack of compatibility with PDF files (?) and its high cost. Now, the whole PDF issue was blown out of proportion as you can convert most PDF files to Kindle format and play it on your Amazon Kindle. The cost was high at first, but I find the $359 price tag to be reasonable, considering the free wireless service that you get with your Kindle. But now at $259 (the limited time price), you would expect people to stop complaining so much about Kindle. But here is the new complaint that is going around the net: a laptop does everything a Kindle does and therefore is a much wiser option.

Well, here is why Kindle TKOs a Laptop when it comes to reading:

• Portability: Even the lightest laptops can’t hold a candle to Amazon Kindle. Kindle is simply made for the portable life. If you are on the go all the time and you would like to keep up with your favorite newspapers, blogs, or books, Kindle is a hands down.
• Convenience: a laptop is great for reading ebooks that you already have, but it does not allow you to download new ebooks in less than 30 seconds (unless of course Amazon offers your favorite books in PDF format as well). Kindle on the other hand is linked to your Amazon account, and one can argue that buying from the Kindle store is the fastest way you can buy a book anywhere.
• Experience: I don’t know about you, but my eyes hurt after an hour of reading an eBook on my MacBook. I also can’t really take to bed and use it to read books before my asleep. With Kindle, it’s so tiny and convenient, that you can take it anywhere and read your book in any position, even when you are half asleep. Besides, I have never read a book on my laptop and said afterwards, “boy, it felt like I was reading a real book.”
• Price: Most laptops are more expensive than Amazon Kindle, and you wouldn’t buy a second laptop just to be able to read eBooks. Besides, Laptops don’t come with a wireless plan, so you have to take that into account as well.
• Battery Life: Amazon Kindle beats any laptop in the market in the battery life department hands down. No laptop can go for a week or even 4 days all the way without needing a recharge. If you are reading a book on your laptop, you’ll either have to be plugged in all the time, or you need to turn your laptop off after 4 hours MAX (if you don’t have your adapter with you).
• Features: comparing a laptop and a Kindle is a little bit like comparing apples and oranges. Kindle comes with features that are specifically designed for people who like to read, a lot. Whether it’s bookmarking, taking notes, or researching on Wikipedia, the Kindle has it all. A laptop is simply a laptop. It can do a lot of things, but it is not designed specifically for reading.

Am I suggesting that you should choose the Kindle over a laptop, if you don’t have a personal computer? Absolutely not. The Kindle is designed for people who read a lot of books and can use a separate device for that purpose. The Kindle can’t handle Microsoft Word or other software solutions, so if you need a laptop, you should get a laptop. That’s the whole point. A laptop is used for a lot of different things whereas the Kindle is used for reading (or listening to audio). That’s its purpose. It’s perfect for college students, but not so much for programming C#. Would you buy a car when you want the whole bike riding experience?

Good news folks. Amazon has finally dropped prices on Kindle by $100. Sort of… Amazon has just announced that if you get their Amazon Rewards Visa Card, you can get the Kindle for $259! In other words, you get $100 off the Kindle if you help out Amazon’s partner, Chase. I personally think it’s a decent deal as the credit card is not that bad at all. It also goes on to show that it’s not out of the realm of possibility for Amazon to offer these Kindles for much cheaper in the near future to boost sales. We shall see.

What Apple has done with the iPod and the iPhone is simply incredible. You have a cult following for both products, and people simply can’t remember how they lived without them. Apple has not only created innovative designs with both products, but its customer-centric strategy has led to an eco-system that now expands into multiple markets. Amazon is no Apple, but it is still one of the most innovative companies in the world which knows what it’s doing. Considering where Amazon has been and where it’s gotten, there is no question that Amazon has the potential to push its competitors like Apple has in its own market.

But how close is Amazon to having a product such as iPod? The Kindle is probably the first step for Amazon to try and test a few markets. Amazon has done a decent job integrating its online store with the Kindle and wireless system behind the Kindle is simply the decisive against Amazon’s competitors. But Kindle is no iPod. It’s more useful than an iPod (if you are old school like me). But to the young generation, reading a book is like visiting an art museum. It’s fun once a year, but not much fun after. iPod on the other hand is about fashion, entertainment, and much more. So what does Amazon need to do to make the Kindle the next iPod?

• Target the younger audience: Amazon is doing the good job with bringing top books to the Kindle platform, but it simply has not properly targeted college students. By bringing more college text books and working with colleges and universities to promote the Kindle, it can become a part of the young’s everyday life.
• Add Entertainment Features: the Kindle is more about education and learning than entertainment. Sure you can entertain yourself with a good novel, but other forms of entertainment are still preferred. I wonder if Amazon would consider working on a product that can handle the Amazon Unbox video system. Amazon has done deal with Tivo in the past, but making Kindle a portable video player would be the next step. Let’s not forget that educational videos have become very popular in the past couple of years.
• Add Community Features: I have talked about the need for an SDK for the Kindle several times on this blog, and I think Amazon will introduce that very soon (depending on the success of Kindle 2.0). But Amazon simply needs to develop a cult following like Apple. Apple is a very good case study for any company, so Amazon should borrow a page from their book.
• Add Interactive, collaborative Features: let’s say you read a good book and you want to share a sentence that you have liked in that book with a friend of yours on Facebook? Wouldn’t it be cool to be able to do that on your Kindle? How about sharing your class notes with your fellow classmates wirelessly? This probably would put a huge burden on the whispernet, but I think it’s worth it (even if offered as a premium feature).

Amazon can not just put its hope on people suddenly becoming heavy readers again. By accepting that fact, Amazon can follow the path that iPod has in the past few years. But at the end of the day we may see a clash between the iPod/iPhone and the Kindle. Is that inevitable, that’s a question for another day.

I took a bunch of innovation classes when I was in college. These types of classes are great as they help you think differently about how things are done and how you can improve them. So I put the following question on LinkedIn a while back to see what people may want to see in a remote:

If you wre to add one feature to your remote, what would it be and why?

The answers that I got were mostly on how you can make remotes cooler. Of course, making something look cool doesn’t necessarily mean you are innovating. So here is my question on Kindle. If you were to think outside the box and add one feature to Kindle to help its evolution (as an alternative to paperback books), what would it be and why? Very interested to hear your thoughts.

A few days ago I was browsing through Amazon’s selection of books to figure out which books are the hottest sellers out there. To my surprise, I found a couple of books who were being sold for about $9 as paperback but $9.99 in the Kindle store. Now the problem with that is why would anyone want to buy the Kindle edition for more? I am actually interested to see if anyone of you guys would consider paying more for Kindle books, but to me that would be unreasonable.

Today I checked the same books, and it seems that Amazon is now matches the prices of both editions for these books. While still unreasonable, at least Amazon is paying attention. In my book, Amazon Kindle books should be prices at least 20-30% lower than their paperbook counterparts. Some say that all books should be in $0.99 - $4.99 range, but I can’t see that happening for $100 college books.

I am interested to hear your thoughts on this. Should Amazon charge the same for a paperback book and its Kindle version? Would you consider paying more for Kindle books?

When I got my Kindle I thought it was the best thing ever. It had its glitches and challenges but the fact that I didn’t need to order paper books anymore (and pay the Amazon Prime fee) made me believe that once you switch to Kindle there is a good chance you’ll stay with Kindle. But to my surprise many of my friend and colleagues have gone back to books as they find putting notes on paper books and the whole experience of it hard to let go. So here is my question for today:

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Well. It’s just a rumor at this point, but sources close to the Kindle inner circle are claiming that Amazon has sold 240,000 Kindle devices so far for a revenue of $86-94 million. Now that’s not bad at all. These number are obviously not official (well they are sort of it techcrunch claim it), but this should give Amazon plenty of reasons to continue on this path. Now let’s see the profit.