Kindle Makes Reading Easy
Why buy a Kindle? Maybe this is the last year that this thought will cross your mind. Spending a $100 + for a tablet that primarily only serves to run the Kindle application. .
Beginning in 2010, Amazon has opened up the Kindle application for smartphones and in 2011 will provide for “cloud” access through the internet to access your personal library. This is great news for Amazon, for Kindle user’s all around. With smartphones and tablet pc’s, the need for a Kindle only device is non-existent
Given the option of accessing your library through your smartphone and now online, requiring essentially only an internet connection, users can now simply use the devices they already own.
No longer do people need to shell out hundreds of dollars for another electronic device to slow them down as they travel, to carry to the beach or wherever people leisurely read.
This move by Amazon sparks a growing trend of “cloud computing” where users don’t have installed software directly on their device and simply access the cloud through the internet. It would be anticipated that Apple would be next, in moving their massive i-tune’s library to the “cloud” so users wouldn’t have to be at their computer to access their library. But time will tell.
While all of this efficiency is great in terms of simplifying technology, it opens up a dependency for the internet and a new opportunity, albeit an obnoxious one, for advertisers.
Imagine reading The Da Vinci code and every few pages, you need to click through advertisements. That would seem to me, to be the only drawback from having such broad access to content.
The good news is that Kindle has re-invented itself and set the bar high for other competing e-readers. While this won’t be the death of physical books and publications, it seriously throws into consideration the fact that our children, in our lifetime, won’t be carrying a back-pack full of books to school.
