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Kindle DX: Big Kindle, Big Price

by Michelle Lentz on May 6, 2009

by Michelle Lentz

As someone who purchased a Kindle 2 in February, I’m feeling a tiny bit screwed by Amazon. Really, couldn’t you just have released these at the same time so we’d have had a choice? This was a very Apple thing to do. Alright, just had to get that off my chest and so – now the specs …

kindledx

The new Kindle DX has

9.7 inch screen with a squashed QWERTY keyboard at the bottom
1/3 of an inch thick (10.4″ x 7.2″ x 0.38″)
3.3GB Storage for 3,500 books (an increase from K2’s 1,500 books)
“Long” battery life
Native PDF support through built-in reader
Automatic landscape/portrait text rotation
Navigation buttons moved to right side of screen only
Built-in/included EVDO for wireless book downloads
Still black and white, if anyone is curious

The Kindle DX will be trialed by 5 universities this year (Arizona State, Case Western Reserve, Princeton, Reed College and U of Virginia Business School) and they expect it to “revolutionize learning.” As a current instructional designer and former college instructor, I would agree. I bet the eLearning blogs will be all aflutter about this over the next few days. Imagine how portable learning is becoming on a daily basis! I’m literally pulling this from a few live blogs, but it sounds like Amazon has agreements with Pearson, Cengage Learning and Wiley to offer 60% of their textbooks on the Kindle. I’m not surprised about Cengage at all – I worked for them in another incarnation of the company and they were always a bit ahead of the curve when it came to forms of eLearning.

The New York Times and Boston Globe (now that they’re friends again), as well as the Washington Post, will be offering their own Kindle experiments this summer. They plan to offer lower prices on subscriptions for longer subscription packages. The NY Times also said that the Kindle DX will be offered to readers in areas where home delivery is not available. I don’t quite understand that yet, but there you go. I am curious if the newspapers will be formatted differently for the DX as opposed to the K2 and if those new subscription rates will apply to K2 owners as well.

So, my big gripe is that Amazon released the K2 in February and then this release a few months later. Really? While I don’t really crave the large screen format (demonstrated with newspapers, textbooks, and sheet music), I would LOVE the built-in PDF reader and auto-rotate to widescreen. *grumble grumble*

Retail price for the DX – are you ready? $489. I’m hoping scholarships or grants help those college kids pay for that Kindle. Ouch! I also don’t think that a $500 price tag is going to help “save” newspapers, as everyone has been chatting about. It might be a step in the right technological direction however.

The Kindle DX is available for pre-order and will be available in “Summer.”

Your thoughts on Amazon’s latest foray into eBooks?

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Contact Michelle with news, stories, events, and more.
Email: michelle[at]writetech[dot]net
Twitter: @writetechnology, Friendfeed: michellel
Sites: Write Technology, Wine-Girl.net

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Silicon Valley PRSA Hosts Media Predicts 2009

by Brian Solis on December 4, 2008

by Brian Solis

The Silicon Valley PRSA chapter hosted its annual Media Predicts event at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View. Industry trendsetters, chroniclers and luminaries shared their predictions for trends, issues and technologies for 2009.

Media Predicts is literally a black tie affair that attracted PR professionals from every major agency and tech company in Silicon Valley.

Sam Whitmore of Sam Whitmore’s Media Survey emceed the evening and Ann Windbladt of Hummer Winblad Venture Partners served as the moderator.

The panel consisted of tech media heavyweights:

Elise Ackerman, Technology Reporter, San Jose Mercury News
Michael Arrington, TechCrunch
John Markoff, Senior Writer, The New York Times
Mark Veverka, West Coast Editor & Columnist, Barron’s
Richard Waters, West Coast Editor, Financial Times

The discussion ranged from netbooks to Web 2.0 to Google and Facebook to Microsoft and Yahoo and everything in between. The witty banter seemed to lead us all over the place, but overall, it still fun and entertaining.

The panel invited us to gaze into their respective crystal balls for a moment, but for the most part, we dissected and analyzed the successes and epic failures of 2008.

Here are some of the highlights;

Some viewed the Obama campaign as the killer app of 2008, while others were ready to move beyond “Web 2.0.”

Michael Arrington, for example, scrubbed Web 2.0 from TechCrunch. When asked by Ann what his definition of Web 2.0 is, Arrington responded, “Web 2.0 was a renaissance from a nuclear winter – the last recession. We’re all about technology.”

Richard Waters defined Web 2.0 as ultra-low cost publishing with a bit of interactive tools.

Joh Markoff described it as open interfaces and open tools that plug services together in a Lego-like function.

The conversation promptly shifted from open to closed systems.

Arrington characterized a trend that closed could be the new open. He highlighted two successful companies that are based on closed systems, Apple and Facebook. In 2009, he’s looking forward to the competition between Android, iPhone and other smart phones.

Markoff countered, claiming that Apple is not closed. “If you count the lines of code in the Mac OS, 1/2 are open source,” he exclaimed.

Arrington pointed to Microsoft in its prime. “What if Microsoft approved all apps for the Windows OS before they were allowed to sell to the public,” he asked.

Richard Waters jumped in, “Apple is a closed system and closed platform,” he stated.

Ann introduced Gartner’s Top 10 Strategic Technologies for 2009:

Virtualization
Cloud Computing
Servers
Web-Oriented Architectures
Enterprise Mashups
Specialized Systems
Social Software and Social Networks
Unified Communications
Business Intelligence
Green IT

In response to the list, Arrington revealed that he’s fascinated by the cloud computing efforts that are targeted at enterprise and consumers. However, he cautioned against the over enthusiasm of 2009 trends in the enterprise as it may well be the year of tremendous IT cuts in resources and budget.

Richard Waters refererred to Chris Anderson’s next book, “FREE.” In 2009, he believes that free is no longer going to be a good business model to support. “Cheap, on the otherhand is a great business model,” he believes.

I’ll let the pictures tell the rest of the story…