So Amazon enters the ebook fray with its new paperback sized Kindle ebook device. There’s plenty of media coverage on this with arguably the best of these being the Guardian’s Paperback to the Future (Guardian 22 Nov 2007). But despite some interesting features its the same old “lock em in” model at work here with the unique twist that the content will be updated using embedded mobile phone technology to update the proprietary format data. The business model here is that users pay, not for the data transfer, but for a ‘reasonable’ subscription for whatever digital book, magazine or newspaper feeds that are participating in Amazon’s scheme.
The new ebook killer device?
November 22nd, 2007
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Actually, I have successfully ported over PDFs and Word docs to the Kindle via a SD card. It isn’t the easiest thing, but it is free and quasi-legal. Downloading the free MobiPocket eBook converter app, and saving the files as a PRC (Palm) document does the trick, and preserves the formatting fairly well if the document is simple and well-structured. Too bad Amazon doesn’t officially support this, but a little excavation on Google will reveal detail about the process. The AZW format is just the Palm format repackaged and Amazon opted to not explicitly help (but also not to hinder) hackers.