Kindle

I just went over to Amazon to rate to the new Toshiba drive I purchased and saw to my excitement that a book by Joshua Slocum was free on Kindle. I snapped it up and then noticed that another of his book and, lo a metric ton of other sailing books were also there for the taking. Many of these are in the public domain, and I’ve discussed how to search for and download them in my last post on the subject. Some however are either new to the public domain, or just lucky finds. I’ll post links at the bottom. ...

I just devoured this book. I started it last night (after completing the riveting final book of the Liveship Traders Trilogy) and finished it a few minutes ago. I bought this book (somewhat impulsively) after watching Scott give a webcast on the topic a week or so ago. I have always yearned to do more public speaking and trusted Scott to teach me at least one worthwhile thing for my $9 (Kindle Book). ...

As the flame of this debacle grows dim, I find myself still bothered by the misrepresentation and poor fact checking done by fellow bloggers and reporters. Case in point… A lot of people are trying to link this unfortunate episode to DRM. While I oppose DRM, and think that Amazon has squandered what little possible benefit DRM offers the consumer, this is quite clearly not at DRM issue. Digital Rights Management is concerned with access control, and specifically with limiting the ability of the consumer to copy and transmit copyrighted materials. Most people dislike DRM (possibly without know much about it) and therefore bloggers and the media have co-opted the term in hopes of raising our hackles. I post this short afterthought in hopes of settling your DRM hackles back down, at least on this count.

This week Amazon pulled a surprisingly ironic move. It removed an unauthorized version of George Orwell’s 1984 and Animal farm from all connected Kindles. Its important to note that these books were uploaded to the Kindle Store by a company that did not own the rights. Regardless, the move angered and frighted Kindle many users. There are countless newspaper articles, blog posts and tweets on the irony, legality and fairness of this move, so I won’t say more about that here. What I will do is provide a solution to this problem. I’m not using (or supporting) Windows anymore, so this solution will only work for you if have a Mac or Linux box. ...

I love my Kindle. I knew that I would, because I borrowed my friends for a few weeks and read a book on it. I was worried about the lack of a “Kindle Public Library” and the whole loaning and selling Kindle books thing until I rediscovered Project Gutenberg, and Feedbooks. To be honest, while I knew about Project Gutenberg before, I didn’t really have a use for it until I had a dedicated reader. I mean, who wants to read a book at your computer. Even on a laptop its no fun. But with a svelte, light, non-backlit reader in my hands, the out-of-copyright and CC world are my oyster. ...