Boingo plays with a Kindle

[Harvey]

It's not really a review, but Boingo has a nice summary of Kindle features.

Some notable observations:

• Its eBooks have DRM (filetype: .AZW), but it supports unprotected Mobipocket books (.MOBI, .PRC), .TXT files, HTML, and Word.

• It has a web browser, under the "Experimental" banner.

• You can download text and other files to the device from the web for later storage. I downloaded young master Doctorow's story "Printcrime" from the Overclocked site via the Kindle's browser and was reading the plaintext version in about 45 seconds.

• It can play Audible audiobooks, but cannot download them over the air using the "Whispernet" EV-DO service. They must be downloaded using the Audible manager, then copied to the Kindle via USB.

• The Kindle can play MP3s copied to its internal storage (180MB user accessible) or SD card, but only on random shuffle. Music can be played in the background while you read or shop the Kindle store.

• Kindle also features "Kindle NowNow," a human-powered search query system powered by Amazon's Mechanical Turk distributed work system. NowNow is free.

• Blog subscriptions cost $2 a month with a 14-day free trial. However, you can browse directly to the blog using the "Basic Web" browser for free. Basically, you'll pay for RSS, but not the web.

• PDF is not supported. At all. Even via the conversion process.

• GIF and JPEG are supported filetypes. Hello, manga!

• There are only two fonts: Caecilia and Neue Helvetica, both from Linotype. You cannot select which font to use to read (the book texts are in Caecilia), but can select from six font sizes.

• If you email a document directly to your Kindle, Amazon will charge you a $.10 per document conversion fee. You can choose to avoid that fee by using the free Kindle service that will email the file back to you, which can then be copied via USB.


LINK: http://gadgets.boingboing.net/2007/11/19/15-things-i-just-lea.html

[Stacy]

I'm really surprised that there are only two fonts. It doesn't seem like it would be too hard to have other ones. I'm also surprised that they didn't just use a more standard font like Ariel or Times New Roman! That's just me.  I'm sure it will be fine.