Today’s big news is the announcement of Kindle 2.0, which is something I’ve been keeping a close eye on as the husband of a woman who can never seem to read enough books and has, as far as I can tell, been doing everything on the edge of eReading. She buys eBooks, heavily uses Digital Editions, and wants an eReader but wants to make sure it supports the right formats. She’s currently using Stanza on the iPhone as her device. As an RIA enthusiast it’s been fun to watch her jump from application to application and try out different devices.
One of the things that caught my eye with the Kindle coverage was in the Forbes’ piece about the device:
Reading the papers on the Kindle is slower than it should be, with lots left to do on design and layout. So far the publishers seem to be moving Web copy directly to the Kindle rather than designing content for this as a unique device. I tried to go to The New York Times’ op-ed page, and after an initial blank screen received a full-screen picture of David Brooks. Eeek. Satirical blog The Onion jumps straight into stories, with no organization.
That tells me there’s still a need for content to be genuinely targeted at the device. Text is easy because it’s so basic, but even primarily text-based content is being merged with photos and videos for a more interactive and engaging effect. There is a really good article in Time Magazine about this and it talks about the reader we showed off at MAX built on Adobe AIR (page 2). What’s great about these RIA technologies is that it is pretty easy to seamlessly incorporate media and text together. I can’t imagine wanting these to run on the Kindle or a device that’s meant specifically for reading text, but I can imagine these kinds of applications and devices would be great side-by-side offerings for content providers.
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