Amazon needs to hire a better designer!

My friend, Ken Moss, wrote an excellent review of the pluses and minuses of the Kindle. I added a comment from my experience living in a multi-Kindle household.

The making of a Kindle cake!

Kindle's currently take up to 6 weeks from the time you placed your order (people receiving them today, ordered them around Feb 1).

Sounds like the Christmas backlog is soon to be cleared, and Amazon expects to begin shipping the same day as they are ordered.

Quoted: Amazon.com's CEO says the company is finally ramping up production of its electronic book reader as customers continue to face long delays in receiving it. Read this blog post by David Carnoy on News Blog.

Some Alt key sequences on the Kindle to get debug info, show your current location (using cell-phone triangulation), Mine Sweeper.

The development team for the kindle is a wholly owned subsidiary of Amazon.com, based in Cupertino.

Kindle is supposed to run for a week w/o a charge.

Quoted: Customer Service says that the battery should last one week if the wireless is turned off and 2 days if the wireless is kept on. If yours does not last that long, please call Customer Service, 866-321-8851. Mine only lasts a short day, so Amazon said it is defective and they are replacing it.

I disagree with the author here. I think Amazon strikes a good balance for this v1 product. Unlike iTunes, digital media purchased on Amazon is stored in your account on their servers. If you lose your device in the future, you can download books from your library for free to a replacement device - in perpetuity (in contrast, if you lose an iTunes dowloaded song - Apple says "tough luck" - and you have to buy it again).

Amazon DOES support a minimum level of sharing of media - I have multiple Kindles in my account (for different family members). Since they are all part of our family's library, any one in our family can download these media to their Kindle to read.

I agree, it would be better to have an ability to transfer media to another user (delete from my devices and library, and add to someone else's). 20 years hence, I would imagine that my online digital library at Amazon will be itself quite a valuable personal asset. When I die, do I get to pass that on to my heirs? Can I sell my account to another person?

Once lawmakers understand how much is at stake for individuals (thousands of dollars of digital assets per person), I would hope they will be compelled to enact legislation protecting our investments.