Amazon Kindle Tablet

Based on this article, we know quite a bit more what to expect.  And I expect, sadly, I suppose, that it will blow the doors off the Nook Color.

Amazon Kindle Tablet

Why do I say that?  The size will be the same, touch screen, running an Android OS that Amazon has its way with.  The price will be the same $250.  So what's the big deal?  Amazon is going to promote it like mad and offer a year's subscription to Amazon Prime which is about $80 for the year.  I've done Prime and I was very positive about it.  You get free streaming video.  Hello,  if I got that on my Nook I'd be thrilled.  So that's essentially $100 off.

What Amazon does well they do very well.  You purchase something and they get it right to you.  Last week during the hurricane, I bought an emergency radio and it came 2 days later.  A month ago I bought a can of chestnut puree.  Why buy that from a bookstore?  Because the price was less.  The can was more expensive, but the shipping--because of the Amazon Prime Trial--was free.  I bought the macro lens and returned it with no emotional upset.

To have access to shopping from your reader, streaming video, music and I'm sure other things not yet revealed will make me consider selling the Nook and buying a Kindle Tab.

What will this do to Christmas book sales, kiddies?

Online retail giant Amazon has hinted that it plans to offer its own tablet computer running Google's Android operating system, perhaps as early as October. The research firm Forrester said recently that it expects Amazon to sell 3 million to 5 million tablets in the fourth quarter this year if it can keep up with the demand.

The tablet seems smartly designed to enhance Amazon’s “razor and blades” strategy, which creates a virtuous, reinforcing link between Amazon’s reading device and content. It should be attractive to e-reader buyers. It might well recapture the e-reader device leadership position from the Nook, and perhaps lessen the lost of e-reader-focused buyers to the iPad.  And the bundled Amazon Prime membership should enhance Amazon’s larger retail relationship with its tablet owners.
All in all, the Kindle tablet seems well-positioned to strengthen Amazon’s market position.

Everything Amazon does is to strengthen their position so we know this is going to create waves.


AFAIC, it's expensive.  We need a great reader for under $100.  We need a reader a kid can forget on the bus and no one loses sleep over it.  After all, this economy is not great.  People are in financial difficulty even when there are still people employed at great salaries not realizing millions of people are unable to find a job.

Also AFAIC I'm rather have a Samsung Galaxy but that really is too expensive.  I can shop at Amazon with my Nook.

But I think Santa's elves are building and designing these gadgets.  My fingers are too big for the little pretend buttons.  So someone should consider humans are using these things and they don't have a stylus in hand.  That would be an interesting thing though, a retractable stylus built in...

Amazon's New Tab

Didn't I say this just a couple days ago?  Amazon would come out with a tab the minute I rooted the Nook Color.  Scroll down in the article to learn what little we know about the autumnal release.

Amazon Tablet

What gambit of interest, what technological improvement  has traditional publishing made in the last year/5 years/10 years/25 years?

Ooo!  Me!  Me!  Me! Call on ME!

I can remember when it was a big deal, I suppose I should write that as Big Deal (trademark pending), when publishing decided to make the covers of romance novels more like greeting cards with the embossing and glitter.

I'm stumped beyond that.  No, no, wait.  I got a really excellent cook book by Richard Bertinet and it comes with a short DVD so you can see his technique.  Boy, that was very helpful.  And he's a nice man, I wrote to him and he wrote back.  DOUGH

You should be able to do that with an ebook, right?  Include a little tutorial session.

But I don't want to go off on yet another rant about legacy publishing and how they've been stiffing writers and the public for well over a generation now.

Let's talk about entertainment for a brief moment.  Certainly the Great Depression occurred well before I was born and I actually know very little about it from a financial perspective because me and math are not BFF, but I do know about it from an entertainment POV.  That's a decade I am quite familiar with film-wise much more than the 1940's or even 1950's.

It cost 10 cents to go to the movies in the 1930s.  Maybe even less in a small town 2nd run kind of situation.  Even though times were terrible, people still need to get their minds off their problems and could afford 10 cents.
As I have said Shirley Temple was one of the biggest stars of the decade and musicals were so popular.  Think of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers.

This is the song "Pick Yourself Up" by the great genius Jerome Kern, lyrics by Dorothy Fields.



What in entertainment today is suggesting we look on the bright side, pick ourselves up, rally, anything positive?
What's uplifting?  Well, gee, I can't think of anything from NYC or LA.  And the disposable income people have is dwindling, not increasing.  It's not going to be increasing any time soon.  So the old models of what people wanted to read or see or listen to is probably going to change even more.

Yet legacy publishing can't see it.  Well, good for them.  Stick to what you know.  Double that for network television.  And let's cancel the good old shows and program in some cheap to produce crap reality shows.  Hey guess what, there's this thing called the internet and the viewing audience doesn't need you anymore.

I wish there was a Charlie Chan marathon on this weekend...