Kindle is it the Book 2.0?

Will Kindle replace the book? The new e-book reader from Amazon will be attempting to supplant the ubiquitous book. Will it drive the book to extinction? Check the Newsweek article, The Future of Reading by Steven Levy.

Will Book 2 replace the book or will it be something else?

Perhaps not yet but it does have potential.

Its biggest obstacle or challenge is its PRICE,around $399. Present and future competitors have more features and cheaper or similarly priced: Aside from a reader some are media players and mobile communication devices.

For me the appeal of the Kindle and such similar e-book readers is two fold. First, It may be more effective as a reference collection: A collection of books or documents one can access quickly – not necessarily for long reading but for checking things. It would be easier for doctors, professionals and writers to carry tomes that they may need. Second, And this is specifically for the Kindle – it is wired to the Internet. This holds great potential because you can subscribe not only to newspapers and blogs but to almost all form of content via RSS feeds.

In the article Steven Levy wrote:

The Kindle is not just for books. Via the Amazon store, you can subscribe to newspapers (the Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Le Monde) and magazines (The Atlantic). When issues go to press, the virtual publications are automatically beamed into your Kindle. (It’s much closer to a virtual newsboy tossing the publication on your doorstep than accessing the contents a piece at a time on the Web.) You can also subscribe to selected blogs, which cost either 99 cents or $1.99 a month per blog.[Source]

Sounds and smells like RSS? But a subscription fee? Charge for blog and RSS feeds? Sounds like another potential stumbling bloc for the Kindle.

Interesting device and service. Probably more effective as a mobile reference library .

I would agree with Technovia’s view of the Kindle:

Kindle goes 30 hours on a single charge, stores 200 books, and uses wireless connectivity based on EVDO so it operates completely independently of a PC. All cool, but not as cool as an e-book reader that demands only a small commitment of cash. An inexpensive Amazon-branded e-book reader could have been the star of this holiday season.[Source]

Interesting device and service. Let us see how it fares.

Check the technical specs of Kindle at Engadget:Amazon Kindle: Meet Amazon’s e-book reader