Kindle for Mac

I finally entered into the world of Kindle. I’m not much of a reader. So when I first saw the Kindle and idea behind of it, I was excited as a geek and gadget nerd but I really didn’t bother to try it for my own personal leisure.

I totally forgot, actually didn’t care, one of my summer class is meeting this Saturday first time. Of course my professor emailed us what I need to get done before the first class. Being who I am, I completely forgot about it and panicked when I saw a reminder yesterday. I have to read a entire book by saturday? I don’t even purchased one yet!

I originally planned to go to school early today and purchase one at the bookstore. I was also checking the availability at Borders and Barns and Nobel, I saw the Barns and Nobel’s Nook advertisement and remembered Kindle has an app for Mac. I quickly searched the title of the book and purchased it!

After reading about 15% of my first reading on Kindle, I’m somewhat disappointed. This is more of computer’s fault, I find myself not liking reading wide screen at all. This is really annoying, I wish I can change my screen’s orientation. I wish I can highlight what I want to highlight and ability to write a note. I wonder how my reading experience would improve on Android platform once Amazon releases Kindle for Android. I think if I use my phone, I’d complain that screen is little too small. Maybe not, since I read a lot of PDFs on my phone anyway.

I think to get the best experience out of kindle I need to purchase actual Kindle or get an iPad. Possibly another reason to justify myself to purchase an iPad that I kept refusing to purchase. Anyhow, I got to get back to reading and finish it sigh. Hopefully by end of this reading, I like the idea of reading books on computer or any portable device that will make me a bookworm!


eBook on BlackBerry?

Amazon released its Kindle app for BlackBerry today. Link

What a great idea for storm and storm 2 owners but I can’t seem this will be useful to other devices with a small screen. Can anyone tell me how easy it is to read on small screens???

Amazon, what about Android devices???


Apple and Music Industry.

Apple iPad – it has been a buzz word since Apple announced it back on January 27th. Without question, Apple’s iPod and iTunes shook up and changed the music industry.  Likewise, the iPad is already generating a lot of changes in the eBook industry.  Three major publishers left Amazon due to Amazon’s fixed price policy and are now in process of renegotiation. Why? Apple simply worked with them to decide the price on eBooks. Apple lets publishers dictate their own contents’ price… but why not for music?

Apple sells 3 out of 4 songs that are sold digitally. Apple had complete domination over digital music sales since the launching of the iTunes store and the iPod. Prices were fixed – $.99 per song and $9.99 for an album. Recently Apple allowed the music industry to have fluctuating prices ranging from $.69~$1.29 per song. Currently, the result of this pricing is the decline in sales. My personal theory in the pricing of music is that a CD should be around $9 so anyone can purchase one within $10. When it comes to a single, it should been priced around $2.99. Every album has at least 2~3 songs that grabs people’s attention. I’m pretty sure people can justify purchasing the whole album if they plan to purchase 2~3 songs – it’s only fraction more. However, my theory seems too late and probably ineffective judging by the decline of sales at $1.29. To Apple contents sales are just additional revenue. Apple would never distribute part of revenue generated from its device to content providers. I believe Apple should listen to the music industry about pricing like they are doing with the publishers for eBooks when thinking of the future.