Light My Kindle

Several blogs (including this one) have been hinting at the possibility that President-elect Obama will choose a prominent person in the technology field to be his chief technology officer in his cabinet.

Amazon’s CEO Jeff Bezos is on the short list, as is Steve Ballmer and Mitch Kapor (Microsoft and Lotus, respectively). This person will deal with issues such as expanding the country’s wireless network and network neutrality, among others.

The Washington Post reports that Jeff Bezos (at left), Amazon’s CEO, has been named to Vanity Fair’s list of the top 100 Leaders of the Information Age. Bezos falls in at #6 on a list that also includes Al Gore, Sergey Brin (of Google), and Angelina Jolie.

For more information, visit VanityFair.com.

Craigslist.org founder Craig Newmark has a Kindle, and really enjoys it. In a recent interview with The Seattle Times, the interviewer asks some interesting questions about Craig’s Kindle:

Q: I hear you have an Amazon Kindle.
A: I do have a Kindle, I like it a lot. It does have flaws, but it is a good device and I’m on my 23rd book and I have several more lined up. On a trip, typically I’ll have at least three books and on a long trip probably four; now I just have a Kindle. My life is a little easier.
Q: That’s interesting, because one thing about Kindle is the digital rights attached to the Kindle version of books. Unlike a physical copy, when you’re done, you can’t give the books to a friend or sell them on Craigslist.
A: I am painfully aware of the plight, particularly of independent bookstores, and I want to help and I don’t know what to do about it. I could use some advice from Jeff Bezos, because I know he’s concerned.
Q: Have you talked to him much?
A: I met him a year ago, that’s it. I like his hair.

The interviewer brings up one of the very few things I think is a drawback for the Kindle - not being able to resell a book after reading it. I’m used to passing books on to family members and friends, selling them (on Amazon, of course), or trading them on PaperBackSwap.com. With the Kindle, however, you have a digital copy and it’s attached to your specific Kindle. I’ve gotten around this so far by purchasing Kindle books that I think I’ll read again at some point.

You can click here to read the full interview, which discusses politics, Wal-Mart’s classified ads that compete with Craigslist, and the future of Craigslist.

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos spoke at a conference sponsored by Fortune and gushed about the wonders of the Kindle. When asked what Amazon will do when Google and Wikipedia create a digital database of books that can be downloaded and printed in minutes, Bezos replied, “I don’t know why anyone would wait five minutes for a book.”

Ouch. Fine point.

He continues to say, “Our vision for Kindle is we want to have every book in print or out of print, all available in less than 60 seconds. The medium time to download a book [on the Kindle] is 23 seconds.”

Currently there are over 140,000 titles available for download on the Kindle. When shopping from the built-in Kindle store, the titles download faster than I can even get back to the home screen. Sending an item wirelessly from Amazon.com takes slightly longer, but never five minutes.

Jeff Bezos, the CEO of Amazon.com (the maker of the Kindle), has invested in the social networking / microblogging site Twitter, via his fund called Bezo’s Expeditions.

Twitter plans on using the money to improve their reliability, which will make their thousands and thousands of addicted users very happy.

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has been speaking lately about the Kindle and confirms that a second version of the device isn’t planned anytime soon. He does say that there will be future versions of it, but that a second version is “not that near.” On the other hand, an Amazon spokeswoman was quoted saying that no future iterations of the Kindle are planned. This makes it seem as if no official plans have been made, but as CEO I’m sure Bezos has long-term goals in mind.

Most gadgets get upgrades and improvements that necessitate future versions (like the iPod, computers, cell phones), but I have a feeling Amazon may be taking a Nintendo-type approach.

When the original Nintendo was released, the company may not have envisioned that anyone would need another version. You could make more games for the version you had, so why would you need another system? But as the technology improved, we got the Super Nintendo, and the N64, and of course now we have the phenomenal Wii system.

Perhaps in a similar way, Amazon doesn’t forsee a need for a Kindle 2.0 right now because there are tons of books for users to download, and the system works. But users are making wish lists of missing or improvable features, and eventually Amazon will probably find a reason to release another version.

The early adopters in the crowd are hoping it won’t be for a while. After all, we dropped $400 on this thing and don’t want to have it become obsolete any time soon.