A Kindle trick changes the reading experience | Hacker News Reader

A Kindle trick changes the reading experience

goodexperience.com

21 pointsgabrielroth14 comments

Imagine if the Kindle or other e-reader allowed plugins. Perhaps you could write a greasemonkey like script that automatically alters the reading experience for you.

The reader could write a simple script to replace "heart in his mouth" with whatever metaphor he wanted.

A simple find feature -- which is what this article talks about -- isn't enough to crow about.

It may not be a technically impressive feature for an e-reader, but if public shaming like this causes authors to adjust their writing style, that's pretty interesting. I'm not really sure if it will (do the kind of people who read these books really care about stuff like this?) but who knows?

Right now it is, since many of the competitors to the Kindle (including Sony Reader) do not have any search capability.

No, but the experience of beautiful digitized text is. The fact that I can carry a library around, for instance. Searching. Looking up words. I have Ulysses digitized and on my Kindle and it's a thrill to really get into Joyce's language. Much easier than with the physical copy I own.

I think the point is that a feature that's technically trivial can have a profound effect when applied to an object like a novel, which has lacked that feature for its entire three-century existence.

"his heart in his mouth." [...] just how many times did Follett use that ONE metaphor in a single book? [...] And the answer is: 13. Actually 17, if you count the four instances of "her heart in her mouth."

Searching at that book's Amazon Reader page, I counted 16 instances of hearts in mouths. http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0451166892

Maybe there were 2 instances on a single page.

I've got a great secret trick for the astute kindle owner - read it on paper!

I don't know how to say this entirely politely: where do you get off?

The sheer hatred for this device staggers me. It's become a joke! People who've never used one call it ugly. They call it a waste. It's become a joke of the industry, and I have no clue why. It's selling well, isn't it? It's just selling to a niche audience of people who actually read things. So I guess the joke has to do with the implied functionality, like your wonderful joke implies.

I am an astute reader. I own a Kindle to go with my miniature library. I enjoy cuddling up with my Kindle just as much as I would with any other book. The screen is gorgeous. The device is gorgeous. I've never understood the mockery. No, it doesn't feel "high tech" and gleaming, it feels very down-to-earth. It feels like a book ought to feel.

Now, I'm the sort of person who likes Shakespeare. And it's much easier to have The Complete Shakespeare on a Kindle than it is to have it in a backpack. I also have The Complete Asimov, and I'm considering The Complete Sherlock Holmes.

The Kindle got me into reading P. G. Wodehouse for the first time, because his stuff was free on Gutenberg. I managed to find a complete archive of Diana Wynne Jones stories: they're for teens rather than adults, but they're still very well-written and they're childhood favorites and I like that I can find them and read them when I couldn't purchase half of them physically on Amazon.

When I got to a meet-up an hour early, I had my Kindle, and I could go and search for half a dozen novels and read excerpts from each one. It's like window shopping but you can do it anywhere.

Not to mention the free wireless Internet I get everywhere, the NowNow asking feature (which I've used several times to get quick feedback on projects), and the music player, which I've loaded with Bach, and which isn't a brilliant player but which makes for pleasant background music while I read. I value my Kindle more than I value my iPod.

So, you who would mock the Kindle, try planning out a 7-hour train ride when you read books often at the rate of one every 90 minutes. Try figuring out a better way to store 200 books in a dorm room without cluttering everything to hell. Try making a physical device that does as much, as unintrusively and as beautifully as the Kindle does. Then mock it. But I don't hear the Kindle users complaining, and isn't that the important thing? The fact that the people who actually use the Kindle enjoy their product a lot?

> The sheer hatred for this device staggers me. It's become a joke! People who've never used one call it ugly. They call it a waste. It's become a joke of the industry, and I have no clue why.

I agree that the hatin' is a bit over the top. (Though I agree the device is aesthetically challenged, it's the screen that the user is looking at. If the Sony Reader I've played with is any indication, the screen is really all that matters, the button arrangement on the Kindle is considered almost perfect, from what I understand.)

That said, I think what some of the critics are seeing is a repeat of the Newton. That was Apple's first stab at a portable "smart" device that overreached; it was expensive and its user experience was mostly alien. Because of its failure, the first successful device in that market space was the much inferior Palm Pilot, and as such, the Newton may be perceived as setting back or delaying the mainstream acceptance of a fully powered smart device via premature birth. (The sector really didn't regain the same capability level in the mainstream until the Blackberry and iPhone came on the scene.) The Kindle might be doing the same thing with the "PADD" (I'm thinking Star Trek here) concept by focusing on books and focusing the UI on that exclusively. Such a device could potential save periodicals and newspapers, but those markets aren't ready for pure digital distribution yet...

I don't know how to say this but... are you paid by Amazon?

Perhaps I'm being a bit too paranoid, I'll assume you're an honest kindle fan.

It is not the kindle that I hate, it is the Amazon marketing.

The kindle is in fact not selling well. It can't both: sell to a niche and sell well at the same time.

Not if you go by the standard definition of well.

It only sells well if you go by Amazon's much lowered sales expectations.

But honestly I sort of admire Amazon's hutzpa, they know what they're doing and they're dong it well.

The kindle, I don't hate, it's not for me, but I wish you the best with it.

...Wow. I say I like something and you accuse me of being from Amazon? No consideration that it's a good product?

Selling to a niche is a great way to sell well. Look at any company except the obvious humongous ones; they all specialize to niche markets. I don't know if the Kindle is intended to be a niche product or if it sells well according to the expectations of Amazon, but your general premise is wrong.

> the kindle is in fact not selling well.

  Availability
  Due to heavy customer demand, Kindle is sold out. Please
  ORDER KINDLE NOW to reserve your place in line. We 
  prioritize orders on a first come, first served basis. 
  Note that Kindles cannot currently be sold or shipped to 
  customers living outside of the U.S.

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