Musing about my personal list of needs/ uses concerning media portability:
- I need an audio-carrying device, as I fill a 4-hour train commute or a 15-minute walk with MANY snippets of music and spoken-word podcasts (iPod). I need a syncing mechanism with my home-base (iTunes on desktop computer) or with my multi-purpose device I carry around anyhow (iTunes on laptop). I would need an online audio backup service (?).
- I need my portable multi-purpose device mentioned (Toshiba) to accomplish the MANY tasks of business and personal digital life.
- I need a mobile high quality camera (Nikon) to take MANY pictures. I need a syncing mechanism (Adobe Lightroom), and I need an online backup/ publishing service (flickr).
- I need a mobile phone to take MANY calls a day which additionally serves as a low-quality camera and recorder (Sony Ericsson). I need a syncing mechanism (Windows Explorer).
- I need a text display device to read say a MAX of 100 pages a day from a RESTRICTED number of sources (one or two books and two magazines/ newspapers) when not at home. Let it be 1000 pages for a holiday. But nevertheless: I concentrate on/ dive into ONE or TWO books then, reading sequentially. Concerning the magazines and newspapers: I browse them - which is different from searching. Paper is fine for that. The use case of researching (full-text search) is so tightly coupled to re-using the found text snippets instead of just reading them that I would use my laptop anyhow.
Is the Amazon Kindle the future of the book? No, definitely not. But ...
... it might be the future of a completely new information/ entertainment need or usage scenario. Tell me how!
(Everyone is talking Kindle: Navigate with O'Reilly Radar! | Read Between the Lines! | It's TechCrunch time! | Follow Kevin Kelly's Lifestream! | Call 800-CEO-READ now! | Read Nick Carr's Rough Type! | Read Seth Godin! | Read how to change the world! | Read the Newsweek cover story!)
Make sure to watch geek meeting geek: Robert Scoble's Kindle versus Michael Arrington's iPhone.