My father came up with an interesting idea the other day. It was right after he said that "the Kindle will be history in under a year." I likened that statment to someone having said, "the hard-back book will be history in under a year" when paper-back books made and appearance.
Despite this statement, my father had a truly interesting idea. He thought that the text on the Kindle should scroll downward as the reader reads. This should be adjustable (as simple as a setting for fast, slow, faster, and slower) and would also get rid of the constant "next page" button pushing. I thought it sounded pretty clever.
In this vein, I have a couple of ideas that Amazon should look into for their next Kindle release.
Allow the reader to download and set his own screen-saver images. I'm not sure who made the final decision on the images that are pre-loaded, but they're kinda rotten. I have a portrait of Agatha Christie (good), an awkward one of Steinbeck (blah), a portrait of James Joyce where in his hands appear so small that I think he must have been in constant pain, then several of historically notably people, few of whom I recognize and they are not captioned. Why can't I be allowed to download my own? I would pick Dick Francis (natch), Agatha Christie is already on there, Robert B. Parker, and a host of others. They could serve as my constant inspiration.
Second, allow me to download music that can play through the little speakers on the back. I'd love it if a bit of Beethoven, or a mote of Mozart were pumped out as background noise while I read. The sucker has speakers. I've yet to hear them work, but I think this would be a good way to leverage those babies.
There are several other ideas regarding future versions floating around in my scunion, but we'll save those for future posts.
No comments:
Post a Comment