The Future of Reading?

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Sep 192012
 

The Future of Reading?

Recently, Amazon released new Kindle models. With this introduction Amazon is beginning a push to integrate their Kindle e-books with their Audible audio books. Recently, I’ve noticed that if you buy the Kindle version first, you can purchase the corresponding audiobook version for a greatly deducted price. As I recall, the deal would be about $16. The idea is that you can read an e-book and switch to the audio version for listening on the go. The beauty is that the version are synced. Meaning, the versions can pick up where you left off in the other format. 

How will combination ebooks and audio books change the face of learning? Some people find it hard to sit for long periods of time reading a book. If, after an hour of reading it might be useful to get up and go for a walk… and, while you are out, continue listening to the book you were reading.

 

Bottom Line

This is an idea that will shape the future. 

 

Notes:

This is a quick post. There may be some incomplete thoughts and other typographical errors. This was written while listing (live) to Amplified, the 5by5 podcast with Dan Benjamin and Jim Dalrymple. iOS 6 comes out later today.

 

Harvard Business Review, do you want to sell more articles?

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Jul 192012
 

July 19, 2012

12:39 PM

While reading a book on a Kindle electronic reader, it came to me that there is not an easy way to order, buy or read the reference materials at the end of each chapter. It would be great if there was a way to get a preview, order, buy and read the article inside the Amazon ecosystem.

Harvard Business Review, do you want to sell more articles?

Notes: The book is The Innovator’s Solution. There are a lot of articles that interest me in the chapter end notes. There seems no easy way to order and buy them yet.

Original title for this post: Reading Resources – Increasing Sales

Lubricity of Commerce

12:46 PM

Amazon – Missing Sort Type – Kindle Format

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Sep 102011
 

KindleAuthorPage

Odd, there is no clear way to just display an authors books as available by format. In this case I was hoping to only see books that are available as Kindle ebooks.

Kindle Network From Twitter Followings – Social Reading

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Sep 102011
 

KindleScreenshot

The Kindle reading network has some interesting possibilities.

  • Book clubs
  • Education: 
    • K-12,
    • College
    • University
    • Community Ed.
  • …

The key might be to arrange around some circle of relevance. Classes and topics make sense as these are areas one can identify interest in. How do you find areas of interest that are below the surface of consciousness? Perhaps this is solved by connecting with people from other networks something like a cross-pollination of interests.

Kindle Changes – Apple iOS App

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Jul 262011
 

Terms of Service – Compliance

See the difference between the two screenshots? The one on the left has the “Shop In Kindle Store” button that takes you to the Kindle store in Amazon.com to buy books. The link was removed to comply with the terms Apple has set forth. I’ve never used that link to buy books. Of the sixty or so, free and paid, books I’ve bought for Kindle, all have been done via the Amazon.com store on a computer.

BEFORE

IMG 0204

 

AFTER

IMG 0209

 

 

Ebooks in Education – Amazon Kindle

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Apr 172011
 

 

Below is a screenshot of a webpage Amazon.com has for a finance book that presumably is used in colleges and universities.

There are more sections of highlighted text on the page that are not shown in the screenshot. The Public Notes section has no notes. The readers, students, could write in notes for a section of text and their notes would be easy to see on their own Notes page on the Amazon site. Notes they make public would presumably appear in this text box.

Screen shot 2011 04 17 at 11 32 44 AM

What would be interesting is if it would be possible to join a group, think class or book club, to read and share notes with. This could engage students and readers more. If half the class highlighted some text it would probably be worth talking about in class.  The notes people write would enable a better discussion because reader recall would presumably be faster when text the person wrote was presented. The internal database of the mind would be faster for searching and synthesizing the thoughts and ideas of the book and passages.

Notes:

Link to the page for the book screenshot above. Perhaps more passages will be highlighted by the time you visit.

 

Amazon Kindle Social Network?

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Apr 052011
 

 

ScreenClip(49)

Public Notes -  See image above. 4 people have this feature enabled

People can share their highlighted passages and written notes in the Kindle version of the book. This might be part of a reading club / social network.

  • Read book together.
  • Meet with other readers (people in your organized or not organized book club)
  • Discuss meaningful passages, notes and lessons.

There is a webpage where one can see all the highlighting one made in the book. There is also a page where some of the top highlighted passages are available. Here is the page for the book Content Rules. NOTE: This is an https URL. You might need to be logged in to Amazon to see it.