A periodic roundup of relevant news… from our other blogs:
Top Cablecos to Debut Online On-Demand Shows
In recognition of the need to bridge the gap to the Internet, both Comcast and Time Warner Cable have now said they will make select programming available online to TV subscribers in the second half of this year.
Operator Plans for Mobile Broadband
Even as cable and telecom companies gear up with 4G wireless broadband strategies, Wi-Fi continues to grow in popularity, and more operators are starting to use it to their advantage.
The Kindle DX, Bigger and still expensive
At Amazon’s press event they announced their new, bigger, more expensive Kindle. The focus for this one is definitely on the newspaper, periodical and textbook consumer.
The (Sweedish) Pirate party is on
If the Pirate Party can translate their current momentum into enough actual votes to get representatives into the EU parliament, it would get the word out on precisely the kind of copy-left, file sharing, network neutrality that the Pirate Bay has promoted for years via far more mainstream avenues.
How to Share News Items, Music, Videos and Websites on Facebook
Ever wanted to share a blog post, website, video, music or news story in Facebook? There are two ways to do this, by using either: the ‘Share on Facebook’ bookmarklet’; or the attach ‘Links’ method.
Every time a Kindle gets reviewed its always mentioned that it is expensive. Has anyone reviewing a Kindle ever looked into what lifetime wireless data service costs? It would seem you’d need to know what it cost to proclaim that the device (which comes with life time wireless data included) is too costly.
True, a lifetime of data services does help put it into perspective. But value is relative. Since I don’t read very many books these days, I’d rather buy a $179 Kindle and periodically sync/dl new content over USB. In fact, I’ve been thinking about picking up a Sony Reader off ebay.
Dave,
The Sony Reader is perfect for what you describe as your reading habit. If I didn’t read so much I would rather go that route. Its how I get music on my ipod.
But seeing as how I read a ton, downloading right into the device, having a back up (of my purchased books) kept with Amazon and syncing with the ipod kindle app make it the best ereader for me.
Which ever direction you go, ereaders are better than books in every respect. I’ve read comments where people claim that if the accidently destroyed a book it would be no big deal but an ereader gets destroyed and they would feel real bad because of the difference in cost. But if you examine the argument you would see that the Kindle isn’t just one book it is a library of books backed up at the Amazon web site. If your library of real books got destroyed you’d be out a lot. If your Kindle got destroyed, you buy another and then redownload the books you bought at no additional charge. Library intact.
My issue is how reviewers will hit on the price but not actually examine what the costs may be for the data service.
Gear, the lifetime wireless is irrelevant to the cost. Amazon builds the cost of each book transmission into the price of the book. Or they could if they don’t now. Bottom line, the price of the hardware does not have to be elevated to include wireless costs when those costs are (or should be) imbedded within the price of each unit downloaded to it.
…Dale
Dale, Amazon’s digital books are more than 50% less than the price of other ebook services for new releases and best sellers. It’s a selling point. Based on my experiences with Dash, I doubt that Amazon pays Sprint per download.