Today Amazon officially announced the Kindle E-Ink based digital book. It ain’t pretty but it packs some impressive features.

• EVDO wireless connection with included service. That’s right, no wireless bill.
• Access to Wikipedia and dictionary included. Reading Neal Stephenson’s Quicksilver on your Kindle and want to learn more about bastinado? Cake. Select it and off you go. Wirelessly and for free.
• Your library remains your library for as long as Amazon keeps the service around. Supposedly the device holds about 200 books and has removable storage support as well. If that’s not enough, simply clear out some space on the device so you can hold your new books and revisit those old ones at your whim.

Unfortunately, it’s not perfect yet.

It’s hideous

The form factor will change for revision 2. It has to. This is meant to be a replacement for a book, yet the actual reading area is perhaps half of the front panel surface area. The keyboard takes up a significant amount of surface area and yet the buttons are small. We’ve had sliders on cell phones for years, this product cries out for it. Make the entire front panel readable with a comfortable bezel for the next and previous page buttons.

There are good things: they’ve really thought out the page buttons. The weight and size is about right.

It’s limited

Amazon has a stock of about 90,000 books you can purchase to read on the Kindle at prices ranging from $0.01 to over $1,000. You can read the first chapter of any title for free before deciding to buy. You can purchase subscriptions to magazines, newspapers and blogs (?).

That’s pretty cool and all, but the breadth and depth of titles obviously isn’t there yet. Chances are if your reading tends off the beaten path you might be out of luck right now. Amazon aims to build the library further, of course, and I’m sure they will. But it will always lack something given the entire output of humanity since Gutenberg’s time.

Note also that there’s seemingly no support for personal PDFs which seems like a grand omission.

It’s expensive

The biggest shot against the device is the initial buy-in price of $399. No doubt, people paid more for their iPhones initially. The iPhone is meant to replace a host of separate electronic gadgets: phone, music player, video player, PDA. This thing is meant to replace a cheap commodity, the paperback book. You can walk into any used bookstore in the country and there will be a book to read for $1. Only the hardest of the hardcore book reader will find this proposition even remotely appealing.

Books seem to be priced reasonably — I can buy Peter F. Hamilton’s entertaining and sprawling Night’s Dawn trilogy for $8 — though one could make the argument that since there’s no physical medium being produced, stored, or delivered we should expect to pay far less but Amazon still has to subsidize that data plan in the background, too. Your 400 clams and ~$10 per book doesn’t just buy you that reader hardware and something to read on it. That always-available EVDO data plan that Amazon is footing the bill for is a large investment. They have to plan for customers to use that thing day in and day out for a long time. Especially given the Wikipedia access, some customers might buy one book a decade and ring up charges for Wikipedia access.

I’ll take rev 2

I’m interested, actually. I’m a voracious reader and I go through books pretty quickly. I also tend to re-read books, often in the same year like I recently did with “The Baroque Cycle”. I actually purchase a lot of books as well and the thought of finishing a book and being able to browse a bookstore, read the first chapter and buy the book from wherever my ass happens to be planted is exceedingly appealing. There are a few things that have to happen first.

• Looks aren’t everything, but I’ll wait for rev 2. I think we’ll get a bigger display with the next revision of E-Ink. Color? Maybe.
• A larger library and a deep and expansive technical reference library. I’m thinking of something with a catalog like Safari with cross-references and web links.
• The price must drop below $200.

It’s a very good first effort, but the steep buy-in will deny it “grand slam” status. Hopefully Amazon will be able to survive the initial pains and do what needs to be done to make it succeed.

I figured I was immune to rhythm games after I sold off Guitar Hero 2. I reached a point in that game where the joy of rocking met the harsh reality of the difficulty curve and I realized in a flash of insight that I was done. I play so little anymore — even less these days now that Julia has The Cough That Time Cannot Dissipate and I’m in what I term “defensive mode” where all I want to do is sleep in the expectation that it will be an utterly miserable night — that when I do take the time to play I want to have fun. I don’t want drudgery, I don’t want to constantly bang my head against the brick wall of impossibility. I want simple enjoyment. So, once I hit the hard difficulty level in Guitar Hero 2 and started failing miserably I simply went on Craigslist and sold it.

I’d seen the runup in anticipation for the successor, Guitar Hero III and for the new kid on the block, Rock Band. I had witnessed from the virtual sidelines as the lined up across from each other with their own peculiar strengths and weaknesses, but I didn’t care. I was past that!

Until…

But then they get released and I start hearing rumblings:

“Rock Band is more approachable.”

“Rock Band + drums is almost pure, distilled joy.”

“Rock Band cures most transmittable diseases.”

So I caved. Early Christmas present for daddy. And it does indeed rock, and I haven’t even tried it with anyone else. Cat, of course, won’t touch it with a boat oar so that’s out of the question. I have some friends coming tonight and anticipation is high. The difficulty ramp is more approachable. I’m just on the cusp of hitting hard difficulty on the guitar — which is the first that actually uses all 5 frets — and I’m not dreading it. The drums on medium are doable for a total drum twit like me to approach, though whoever came up with “Green Grass & High Tides” and its 9 minutes worth of right-leg torture will roast long and slow in the deepest pits of hell. I’ve even done a couple of vocals on some Police songs and aced them… but I have the voice of a nightingale so this should shock no one.

Rock is meant to be rough

If only there weren’t rumbles of less than reliable hardware. The guitars have strummers that seemingly inevitably screw up and the “overdrive” doesn’t kick in consistently. The bass drum pedal snaps in half. The drum heads start not responding. People that can’t sing use the mics. I admit to being a bit worried about the longevity of the hardware, but it certainly hits the right balance to provide a simply astounding level of happy happy.

Is it time to rock yet?

I tried to fit in a little game of NHL08 this morning before work, but Julia was having none of it. She popped in and wanted to watch but watching soon became…

“Daddy, can you teach me how to play, please?”

I am not, contrary to common opinion, a heartless bastard and this certainly had its intended effect. So I loaded up a shootout, showed her that the left thumbstick made the little guy skate around and that if she wanted to shoot the puck she should push the right thumbstick up.

Away we go. She is quite entertained simply skating around for a while, occasionally sending poor Eric Staal repeatedly into the boards, then crosses the goal line and the whistle blows.

“You can’t cross the little line, sweetie.”

“Oh.”

Next skater comes and she skates around some more and crosses the goal line. Tweet.

“Don’t forget, you can’t cross the line.”

Next skater comes and she skates and pushes the right thumbstick forward and shoots, all by herself! This gets her excited but soon enough Daniel Alfredsson ends our run and the game ends. I set up a rematch and she skates in as Eric Staal again, wrists it from the slot and deflects one off the pads and scores!

“Yay Julia!” I’m pretty sure I scared her by yelling so loudly. “You scored!” She raises the controller over her head and bounces up and down in celebration.

Spezza skates in, toe drags and puts a nice one past Ward. Crap. I figured she might actually win it. Matt Cullen (allpraisehisname) skates in next and Julia skates past the goal line again. Ah well. Heatley takes his turn and boofs it so it’s Cory Stillman up next.

Julia skates in, wrists one which deflects off the glove and through Gerber’s legs for a goal! Winner, Julia! Her second NHL08 shootout ever and she wins it. At 4 and a half years old.

Almost brings a tear to my eye.