Living inside the Kindle garden.

One supprising thing I found with my Motorolla Xoom is that the killer app for me has been the AmazonKindle App for Android.

I have been reading a lot of Scifi books on the device. The interface is ok (I do prefer Alkido in the User Interface, I seem to mispress some buttone in Kindle).

However, the great thing has been the indie books. From US$2 to US$6, these books are not inovative in style or content, and are not that origional. However they are really good reads.

These authors (and there is some authors I am fans off pushing stuff out via the indie route like Dave Freer and Eric Flint) have hot a sweet spot. At less than US$6, I am willing to take a risk to read a book. This is not something I am willing to do at $A20 for a paperback and $A50 for a hardcover.

Now if only Baen was available, and I would not leave the Kindle space.

So I have been reading one off and some series. Again, I have been supprised with the readability of these books, and I know that the authors get a bigger slice of the purchase price than if they wen mainstream. So the experience has been posative, and I may now branch out to fantasy (and pray it is not Vampire Sexapolooza).

One other thing, the Kindle app has actually discouraged me to buying a Kindle. The only advatage from a Kindle compared to the Xoom is battery life. I have had my Xoom almost drained after a days use. However, the trade off of a Tablet v a dedicated reader is that I can have a multimedia internet connected device, that can also read books.

I have yet to buy a non indie book from Amazon. That may be another story.... 

Update on Tuesday, July 12, 2011 at 7:21PM by Darryl Adams

I have placed 3 of the books I have read in the Recently Read Books column, check them out (and don't think you have to use my affiliate link to buy them :-)

LA Times: Spam is clogging Amazon Kindle marketplace

I am not supprised, but the spamming and copyright violations are occuring over at Amazon. However, there appears to be an industry growing around it:

These e-books are listed for sale — often at 99 cents — alongside more traditional books on Amazon's website, forcing readers to plow through many more titles to find what they want. Aspiring spammers can even buy a DVD box set called Autopilot Kindle Cash that claims to teach people how to publish 10 to 20 new Kindle books a day without writing a word.

Aparently the Barnes and Noble system does not have this problem, but this could be the "big target" sucking all the exploits towards it. Also, B&N are aparently also policing their publishing service harder than Amazon.

Is this a trend for just Amazon or all self publishing? We have to wait and see

Product review: The Motorola Xoom

The Xoom is one of the new "Honeycomb" or Android 3.0 yablets to be released (the other is the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1v (Via Vodafone) and the Acer EEE Tablet.

Available with Telstra (and soon with Optus) with a 2 year contract, I have been pleased with the performance of this tablet.

As it is 1Ghz duel core with 1 gig of memory, and a 10.1inch screen, it is the best device yet I have to render PDF files. 

As an ebook reader, the text is crisp and well rendered, and Akido, Kindle and Kobo apps work nicely (although Alkido is sometimes crashes).

Storage is no problem, with 32gb of flash memory. 

Battery life is good, with about 8 hours of use with wifi/3g radio on. With the radio off, you can get better battery life, but I have yet to test it. 

As soon as Honeycomb gets better acfceptance in the developer comunity, expect a lot of apps tailored for it. However, most apps work great on it, however, the full screen mode on some apps can be slightly streched (l am looking at you Seismic).

All in all, it is a good reader, and is a good competitor to the iPad.

Delimiter: Bookshops are dead - Sen. Nick Sherry

Delimiter Ranter in Chief Renai Lemay reports on comments from Senator Nick Sherry that bookshops are dead in 5 years.

I guessed that may also be the Productivity Commission feel of things, since the white anting articles appeared yesterday.

The only thing I say is: Derr. 

Tony Martin on the Fall of Borders

This is a great consumer side view of the Fall of Borders from Tony Martin (D-Gen, Martin Molloy, Get This). Well worth the read.