Kindle: meh

I'll add to the spasm of shallow posts about Kindle in the geo blogosphere: the Kindle does nothing for me. I like paper books. I like the user interface and I like the freedom. Mark Pilgrim captures Amazon's evolving view on this freedom with a couple of quotes:

When someone buys a book, they are also buying the right to resell that book, to loan it out, or to even give it away if they want. Everyone understands this.

Jeff Bezos, Open letter to Author’s Guild, 2002

You may not sell, rent, lease, distribute, broadcast, sublicense or otherwise assign any rights to the Digital Content or any portion of it to any third party, and you may not remove any proprietary notices or labels on the Digital Content. In addition, you may not, and you will not encourage, assist or authorize any other person to, bypass, modify, defeat or circumvent security features that protect the Digital Content.

Amazon, Kindle Terms of Service, 2007