Kindle now sharing your highlights

There has been some alarm over a new Amazon Kindle enhancement that collects and shares highlighted text. I will confess that I’ve evolved into a lazy Kindle user who for the most part just downloads and reads e-books on the device without paying too much attention to new enhancements to functionality so I needed the blog post on gigaom to find out that this was happening. I do use the highlight feature quite a bit at times and I also take notes. I briefly visited a Kindle board a few months ago where people were saying they never use the note taking feature and don’t even know how it works. I can’t imagine reading and not making notes but  – but then again these are probably the same people who read 400 page books in half an hour. If you tend to stop and comment regularly like I do  – the going is a lot slower. Here’s something to keep in mind about Kindle notes. You can copy and paste your clippings from your Kindle to a document on your computer. You can empty out your clippings document on your device, but all clippings are stored on an amazon server and you cannot delete that content, in fact Kindle users don’t know where the data backup is.

Here’s what the notes look like when you download them:

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Michael Jackson: The Magic, The Madness, The Whole Story, 1958-2009 (J. Randy Taraborrelli)
- Note Loc. 1547 | Added on Sunday, xxxx 18, 20xx, 01:50 AM

jrt needs to get the ages right and stick w/ them

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Killing Willis: From Diff’rent Strokes to the Mean Streets to the Life I Always Wanted (Todd Bridges)
- Note Loc. 1741 | Added on Wednesday, xxxx 28, 20xx, 11:16 PM

why did i think this was earlier?
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These notes could easily be extracted and shared if amazon chose to and that could be a much bigger privacy violation than highlight sharing. But it is also true that without context the notations can be fairly meaningless. It takes paid analysts with access to user ids, to make connections between notes made across multiple publications read on a single device and build a profile. Without this analysis the notes are random anonymous text floating around in the global mind miasma, and far less revealing than something you’d voluntarily share on twitter or face. I confess that even before I knew about the shared highlighting, I have been mindful about what I highlight or write on Kindle but this is no different than how I’d treat a print book because I often lend books to friends and family members. Unless you live alone and never plan to share your books with anyone, you wouldn’t scrawl things you don’t want people to know in the margins of your print books because this could be similar to sharing your diary. It makes sense to treat books that you read on your Kindle device in the same way.

Filed under: Books, Technology, enhancements, highlights, kindle, notes, privacy violation

Twitterature (book release)

The Wall Street Journal hears Shakespeare rolling over in his grave. I say it’s a mistake to think Shakespeare was a luddite, fuddy duddy, future phobe. Follow the link below to read about the book.

dracorosa: Twitterature: the World’s Greatest Books in Twenty Tweets or Less..http://bit.ly/2ayRwY
Original Tweet: http://twitter.com/dracorosa/status/6545895108

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Filed under: Books, Technology, shakespeare, twitter, twitterature

Nook Review from huffpo(HuffingtonPost.com)

Huffpo reviewer writes:

A lot of people say they don’t like reading books on an LCD screen, but many of them might change their minds if they turned down the brightness of the backlight.

huffingtonpost: Nook Review: Barnes & Noble’s eReader Is A MESS http://bit.ly/51AW73

^^I don’t have a Nook (does anyone without the special hookup have one yet?) I have a Kindle reader and the Kindle app for iPhone/iPod Touch. The touch screen is lots of fun if you’re reading for a few minutes. Just about anyone would get a kick out of the finger page swiping alone. But when you need to read for hours it gets tiring fast. And turning down the backlight is not the issue. You also have a couple of choices for the appearance of your the Kindle app page – but that doesn’t make it a Kindle. In the same way the pages of a print copy of say the Wall Street Journal don’t look like the pages of a glossy art book. Two different textures – two different appearances. Nitpicking that I suppose only the hardcore reader will get but this is what reading devices are designed for. People who are light readers or who only read for a few minutes at a time can easily make do with whatever computers or devices they already have if they want to read e-books. Anyway – follow the link below for the full review.

Original Tweet: http://twitter.com/huffingtonpost/status/6535292868

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Filed under: Technology, nook review

Man marries video game character

It’s amazing how many people don’t get this. I don’t even play video games (yet!) and don’t know if I ever will, but I think it’s cute, funny and in the narrator’s words, a piece of performance art. Observe how the comments float across the screen in Japan. That’s a nice touch – and really gives the impression of an organism. Of course I can’t read the characters and don’t know what they’re saying but I do know that there are so many sour puss hater types who post on youtube that the effect won’t be the same. Why do people watch videos and then type insulting ish about how much they hate it and themselves and the internet, blah, blah. In that case get off the damn computer or put down the device and take a walk or do a dance or sumthin’ to knock that hateration out of you. Seriously. Just sayin’.

Filed under: Technology, japan, marriage, video game character, youtube

Practising mobile posting

I tried this last night directly into the iPod/iPhone wordpress app – accidentally flicked my hypersensitive screen which resulted in select all then delete and it was poof irretrievably gone! Not a terrible disaster since it was just a test – but if it was a school or professional post I’d be angry and distraught in equal proportions all diffused together. I know there are plenty of MID bloggers and journalists and I am Joanna come so lately they be sweepin’ up after the party at this point. But I think there’s still opportunity for me to seem like a forerunner on the literary/academic front where some still use typewriters or old fashioned desk hog tower and cathode monitor PCs. I’ve noticed that I seem to be the only digital book user in my classes thus far – unless people are just not citing them as such yet. Age is not a pertinent argument. My 70 something year old father reads online everyday and will be getting his second apple laptop for Christmas.

Sent from my iPod

Filed under: Technology, Uncategorized

Sony Reader Daily Edition – It’s almost here

I got the email notification earlier this evening that Sony is now accepting pre-orders on the new “Reader Daily Edition”. The delivery guesstimated date is Dec. 18 and Jan. 8 with no guarantees. So anyone who plans to gift this on Dec. 25, will be presenting a picture with a promise for the actual gizmo to show up around the time of the “Coming of the Magi” (Orthodox Christmas). When I was growing up we used to keep our tree up till Jan. 6th but I only recall one time when we did a second round of gifting. It might not be a bad idea to get back into that tradition again. Is it just me or is “pre-ordering” the new trend these days. No one wants to over-order, and under ordering would cause pandemonium at best and lots of self flagellation by the seller over lost sales at worse – so it makes sense.

Filed under: Technology, amazon, daily reader edition, ebook, Ereader, kindle, Sony

Academic E-texts

Conversation with a friend who is also back in school: I asked him if he’d tried a learning website that I recommended, and he said he’s been swamped with reading from multiple texts these days and hasn’t had time for much else. I asked if he’d tried e-books (because they can make a student’s life easier). He said he doesn’t like the idea of e-books and doesn’t like reading books on the computer. I told him I have a Kindle now. He was unimpressed and asked if that wasn’t the same thing as a computer – just smaller – i.e. a redundancy and waste of money. I told him it is a reader device. E-Ink technology and the fact that the screen is not backlit prevents eye strain. Computer reading hurts my eyes but I read using Kindle for hours without discomfort. This makes a difference for me because I’ve been reading e-books on computers for years. In the past I used e-books when there was no print available. The first e-book I read was only published online – this was circa 1997. Now I use print when there’s no e-book available. There are e-book fans who won’t read print anymore. I’m not an extremist like that – I’ll always use both types of books. Anyway I’ll take my Kindle for a show and tell next time and see what what this friend who isn’t exactly a gadget lover or a technophobe thinks of it.

Filed under: Books, Technology, Academic, ebooks, Education, etexts, kindle

Kindle for Academics

Yesterday marked the end of my first full week as a Kindle user. I had an earlier review a few days ago but thought I’d do better to learn more about basic features before I posted. It’s easy to get hooked on the instant gratification when you have an ocean of reading material at your fingertips (but not enough writers of color though and we need to get with it on this issue). By contrast a print book I ordered over two weeks ago days ago still hasn’t come yet. This was from an independent seller on amazon and not amazon itself, so not a slam on amazon delivery times but note to self – check with seller for status.

I am a graduate student so the first thing I wanted to know was what other people in academia think about this technology. My initial internet research turned up technophobe scholars who are typing up comments to the effect that this gizmo is just another consumer gadget and not really good for use in academia. This is odd to me because many textbooks already come with e-text versions and other supplemental electronic material even if it’s not Kindle e-text. I’m very happy reading academic books on my Kindle and what academic prefers flipping through four-inch thick tomes to searchable text? Not every academic book is available electronically, and it looks like my next seminar won’t have e-books, but I’ll take electronic over print any day for academic reading. Out of all of reading device target market, academics are the ones who benefit the most from a dedicated reader device. If you read books several hours/day, everyday, then Kindle or similar device is for you. If you are an occasional reader who already has a smart phone or a PDA you already have the option of reading e-books on either or on your lap or desktop computer, and putting out the extra money for a separate device might not be worthwhile.

Filed under: Review, Technology, Academic, E-book, E-reader, kindle