It seems like just yesterday that I was talking about e-readers based on Google Android competing with the Kindle. Now we have one using the same e-ink technology coming out from Amazon's main competitor in the book work, Barnes and Noble.
The 'nook' has lots of new features going for it, but very little I don't expect to see in the next version of the kindle.
What will make or break the nook will be how B&N uses Google Android.
I may have mentioned before, but my day job is as a computer programmer (I know, I know, many of you thought I lived off the revenue from this blog with no ads on it). When I got my Kindle I was very excited about it's social networking potential.
What social network potential you might be asking yourself?
Why having Kindle upload my reading activity to Goodreads so that all of my friends can see what I'm reading.
Or being able to tweet passages from books via twitter.
Or just asking about the meaning of some Victorian slang from an O. Henry story.
I can do all of these things very easily with a computer hooked up to the internet, but I can't do it with the kindle.
I was going to fix this! I was going to implement a Kindle API and unlock the device's true potential. Then I remembered 2 things:
1) Kindle has DRM
2) I am more willing to be lazy and do nothing than I am to talk with a lawyer about how much trouble I could get in for helping Amazon for free.
So I did nothing.
I am reading 10 Days That Shook the World by John Reed (which you would know if I could enable the non-existent Goodreads app) and there is a great quote about how the bi-partisan political groups lost their power and standing during the revolution. It was very fitting for our current situation in which the bi-partisan center is falling to the right and left (though without the revolutionary overtones). It was a great quote and I wanted to tweet it. But I couldn't, because there is no twitter app for the Kindle.
e-readers need app stores. Kindle, Nooky, and Sony must all develop and deploy them.
Except that B&N doesn't have to develop and deploy an app store for the Nook - it already exists, all they have to do is allow it onto the Nook.
Amazon is bragging that they now have:
"a new electronic publishing program that we hope will help you solve some of the issues that you find yourself worrying about...Elements are short bursts--nuggets--of stand alone, targeted information and inspiration on a discrete topic, of 1--2,000 words...at only 1 dollar and 59 cents."
How about a wikipedia app that lets me download the 10,000 highest rated articles? Make it Encyclopedia Britannica if you want to charge money.
While Amazon is wasting resources trying to nickle and dime their users, the first e-reader with an app store is going to blow the kindle out of the water. And that's before some genius thinks of a killer app for ereaders that isn't obvious like the ones I've pointed out.
Programmers will PAY for the privilege of being able to sell software that Amazon is writing for itself. This isn't a crazy idea - it's Apple's app store - it's why Apple is announcing record revenue. It's even risk free - you don't have to pay development costs for apps that don't work out.
No app store, $1.59 for an encyclopedia article, and a Google based rival offering from their biggest competitor? Kindle fail! - big time
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