A few months ago, I bought a kindle. Generally I like it, but I do have a few small points to make.
Thursday, December 30, 2010
Clipping Limit Complaint Email - I smell a lawsuit
Please tell me where on this page the clipping limit for this book is defined:
http://www.amazon.com/Infinite-Jest-ebook/dp/B000S1M9LY/
Does it tell you the clipping limit when you put the ebook in your shopping cart?
Does it tell you the clipping limit when you purchase the book?
Is the clipping limit listed anywhere on your website?
Is the term "clipping limit" ever defined anywhere on your website or on the above mentioned book page?
http://www.amazon.com/Infinite-Jest-ebook/dp/B000S1M9LY/
Does it tell you the clipping limit when you put the ebook in your shopping cart?
Does it tell you the clipping limit when you purchase the book?
Is the clipping limit listed anywhere on your website?
Is the term "clipping limit" ever defined anywhere on your website or on the above mentioned book page?
Amazon Kindle - The Anti-Social Reader, how clipping limits make pirated ebooks better than paid ebooks
Full disclosure, I've never bought an e-book before. This week I bought Infinite Jest. I figure if you're gonna pay ten dollars for something that isn't real, you should really get your money's worth out of that ten dollars.
I like to highlight things. I like to share them. That's why I got a Kindle. I wanted to become a SOCIAL READER. I wanted to share quotes from the books I'm reading to my social network, I wanted to write about the books I'm reading using quotes from the books. Amazon Kindle seemed like the right way to do this. Boy was I wrong.
While at lunch, reading my Kindle, I attempted to make a highlight. I was greeted with this omniously foul screen:
"Unable to share. You have reached the clipping limit for this item."
WTF! Clipping limit? The book is 1,079 pages. WTF limit! I understand if you had a limit that stopped people from clipping the entire book, or if it was based upon the length of the individual clip, but I only want to share a paragraph. It's not going the ruin the 1,079 pages for anybody. The publisher already has my 10 dollars. I also bought a hardback copy of the book for 15. The publisher has made a full 25 dollars off me, what more do they want?
Can they really stop me from clipping? No.
a footnote from Infinite Jest
But they can ruin Social Reading. They can take away our ability to read and share easily, which was the whole point of the Amazon Kindle.
It was supposted to be a gateway into a new world of social reading. I've always quoted passages in my history papers, footnoted passages with credit to the author and information on how to find the book. This allows others to seek out the source material and read it for themselves. If I quote a passage from Infinite Jest, I'm advertising the book on the internet for you, so that others will hear about it and buy the book. Other than the above mentioned case of someone clipping the entire book, they have nothing to worry about. The only thing they're doing is annoying their paying customers. I've paid. Why fuck me in the mouth when I'm trying to do you a favor and share information about your book? Discussing it on the internet with other readers brings life to the text. That's what social reading is about. Not "clipping limits", which I may add were NOT defined when I purchased this book, NOT negoitable, as though I could expand my clipping limit by paying more and pretty much turns this magical ebook into a rotten piece of shit. Readers of the freely downloadable pdf copy that's floating around out there don't have to deal with this restriction. So basically you've made your paid product less useful than the free version. And you didn't stop me from sharing, you just pissed me off.
Also, please tell me, where on this page does it say this book comes with a "clipping limit"? Seems like false advertising to me. I smell a lawsuit.
I like to highlight things. I like to share them. That's why I got a Kindle. I wanted to become a SOCIAL READER. I wanted to share quotes from the books I'm reading to my social network, I wanted to write about the books I'm reading using quotes from the books. Amazon Kindle seemed like the right way to do this. Boy was I wrong.
While at lunch, reading my Kindle, I attempted to make a highlight. I was greeted with this omniously foul screen:
"Unable to share. You have reached the clipping limit for this item."
WTF! Clipping limit? The book is 1,079 pages. WTF limit! I understand if you had a limit that stopped people from clipping the entire book, or if it was based upon the length of the individual clip, but I only want to share a paragraph. It's not going the ruin the 1,079 pages for anybody. The publisher already has my 10 dollars. I also bought a hardback copy of the book for 15. The publisher has made a full 25 dollars off me, what more do they want?
Can they really stop me from clipping? No.
a footnote from Infinite Jest
But they can ruin Social Reading. They can take away our ability to read and share easily, which was the whole point of the Amazon Kindle.
It was supposted to be a gateway into a new world of social reading. I've always quoted passages in my history papers, footnoted passages with credit to the author and information on how to find the book. This allows others to seek out the source material and read it for themselves. If I quote a passage from Infinite Jest, I'm advertising the book on the internet for you, so that others will hear about it and buy the book. Other than the above mentioned case of someone clipping the entire book, they have nothing to worry about. The only thing they're doing is annoying their paying customers. I've paid. Why fuck me in the mouth when I'm trying to do you a favor and share information about your book? Discussing it on the internet with other readers brings life to the text. That's what social reading is about. Not "clipping limits", which I may add were NOT defined when I purchased this book, NOT negoitable, as though I could expand my clipping limit by paying more and pretty much turns this magical ebook into a rotten piece of shit. Readers of the freely downloadable pdf copy that's floating around out there don't have to deal with this restriction. So basically you've made your paid product less useful than the free version. And you didn't stop me from sharing, you just pissed me off.
Also, please tell me, where on this page does it say this book comes with a "clipping limit"? Seems like false advertising to me. I smell a lawsuit.
Wednesday, December 29, 2010
Kindle for Mac: Bookmark button confusion
In Kindle for Mac, to create a bookmark you push the "+" button. Not the button that looks like a bookmark. Nevermind that the bookmark looking button is right above where the bookmarked page icon appears. The bookmark looking button takes you to the "all notes and marks" page.
How about separating the two icons, but keeping them close together. A bookmark looking icon for add bookmark and next to it a notepad page looking icon for "all notes and marks".
How about separating the two icons, but keeping them close together. A bookmark looking icon for add bookmark and next to it a notepad page looking icon for "all notes and marks".
Kindle: Footnotes
See the number, navigate to it. Click, goes to the footnotes in the back of the book. Click "back to text" and it puts you past the footnote, making you wonder if you missed anything, forcing you to go back a page and then continue reading.
Back to Text should take you back to the original text page you were on and not attempt to advance the book.
Kindle for Mac also behaves this way and it's weeeeeeeird.
Back to Text should take you back to the original text page you were on and not attempt to advance the book.
Kindle for Mac also behaves this way and it's weeeeeeeird.
Kindle for Mac: Multipage Highlighting
Seems kinda impossible. I'm gonna have to highlight one sentence on one page and one on the other. I'm not crazy about this kludge, but it will do for now.
Sync to furthest page read
Although I've had some minor troubles, when it works, it really is like magic. Flipped a few pages on my phone, came back to my Kindle for Mac application and it properly synched me up to the furthest page read. Pretty damn impressive.
No sharing on Kindle for Mac
says the tech support guy. But when I highlight something on the mac, it syncs the highlight to my kindle which can share and also saves the highlight in my plain text "my clippings.txt" file on the Kindle which I can freely copy and paste from. So let's put all this nonsense about protecting the book aside and get working on adding both a share button to the Kindle for Mac app and maybe lightening up on the cut and paste restrictions. Let the people have their paragraphs. Just lock out the ability to copy and paste the entire book. Don't stand in the way of your users just to defend against piracy that is rampant and going to happen anyway.
Sync to furthest page read confusion
Done reading on the Mac. Close the app, move to Kindle.
Kindle offers to move me to furthest page read. I say okay.
But it's not the furthest page, it's an earlier sync. So I tell it to do furthest page read again. It says to "turn annotation backup on" in settings. I check, it's already turned on. I click sync/furthest page again. Same message.
So I go to settings, turn annotations backup off and the thing syncs to the correct page.
Curiouser and Curiouser.
Kindle offers to move me to furthest page read. I say okay.
But it's not the furthest page, it's an earlier sync. So I tell it to do furthest page read again. It says to "turn annotation backup on" in settings. I check, it's already turned on. I click sync/furthest page again. Same message.
So I go to settings, turn annotations backup off and the thing syncs to the correct page.
Curiouser and Curiouser.
Large Print Books need Large Print Menus
Been trying to explain my problem to Amazon Customer Service, so that hopefully someone there can pass this issue up to the programmers, and they can fix this problem, allowing me to buy a Kindle for my Grandma. Here's my latest attempt:
I'm well aware of the Font Aa button. My complaint is that it doesn't work on the "home screen" where one selects which book to read. My grandma can read the book fine, but she can't select which one to read.
On the home screen, after selecting Font Aa, The options to change the size are grayed out/disabled. This is the issue I'm talking about.
Home -> Font Aa -> No options.
Large Print books need Large Print menus.
I'm well aware of the Font Aa button. My complaint is that it doesn't work on the "home screen" where one selects which book to read. My grandma can read the book fine, but she can't select which one to read.
On the home screen, after selecting Font Aa, The options to change the size are grayed out/disabled. This is the issue I'm talking about.
Home -> Font Aa -> No options.
Large Print books need Large Print menus.
Kindle for Mac: No Dictionary
On the Kindle, I just hilight a word to look it up. On the Kindle for Mac, since I can't cut and paste, I have to retype the word into Google to find out what a "Kekulean knot" looks like. This is very annoying and counter intuitive.
from Infinite Jest (thanks to wallacewiki):
"I stare carefully into the Kekuléan knot of the middle Dean's necktie."
"Kekuléan" is not a type of knot. To Hal, the knot he is focusing on resembles the self-consuming, annular shape of the snake that inspired August Kekulé's discovery of benzene's molecular structure. August Kekule (1829-1896), a renowned German organic chemist, was the principal founder of the theory of chemical structure. His most famous work, the discovery of benzene molecule's structure, is said to be inspired by a dream. "Kekulé's Dream" was that of a self-devouring snake, the shape of which he used to describe the benzene ring.
Hal's intense focus on this annular, or ring-like, part of the tie is the first reference to annular shapes.
from Infinite Jest (thanks to wallacewiki):
"I stare carefully into the Kekuléan knot of the middle Dean's necktie."
"Kekuléan" is not a type of knot. To Hal, the knot he is focusing on resembles the self-consuming, annular shape of the snake that inspired August Kekulé's discovery of benzene's molecular structure. August Kekule (1829-1896), a renowned German organic chemist, was the principal founder of the theory of chemical structure. His most famous work, the discovery of benzene molecule's structure, is said to be inspired by a dream. "Kekulé's Dream" was that of a self-devouring snake, the shape of which he used to describe the benzene ring.
Hal's intense focus on this annular, or ring-like, part of the tie is the first reference to annular shapes.
Kindle for Mac: Editing Highlights
Okay. I made a highlight, but now I want to edit it, I over shot, highlighted an extra word and now, in my infinitely obsessive ways want to remove the extra word without deleting the entire highlight. But I can't. Why?
I highlight the extra word, right click for options, but only see "Search". Why not "remove from highlight"?
I ended up deleting the highlight and re-highlighting it, but I didn't like it.
I highlight the extra word, right click for options, but only see "Search". Why not "remove from highlight"?
I ended up deleting the highlight and re-highlighting it, but I didn't like it.
Open Letter to Amazon about Social Reading
My first few minutes, with Kindle for Mac:
I can't copy paste (which I get, you're trying to protect the book), but I also can't copy and paste a quote to twitter (share).
Are you interested in social reading or not? On my kindle I can share, I have to push alt-ent to do so, which is absurd, but at least it has the option.
SOCIAL READING. I need to be able to share what I'm reading, otherwise I may as well just read a hardback book.
and the locking out of copy and paste is a huge offense to anybody that's writing a research paper and attempting to quote a book (which is fair use). Your shortsightedness is ruining the improvements that technology is attempting to make to books.
Get on board or get out of the way.
Thomas
PS: You still haven't added large text to the menus of the kindle, so I still can't get one for my grandma because she can't read the menus. I can't believe you're on version 3 and you haven't figured that out yet.
I can't copy paste (which I get, you're trying to protect the book), but I also can't copy and paste a quote to twitter (share).
Are you interested in social reading or not? On my kindle I can share, I have to push alt-ent to do so, which is absurd, but at least it has the option.
SOCIAL READING. I need to be able to share what I'm reading, otherwise I may as well just read a hardback book.
and the locking out of copy and paste is a huge offense to anybody that's writing a research paper and attempting to quote a book (which is fair use). Your shortsightedness is ruining the improvements that technology is attempting to make to books.
Get on board or get out of the way.
Thomas
PS: You still haven't added large text to the menus of the kindle, so I still can't get one for my grandma because she can't read the menus. I can't believe you're on version 3 and you haven't figured that out yet.
Thursday, December 9, 2010
Sharing a quote should actually share a quote
Sure sure, we all know you want to link us to your Amazon website so you can sell ads for pageviews, but it's not going to work if the people can only read my note (and hey! stop discriminating against people who loaded their own ebooks, many times the filename contains the title and author name and can help other people identify the quote and share the knowledge, which is really what this is all about. Sharing quotes without attribution is wrong. And making me type it in the note with your goofy keyboard every time is repetitious and each time my cite gets lazier, thus my lede for the quote gets lamer and lamer and you get less pageviews), and not the first 140 characters of my interesting text that I'm trying to share. Share the interesting text and people will click on the short link that follows... not the other way round.
Sharing should have it's own key
Alt-enter is not easy enough to push for sharing. Also the AA key is confusing, the function keys should be separated from the keyboard in a row above the keyboard. But keep the grey colors. I like the way the controls are there if I need them, and gone when I'm reading.
Arrow keys should go in all directions
A lot of times I want to navigate to the bottom of a list by pushing up.
The number one problem with the Amazon Kindle: no large print on the menus
I wanted to get my Grandma a Kindle for Christmas. I let her use mine, and in a second, my plans fell apart. She couldn't read the list of books to select which book she'd like to read. I pushed the button to adjust the text size or change the orientation of the menu, but all the options were disabled.
The kindle could be a killer app for large print book readers. Any book you want in large print (and it will read aloud). Brilliant, right? Perfect for my Grandma. Fix the menus, Amazon. Fix the menus so I can give you more money. Please, thank you.
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