The new Amazon.com AmazonBook eBook Doohickey
Minitel image from Wikipedia: Tieum
Firstly, I can’t call it a “Kindle” because it sounds like something you might need to start a fire. Doohickey sounds just right.
Amazon has decided to bring this $399 mobile eBook device to market with a modified iPod sales model — sell the device, sell content for the device at a nice iMall.
However, there is a pretty clear divergence. Amazon frees the device from requiring a tether (positive and negative points here).
Positive: Rather than requiring a PC to sync content the device from the iMall, the Doohickey uses a nice wireless phone connection that silently dials home to Amazon any time it needs something.
Negative: iTunes gives you a local copy of the asset you have purchased (or licensed, to use the media industry term). iTunes makes it easy for you to burn a copy of your movie or music so that you may listen to it in your car, on a stereo or wherever. You can also burn that CD back into iTunes without the Apple DRM, allowing you to use the DRM-free content on any device, anywhere you wish. Amazon’s iMall allows you to download your AmazonBook onto any other Amazon Doohickey, anytime you wish.
There are no plans to open up the proprietary Amazon eBook format, so if you wish to revisit your current AmazonBook in the future, you will need a Doohickey.
Actually, now I’ve spent all this time researching the Doohickey. The Doohickey is closer to this Minitel Terminal from France than an iPod. It has all the words you may ever need, but you’ll need the terminal and a few francs to retrieve them.