Posted on 05/18/2008 7:19:34 AM PDT by PJ-Comix
Good luck with that. I know you’re slick, but that’s going to be a stretch.
Now if Apple was to enter the market the products would fly off the shelves.
I’ve thought about buying a Kindle, and have read many of the reviews on Amazon. I’m going to wait though, to see if they make any improvements to it down the road, or if any other e-book reader comes available that will suit my needs. A check on Amazon for e-books from my favorite writers has come up short, so to me it’s not worth an investment at this time. I’m retired and read a lot of books. Right now I buy most of my books used, either at used book stores or through Amazon or Alibris. Once I’ve read them, I list them for sale on eBay, and get back most of what I paid for them to begin with.
I’m waiting for a digital paper version that can go through the wash in my jean pockets.
Yes you can change the font size. There are six different sizes to choose from. When you place a book on your Kindle, either through Whispernet or USB, it is there until you get rid of it. One cool thing is that the books you order from Amazon are always saved for you on the Amazon website. You can re-download them at any time.
BTW, all those classics that the review above mentioned are available for FREE at various sites. You can also get your documents converted for FREE through Amazon, but you’ll have to move those over to your Kindle through USB instead of Whispernet. The 10 cents charge is for Whispernet delivery.
I love my Kindle and it is well worth the $399 if you read a lot. I’ve had mine for almost two months and have saved over $140 already. OH! BTW again, besides the classics, there are a lot of current books available for FREE also. FREE is good :-)
This was the last format I've been missing. It wasn't a big deal because I usually put my .lit files on my Pocket PC to read.
I'll tell you something that is NOT a stretch. I made PayPal the successful company that it became. I posted before about this. What happened is that in early Jan. 2000, PayPal was still a very small company. They were oriented towards using Palm Pilots to "beam" money to pay for meals at restaurants. Anyway, I checked eBay and did a search. Only about a dozen auctions were using PayPal so I sent an e-mail suggesting that they change their orientation towards eBay auctions and using PayPal auction banners. I followed this up with a phone call to their marketing director, Jack Selby. I pitched the idea on the phone but for some reason I thought he was unenthusiastic about the idea.
Several days later I called Selby up again and stated that even though I might have come off as a "nutcase" that, dammit, my idea was a good one. I continued on in this vein while Selby was trying to get a word in edgewise. Finally he was able to interrupt me to tell me they LOVED my idea about using PayPal for eBay auctions and that they had already initiated the PayPal auction banners right after my previous phone call. Well, to make a long story short, by that March, PayPal grew at an astronomical rate to over 300,000 auctions on eBay. You want to know who made that company? Yours Truly. And anybody is welcome to contact Jack Selby to verify this account.
So my wanting a freebie Kindle (and free book and publication subscriptions for life) is hardly a stretch. If my idea is even a tenth as good as the one I gave to PayPal then it is well worth it.
Since Diner's Club had been doing that since the late 50's I'd say you were correct that they needed a new business model. I wasn't dissing you, sorry if it came across that way.
Any enterprising business reporter out there is welcome to dig into this account of what really made PayPal a success.
I love my eink reader. When my daughter unexpectedly ended up in the hospital for two weeks, it was the only thing keeping me sane. Stuck a 2GB SD card in that sucker and never looked back. One of the overlooked pleasures of these devices is efficient one handed reading.
I have a Sony Reader, Book Designer 4.0, and Azureus. These things do not go together, nosirreebob, completely incompatible. I never use them in concert nor has the thought crossed my mind. I do not advise replicating your print book collection in any way other than slicing through the bindings and laboriously handscanning them through an OCR device.
Of course, at a Harley Dealership you have to be suspicious of an employee who doesn't have cuts and bruises on his hands.
You have good ideas. Practical ideas. You should register an LLC and sell them.
Don't give away your wisdom. Sell it, man!
Hey, I also have a way that Sunday newspapers can VASTLY increase their circulations. But how to let them know without some guarantee of compensation? Believe me, with this idea even many people here that haven't bought a Sunday newspaper in ages would EAGERLY be buying the Sunday edition every week.
DUmmie FUnnies should always be free. Everything else, you charge for.
Right now I am watching the "Chief Innovation Officer" of the Tribune Co. toss ideas at the wall one after another, hoping that some or even one will work. He even came up with the idea of repainting the L.A. Times vans as if that will somehow increase circulation. Another idea of his is to repeat on page after page over and over again that they are "Green" because they are using recycled paper. I call that annoying.
Just did a bit of research. In states such as here in Florida or Nevada this idea would work. In most other states it wouldn’t. Okay, the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel and the Miami Herald both have plunging circulations so this idea would definitely help them. The FUnniest thing is that certain people in both newspapers really don’t like ol’ PJ at all. It would KILL them to have to take advice from me. Of course, in the meantime their revenues are falling, falling, falling so they just might have to swallow their pride on that one. Hee! Hee!
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Now I’m going to have to try that. Every time I want something, I’ll have to shoot off a letter first to see if I can get it for free.
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