Kindle 2.0 is out…almost

This message composed using Amazon Kindle. All told it took about 6 minutes from first accessing Basic Web to the completion of this sentence.

Edited thereafter for keystroke mistakes.

And here's a screenshot, showing BPL.com in virgin territory.

Note the scroll/selector wheel at bottom-right, and the vertical scroll "bar" display, which is moved to a line of selectable content.

Brett, many thanks for taking the time and trouble to demo this for us. There is definitely room in the market for an intermediate device between fiddly small browsers on smartphones and 1kg netbook laptops. There are some 'MID' mobile internet devices, with around 5" screens and slideout keyboards, but battery life tends to be low, and they are still fairly heavy. That's why I think an E-ink screen you can plug into a smartpone would be a winner.

In the meantime, I'll probably go for a nokia n810 web tablet, which also has builtin gps and wifi and FM radio. The 4.1" 800*480 screen isn't quite as big as the kindle's, but the unit only weighs 7oz, and you get to watch movies as well as read text. As ever, charging batteries is an issue.

The cheap'n'light solution to a basic e-book reader is to buy an old palm III or a handspring visor off ebay which uses AAA batteries. Using the free and very good palm ebook reader software, you can access a lot of literature for free through project gutenburg. The 160×160 screen ain't in the kindle class though.

A little more detail on the hardware.

the kindle runs Linux on a gumstix mainboard linked to an epson video driving chip. Amazon have loaded a java app which does the business for their proprietary e-book format, and keeps their secrets safe. But I'd guess the other apps inclusing basic web, are linux compiled native binaries, and once amazon or one of the other ebook reader producers like Jenke can be convinced to open up this aspect of the device, it could be very useful to hikers. The gumstix board has a bluetooth chip, so pairing a gps would be easy. Think gps linked mapping, with downloadable maps, albeit in 16 shade grayscale. With digitisation available too, you could use a stylus to click on weblinks and make notes on maps etc… nice.

I guess it'll just take a little time for the technology to mature, but with the pace of development in this industry, that might not be too long.

Edit to add, the iRex iLiad is already halfway there in tech terms, though beset by proprietary e-book format issues. Check the spec!
http://www.linuxdevices.com/articles/AT9929449485.html