Jurnan

Kindle

A rare e-mail notifying me that someone started following me on Tumblr - I did not even know my account was still there, I thought I got rid of it, like with so many other (pointless) social networking sites. The additional value of Tumblr is not altogether very great, but as all bytes are still alive, I might as well contaminate this  place rather than post useless entries on my political blog.

Thus all political stuff’s been kicked off,  to make way for even more pointless things (probably be just short stories about my motorbike holidays and the notes & highlights that find their way onto my Amazon Kindle profile. Amazong has forced me to admit that the Kindle e-reader application - I do not actually own a Kindle e-reader - is well developed, and, contrary to many other Android apps, it actually runs pretty smoothly on Android’s freshly created Honeycomb Tablet operating system. 

I used to own a Sony e-reader. A reasonably reliable little machine with a battery much overestimated by its producer, even though it still did well; an insensitive touch screen; worthless pc software and conversion possibilities that would not have defied the comprehension of a middle aged English knight. Amazon, however, has taken care of its business. Easy synchronization, regardless of which device you’re working/reading on, and you can check all of your notes and highlights on-line by merely logging onto the kindle.amazon.com website.

Good news for people who are reading fanatics then, much like myself. Good news for students, too - again, like myself. Making notes on electronic devices is often a nightmare only to be topped by the process of having to retrieve them. There’s only one minor downside. Adding your own files is going to be quite the hassle. At least software by Calibre brought the possibility of converting your newly downloaded PDF books, obtained about as legally as most mp3’s. I know of no way to achieve this on a Kindle device. And then there’s the minor minor downside. You can review your books, but writing an actual review is rather unconventional. Only by adding (or editing) notes or highlights straight from any of your reading apps or devices will you be able to provide additional self-opinionated remarks to annoy fellow Amazonians who have opted for the Twitteronian baptized term ‘follow’.

But at least it does what it has to do - it enables you to read. And while we’re at it, not only recent books are available. Not having been raised in an English country, I never got much further than the stereotypical English legends such as Shakespeare, of which I only ever saw a film at secondary school, the period of your life in which practically any guy will refuse to read books on principle. Now I am pretty much incapable of remembering the last film I’ve seen, and I am not generally patient enough to claim my place on the sofa to spend the evening watching t.v. I have been told there are numerous films based on old novels such as Wuthering Heights, but who honestly wants to be guilty of doing injustice to such a great work of art?