Posted by Markus on 6th April 2009

eBooks, Kindle and the iPhone

Today I made a leap towards a future I’ve been supporting for a long time, but something I have been reluctant to start enjoying – electronic books. For a long time, I’ve been on a personal mission to reduce my use of paper by embracing everything digital – be it all my writing, mind mapping, designing and even the medium I have chosen as my profession.

The Kindle

Whether it’s been news, movies, music or pretty much anything consumable, I’ve been in the forefront in using and promoting digital technologies – even though it’s been a pain in the ass in the beginning, there has been one media I’ve held on diligently. Books.

I haven’t subscribed to any newspapers or magazines in god knows how long, since I can get all the relevant information that interests me usually the same day things are happening instead of the next day and I can use several different sources to make my own mind regarding the events instead of just one, collective source. But still, books have been ordered (of course online) and placed vehemently in my bookshelf to wait for just the right time to start reading them.

I still remember the first time I ordered books online, when I was still in high school, so the year was something around 1998 and the feeling opening the quite massive cardboard box is still crisp in my mind. Amazon came around about that time, and it opened a new world together with eBay. The thrill of hunting collector’s hardcover editions of those particular books I wanted to add in my collection, ordering and receiving them was the thrill of it. This went on for a decade, until Amazon came out with something that joined my mission of saving paper with new, cool technologies and my long love with books – The Kindle.

For the first time I found myself arguing the fact that books could be read in any other way.

That internal debate was quickly solved however, since like most fun things the Kindle only works in the States and would be as much fun as a broken printer. Then Amazon came up with the second iteration of the Kindle and quickly after that, an iPhone application called Kindle. Yeah, it was Kindle without Kindle and on my favorite platform always with me.

After the initial excitement I noticed myself again cursing the idiots who still think the world should work on geographical boundaries locking the Kindle application only to the States, but doing some research I found an open version of the program called Stanza.

So, today I uploaded quite a few eBooks to my iPhone, naturally setting up a server for my eBook collection to be ready to download whenever I feel like adding more books to my phone. Thus my journey begins. A journey that joins book and technology.

A journey that I will try to enjoy to the fullest and try to keep an open mind, let’s see what happens. I’ll keep you posted on my experience.

Have you done the leap? Do you consume more electronic books that physical ones?



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  • No, I actually compared different alternatives half a year ago, and now am a quite happy user of ConceptDraw. Have been using MindManager before, but IMO ConceptDraw has a bit more flexible feel to it. Plus I like to create mind maps that reflect the topic visually and in that sense ConceptDraw is quite good.

    The biggest surprise for me was that the "only official Tony Buzan mind mapping tool" iMind Map was a crappy piece of usability design.
  • Your story sounds a lot like mine, an avid proponent for everything in digital format etc. (Even though in reality I've been a bit slow to change my personal content consumption habits. For example I'm still partly relying on cd's even though I only use them for ripping the content into iTunes.) Right now I feel that Kindle may be the point where I turn into a luddite. It's just something about the look and feel of physical books. Imagine a perfect summer's day on the beach with a cold drink and a... Kindle? :) I may be of quite the opposite opinion within a year, of course.

    As an off-topic: which mind mapping software do you use?
  • As I am a Mac user, I currently use MindManager by German MindJet, but had I the option, I would use either Novamind or ConceptDraw. If you're looking for a free tool, Freemind is good.
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