The Kindle from Amazon is a super-cool device and I want one simply because it’s a gadget. For now, I’ve got my iPod Touch though and that’s good enough for me (so no, Ame I don’t really want one!). Also, I say Kindle, but I really mean all e-book reader devices. The portability is amazing, and, I know I hate the environment, but the paper-savings are enormous (a quick sidebar though – for all the R&D placed into the Kindle, is there really a net-gain?).

I’ve not used or even seen a Kindle in person, so all I have to go on are reviews and hearsay, but I hear the display technology is what puts it over the top: it looks and receives light like real paper with real ink on it. The only problem is there’s one page and, for all intents and purposes, nailed to the device.

The device I want is very simple to imagine. In short, it is the only book you will ever own. For the purposes of this discussion, I will describe my favorite book and backtrack later – it’ll make more sense this way, I promise.

Imagine a nice-sized hardcover book at about 250 pages – not too thick, not too daunting, but just right. Each of these pages is a double-sided version of the Kindle’s superpaper technology and looks, feels, bends, and even smells exactly like paper (extra credit for bits of pulp thrown in). You can start any book you like on page one, and flip through to the end on page 250 without pushing a single button.

Well, not quite no buttons, but close. You can select which book you want to read, by using the touch interface on the front cover. To keep the aesthetic value of this book high, no touch-screens as we know them like on an iPod, but an optical projection with adequate sensors to detect what choices  are made (very much like those laser projected keyboards out there). Storing text is trivial and flash memory is ridiculously cheap and falling dramatically on top of it, so space for books is effectively unlimited.

Some questions immediately arise though. First, what if the book you want to read is not exactly 250 pages? The weasel answer is of course, “it’s up to you,” but there are some options: Have the book’s software typeset the text for you; shrink or enlarge the text to fit the space; or if there’s more than 250 pages in the book and you reach the end, place a bookmark and simply close and re-open the book to an earlier physical page and resume reading (which leads into the next point, even).

Physical bookmarks are problematic. If the text of the book can fit in those 250 pages and that is the only text you read, then a bookmark will suit you fine. You can place a bookmark, close the book, and resume reading later – just like a low-tech book today. If you change texts, the bookmark will be on the wrong page – or will it? Again, options: Changing texts when a physical bookmark is present will simply move the words to accommodate the bookmark, so when the book is opened, the last page you were on (or even the first page, if you never opened it before) will show; Ignore the bookmark and display the text to whatever page is opened – this seems a more likely and elegant solution. To elaborate on this second point, the book likely doesn’t care where you put a bookmark – it has no way of knowing what a physical bookmark is. What the book does know is on what page you were last. I submit that is all that matters to the reader; picking up where you left off.

That’s just my book though. Yours might be a paperback, or be like an unabridged War and Peace. The number of pages doesn’t even matter – it could be as few as one or as many as 10,000. The important part is there should be pages you can turn and touch. The interface and storage don’t necessarily have to be in the book itself, but certainly helps for portability. One possible scenario is the book has no interface or long-term storage, but simply an antenna with which to receive the appropriate data.

I said it would be the only book you will ever own, but really, where’s the fun in that? Sometimes you want a large hardcover, other times a magazine format. Maybe you want to scatter your house with them so you can pick up and read wherever you are. Portability is a selling point to be sure, but hey, “what if?”

I’ll leave marketing departments and focus groups to the name of this device, and you know it’ll be something stupid like Kindle. Yes, I said it. The name Kindle is terrible. You’re Amazon of all things! You’re named for a rainforest! Pick a tree that grows in the Amazon Rainforest and make sure you pick a cool sounding one! That’s enough rant for now, but I want my damn book!

Yes, my Xbox 360 caught the horrible plague that is the Red Ring of Death. I thought I had gotten away scot freeafter owning it for almost two years, but I think it was just denial. There were a handful of problems with the device from the get-go like disc read problems when the console was vertical for some games, horizontal for others. One day, Bioshock would not boot for some unknown reason. So really, yes, denial.

You may spot a couple new links on the Links to Other Places category. I feel confident linking to the Freakonomics blog without ever having been there. One day I had quite a lot of time to kill at a Half Price Books and read a chapter or two of the book. It was quite good, and I still want a copy. The other one, God Plays Dice, I stumbled upon in my adventures on the Internet.  It’s not on my rotation proper, but I go there whenever all my other avenues have dried up and I’ve got nothing to read. A glowing endorsement I know, but I’m almost always pleased when I go there. He tends to focus on math and physics, which is cool, but he sometimes gets a little too excited about numbers.

Then there’s Joel on Software. An amazingly excellent post got my attention one day, and it similarly went in my pile of things to look at when things are slow. He doesn’t post often, but when he does, it’s likely to be pretty good.