Jonathan Takiff | Kindle takes reading to another level

THE GIZMO:

Kindle Wireless Electronic Reader from Amazon.com.

The definition of kindle is "light a fire," and that's definitely what Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos aims to do with the new Kindle electronic tablet. A hand-held, lightweight (10.2 ounce) device with a six-inch black on white viewing screen, Kindle is designed primarily for downloading and reading books, as well as magazines, newspapers and blogs.

While the giant Amazon on-line retail site now sells everything from power tools to flat-screen TVs, let us not forget that the company was built from the ground up as an online book seller. Now that printed medium - "the last bastion of analog" - needs contemporizing, Bezos believes, to stay relevant in today's techno-centric, on-the-go and rapidly evolving world. Can his new baby, the first branded Amazon electronic product, rekindle a love of reading, just as the Apple iPod has renewed interest in music and helped transform the music business?

PUTTING IT TO THE TEST: Truth is, Sony also has been trying for a couple of years, without much success, to create a market for the electronic book with its competing Sony Reader - now newly available in a second generation version for $300.

The somewhat pricier, $399 Kindle employs the same basic electronic ink technology - invented by a company called E Ink and manufactured by Taiwan's Prime View International - to produce a screen display that mimics the appearance of print on paper. The screen is not back-lit, to extend battery life to days or even weeks between charges. Yet the text still seems to almost pop off the tablet page under most lighting conditions, indoors and out.

I've actually found its glare-free screen easier to read under a bed lamp's glow than a glossy stock magazine page. And because you can increase the size of the typeface on the Kindle in six steps, every book can be blown up to a "large (or even larger) text" version that should appeal to readers at both ends of the age spectrum.

What really appeals to this impulse buyer - and separates this product from the PC-loaded Sony Reader - is that the Kindle operates wirelessly, using an Amazon-developed service called Whispernet, to deliver its goods in just seconds. If you get excited hearing an author discuss his/her new book on National Public Radio's "Fresh Air" or the CBS "Sunday Morning" show, you can tap on a device button and be whisked instantly to the Kindle Store, where you'll probably find the book under the New and Noteworthy or New York Times-supplied Best Sellers list. And if it's not there, you can type in the name on the Kindle's keyboard and it'll probably pop up. About 80,000 books are already in the system, and more are being added each day, with most rapid-fire downloads priced at $9.99.

Or imagine sitting bored at a bus stop, train station or airport. With a Kindle, you can load up a periodical for the ride - including daily newspapers like the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times and overseas papers like Le Monde, plus magazines like Time, Atlantic Monthly, Forbes and Fortune - available for single copy (50 cents to $3.49) or monthly subscription charge ($5.99-$14.99 for the papers).

More than 300 blogs also can be subscribed to, for daily, automatic downloads to the Kindle, at 99 cents to $1.99 a month.

Users don't need to concern themselves, since there's no added transmission charge tacked onto the bill, but Whispernet actually uses leased minutes from Sprint's high speed EVDO and slower 1G networks to send and receive communications. So the device will work wherever a Sprint phone operates.

As a reluctant book reader, I also appreciate that Kindle offers free tastes. You can download the first chapter or few pages of a book at no charge. This try-before-you-buy mechanism actually talked me out of Stephen Colbert's "I Am American (and So Can You)" (without his comedic bravura, the jokes weren't connecting) but did talk me into buying Steve Martin's new autobiography "Born Standing Up" - which actually reads funny.

TECH SPECS: Wrapped in an Apple-like white plastic case - a little thicker on the inner "spine" side - Kindle feels a bit like holding a book, especially when it's also wearing its leather slip cover. But to flip through this book, you tap "next page" and "previous page" buttons.

Most command and search functions are instigated by moving a cursor up and down the right side of the screen, using a roll and push wheel. For book browsing and buying, this technology is a snap. With other features on Kindle - say Google and Wikipedia site searching, underlining or checking out a word meaning with the on-board New Oxford American Dictionary - the button pushing becomes a multi-step process, and also involves typing on the small keyboard situated at the bottom of the screen. I've got a minor gripe with the pale letters printed on these keys - hard to read under low light - and also with the positioning of the "page" and "back" buttons at the edges of the Kindle case. Those locations limit grip spots and spark some inadvertent button pushes.

Kindle has 256 MB of memory on board, about 180 MB of which is available for users, to hold in excess of 200 books. (Sony's new reader holds 160 books.) "Hundreds more" books can be stored by inserting an SD memory card. Even if you delete a purchased book, you can still retrieve it from your online Kindle locker. But only the last seven issues of a subscription newspaper or magazine remain available for reading, and that's only if you've left them reside on the device.

Want to listen to MP3-encoded music or an Audible audio book on the Kindle? That's possible, too, however, you have to load those audio files into the device or an SD card through a PC. Music tracks play (even while a book is on screen) through a tinny built-in speaker, or a bit better via a stereo headphone jack, but only in random shuffle mode and without on-screen identification. Amazon files this application under the "Experimental" section on the Kindle menu, which implies it can and will be updated, based on user feedback.

Texting features could also be improved. You can send user messages (including reader comments) back to the mother ship via the Kindle keyboard. For 10 cents a pop, people can send you documents and images (Microsoft Word, HTML, TXT, JPEG, GIF, PNG and BMP) for perusal on the device. But you can't edit a document or e-mail the world.

FUTURE TRENDS: Screen enhancements are also likely in future editions. Prime View International says it already can make an eight-level gray scale screen (Kindle uses a four-level version) which would sharpen the look of photos and the art images which pop up when the device goes into sleep mode. And Prime View plans to release 16-level gray and color versions of its Electronic Paper screens in 2008.

Kindle hardware pricing should also come down, if the concept takes off (though Amazon is now reluctant to share it with other product makers). At the right price, schools could push these devices on students as a "must have" work tool. Some textbooks already are available for the device, and it would surely be better for students' posture if they were carrying just one 10-ounce device rather than 35 pounds of school books to and fro. Oh, and their e-book editions could be updated instantly. *

Send e-mail to takiffj@phillynews.com.