Arts
On Feb. 9, Amazon.com unveiled the Kindle 2, the second generation e-book reader, calling it "Still amazing, only better."
Amazon extensively promotes the new gadget with short video ads including customer testimonials ("I'm a bibliophile and I love my Kindle!") and voice-over informational clips that demonstrate the Kindle 2's many capabilities.
While the e-book reader's features improvements over the first generation model (thinner, sleeker design; faster page turning; sharper display and greater storage space), it also boasts new capabilities, such as the "text-to-speech" option that can read anything out loud.
Users can also annotate their texts, send personal documents from their computers to their Kindles and access Wikipedia.
More than 230,000 books are available for the device, as well as more than 1,000 blogs, in addition to major newspapers and magazines from around the country.
The new model offers about two days' worth of battery life, which is more than the original Kindle, as well as more storage space and a "sharper display," according to the Amazon ad.
Curious, but not enough to shell out $350 for the sleek, smart gadget, I sought out an expert to help me get my head around the latest news in the book world.
Haley Wauson '09, an English and psychology double major writing her senior thesis on digital print, explained some of the finer points of Kindle technology to me the other night in Collis.