I like this idea for a place setting, and even more this namecard idea! I’m always for a bit more glamour in life, and this kind of thing makes it possible every day without having to go out and buy something extra.
Tag Archives: ideas
My Love Affair with the Kindle Continues
But I feel only lukewarm about the cover. I find it really comfortable to read with the cover on, but I wish it did a better job of holding the Kindle in place. The little plastic piece on mine has smashed in on one side, making the Kindle tip to the right when I try to read–rather annoying! I did a cursory search on a replacement cover, but none of the ones I found were that inspiring. Oh how I wish they would make one that matched the covers of these Penguin classics!
More Kindle 2.0
After several more weeks with the Kindle, I have a new set of wish list items for Kindle 2.0. In no particular order, they are as follows:
1. Ability to hold down a page as you scroll through previous pages like you would in a real book. There have been a couple instances where I’ve forgotten how some character is related to others, and I’d like to go back to where he/she was first mentioned without losing my place. I know I can set up a bookmark and then return to it later, but what I’m looking for is more of a temporary bookmark, so that it’s not there anymore once I return to my place.
2. The spot to charge your Kindle should not be located on the bottom, as this makes resting the Kindle on your lap while charging it highly inconvenient.
3. Since I only rarely use the internet on the Kindle, this really isn’t that big of a deal, but it’d be nice to be able to charge the Kindle via USB in more than a trickle capacity.
4. A better way to track where you are in a book. Currently you have to count how many dark dots you’ve covered out of 50 to figure out a sense of where you are in the book. Even just breaking up the 50 into more manageable fractions would be helpful to know if you’re, say, a quarter of the way through a book.
I’m also imagining a pop-up illustration of a book spine that would show you how much you’ve read vs. how much you still have to go…Amazon SDK anyone??? Or maybe just an alt command?
And really, page numbers would really be a lot more helpful than “locations.” Referencing the page number of the print edition, even if modifiers had to be used depending on what font size you were using, would be great. For example, “page 113-5 out of 1050″ would signify that I’m on the fifth chunk of page 113 of the print edition. That way people can actually cite stuff they read on the Kindle, without having to cross-reference a printed copy.
5. A better way to highlight. After thinking about it, a stylus would probably be inferior to having a trackpoint (IBM Thinkpad style) or rolling mouse (Blackberry style) because 1) people are liable to lose it, and 2) the Kindle currently does not allow a touchscreen (recent reviews on Sony’s eReader 700 also note that the touchscreen has led to blurry lettering…kind of the most important feature of an ereader!!). But in any case, it’s really necessary to be able to start/end highlighting at a specific word, instead of the beginning of a line.
6. In a similar vein, a trackpoint would also help facilitate more direct choices for referencing definitions in the dictionary (the lookup feature also takes way too long to load right now–11 seconds by my own experiment. I want to read not wait!). You should also be able to search the dictionary from the home screen. It would also be nice to keep a log of all the words you have looked up (someone in the forums suggested auto creating a Word table) to reference later. Gotta love vocab practice as an adult!
7. Smarter downloads. I definitely see the value in having, say, the Wall Street Journal download directly to my Kindle so I can read it anywhere and not have to deal with all the paper and inky fingers. However, I currently miss about 30% of my papers since I forget to turn on the wireless at some point in the day (and if you missed it, you missed it). It’d be awesome if I could program the Kindle to turn on the wireless for, say, 10 minutes each morning, to make sure all my newspapers and blogs get downloaded for the day. They would then be stored for a few days before I could read them at my leisure. (It’d also be nice to be able to delete particular issues of newspapers in the Content Manager, as opposed to deleting the whole publication.)
8. Revamp the keyboard completely. The current keyboard is ugly and difficult to use because the buttons are so small and require a lot of pressure to register. Assuming a touch screen is not an option, it could be made a whole lot prettier, and probably would benefit from being flush with the rest of the device so people could rest their hands there comfortably while reading (I currently rest my thumbs on the white space above or on the left flap of the case/the scroll wheel windor on the right…thus avoiding practically all accidental touches on the next/previous page buttons. I actually love that they are so large, and hope Amazon doesn’t change the size or placement of them!!! And honestly the process of turning a page on Sony’s eReader sounds so cumbersome…I want to flick my finger and continue reading, not have a laborious process in and of itself).
DIY Projects
I’d like to do more DIY projects around the house–that is, once I have a house. At this point I’m satisfied with painting my apartment, and my recent art project. 
But if I DID have a house, one of the first things I’d want to do is reupholster my couch. It’s something I’d just like to know how to do for the fun of it, and in general I like giving old, ugly things a new life. And then the other day I came across these pictures from an old woodworking book, and I thought, hey, I wonder if there’s a market for a DIY helper business. I think there are a lot of people out there that like working with their hands and doing cool stuff in their homes, but have little experience and no idea where to turn. So instead of spending a lot of time and money to, say, reupholster my couch (rather poorly) myself, or paying a lot of money to get someone else to do it (whilst depriving myself of the learning and sense of accomplishment), what if I could call a local artisan to come to my house with their tools and teach me how to do it? I could save money on the tools I’ll have little need for in the future, but I’d be able to learn a new skill, and then execute it under the guidance of a professional. I like the idea of individual people helping people, and I think it could be a win-win for crafty people who love what they do but perhaps have no good market in which to sell their skills, and busy people who would like to learn these extra skills but the opportunity costs are currently too high. What do you think–is it a winner?
If I Were Designing Kindle 2.0…
So, I’ve had my Kindle for a while now and I still love it.I find I read a lot more, and better books (classics are so cheap!! 99 cents for most, and some free content as well). I’ve only bought one bestseller so far (9.99 for those…currently reading Brisingr by Christopher Paolini, which is right now average to good). Anyway, as awesome as the Kindle is, I think it has amazing potential in the next few versions. I anticipate that a lot of the products we use now will ultimately consolidate into fewer, more powerful tools that are easily adaptable for our needs (i.e. I’ve been advocating the “e-machine” for a long time…a transportable device that will serve as an iPod, phone, eReader, laptop, etc. that can dock into a more permanent station at home with more memory and space and all that…I really cannot wait until this day–I’m sure it is to come ). So yes, the Kindle–unlimited possibilities, and I’ve been playing around with ideas of what could be improved, how the product could really be defined, etc. for a few weeks. Originally I was planning to ramp up my skills in Google SketchUp to make an illustration of my own, but after poking around on BlogKindle and other sites, I found a few illustrations that together formed my vision of Kindle 2.0. So, first, my inspiration!
In order for the Kindle to be successful in the academic market, it needs a bigger screen. Charts and diagrams in textbooks are vital to understanding the material, and making them into microscopic images destroys most of their value. Thus, you want a screen big enough to display textbooks, but small enough that it’s not overwhelming for the everyday reader on the bus. I really like the idea of a 360 degree folding device where you can open it up to show large pages in Portrait or Landscape, as well as two smaller portrait pages when the device is held horizontally. It should also be possible to fold the Kindle back onto itself, so you can read only one smaller portrait page, similar to the current format of the Kindle. After reading on it for a few books, I find that things are much simpler, and that one page is less overwhelming than all of the text of two pages side by side. I’d like the option of keeping this format. I also think the Kindle should be able to fold the other way, so that both sides of the screen face each other for safe storing. In general I find the next page and previous page buttons to be really useful. I am not bothered at all that they are easy to hit, and it makes one-handed, snuggled-up-in-bed reading both possible and enjoyable In terms of other smaller changes, it’d be nice if the keypad was part of a touch screen, similar to the iPhone, and it might be useful to include a stylus to more directly underline or choose words to look up in the dictionary. It’d also be nice to access the dictionary from the home screen, and search for words directly instead of first looking them up in a book, and then looking them up in the dictionary. I find that while I do look up definitions while reading, sometimes I later remember the word I “learned” but not the definition, so it’d be useful to double check more easily.
So all of these things would be awesome changes and could really make a superb eReader. But what would really be revolutionary would be to force the Kindle into a screen component of a DDM PC. I find the concept of DDM computers fascinating, and it would be a really cool way to tap into a completely new market. I kind of view it more like this, where the Kindle would be part of the laptop screen at home, and then could be taken wherever to read/listen to music/watch DVDs on the go (I know the scope of the Kindle is currently only books, but seriously, I wholeheartedly believe that we’ll eventually have one device to do it all). This would be great for families who have several Kindles, and could add/subtract to the main display of the family computer at home. But more realistically, I think increasingly family members each have their own laptop, so they would only add/take away from their own computer, which may actually work better for standard screen sizes and all).
So, what do you think? Is the Kindle the next iPhone? I say yes!
Edit: I also think it will be important to solve the following issue: now that people will buy fewer paper books, their libraries at home will be smaller, and it will be harder to show off what they’ve read to others. I also get a lot of comfort from being surrounded by all of the books I love, so that is lost as well. It’d be nice to allow some sort of “cover” that would display what you’re reading on the Kindle, though this isn’t a perfect solution. I can’t decide whether iPod-esque anonymity or public displays would be better…maybe the option to do either. Hmm…
Bus Stops
I was waiting for the bus on Saturday and I got to thinking…how come the bus stop pavilion is a square, instead of a long rectangle? The square shape is bad for a few reasons:
-only enough seating for 3 people along back edge
-if it’s nasty weather outside and people herd themselves into the pavilion, the people who get there last are the first ones on the bus
-general uncomfortableness of squeezing together and having people on all sides of you, instead of forming a line
I propose a bus-length shallow pavilion that would allow people to naturally form a line while allowing them space to sit down on a bench and/or take refuge from the weather. I also would really like to see swings!!
I Want That!
Dear Mayor Daly,
Please consider these swingset style bus stops for Chicago, Hyde Park in particular. Sometimes the #6 does not come on time and I’d be a much happier camper if I could swing while I wait. Think about it.
Sincerely,
Jessica
personal stylists
this is why i love computers. yesterday i received two emails about “personal stylists” from neiman marcus and anthropologie, where based on your browsing history they’ll send you emails with the stylist’s latest finds for you. basically a “you may also like” section, via email! the one from anthropologie works a bit different, in that a stylist at the store nearest you will actually pull the items for you to come in and look at. probably more people will use the one at neiman’s, but the conversion rate once you actually get people in the stores would probably be higher at anthro. oh, i love marketing. someone pay me to come up with programs like this. (actually, last night i had a dream about gap installing little screens in their dressing rooms where you could scan in each item of clothing you were trying on, and then give feedback about what you liked/disliked, and whether you were going to buy the item…but then i thought this morning, what if you had a crapload of stuff to try on? then it’d be a little cumbersome to enter in all that info by hand…so maybe it could record what you thought out loud, and then you’d need a voice recognition software to turn that stuff all into words so you could categorize it and make reports people could actually use…hmm, what do you think? i’m really excited for the future. i can’t wait to see what people will come up with to transform life as we know it! another random aside–as i was walking to class the other day i was thinking about crime and punishment and whether at some point we’ll live in more of a “truman show” world where everything is recorded and we could use that information to incriminate the right people. would this lead to a loss of privacy? should privacy exist? i wonder…).
anyway, i thought the suggestions from neiman marcus were pretty darn cute, and i especially liked the last two.
the email i got from anthropologie:
