Today Amazon (NASDAQ AMZN) announced its Kindle e-book reader, which may remind long-time printer industry participants of numerous noble but ultimeately unsuccessful attempts at electronic book-reading appliances over the year. A quick look at the coverage (and photos), for example at Between the Lines, will bring back memories of past efforts. BUT...before focusing too much on the hardware/product specficiations and characteristics, look at the whole "ecosystem" Amazon has put into place, with its Kindle store, subscriptions to newspapers, magazines, and blogs, links to Wikipedia as well as The New Oxford American Dictionary. In my opinion, this changes the "e-book" equation, and makes ultimate success seem much more likely, especially when viewed with the rather obvious analogy of iPod/iTunes.
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