Two Weeks In, Kindle Still “Fugly” & Expensive

Via Print Is Dead: Benjamin Higginbotham of Technology Evangelist shares his initial thoughts on the Amazon.com Kindle: it’s “fugly,” and the paging buttons are too big and clumsy, but wireless acess? That’s pretty cool. (Except for the whole paying for blogs thing, which is just weird.)

At Publishers Weekly, Calvin Reid finds “a lot to like” about the device, and while his cousings oohed and aahed at it over the Thanksgiving holiday as well, “they both balked at the $400 price—easily Kindle’s biggest drawback.” And at the O’Reilly Radar blog, Dale Dougherty recommends Amazon consider a “Family and Friends plan” where users could share the e-books they purchase with up to five other pre-selected users. “Sharing content helps to build a library and more significantly, create social interactions around that library,” Dougherty explains. “Think of the Kindle not as a personal reading device but as a personal library that you’d want to share.”

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