Louise McGregor Digital

Unrelated things

There’s a whole lot of thought, clever thought, behind offering you related content or related shopping offers, but it doesn’t always go well.

Slideshare Finds Content Related to My Name;

I uploaded a presentation about “7 signs you’re in the wrong job”, but under related content on the right you’ll see a slideshare called “Peter Rabbit” which is based on a story by Beatrix Potter… which happens to feature characters Mr and Mrs McGregor, who are pretty much the bad guys of the piece. While my name is McGregor, it’s not really related content. But I laughed.

Amazon’s Flawed Recommendations;

I bought a Kindle last week, since Amazon finally decided that it would be OK to ship the model I wanted to the Netherlands. It’s my new favourite toy. In the same order I bought a power adapter for the EU and a kindle cover.

In my recommendations I now see a power adapter recommended on the basis that I bought a kindle cover, and a kindle cover on the basis that I bought a power adapter.

There were other kindle related recommendations listed, but these two were right next to each other so it jumped out at me.

Amazon knows I live in the EU, but yes potentially a US power adapter might be something I was looking for – but that’s not why they’ve recommended it. It seems they take the data of the items I ordered, not the whole order in creating recommendations.

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Louise McGregor Book Review, Digital

Size does matter: Kindle gets bigger

Amazon launched a new kindle last week, bigger and better than before. The bigger screen size will improve readability and graphics display, but it’s not just the size of the device that’s grown.

The selection of content has also grown; It was launched with 90,000 books, had 230,000 in February and now has around 275,000. It’s also become a favourite way to get newspapers with significant partnerships developed with New York Times, Washingtion Post and the Boston Globe. Partnerships textbook publishers and pilots with universities will also help sales – not to mention the state of student’s backs.

But perhaps the most dramatic change of all is in the sales figures. Where there is a Kindle version 35% of purchasers choose it.

I can see all the reasons for using an electronic book reader – and here I should point out that as I’m in Europe Kindle is not available so my experience is limited to using a Sony reader in a Waterstone’s store. It’s small, portable and you can store a lot of content on it. With the wireless delivery you can pick up newspapers at the moment of publication without leaving your home. There’s some discussion about it making life easier for those who need to carry a lot of documents – this argument I don’t buy, Kindle doesn’t let you work on the documents and I don’t think it offers any advantage over having a laptop and a passable internet connection.

CM200905_kindle2.pngI just don’t like it.

I love reading, I love books. I like the feel of them, I don’t even care if they’re old or new. I grew up with them and have always lived with books. A house without books isn’t a home, it’s a hotel room.

I suspect this might be the piece of technology that reveals my inner luddite.

images kindle via pixabay, book from darwinbell via flickr