Kindle-ing the flame

For a couple weeks now, the Internets have been ablaze with word that Amazon had a new version of its Kindle eBook reader on the way. And in a Steve Jobs–esque press conference this morning, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and Stephen King introduced the Kindle 2. The new gadget features a markedly sleaker design (more photos), longer battery life, greater memory capacity and a few other neat features, including a text-to-speech function, which can convert any eBook into an audiobook, provided you don't mind a robot reading to you at night.

To my mind: It's a nice step forward, but still fails in several ways. Mike Cane, the hyperbolic, hyperactive blogger behind The eBook Test, calls it abominable, largely because it has no SD memory card slot and isn't compatible with ePub, the prevailing open-source publishing software. That, of course, speaks to a larger issue that has a lot of industry folks concerned. Amazon—as a leading seller of eBooks—is positioning itself to dominate the market by both producing and exclusively selling their own eBook format.

I'm also still not a believer in an eBook reader, exclusively. As iPhones, iTouches, and an assortment of other mobile devices integrate eBook reader apps, it makes a lot more sense to me that someone would pay several-hundred dollars for something that can do everything that an iPhone can, rather than $359 for a Kindle 2, which is stuck largely as a reader (and can only read Kindle-converted and sold texts). Sure, it can access some blogs and download some newspapers (which begs a monthly subscription rate). And $9.99 for a book is a break off of the $25.99 retail price of most hardbacks, but not so much for paperbacks that already clock in at $13.95, $14.95.

That's not to say I don't want one. I still like the idea of the Kindle, I'm just put off a bit by the monopoly reek it emits. And the new version isn't washing any of that away.