One thing I really love about the Kindle is that there are tons of free books out there if you are willing to go through the agony of converting the file and then using USB to transfer them rather than just buying them and downloading them wirelessly over Sprint’s cellular network. It’s beautiful, you can convert all of the books that aren’t copyrighted and end up with this (click the pictures to make them bigger):

but then sometimes things are not well in Kindleland and the converter gives you this:

But how can you complain with free?

Well, I know this is hard to believe but this post is not about an Amazon Kindle but its actually being sent from an Amazon Kindle. How, you might ask? Stay tuned…

After looking into eReaders and where this technology is going, one has to see the correlation between this technology and these types of projects. The Associated Press has an article on Carnegie Mellon University’s project to put books online, similar to the Gutenberg Project or Google’s book project. Currently, CMU’s project has about 1.5 million books with thousands more added each day.

Amazon’s Kindle is on the right track by including the ability to connect, via WIFI or broadband cellular, to the internet and download books to satisfy our “I want it now” cravings. Sure, Amazon will profit off of this and this will be good for them. But they are setting the bar. Someone will come along with the same desire to spread knowledge that founded the $100 laptop project and combine eReaders with online book projects and create an eReader that can access the online book projects almost anywhere you are.

I don’t think the technology is there yet, but I’m excited to see what is going on in this field. Store all of your books in one place so that you can access them at any time, search through all the text in all of your books, tag sections, add notes to the margins, sharing content with others….ok maybe not that last one but you see where I’m going. We did this with our music, we’re doing it with our movies/TV, books are next.

As a huge fan of reading, I think this field is moving in some good directions. People say that nothing will ever beat the feel of a thick, captivating novel on a cold and rainy day but I’m willing to give up feelings for features. Have a look at what others think:

• Ars Technica
• Stephen Shields
• Justin Taylor
• Tim Challies