Ode to a Broken Kindle

I own an Amazon Kindle, one of those e-reader devices that lets you read books, magazines, and just about anything else on a (relatively) small electronic device. There’s a problem with my Kindle, though. It’s broken. (Insert sad violin music here.)

The break stems from what, in my mind anyway, is a design flaw in the device itself. When you buy a cover for the Kindle, which most people do, the cover gets hooked directly into the side of the Kindle. Normally, this is nice. The cover doesn’t slide around, looks nice, and keeps the Kindle protected. What could go wrong?

Well, apparently, when you open the cover from the back of the Kindle instead of the front, it can bend the plastic pieces hooking the cover to the device. These pieces, once bent, slowly work their way into the wrong place inside the Kindle, and eventually start cracking and breaking it on the front. You can probably see this in my picture (you have to look pretty closely).

The Kindle isn’t technically broken; it still works. But the cover now doesn’t fit quite right, and it kind of weirds me out to try to read with it now with a little chunk missing out of it.

Don’t get me wrong; I’ve really liked the Kindle. It’s a convenient way to get a book whenever you want it. It’s comfortable to read. I think the best feature is its use of e-ink, which puts all the text you read into a very readable, easy-on-the-eyes form. If you’re like me, you’re not a fan of reading a lot off of computer screens. The e-ink solves that problem beautifully. Apple’s new iPad tablet might look neat, but the computer screen would make reading long books a problem for me and my eyes.

As far as my broken Kindle goes, I’m hoping that Amazon will make things right. (Insert trumpet fanfare here.) They even sent out an email about this very problem, suggesting people who experience it contact their customer service about getting it fixed. That’s exactly what I’m going to try. I’ll let you know in the future how it turns out. Hopefully Amazon can live up to the good service they’re supposedly known for!

The [Google] Wave of the Future?

Whether you’ve ever heard of it or not, in the future Google Wave might be the main method of communication in our world, period. Bigger than telephone, bigger than letters, bigger than email.

At least, that’s what they tell us.

I received an invite to try out Google Wave a few weeks ago, and let’s just say this product is still very much in beta. There’s a lot of bugs in it, it can be slow to open, and it can crash at any time. Beyond that, it’s just plain slow and awkward to use.

But still, the possibilities of this product look pretty exciting. To really get a feel for what Google Wave is and what it does, click here. As a pastor, I’m interested in applications for Bible study, church work groups, prayer requests, and lots of other uses that are possibilities with Wave.

As of now, you can only be on Google Wave if you have an invite. These invites were once pretty scarce, but are getting more common. I have a little more than 10 invites I’d like to give away. If you want one, just post a comment to this post, and I’ll see what I can do. Note: you must leave your email address in some way for me to be able to invite you!

By the way, I’m pastorwalters [at] googlewave.com if you want to contact me on Wave. Maybe I’ll see you on the internet communication tool of the future!