According to Amazon NowNow, Amazon shipped approximately 4,000 Kindles. This number may be true or false but the number has me wondering about the number of people waiting. If you are tired of waiting - and the waiting is turning to anger - what are your thoughts?

I asked in Amazon NowNow, why isn't Amazon releasing their sales figures?

A nasty answer came back stating: "Why do you care?" I care because the number of sales validates my interest and purchase. I am human - and happier when a large purchase is made and know other people made the same purchase.

A second answer stated Amazon does not need to release the sales figures. Well, they could generate more excitement - unless they are hiding something. Of course, there is an obvious snag. By not releasing the sales numbers then some people think something is wrong.

Finally, a third answer suggested Amazon did not sell that many Kindles and does not want people to know this information. OK. No big deal. I love my Kindle and consider myself to be one of the lucky ones. You will be happy when you get yours too.

Interestingly, one Kindle is not enough. I find myself sitting and watching others use my Kindle. In fact, my Amazon Kindle is very popular with the family. My younger sister loves to flip through a couple books on the Kindle. My older sister wanted to borrow "the book" (aka the Kindle). One of my brothers put several samples onto the Kindle - Thank you for not buying them with my account. My parents have grabbed the Kindle and flipped through different texts, too. Actually, every person who has been over to the house this holiday season has picked up the Kindle and read. 

Yes, the Kindle is very popular this Holiday. Are you having trouble keeping track of your Kindle, too?

Postscript: What about using the GPS feature in the Kindle as a security feature?

One of the nice features regarding the Amazon Kindle is the ability to change the text size for books. I decided the third setting is the easiest on my eyes. The text size allows me to remove my glasses and keep the Kindle at a distance. After reading several books and articles at different text sizes, I am curious if others find their eyes do not hurt after reading for a long period of time. 

Postscript: What are you reading today? I downloaded Bill Bryson's A short history of nearly everything. No, I will not include a link because I am simply curious whether anyone else is reading something interesting.

Numerous features are silently sitting inside your Amazon Kindle.

Bonus content

The main GUI and most of the back-end code is written in Java. The framework is quite elaborate and can be extended with extra "booklets".
After spending some time investigating it with JAD, I found some undocumented shortcuts, features and easter eggs. Here's a more or less complete list.

Picture viewer

I'm not sure why Amazon didn't make it public (maybe because paging is kinda slow), but there is a basic picture viewer in Kindle.
To activate it:
1) make a folder called "pictures" in the root of Kindle drive or SD card. Kindle also checks for "dcim" made by cameras.
2) put your pictures for a single "book" into a folder inside that. The subfolder name will be used as the "book" name. Supported formats are jpg, png, gif.
3) in Home screen press Alt-Z. A new "book" should appear. Open it to view your pictures.
4) In the local menu you can toggle dithering, resize to fit and full screen mode.

Keyboard shortcuts

Various undocumented/underdocumented keyboard shortcuts. I italicized most interesting ones.

Global keys

Alt-Shift-R reboot Kindle
Alt-Shift-. restart GUI
Alt-Shift-G make screenshot
due to an implementation bug, screenshots can only be stored on SD card, not the main storage. A gif file is saved in the card root.
Shift-Sym start demo
Enabled only if allow_demo=true is passed on the Java commandline. Needs a special demo script present on the SD card.

Home

Alt-Shift-M Minesweeper
Alt-Z rescan picture directories
Alt-T show time

Reader

Alt-B toggle bookmark
Alt-T spell out time
Alt-0 enable/disable slideshow
Alt-1 start slideshow (if enabled)
Alt-2 stop slidehow
Alt-PageForward/PageBackward go to next/prev annotation or one "chunk" (1/20th of a book) forward or backward

Settings

411 show diagnostics data
511 run loopback call test
611 diagnostic data service call
c/e/s
126 Lab126 team members

Font List

J show/hide justification options

Picture viewer

Alt-Shift-0 set current picture as screensaver
F toggle fullscreen mode

Minesweeper

I,J,K,L up,left,down,right
M mark mine
R restart
Space open cell
Scroll move cursor up/down
Alt-Scroll move cursor left/right
H return to Home screen

Text input

Alt-Backspace clear all
Alt-H/Alt-J move cursor
(the following don't work in search field for some reason)
Alt-6 ?
Alt-7 ,
Alt-8 :
Alt-9 "
Alt-0 '

Browser

It seems there is a location capability (GPS?) in the CDMA module. I cannot check it as I'm not in USA but the following shortcuts are programmed inside the browser.
Alt-1 show current location in google maps
Alt-2 find gas station nearby
Alt-3 find restaurants nearby
Alt-4
Alt-5 find custom keyword nearby
Alt-D dump debug info to the log and toggle highlight default item
Alt-Z toggle zone drawing and show log

Audio Player

Alt-F next
Alt-P play/stop

Search commands

These command work in the search field. You can enter only beginning of the command if that's enough for it to be unique.
Public commands (always available)

@help
@web
@wiki/@wikipedia
@store
@time

Semiprivate (available but not mentioned in @help)

;dumpMessages dump current debug log into the "documents" directory
;debugOn set log level=2 and enable private commands
;debugOff set log level=1 and disable private commands

Private commands

Note: following commands are clearly not intended for end users. Some of them may damage your Kindle and void your warranty. Enter at your own risk.

`help list private commands
`7777 set version to TOPmk-xyz-77770 (to disable OTA updates?)
`voltLog <1|0> enable/disable voltage table debug
`batteryLoggingDelay set battery logging delay (in seconds)
`pppStop close WAN PPP connection
`disableIndexing
`logOpenFiles
`startIndexing
`dumpBattery
`indexStatus
`compliance
`einkAdjustments
`allocate [MB]
`log611
`reloadContentRoster
`indexForever
`downloadIndex
`consumeMemory
`terminal
`checkForUpdate
`applyUpdate
`stopIndexing
`processNowNow
`processTodo
`countUnmergedDownloadedIndexes
`dumpIndexStats
`memInfo

The forum polls are open for nominations of 2007 technology product of the year. Feel free to nominate your favorite UMPC, Tablet PC, or MID. Make sure that the Apple iPhone does not take the forums by storm by nominating the Amazon Kindle rather than the Apple iPhone.

Dean Takahashi, Mercury News, states the Amazon Kindle and Sony Reader are signature products of the year 2007.

The short read is titled a first look and hopefully there will be a more in-depth analysis of the differences between the two products.

Have you noticed that the number of discussions about the Kindle have continued throughout the month of December?

Digital Media Wire provides four positive comments about the Amazon Kindle and concludes:

If you put all these pieces together, the interesting conclusion is that the Kindle may represent the first real product that challenges our perceptions about how people are consuming content.

What are the four pieces?

1. RSS Feeds

2. Integrates magazines, books, newspapers, and blogs

3. Emphasis on real time information

4. Amazon's full library at a single click

What do you think? Do these four pieces make the Amazon Kindle the most lust after gadget?

Holly Buchanan discovered Amazon's personalization feature. She points out that the ads for the Kindle change hands. Males see a man's hands holding the Kindle and females see female hands.

What marketing features have you discovered are working for you? Should Amazon market on television? Should magazine ads be used? What about Amazon representatives attending CES 2008? Do representatives canvas college campuses? How about striking deals with bookstores?

Reports are surfacing this week that eBay auctions of the Amazon Kindle are double the original price. While some people doubt that the quick sell-out was real, the willingness to pay twice the price suggests there is a demand for the product.

We are left wondering how many Amazon Kindles sold this year - and they will have to disclose this number eventually. Will they wait until the last minute? Will people feel tricked if the sell-out numbers are small? Will bloggers write the sarcastic "I told you so" in their blog posts?

Do you believe the lack of sales figures is an indication of a relatively small number? Do you believe that the lack of disclosure might be the downfall of the product?

I wonder if Amazon officials worry about the questioning of the number of Amazon Kindle sales. Wouldn't you?

Management Craft published an overview of their first day with the Kindle.

What a cool device and I know I am going to LOVE it. The combination of books, newspapers, magazines, and blogs is great. I have not tried this yet, but I can highlight text and create a file of clips and quotes that I want to refer to again. I can search anywhere in the content. It has a dictionary and Wikipedia. And I can download audio books and listen using headphones (or background music). If the 180megs of storage is not enough, I can add an SD memory card. And so much more I have not yet discovered.