Wednesday September 1
 
11:37
 
Annoying Kindle book pricing

Tony Blair’s memoirs “A Journey” are out tomorrow. Rather annoyingly, while the Kindle edition is only $10.82 in the UK, it’s $18.90 in the USA, and even more in Asia. Be warned Amazon, Knopf, and Cornerstone Digital – it’s that kind of pricing that causes people to Google for a torrent of the ebook!

Tony Blair has PDF extracts of his book here – they discuss Gordon Brown, Iraq, and Northern Island.

I’m not one for reading memoirs, biographies, or autobiographies – but this is one book I would like to read. Maybe because I lived through the politics and followed it and understood it more than at any other time, or maybe because unlike Thatcher, until the Iraq issue, I had admiration for Tony Blair. In any case, I wont be buying until the non-UK price comes into line with the UK price!

Monday August 30
 
16:58
 
Kindle 3 Review – a real review by an eBook enthusiast

Thinking to get a Kindle 3? Want to real review, from someone who is an avid eBook reader? Read on…

Friday August 27
 
18:07
 
Kindle 3 Burnt Orange Case unboxing – but where’s the Kindle?!!

August 27th and the day of release of the Kindle 3. My Kindle 3 burnt orange case just arrived and here’s my first ever unboxing, including a brief comparison with the Kindle 2 case.

Unfortunately my Kindle 3 is still flying from the US to Tokyo and since UPS Tokyo doesn’t work on weekends, it’s going to arrive tomorrow (Saturday) and then sit for 48 hours before being delivered. Why don’t you deliver on Saturday, UPS??! That’s a delivery FAIL – hence the background of FAIL from I Can Has Cheezburger Pro Clock on the iPad :)

Unboxing here!

Thursday August 26
 
10:58
 
My Kindle 3 is on its way!

Email arrived from Amazon early this morning to say my Burnt Orange leather Kindle 3 cover has shipped. Checking the Amazon website, I see this in the order status for my full Kindle order:

I contacted Amazon a few days ago and they told me that my Kindle order would be shipped on time – ie, on or before 27th. This hopefully confirms it: “This portion of your order is being prepared for shipment and cannot be canceled of changed.”

Since I live in Japan and since the Kindle will probably be shipped by UPS and since UPS doesn’t work on weekends in Japan, I don’t expect to get my Kindle until early next week if it’s shipping from the US (which the cover is). I’m eagerly awaiting the shipping notification for the Kindle itself though – who knows, it may ship from China and get here sooner than I expect!

Update 27/08:

My case has arrived in Tokyo! Whether it will get to me today or not, I don’t know – though it’s kind of a mute point without the Kindle to go inside it! The case is actually being shipped by DHL, not UPS.

As expected, the Kindle itself is being shipped by UPS, leaving Amazon a few hours back. It has travelled from Newark to Philadelphia and I suspect will go onto Louisville and possibly Anchorage (if the last Kindle is anything to go by) before arriving in Tokyo tomorrow. It will then sit motionless for 48 hours because UPS is closed on weekends. Hmph.

Tuesday August 10
 
11:08
 
Confusion over Amazon’s UK Kindle store

With the launch of the Kindle 3, Amazon also launched an Amazon.co.uk version of the Kindle store:

What’s not clear, however, is how the UK and the US store are going to co-exist. Currently it’s still possible to go to Amazon.com and change your region to the UK. Here’s the same book in the Amazon.com store with region set to the UK – note the “includes VAT” line:

This raises all sorts of questions:

• Currently the two stores co-exist but later will current UK users be forced out of the Amazon.com store and into the Amazon.co.uk store?
• Will current UK kindle users have the ability to transfer existing purchases from their Amazon.com account to their Amazon.co.uk account? And if so, what happens if they previously lived in the US (or another country) – will those purchases be transferred to the UK store or will they need to switch Kindle registration between .com and .co.uk sites to access previously purchased books?
• The current Kindle help pages state that if you move out of the UK, you need to use the Amazon.com Kindle store and select your region appropriately. But will your purchases follow you?

New Kindle purchasers probably don’t have any option but to use the Amazon.co.uk Kindle store because Amazon.com will no longer ship Kindles to the UK. However if you’re an existing customer, I see no reason to rush to use the Amazon.co.uk Kindle store until Amazon.com forces you to do so – at least until the points above are clarified.

Kindle UK: WIFI 109 GBP, 3G 149 GBP. For the syncing features – your place in the book is sync’d with Amazon’s servers so that if you open the same book on your iPad or iPhone, it knows your position – and the ability to buy books wherever you are in the world without a PC, I would definitely recommend the 3G Kindle.

Update: A comment on Wikipedia claims: ...existing UK users are offered the option of migrating to the UK Kindle store, with no loss to their existing purchases. If that’s true, that would show that users can move the the US to the UK store, but not necessarily back again.