If you recall, this is essentially the same thing he tried to pull with Netscape, when he copied Digg’s concept back in their early days. He attempted manufacture a community by paying users to submit articles. I’m not sure how Mahalo works, but I question if it’s in the black now.

If you read his Twitter posts, he’s (as someone on one of Laporte’s shows said) he’s the PT Barnum of the Internet. A shameless self-promoter and showman.

You do bring an interesting discussion forward though in mentioning netbooks. It didn’t seem to me that Jobs was trying to reach the geeks, but rather the huddled masses that yearn for something less “techno-centric” than the netbook. There are those that find netbooks “too geeky” and yet they crave portable computing. THESE are the people the iPad will reach.

Oh–and the people that I have heard that say this will replace their Macbook when they travel.

i admit i haven’t watched netflix’s instant watch since i don’t have a netflix account, but i do watch hulu often. hulu, which is not in full high definition, comes through in better than standard cable quality for sure. however, even at 480p, my internet struggles to watch glee and greek episodes (yeah, i admit it…) without hiccoughs.

digital distribution may be good for games since graphics information is rendered from code, but distributing whole movies via the internet is *expensive*. all that throughput and bandwidth, the time it takes to download uncompressed video (and audio) … and anyone with comcast internet will tell you how unreliable the service is. you don’t want to be at the climax of “bad boys 2″ only to have your movie pause and start to buffer again.

my web browser unexpectedly crashing at home wouldn’t be too much of an issue – but having ms excel take a dump while you’re working on a client deliverable? that’s what makes it so irritating to work with.

i watch wavy news 10 in va beach here because the weekend weather girl is also a penn state grad

.. and that’s pretty much the only reason.

windows has been pretty bland since 95. every iteration since has pretty much been a new skin on the same underlying platform. there have been some amazing things independent linux developers have done with the user interface for the various distros, and everyone knows apple is the king of the UI world with not just OS X but all their devices. stability has improved quite a bit, but in the last week alone in the office i saw 2 co-workers get blue screens on their laptops.

add in the original zune which failed incredibly (especially with that brown option) and that’s really damaged their reputation. they’re not hip. they’re not cutting edge. they’re not pushing limits.

however, i think they’re doing well with the xbox 360 (i hate my ps3 except for the blu-ray player in it), the first looks i’ve seen of the zune HD look pretty cool actually, and using the RC of windows 7 on a virtual machine – i have to say it’s actually not bad. but is it a little too late? maybe. the hardest thing to do is fix a damaged reputation — and microsoft is definitely damaged goods.

there’s a slight difference, but the difference is still there.

So far, the synching has been working great for me. Just confirm that your Kindle and your iPhone are both registered to the same account that manages your Kindle. Then, when you open the Kindle app on your phone, you should have a section called “Archived Items”. These are items that you have already purchased for your Kindle. Go ahead and select one. Then, once the item is downloaded to your phone, both your Kindle and your phone should keep track of the last page read on either device.

To manually trigger the synch, just touch the page you are reading on your phone and then touch the bottom-right icon (arrows going in a circle). This then checks to see if you have read further ahead on your Kindle.

Hope that helps.

I am a Kindle 1 owner. My biggest adjustment was overcoming my vanity. Maybe it’s just me…but I miss displaying all of my books around my home and office.

The Kindle is very compact and helps pass the time during my commute on the DC Metro. The wireless access from anywhere is great. The screen is easy on the eyes and I feel like I am reading at a much faster pace.

I must say, the digital paper approach on the Kindle is much easier on the eyes than I thought it would be. But, books have their place too.

Like you, I’m just glad that it has the potential to reignite passion for reading.

My book is for sale on Amazon.com. Does that mean I can get it on the Kindle easily? I guess my publisher had to do it?

Note to authors … if you try to download a formatted book onto Kindle, it doesn’t translate. You have to reformat. Amazon will place your book for you on Kindle free of charge if you list your book for sale on Amazon.com.

So great that people are reading!!