Jorge Quinteros
Blogger, web enthusiast & avid photographer based in Brooklyn.

14th June 2010

By no means do I consider myself a decent writer in comparison to the blogs I follow but I’ve developed a huge esteem for the people who write them and I believe in supporting their craft to enjoy more of it, especially if it involves using a device for it.

Kyle Baxter has taken all his best articles from 2009, assembled them into a book, and published it on the Kindle store. Talk about instant pleasure and as an added bonus, it’s only $4.99.

I think we all have theories, observations or opinions that float in our heads that often go unmentioned because they’re sometimes just kept as solid thoughts but a great writer is able to summon all this thinking and shape it into something tangible and express them so eloquently with words that they make you understand topics you had no idea you would develop an interest for.

This is exactly how I feel about Kyle’s writing, so know I have no choice but to always look forward to his writing.

21st April 2010

The reason I’ve always preferred to buying my own books rather than borrowing is because I’m the type of reader that has a penchant for excessive note-taking and highlighting as a form of referencing back on something significant.

On the Kindle, I highlight passages like crazy and I enjoy the ability to access them in 2 ways: By connecting the Kindle via USB and exporting every highlighted passage into a .txt format or online at AmazonKindle.

Oddly enough on Kindle for Mac, you can only view what you’ve highlighted but you can’t copy and paste.

With eBooks, you should be able to share more of what you read and while I’ve might not have given the idea much thought, I’m all for Craig Mod’s suggestion in how nimble text should be on the Kindle.

If I’m reading a particularly great passage in, say, On Writing Well, and wish to quote it to my Twitter followers, I should be able to do that seamlessly within Kindle.app. I select a highlight and choose “broadcast.”

Kindle.app will then cut the text and include a link in the tweet. The link will send my followers to the corresponding page in On Writing Well on amazon.com. They can browse the preceding and following pages for context, and then choose to buy. If they already own the book, they can read it, right there, in that web interface.

I would love to see this on a future software update.

30th November 2009

Rachel Cooke on what online book retailers lack in comparison to a conventional brick and mortar bookstores that we’re use to -

Amazon does not set the synapses crackling the way the sight of a pristine shelf of books does: it does not surprise you, nor does it fuel book hunger. You click on what you came for, and then you leave. This, then, is where the independent store, with its carefully edited collection, comes in.

I’ve bragged enough about what a wonderful and practical piece of hardware the Kindle has been that it’s sickening at times but not at one point have I ever lost the fascination that exist in visiting a bookstore despite not ever actually buying a book.

For me it’s more about the experience than it is about what’s offered because at the end of the day, physical stores have fewer books, higher prices, and offer less valuable information than anywhere online. Come to think of it, if that’s the case, maybe it’s the adjacent Starbucks to the B&N that keeps me coming back more than anything.

I think the grounds by which some people still buy books in stores is either because they’re still fearful of purchasing anything online or they just want the book right away to indulge in. I fall in the category of people that roam the store examining books that draw their attention, they take notes of the author or title and subsequently make their purchase online or on the Kindle.

9th October 2009

Amongst all the features and perks that are included to highlight a product on a company website, sometimes even all that information can get in the way of find out what you really want to know about something. In this case it’s about the newly introduce Kindle with International Wireless and K.indled site has answered any questions you may have had about the device.