You probably need to have been living in a cave for the past few months (or just blissfully uncaring about advances in digital technology) to not have realised that Amazon has released it’s Kindle book reader.

Enough people have shared their opinions on the matter (a select few links are at the bottom of the post) so I will save you yet another dissection of the gadget. My only Kindle-specific views are:

1. It is just so damnedly ugly
2. I love that you can connect via wireless to Amazon to get books
3. Why is it so cripplingly content locked?

Please Note: these views are based TOTALLY on other peoples reviews of the Kindle. I haven’t had the (mis)fortune to play with one myself yet. This might change. It most likely will not.

Instead I’m going to use this post to answer Jeremy’s question of what I want from an e-book reader a bit more in depth than I could in the comments.

My mobile telephony needs have once again been thrown into sharp focus after I so spectacularly flattened my last one. As I was wandering through West Quay shopping centre the other day, I pondered once again why, when I want a mobile that lets me easily browse, send emails, upload pictures, take calls, has a useable UI and looks good, I keep holding off from getting one. It might be because I am a stingy cow, and what keeps me from upgrading is the payment model. For my mobile phone I am used to paying for what I use, and that not a lot. I don’t like data plans because who the hell knows if they are going to be using 1, 2, 10, or 100000000 oogies of data transfer each month till they’ve tried it for a bit?! I am also miffed because the phone I want isn’t on the network or plan I want. Why do mobile phones have to be locked to a carrier and price-plan? For example I would be more likely to go for an iPhone if it was not tied to 18 months on O2, a carrier I have never been able to get a signal on in the areas I live, work and play. I resent paying a premium for the handset I want and I doubt I’m the only one so I have to stray into the shady world of phone-unlocking and crippled features depending on the limits of my plan. It is not a scenario I am happy with. Yes, I know I live in cloud cuckoo land where we can chomp merrily down on the cakes we also possess, but, damn it! I can’t be the only one thinking like this?

Plus, if I am being honest here, do I really need to get my emails and browse on the go? Probably not.

So how does this mobile phone rant tie into the Kindle and my ambivalence? There is a link, I promise you.

It is all to do with the content locking and the payment method. Amazon have one thing right in that you pay per download for books, instead of in advance, but my spidy senses are still tingling. What about all the text documents and free e-books I have already got stored LEGALLY on my laptop? They were free and open when I got them, which is why I have them, so why should I want to pay to read them on my Kindle? What about documents I have written myself and want to read on my own Kindle/device away from the laptop? Want to read over a draft of your own novel whilst curled up in bed? Sorry. You’ve got to pay Amazon for the privilege of getting it onto the Kindle in the first place.

And then there is the styling. Can you really imagine being comfortable pulling a Kindle out of your bag to read on the train? My Filofax gets me looks of retro admiration. My PowerBook still has its sleek titanium 12″ gorgeousness going for it. My iPod, even if it is now 4 generations of styling out of date, still looks reassuringly sexy. The Kindle? Just thinking about using it in public makes me want to curl up in a ball of my quirky aesthetic and die. So I am shallow. I am going to be paying hundreds of my hard earned cash for the privilege of totting this thing around – of course I want it to look good!

Before my rant starts to disappear up its own derrière, perhaps I should clarify what I want from my fantasy e-book reader?

Portable
This kind of goes without saying, really. By portable I mean no larger than about the size of a large paperback because that is the biggest size which is 1) easy to hold and 2) fits in my handbag. Plus, of course, it has to be slim and light. My Filofax weighs enough already and as I am still a depressingly analogue girl at heart, I suspect I am going to give it bag-room in preference to a digital gizmo any day of the week.

Scroll view OR paged view
Give me choice. Give me options.

Mac compatible!
You would think this went without saying, but it doesn’t. I have no plans or desire to ever go back to being a personal Windows user. It is not inconceivable that I might stray into Linux territory, but either way, my device is going to be supported on as many OS’s as possible.

DRM independent
I may not like it, but I accept that the e-books I buy may come laden with a form of DRM. It would be nice if they didn’t, but I live in the real world. However, my reader will be able to display all formats, both the locked, the crippled, and the gloriously free. See my afore mentioned grumble about having to pay to read my own draft writings? I don’t want that to happen.

Search
What is the point of having all that text in digital form if you cannot search it? I will not embarrass myself by admitting the number of times I have read a physical book or journal and wished for search…

Note Taking and Annotating
Scrawling notes on drafts and research papers is vital. Being able to tag notes to a particular part of a digital text? Goosebump time. A reliable tagging and bookmarking functionality are key.

Text input functionality
This is kind of necessary if it is to have that annotating functionality. I am not sure the form they input should take. My preference would be for a physical QWERTY, but I could be persuaded to adapt to an alpha-numeric keypad a la a mobile (so long as it had decent predictive text), or a handwriting interface like a Palm, or… something I haven’t thought of. Do I want to be able to write documents from scratch or just edit/tag/annotate extant ones? Now that’s a questions. If it is to be a proper mobile computing device then I need to be able to at least write emails…

WiFi
I am willing to pay for internet use on the fly but if I am in the range of my own home WiFi, let me use it and save some cash! I am not sure if I am sold with the method the Kindle uses to get content. The whole dock-with-computer-to-get-new-content ritual is familiar from the iPod, but it would be nice if my shiny e-book reader could do more than just display me some books. If it could let me browse online as well, connect to ebook stores (not just the one of course!) all the better. If it could let me ‘beam’ books and text to other people? Oooh. Depending of course on the text input functionality, if it could let me blog on the move… Well, that would eliminate the need for me to have many digital devices.

This is where my wish-list for an e-book device is blurring into my wish for a portable media platform, I will admit it.

Colour
Why do I want a colour screen when books are essentially black/white? Well, if it is going to have that lovely WiFi so I can look at things online, why am I limiting myself to just black and white? On top of that, B/W is perhaps one of the worst colour contrasts it is conceivable to have for screen reading. Right now I am writing on a screen with white text on blue – let my device have a quality screen and a customisable display. Screen reading is not the most fun experience in the world and after a while your eyes get tired. Plus, let us not forget the number of people who have visual problems. Hands up who has ever bumped the resolution up/down on their screen, flipped the colours, increased the font size? Right…

Audio
Well, digital media encompasses audio as well, so let me listen to my podcasts and audio books and music. I am not expecting the device to be able to spew out dolby digital surround sound, just a recognisable tune through some headphones.

Easy to use
Watching Curly Durly play with her Christmas TomTom I was struck with how she is just plain scared of technology. Beyond a certain level it freaks her out and she is petrified of breaking it. I fully expect this is because for the past two decades barely a day has gone by in the house without one of us yelling at a particular piece of (computing) technology that (once again) wasn’t functioning as we expected it to. Her “it’s too complicated for me to understand” mentality started as a defense mechanism but has become something of a self-fulfilling prophecy, so getting her to adopt technology is an uphill struggle. To this day she still SHOUTS in her text-messages and anything beyond the VCR defeats her, but she was getting to grips with the TomTom after just a few minutes because there was a limited range of things she could do to start with and it would take some going to f*** it up. It really was “out of the box” easy. I want my device to pass the Mum Test – I want her to pick it up, be comfortable with it, and to be reading books without having to wade through a fifty page manual first.

Looks good
I know. I know. I know. What is and isn’t good looking is highly subjective and I am no designer, but in my head my device is sleek. Elegant. Smooth edges. I have no colour preferences, nor am I a die-hard fan of the current trends for brushed metal and/or white plastic, but… It is going to have to be classy. Timeless. Something you want to pick up. Something you covet. Something that goes “I am worth the money she paid for me”, but says it in a refined manner. A top-range Tag Heuer timepiece instead of Argos-Chav-Bling.

Photos
Now I am just being silly, but I have got to be able to photo-blog from my portable media platform, haven’t I?

And there you get to the sleeping policeman in the avenue of my reasoning, because I don’t actually want an e-book reader when all is said and done. I want an all-singing, all-dancing multimedia mobile computing platform device that will let me do anything and everything, including reading e-books. And make me a decent cup of tea into the bargain. I want it to be extensible and legitimately hackable like the Chumby so I can benefit from the things other people created that I never dreamed of.

The one thing I *don’t* want is for it to be my only mobile phone. I want my phone to be, well, a phone. Something I can stick in my jeans pocket on a night out so I have something to call a taxi with and to arrange to meet up with other mates further down the evening. Something I’m not going to be out £500 when I drop it, sit on it, leave it in a taxi… I’m not saying that I don’t want my device to be able to take/make calls and route them through my bluetooth earpiece, but that’s not actually a deal-breaker.

Everything else though. That I want.

I just don’t want a Kindle because it disappoints me as I think it has disappointed other people. Frustratingly it could be so much more. But am I on the wrong track here? If this 3000 word ramble shows you nothing else, it is that even I am not sure what I want myself.

I’ve tried to put down in this post what I want from a mobile computing device and where I see mobile, ubiquitous computing going, but I am still not convinced. It is all a bit too nebulous still. Plus I am still not totally convinced that I even want an e-book reader. I love physical books too much. I had a great time over Christmas rummaging through the crates of books in the loft from my childhood. The memories they evoked were just so powerful. Can I, will I, ever feel that for a digital book? I have e-books sitting on the laptop right now but I rarely (if ever) read them. Is that because the mechanism I have for reading them (sitting at my desk) is unsatisfactory, or because I just don’t like e-books? And is a useable e-book reader, as Scoble points out if you can bear to sit through his rant (link below), not necessarily the death of physical books as doomsayers predict, but are people going to end up with a digital copy AND a physical copy? Try it in digital form for a nominal cost, enjoy it, share it with friends, buy a copy for your bookshelf to read in the bath? Instead of wanting my tea-making-device, should I be wanting an e-book reader that excels at being just that: a reader for my digital library?

I quite clearly cannot make up my own mind.

I’m going to extend Jeremy’s original question to all you lot here: What do you want from an e-book reader?

Links:

• The Kindle has landed
• Gizmodo do a good basic Q&A with the Kindle
• Is Amazon’s Kindle the ereader we’ve been waiting for
• Scoble’s rant review

Ah, there’s nothing quite like hanging a new calendar to make you reflect on the year past and the year to come, is there?

I didn’t do a “new year” post last year for some reason so I can’t look back reliably on 2007 to tell if it went as I had planned or predicted. I do know that, on the whole, it went really rather spankingly well. Technically my domestic situation (single, rented flat) is exactly the same as it was a year ago, as is my employment situation, and I still spend my leisure time in a similar way, but the little things have changed dramatically. 2007, I am confident saying, rocked.

This is the part of the movie where the villain swivels round in that big chair, stroking a fluffy Persian, reveals his cunning plan for total world domination and utters a trailer-worthy line like “no, Mr Bond, I expect you to die!”.

Followed by twenty minutes filled with explosions and implausible martial arts scenes, before our villain dies in some gruesome (but still vaguely comedic) fashion, with just enough breath left in his body to lie in the ruins of his secret volcano layer and curse something along the lines of “I’d have made it if it wasn’t for those pesky kids…” before the camera pans to the dashing hero swooping the swooning heroine off into the sunset.

Perhaps I should rethink this analogy?…

So what’s my plan for 2008?

Well, even though reading about other people’s resolutions is rather boring, and I have a whole “don’t plan because it is going to go arse-over-tit” thing, I’m going to share mine this year. Because I am nice like that and I believe in tempting fate. So in no order what-so-ever:

1. Continue the whole healthy lifestyle kick I’ve been on since September. I already feel oodles better (damn it all those I-told-you-so people will never shut up now) and am on the verge of having to buy new, smaller clothes (woot!) so it would be silly to stop now I guess. It’s just nice having muscle definition again. Plus the whole being able to go through a day without my back imploding in agony is rather pleasant
2. A new look for Bright Meadow. Yeah, I know, I’ve been saying this for so long now you’re getting bored, but it *will* happen!
3. Move to London. This will (baring the unforeseen) happen. If I’m not celebrating my birthday in London this year (or at least a city that boasts a reputable publishing house and isn’t Southampton), I will want a BLOODY good reason why not
4. Jump out of a plane. (Relax, attached to a parachute!)
5. Get a job in publishing. Again, this is a “barring acts of divine intervention” deal. At least if I haven’t landed the job by December 31st 2008, I want to be well on my way to getting it. Or have spent the past six months lying on a beach in Maui writing a best-selling novel after winning the lottery as reason why not
6. Get more of my damn writing done! I’d like to say that I’ll have a finished draft by the end of 2008, but I’m not that optimistic. I just want to have had fun writing it
7. Go on more dates. Frankly, I need to get a life. Rapidly. Before I hit 26 and end up a bitter, twisted, crazy cat lady

And that’s it. That’s my 2008 mapped out right there. Is any of it going to come true? Fingers crossed. Am I going to be upset if it doesn’t all come off according to plan? Not overly. Just so long as I have fun along the way 🙂

What have you got planned for this forthcoming year? Do share.

Wondering why I haven’t posted lately? Let me introduce you to the shattered remains of my new Razr to give you some indication of how shockingly shite my weeks have been lately.

I didn’t lay out money for it thankfully – Thanks to changing contract, the CCM had a barely used handset that needed a good home. I was fed up to the back teeth with my own phone (a Samsung D600 I never managed to love in over a year of having it. Something about the whole experience just didn’t gel) so I jumped at the chance for a new phone. Just over a week later and… splat. One misstep in a cafe et voila. It is quite impressive what the full weight of me crashing down onto my handbag can do to a phone. Thankfully the only thing dented other than the phone was my pride, so I’m able to laugh at the situation.

Laughing at the situation was much helped by my colleagues assorted reactions. “Oh, it’s a little bit demented, isn’t it?” – was the classic understatement of the century from the Boss Lady. A comment which was followed in true team fashion by the Tickle going “I’m sure we can turn it back on… where’s the battery meant to go?… This bent bit here?… You got some sellotape?… What did you DO to this thing?!… Um, yeah, I don’t think we’re going to be able to turn it back on…”

At least my reputation as the clumsiest project support this side of the Horse Head Nebula is still intact.

How does this relate to my lack of blogging? It just serves as the perfect illustration of the hectic-ness and sheer oddness of the last couple of weeks. Work has hit this “calm before the storm” patch which is freaking me out – we’ve been running on pure adrenalin for over a year now (holy crap where has the time gone?!) so this temporary slow-down to what, for everyone else, is normal working speed just completely throws the whole finely tuned machine out of synch. Yes, our normal working practices look insanely chaotic to outsiders, but they work for us! On top of that I’ve been experiencing a surfeit of festive cheer lately (I am a not-so-secret Scrooge), have the niggles of an RSI attack looming, and am just plain knackered.

All of which, you’ve guessed it, leaves me with no desire to blog.

Then people start prodding me, asking when I’m going to write next, and getting me to meet them for lunch, then texting/emailing/ringing to ask where the Roast is, and… Grrr! I know it is no excuse but I am a contrary minded cow and the more people want me to do something, the more I dig my heels, get a strop on, and resist.

So no blogging.

I fully planned to keep blogging through the festive season, but it turns out I’ve also fallen prey to the general malaise that seems to hit the Web around this time of year as everyone shuts down, goes slow, or simply goes into hermit mode and refuses to come out until 2008 is a few days old and the hang overs have worn off. That last is me by the way.

I fully intend to go into hiding, marshal my reserves, get some writing done and come back in 2008 better and brighter than ever before.

Or at least more awake and hopefully with a new mobile phone!

So have a lovely time doing whatever your religious/social/cultural inclinations would have you do. Be good to your friends and family, and I’ll leave you with some lines from one of my favourite Christmas tunes:

I wish you a hopeful Christmas
I wish you a brave New Year
All anguish pain and sadness
Leave your heart and let your road be clear

*EDIT*
Knew I would forget to say something!
I will still be twittering whilst I’m away. If you’re not already following me on Twitter (and why not), either keep an eye on twitter.com/BrightMeadow, or my tumblog which agregates everything.

Have a good holiday!

*breathes a sigh of relief*

Well the past week felt like a lot longer to me – did it to you?

For everyone who has tried to access Bright Meadow for the past week and has been greeted with a WordPress error page, I got stung with the arse end of Fasthosts security breeches and crap efforts at customer service. You have my biggest possible apologies – if I had known something was going to happen, I would have told y’all and got my backup plan running in time.

As it was, those of you who read the site through RSS, or follow me on Twitter, Facebook, Flickr or 9rules (or cornered me in the office) stood a passing chance of knowing what was going on and followed me to the temporary site of brightmeadow.wordpress.com. The rest of you, I can only say sorry some more!

I’ve still got some things to sort out here around the Meadow, so till further notice, I recommend everyone pays attention to brightmeadow.wordpress.com – the RSS feed still directs there if nothing else!

Please bear with me a little while longer whilst I get things sorted!

I have a dream and that is something that is really rather scary for me to admit. For the longest time I haven’t had any dreams. I made a few plans but always I opted for the path of least resistance and sort of drifted through my late teens and early twenties.

The last time I can remember having a dream, a real, honest to god, burning lamp of a dream that focused my entire being was when I was twelve and determined to be a vet. For as far back as I can remember being focused on these things (I’m not counting childish desires to be a princess or walk on the moon) I wanted to work with animals. I was always a practical child so the dream of becoming a dog breeder was put to one side and I focused all my energy on getting into veterinary school.

This is something that is very hard to do in the UK as there are only six universities that do the course and you need to be freakishly bright to even stand a chance. Well, I am freakishly bright as it turns out, so why the hell not? I won my scholarship to Hogwarts which meant I was best placed to get the best (and most appropriate) GSCEs. I got spankingly good grades in them, which meant I could go and do the A levels I wanted to do. Or rather, the A levels I needed to do, but as want/need were one and the same at this point, I didn’t mind doing the three sciences.

I even enjoyed it.

But thank whatever made me choose a fourth (Archaeology) as a way to leaven the mix of Biology, Chemistry and Physics, because I didn’t make it into any of my four choices for university. I’m not saying I failed at interview stage either. Oh no. I wasn’t even invited to interview.

Which sucked some what.

What sucked more was that my best friend got an interview from all four universities, got an offer from two, and is (as I type) a practicing vet. But I’m not bitter.

I don’t really remember much of the rest of that year at college. I know I finished the year and I still got good grades, and at some point I made the decision to go to do Archaeology somewhere (leading to the true story of choosing my undergraduate university by sticking a pin in a list). But how or when that decision got made I have no clear idea even to this day.

With the complete failure of my veterinary dream – and, I will admit, a healthy dollup of severe depression for several years – I just started coasting. Get a sparklingly brilliant BSc? Cool. Go do an MSc somewhere. In what? Well, you’ve enjoyed Archaeology so far, why not continue? Can’t decide what to research – there could be worse things than something your supervisor mentions over a cup of tea. Need a job? Work for the local authority because they pay reasonably well and the interview to get on the temp pool wasn’t exactly stringent.

Even the job I am doing at the moment, which I enjoy immensely and give everything to, just kinda… happened. Bright Meadow kinda… happened. Everything for the past five years has just kinda… happened, without any input on my part.

I’ve enjoyed it all and really couldn’t think of things I would rather have been doing along the way, but by no stretch of the imagination has any of it been part of a dream.

Till now.

Now my brain has hooked onto the whole London/publishing/editing thing and refuses to let go. It excites me. I am starting to plan for it. I am starting to dream about it.

Which scares ten kinds of shit out of me because the things I dream of, plan for, and look forward to have a disastrous tendency to fall flat on their face and (on one particularly memorable occasion) have even ended up with me in hospital.

At the same time, the very fact I can dream again is a brilliant sign.

I do not want to be one of those people who coasts through life. I cannot be happy as that person. I talk to people with no drive or desire to change their lot on a day-to-day basis, and at some level I just do not understand that. One of my friends recently decided not to go to university to pursue his teaching dream, choosing instead to get a temp job doing something or other menial that doesn’t use his brain. I accept not everyone is suited to university, but I cannot understand someone who lets their dream float on by because it might be “a little hard”.

I am being judgmental and I shouldn’t because I love the boy dearly, but it escapes me. I don’t understand settling for something. If I am being very honest here, I am afraid of settling for something. I can very easily see myself ten years down the line, settled in a job similar to what I am doing now, sunk into the malaise that seems to pervade long-term employees of my organisation. Not that they mind it, really. It’s easy. They’ve settled. They’ve given up on the dream.

When you act on your dreams you have to step outside what is safe. You run the risk of getting hurt in ways you can’t even imagine. Yes, I am scared it will all go horribly wrong, but I’ve tried easy. I’ve tried safe. Safe and easy bore me. Give me something that stretches me. Give me something to reach for. In my dreams I shine – Heaven help me, but I’ve got my ability to dream back. Don’t let me watch the opportunity fly past my office cubicle window, please?