Just a few additions from our Amazon Kindle features wishlist could do the trick to make the e-reader the absolute best in the business.
The Amazon Kindle has established itself as the de-facto choice for anyone looking for an e-book reader. Near-global availability, a digital storefront that could rival the library of Alexandria, and modern-day conveniences like the ability to sync your books across multiple devices make it a no-brainer. Sure, alternatives like the Nook or Kobo exist, but the Kindle is the largest player in the business by a wide margin. Unfortunately, Amazon’s overwhelming lead also means that the company has been rather sluggish with feature development and the lack of some of these is rather grating for avid fans of the product. I’m all about keeping a product simple and straightforward, but here are six feature additions in my Amazon Kindle features wishlist that would go a long way towards elevating the user experience. I’ve always been a compulsive note-taker and bookmark addict when reading non-fiction. However, as I’ve switched over much of my reading to the Kindle in the last decade or so, I’ve found myself dabbling with the e-book reader’s built-in note-taking solution. Unfortunately, Amazon hasn’t made much, if any, progress here over the years and I find the feature to be severely lacking. Amazon’s implementation is essentially a never-ending list of additions to a text file. This works well enough for occasional note-taking, but with the average user holding on to a reader for a few years, it is a bit of a non-solution when it comes to notes from hundreds if not thousands of books. Amazon’s implementation of notes is essentially a never-ending list of additions to a text file. In fact, the current system is so cumbersome that more often than not, I end up taking notes in a separate diary or notepad. Again, not an ideal solution since it breaks away from the original text in the book. The ability to enable per-book notes and an easy way to output those to a printable format could prove to be a much more elegant solution. Taking it one step further, modern-day Kindles are powerful enough to generate a standard e-book file. How about an on-demand compilation of notes across books with a clickable table of contents? While we’re at it, the Carta panels on the latest generation Kindles have a fast enough refresh rate that typing short sentences isn’t really a chore.
