Kindle vs Centro

[From Roger Moore] As I sit reading Cory Doctorow's Little Brother on my Centro in our kitchen, I have to wonder what the fuss is for the Amazon Kindle? It's a $359 ebook reader. $359? My Centro does that with a free program. My whole Centro only cost $99 from Sprint. It has a camera, voice recording, a phone, and fits in my pocket. (See this great website called Palm Addicts for great ideas on what you can do with your Palm.)

I listen to Mac Break Weekly. Those guys just rave about the Kindle. It's like they never thought to read an ebook on their phone.

I really worried when I heard Amazon was coming to market with their own ereader. I mean, the biggest online retailer should be the biggest champion of ebooks, right? But the first thing I heard was that all the books will be in a propietary format that other ereaders can't read. So now we had one of the biggest internet giants coming into a baby market. That got me a little worried. Amazon was big enough that they could go for exclusive ebook deals. Or, more likely, the publishing companies would just be more attracted to their bigger share of market once it was up and running.

So far, no one knows. If the Kindle really takes off, it could expand the ebook market like no other reader has done. (People might actually start reading more? Ye gads!) But I think it more likely that someone will write a kickbutt program for the iPhone and people will start ereading on a massive scale. Competition is good.