[VictoriaP]

I've been doing too much reading about the Kindle and not enough on it!  LOL  Apologies if this is a duplicate; a search didn't turn up what I was looking for.

I'd swear, somewhere in the last three days of Kindle rummaging on the internet, I'd seen some sort of quote from some Amazon executive about this, but for the life of me, no amount of searching is turning anything up.  Is there an official or semi-official comment at this point that anyone can point me to?

At just four pages of books on the K2, like most of you, I'm already irritated as heck at the lack of even the simplest, non user friendly forms of content management....I cannot imagine what this will be like if I ever replicate most of my library on the thing as planned! 

It seems like this has been a well vocalized issue from day one; I'd really like to know if it appears Amazon is paying any attention or not.  I've been in the software industry for most of the last 15 years and can tell that much of the work needed for this feature is already present in one form or another--I can't help but think that the usual bureaucracy of a grew-too-fast company is what's bogging this down.  I'd like to know they're at least paying some attention to the customer complaints on this issue, even if they're slow to implement it.  If they're really not going to be working on it any time soon, this may be a deal stopper for me.  Or I'm going to have to rethink how to manage it differently on my end, keeping significantly less on the device than I'd planned.

So if anything has been quoted from an actual Amazon source, I'd love to hear it.

(I swear, this and the screensaver issue make me want to take up hacking so I can reprogram the dumb thing.  Or get up a petition to Oprah, since she seems to be the only end user with any clout.  Maybe they'll actually listen to her.  )

 

[KindleKay (aka #1652)]

I agree with both your points.

I have a K1, so I at least, have the option to get SD cards for each genre.  That helps.  You don't even have that option 

And my K1 can change screensavers. 

I am pretty sure that it is just a matter of time for someone to crack the screensaver code for K2....Surely! 

If Amazon announces an upgrade for K2 that includes folders that will not be an upgrade option for K1, I will be ordering K2 so fast my hubby's (and credit card's) head will spin!  I want it so badly!

Time will tell.....

 

[meljackson]

I have 9 pages on mine and that's without even trying. I'm actually holding off on buying anymore books until I cut down some of these pages by reading them. The ones I have already read have been sent back to Amazon so they aren't showing at least.

Melissa

 

[VictoriaP]

I'm just astonished that Amazon encourages us to sample by not allowing us to add to our wishlist online, and then doesn't seem to provide a way to sort the samples from everything else--even though the sample tag is already in place!  Or am I missing something?

Guess I'll start there, by keeping a sticky note with titles & URLs on my desktop so I can just download the samples when I have time to read them, instead of cluttering up my K2 with them.  But that's a really poor workaround.

**Fingers still crossed someone does have official word one way or the other.**

 

[Dangerosa]

Ian Freed briefly addressed this in a podcast. He basically said they hadn't found a solution they felt would be simple enough for users to grasp.

http://www.thekindlechronicles.com/2009/02/19/31-ian-freed/

 

[VictoriaP]

Ian Freed briefly addressed this in a podcast. He basically said they hadn't found a solution they felt would be simple enough for users to grasp.

http://www.thekindlechronicles.com/2009/02/19/31-ian-freed/

Thank you!!! This is exactly what I want to know--they're acknowledging there's an issue.

But....**snort** "simple enough for users to grasp" Let's see:

Three categories that would change the way content is organized:
Read/unread
Samples separated from other content
Genre as currently shown on Amazon's website (which is crappy, but better than nothing)

NONE of this would have to be user adaptable, and none of it requires much in the way of additional programming. The K's already know when you've opened a file (after all, it marks where you left off), already have Samples tagged, and Genre shouldn't be hard to add.

Obviously, this still wouldn't be ideal, but it sure as heck would at least get SOME of the content off the main page.

This link from within the show notes blog does look somewhat interesting; no word if it's been tested on K2 yet. I may much about with it.

http://www.amazon.com/Creating-and-Using-Folders-Kindle/forum/FxBVKST06PWP9B/Tx46R1B8URW7KL/1/ref=cm_cd_ef_tft_tp?_encoding=UTF8&asin=B000FI73MA

Again, it's an inferior workaround, but I'll take any workaround at this point.

 

[Mike D. aka jmiked]

Ian Freed briefly addressed this in a podcast. He basically said they hadn't found a solution they felt would be simple enough for users to grasp.

Yeah, I listened to the podcast. I thought that comment was pretty condescending.

Mike

 

[luvmy4brats]

At one point I had more than 40 pages of books/samples/documents....


Folders/tags is my number one complaint about the Kindle. It would be darn near perfect if they figured it out. Still hoping.

In the meantime, this is what I'm doing:

Samples. Instead of having dozens and dozens of samples on my Kindle, I go to the book in the Kindle store and "Save for Later". When I'm ready to read the sample, I'll go to my Save for Later and send it. If I like it, I'll buy it. If not, I'll delete it.

All read books are deleted from my Kindle. All books waiting to be read, are still there. If it's a book I want to re-read, I just pull it back to my Kindle.

It's not the greatest, but it's the best I can do right now.

 

[VictoriaP]

Yeah, I listened to the podcast. I thought that comment was pretty condescending.

Mike

Oh absolutely. No question.

But it's also bureau/technospeak for, "Well, we have a bunch of other bug fixes we're trying to get out before the whole system comes crashing down on us. But we don't want to tell you about that." LOL

I've heard the argument before, obviously. Typically, once the user base broadens, which has already started between the Oprah publicity and the launch of K2, the complaints move further up the food chain faster until the execs in charge of the project realize this really is an issue. At that point, we'll see a fairly quick though not extremely adaptable fix.

My husband has a friend at Amazon who I understand has done at least some programming work on the Kindle team, though not in this area--unfortunately he's on paternity leave at the moment & I'm not certain how up to date he'll be--but I think I'm going to pick his brain in the very near future.

All the other stuff is fairly minor. This is a work stoppage issue as far as heavy readers are concerned, and realistically that's the customer base (at least at currently) where Amazon will make the most money. They won't be able to ignore the issue as that customer base continues to grow.

Luv--thanks for the insight on you manage things, I really appreciate it. That's kind of the way I'm probably headed for now.