Posted on 14 May 2009, at 12:07 pm, by Judie Lipsett
When I was working on the original Kindle devices review, one of the reader’s features which caught my eye was its ability to pull in wirelessly delivered blog content. Of course, my first thought was disbelief that anyone would want to pay $1.99 (or possibly more) per month for blogs they could read gratis on their computer.
It didn’t take me long to realize a few reasons why it might make sense: People don’t always have their computer with them when they want something to read, reading favorite sites on a mobile device is sometimes a total exercise in FAIL, and even when using an optimized mobile RSS reader, not all sites publish full RSS feeds.
I submitted Gear Diary for review and promptly forgot about it; I can be like that sometimes.
Last night I got notice that Amazon was finally opening up its blog subscription process. It took no time at all to get Gear Diary signed up, and now there is another way for you to get your daily fix.
For those who are wondering, Gear Diary is one of those sites which doesn’t publish a full RSS feed (you can thank our multitude of site scrapers for that), but we are offering a full feed on the Kindle Edition. I didn’t have a choice about what to charge for the service when I signed up, it seems that $1.99 is the default, as I guess Amazon must get their cut. Free would have been fine with me!
In any case, as of today you can sign up for a two week trial subscription. If you own a Kindle, give it a try.
And I know you must be wondering, so here is a quick overview of how Gear Diary renders on the Kindle 2:
Here is our main feed page. Since Gear Diary has so many writers, it is great to immediately see each author’s byline.
You can also view the Article List, which shows the latest feed items. Each item is clickable, and again shows the author’s byline.
Okay…gotta admit. Seeing this for the first time was a bit surreal…
I am really impressed with how nicely everything renders on the Kindle’s grayscale screen; sure, color would be so much more impressive, but this will do.
One of the things I really like about reading Gear Diary on the Kindle is how interactive the experience is.
You can click the pictures to see them in more detail…
You can also look up words that you are unsure of, follow links to other articles or sites, make annotations and notes, bookmark your spot, whatever.
The coolest thing in my opinion? Text to speech works beautifully!!! I have to admit that I got a bit of a thrill listening to the robot read our posts…little things excite me, okay?
It won’t be for everyone, but I suspect that there will be some who enjoy the convenience. If there are any other ways that we can help you get your daily fix, let us know!
Subscribe to the Kindle Edition of Gear Diary
Related posts:
just got gear diary onto kindle blogs; listening to our articles read by the kindle text-to-speech robot was surreal! http://is.gd/zSkj
Congrats to Judie – Very happy to see & read GearDiary on my Kindle 2 http://tinyurl.com/rdv9ck along with Seth Godin, WSJ and many books!
[...] other day a combination of Judie’s Gear Diary post announcing her blog as being in the Kindle Blogs program and Matt Miller’s post at The Mobile [...]
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May 14th, 2009 at 12:09 pm
So cool!
May 14th, 2009 at 12:11 pm
I just wish we could offer it for free! But I guess Amazon has to make something off of it for allowing people to receive it in this format.
May 14th, 2009 at 12:48 pm
TOO cool. All they need now is a color Kindle……
May 14th, 2009 at 1:09 pm
One day…hopefully.
May 14th, 2009 at 4:25 pm
Now that looks really nice! I don’t know if it makes the price less painful, though – especially considering how they can’t offer blog subscription for free… maybe by Kindle 5?
May 14th, 2009 at 11:39 pm
Why not? Count me in – I’m a subscriber