Daniel Hanold

The pre-release of the Amazon Kindle 2 got me excited! The Kindle (2) is, basically, a replacement for books printed on paper. Personally, I love the idea of reading books on a digital device, but after looking at my computer screen for 10 hours per day, my eyes hurt. The advantage of electronic paper devices like the Kindle 2 is that unlike a conventional display, which uses a backlight to illuminate the scree, electronic paper mimics the properties of ordinary paper. This means they reflect the light just like an ordinary paper and can even hold text indefinitely without needing electricity (of course, you will need power to see the next page). A neat feature: you can download books (and newspaper content) over the air.

Anyways: So I found this image on Crunchgear, which has a leaked image of the Kindle 2 (which is supposed to launch in late February) and was starting to the the text display: it has the headline "The Swabian" and basically talks about a not-so-smart Swabian guy who has a speech impediment. Really? Amazon, you really couldn't find another text example for this picture?

Of course, I'm Swabian myself. And a proud one too. My favorite advertising campaign of the past couple of years was a campaign by and about Baden-Württemberg entitled: "We can do everything, except speak proper German". And Amazon, just for the record, that includes helping Newton with the theory of universal gravitation, inventing the first modern carl and the diesel engine, founding Universal Studios and, of course, doing wicked-awesome movies like "Independence Day".

I think I'll get the Kindle after all.