By michellewegner

Instagram is an iOS app that lets you shoot a quick photo, tint it or age it so that it has a more organic/hipster look, and then share it online like a tweet or Tumblr update. I never use it, but it’s crazy popular — and apparently lots of Instagram users tend to take pics of their Kindles.

I guess it makes sense. Most Instagram snapshots I’ve seen are of those casual in-between moments of a person’s life, like for instance when you’re sitting somewhere reading. And although I want to criticize the whole aged/tinted photo thing as being too damned trendy, I have to admit it sometimes adds a romantic glaze to the little plastic and glass device.

There’s even a few Nook shots!

Unfortunately to search the pics online you need to have an Instagram account, which you have to set up through the app on your iOS device. [Update: This site will let you browse Instagram pics via keyword search.] The blog Ebook Friendly has put together a nice sample collection for you, however, so head over there and take a look.

Photo credits from left: ramens, jgrillo, bridgetcmc. (I was going to look for Kobo, but I got hipstered out.)

So far only a few journalists have had a chance to see the new model in person, but early reports have been promising. This is terrible news if you have gadget lust issues like I do, because it makes you want one right now.

Here are some recaps of these first impressions:

This week’s PCWorld podcast leads with the Kindle. (By the way, they point out that officially, it’s just called the Kindle–Amazon never added numbers to the models. But who cares? It’s easier for us if we use numbers, so that’s what I’m going to continue to do.)

The PCWorld editors like the new graphite case; Jason Cross says it improves apparent contrast on the screen, and Robert Strohmeyer says, “It doesn’t show your greasy fingerprints after a couple weeks of use.”

Melissa Perenson actually got to spend time with the Kindle 3 and has lots of praise for the improved contrast and faster refresh rate. Compared to the screen on the Kindle 2, she says, “It was like night and day. [...] You can see darker blacks, you can see smoother text, the screen just looks that much better. It’s a significant upgrade.”

As for the speed of the Kindle 3, it sounds like Amazon finally solved one of the biggest complaints about ereaders–slow page turns. Perenson says, “One thing I realized when using it was that I didn’t take notice of the page turn time. [...] What really stuck out to me was when I was navigating through a menu, if I held the button down, it just literally popped among the options as if it was an LCD screen.”

Perenson also says the page turn buttons are easier to access with different parts of your hand, but at the same time designed so that you don’t accidentally press them.

The same Melissa Perenson also wrote a very positive early review of the Kindle 3 that was published on PCWorld and the Washington Post. You can read the full review, but mostly it’s an extended version of what’s in the podcast above. She ends with, “In my limited hands-on time with the new Kindle, this gadget made an unusually quick, and positive, impression.”

Gizmodo, on the other hand, had a less enthusiastic reaction. Regarding the new screen, Don Nguyen writes, “Improved contrast and font rendering aren’t particularly noticeable for books, partly because it was never an issue with the Kindle 2, but the changes are nice for reading newspapers.” He likes the lighter weight (“great for reading in bed”) and points out that the new WebKit browser, which is also used to power Safari and Chrome, should improve the online experience.

When it came to speed, Nguyen was less impressed. He writes, “The new Kindle is without a doubt improved, but the whole experience is still sluggish; page turns are 20 percent faster but still feel slow, especially compared to the Kindle iPad app.”

The other big gadget blog, Engadget, was a bit more positive about the look and feel as well as the speed. Joshua Topolsky writes, “The build quality and materials used did seem slightly more polished than the previous version, and we really liked the new, more subtle rocker. We can also attest to screen refreshes and overall navigation feeling noticeably more responsive and snappy compared with the previous generation.”

Here’s Engadget’s quick video–just a moving product shot, really–of the device:

Larry Dignan at ZDNEt writes that after spending 20 minutes with it, he’s convinced it’s worth owning: “[It] swung me back on to the side of e-readers in this never-ending debate about multifunction (think iPad) vs. mostly single function devices (e-readers). The latest Kindle is a handy extra gadget to carry around.” He confirms that the WebKit browser “is a vast improvement when it comes to browsing.”

But maybe you just want to see what it looks like in a real world setting? Fortunately, UK tech blog PocketLint took a lot of nice photos of the graphite version and posted them online; click the image below to jump to their site for full size views.

There’s no comment yet from Consumer Reports, although I’m sure they’ll weigh in once the device starts shipping. Back in June they picked the Kindle as the best choice in ereader devices, so it will be interesting to see if anything changes.

Related articles and posts:

“New Kindle Rocks the E-Book World – PCWorld Podcast #87″ [PCWorld]
“Hands On With Amazon’s Zippy, Alluring Kindle” [Washington Post]
“Thinner and Lighter Kindle Comes with Wi-Fi and Starts at $139″ [Gizmodo]
“New Amazon Kindle announced: $139 WiFi-only version and $189 3G model available August 27th in the US and UK” [Engadget]
“Review: My 20 minutes with Amazon’s latest Kindle” [ZDNet]
“PHOTOS: Amazon Kindle Wi-Fi hands-on” [Pocket-Lint]

1. Newspapers are hurting badly in this economy, and the New York Times is in some pretty serious financial trouble;
2. The NYT and other papers have been making serious noise lately about finding new distribution channels and revenue streams. Direct distribution via an ebook device is exactly the sort of new channel they’ve been reported as considering.
3. It may, in fact, be cheaper for a large newspaper to subsidize an ereader for subscribers than it is to distribute the old-fashioned paper route.
4. The New York Times already has had substantial success with subscriptions on the Kindle.
5. It’s speculated (completely unscientifically) that a high number of current Kindle owners are over 40 years of age, hinting that a significant portion of the demographic that will adopt ebook technology may overlap with the demographic that reads (and subscribes) to newspapers.

We’ll find out in about 48 hours. In the meantime, amuse yourself with these news stories about the possible device, beginning with the one in the New York Times that started the whole media flurry today. Here’s an excerpt:

But it is Amazon, maker of the Kindle, that appears to be first in line to try throwing an electronic life preserver to old-media companies. As early as this week, according to people briefed on the online retailer’s plans, Amazon will introduce a larger version of its Kindle wireless device tailored for displaying newspapers, magazines and perhaps textbooks.

An Amazon spokesman would not comment, but some news organizations, including The New York Times, are expected to be involved in the introduction of the device, according to people briefed on the plans. A spokeswoman for The Times, Catherine J. Mathis, said she could not comment on the company’s relationship with Amazon.

[...]

Perhaps most appealing about this new class of reading gadgets is the opportunity they offer publishers to rethink their strategy in a rapidly evolving digital world. The move by newspapers and magazines to make their material freely available on the Web is now viewed by many as a critical blunder that encouraged readers to stop paying for the print versions. And publishers have found that they were not prepared to deal with the recent rapid decline of print advertising revenue.

Publishers could possibly use these new mobile reading devices to hit the reset button and return in some form to their original business model: selling subscriptions, and supporting their articles with ads.

“Looking to Big-Screen E-Readers to Help Save the Daily Press” [New York Times]
A whole bunch of related stories via Google News

Perhaps even more interesting, though, is that for the first time, customers who don’t own a Kindle can purchase Kindle ebooks. This throws open the doors of the Kindle bookstore to millions more customers. What doesn’t change, of course, is the fact that the titles remain DRM-shackled. But for the savvy user who knows how to remove the DRM, you suddenly have access to what’s still the cheapest ebook store on the planet. For now, at any rate.

(Update: it looks like as of this weekend, Amazon has pulled down the serial number from your “Manage My Kindle” page, which you need in order to remove the DRM. However, it also looks like some clever readers have already figured out another way to locate it.)

You may have noticed that Amazon is only extending the service to iPhone/iPod Touch users right now, which I think indicates that its real reason to release the app isn’t to benefit customers but to squash iPhone competitors like Stanza, which sucked up a lot of publicity as a “Kindle killer” late last year. In fact, no other mobile platform has been released (although Bezos says this is just the first of several). Tellingly, a PC or java-for-mobile-devices version wasn’t released first, which would likely have been of benefit to a greater number of customers–but wouldn’t have the same effectiveness at drawing publicity, or at winning the PR battle for ebooks on the Apple platform.

“First Look: Amazon Launches Kindle iPhone App” [Washington Post]
“Is Amazon’s Kindle iPhone app crippled or companion? CFO says companion” [ZDNet]
“Comparing Kindle 2 with Kindle’s iPhone app” [Crave]

I bet Amazon could have won any lawsuit, just like Google could have won the copyright lawsuit that the Authors Guild brought against them a few years ago over their library scanning project, but Amazon doesn’t seem to want a fight. I get that. On the other hand, it’s infuriating to watch this group of 8,000 or so members strip out functionality that they don’t legally have any right to touch.

I hope someone quickly develops a way to block those crippled ebooks from searches on Amazon’s store. If they want to sell reduced-funtionality versions of their books, there should be an easy way to filter them out so readers don’t have to bother with them ever again.

“Amazon lets publishers and writers disable Kindle 2′s read-aloud feature” [Los Angeles Times]