I’ve been using a Kindle now for around a month. I haven’t bought too many books as yet; the Dr Who Guidebook, a Jeremy Clarkson (Top Gear) compilation, a Stephen Hawking tome and one by a supporter of Richard Dawkins whose name escapes me at the moment.

As a kid, I used to read a lot, voraciously in fact and I still subscribe to the fact that a large part of one’s education, vocabulary and memory abilities can be attributed to reading while younger. These days I read a lot less for personal amusement, mainly being 30 minutes at night before mattress-fall to wind me down at the end of the day. I might even break all the suggested rules and have a night cap of a Black Douglas and ice or a port.

I have shown the Kindle to many people and to date, the enthusiasm has been universal. Quite a few have even bought one or intend to for Christmas. At a price of $250+ something as I recall, and an average of $9-$11 for a book (that retails for upwards of $19 for the ‘real’ paperback), you cannot really go wrong.

It is in this light I read of interest of all the hype surrounding the supposed upcoming Apple tablet then. Many are touting a $1000 price tag and an OLED screen. One assumes colour then? Now I don’t know how many Kindles Amazon has sold, but more than I few I reckon. I think Apple may have dropped the ball on this one.

You don’t need colour to read paperbacks (as against coffee table books and glossy magazines say) and Amazon has a good two year march on Apple in the content and infrastructure stakes. And at a grand, you’d have to be a true believer of Apple. Lose a $250 Kindle and have it nicked with your backpack and while it would be a PITA, losing a thousand dollar tablet would be a tad more than that.

I could be wrong; maybe the Apple faithful will buy such a beast. But what an overkill that would be in the real world. Well I think so anyway.

About 12 years ago, a client of mine in a different life (I was primarily a web developer back then) told me his hobby was video editing. He shot his own footage on an 8mm camera and used an Amiga computer and some software for editing. He proudly explained he had managed to cut around 12 seconds the night before.

I had been sideways involved in this sort of thing a few years earlier, but on a professional level, writing and directing the footage for creation of video training on Microsoft Products – Windows 95 and Office 95 using Betacam systems. I could sympathise with him. It was a painstaking job requiring dedication and a good eye and lots and lots of patience.

About a year later, I had a little play with a black box whose name totally escapes me, but effectively it combined it connected itself to an 8mm camera, a PC and a remote controlled VCR to do much the same thing. You would go through your footage marking in and out points, transitions and so on, and then the black box would control the transport controls of the camera and VCR to record the tape to a VHS cassette in the correct order of clips, digitally captured music etc. It was simplistic, but effective and I could edit a two hour church service in around the same time.

When digital cameras came into vogue and a decent price point, the whole game changed; now anyone could do it with just a computer, DVD burner and a DV camera. But it strikes me that as it gets easier and easier to edit footage, less and less people seem to be?

And I fear that trend will continue. Cameras that can shoot high definition – true 1080p – are literally around $300 these days, and while you pay for what you get obviously, the footage now able to be viewed on HDMI compatible TVs is better than we have ever seen.

But until the price of Blu-ray burners comes down the way the DVD burners did, and that means under $100, the hobby is still a little expensive I fear. This means the majority of footage will be shot by the iPod set and most of it never seen. And that would be a tragedy for future generations.

The news came out today that Channel Seven won the ratings ‘war’ this year – again. But apparently Channel 9 is catching up, and Channel 10 had the biggest audiences with Masterchef and the AFL Grand Final.

And I couldn’t give a hoot.

The only programs I currently watch on free-to-air (FTA) commercial TV are the V8 Supercars, the Formula One Grand Prix and FlashForward. The rest of the time I am ABC, SBS or lately and increasingly Foxtel. And my viewing habits have changed because of probably one single thing – the Foxtel IQ digital recorder.

I am now no longer bound by TV Guides and programming my DVD recorder and no longer having to dither about which one to record when two programs clash. Better, if I am away from home (which is frequent) I can even set my IQ remotely via the ‘net.

I am also a fan of UK based television – not the likes of Emmerdale or East Enders I hasten to add – and in my regularly playlist is Ashes to Ashes, New Tricks, Jonathan Creek and the like and these are all available via Fox. And there are other shows that I don’t believe even made it to FTA such as Extreme Fishing with Robson Green and Dragon’s Den that have become must watch programs.

The Foxtel system does have its problems with the major one being shortcomings of its online booking system. This logs you out after a period of inactivity and this I find annoying. It’s not a true logout, as everything is still on screen as it was, but if you try and book something, you are advised of an error. Additionally, the Flash application that drives it can be touchy too and is not very forgiving. Scrolling up or down and left or right may or may not happen for example. And inexplicably, even though ABC 1 and 2 (and presumably 3) along with SBS and some radio channels are available via Foxtel, they don’t appear in their own TV Guide online.

Despite any problems though, Foxtel is way and ahead of the FTA offerings; these are just starting to catch up with the ABC way and ahead, especially with iView. As soon as the other stations get their act together in terms of production incorporating the ‘net and other ‘new media’ ways, the better off we’ll all be.

With the caveat the content had better get better than Idol, Big Brother and similar crap and cheap-to-make TV.

As many know, I am not a great proponent of the move to “everything online”. I have a vested interest in being a paper magazine publisher of course, but I am also not convinced that this is a business model that can be sustained long term or that the majority of the public want it.

(Simple test, ask people if they prefer a paper manual or a PDF one …)

But I am also not stupid (shut up in the back row) and am of enough intelligence to investigate new possibilities if and when they occur.

So it is with the Kindle, the electronic book/magazine/newspaper reader from Amazon. If you are still sporting a glazed look, the Kindle allows you to buy/subscribe to books, magazines and newspapers via Amazon’s online shop, and have them delivered to your own personal Kindle via wireless technology. They are then read on the Kindle page by page using an electronic “ink” method that actually does work well. It is claimed up to 1500 books can be stored this way and read when and where you like.

Ignoring the technology, the Kindle - or a successor - has the potential to be the next iPod. The next “seen to have” gadget, and therefore it makes sense in making Australian content available ie. my magazine(s). The methodology is quite easy and not technically difficult.

But getting information out of Amazon is worse than pulling teeth on a mastodon with a pair of nail clippers and a feather boa as the only tools. The first email had to be followed up no less than three times (over a 10 day period) before a reply was in the offing. All this initial email asked was whether it could indeed be done, as the Kindle website has some Draconian terms and conditions that just couldn’t be met from Australia.

So yes, it can be done. We’ll tell you more after signing an NDA. Replied and sent within 24 hours. But apart from a single email asking I had had any contact from an invisible Australian representative, that is where it has stopped. Many emails have been sent, conversations held with their local PR organisation that has also attempted to pod or poke some sort of reaction, but all to no avail.

So is Amazon a huge and bloated conglomerate and getting it to actually do something is akin to stopping an Airbus 380 by repeatedly head butting it, or is it just arrogant and feel s that enquiries from “Austria, you know the place where kangaroos are grown”, are simply an annoying fly spot on the front cover of the bigger picture book?

I await with, as the cat said with cheese on its tongue, with baited breath.

This is a coincidence. Really it is. My colleague Ian Grayson yesterday wrote about releasing your grip from the 'net and mobile phones for a couple of days. I too went through this situation due to a Telstra / Big Pond cock up (what other type are there) last Friday.

On deadline day too when a billion files are shovelled around the country to get a magazine (Australasian Camcorder) into final shape for the printer.

So I did what I do on such an occasion (accepting that for really important stuff such as emails I still had access via my 34G card in the baby laptop which has been a lifesaver a few times. For further backup, the Blackberry kicked in so I wasn't totally Tommy.

I got one of those old fashioned notebooks with ruled lines and everything and made some notes. This spread into ideas, projects and more and before long, I had six or seven pages of them. All the while sitting on the balcony with a stein of the cold sherbet for company and inspiration.

Computers are fine. But sometimes, a good old pen and pencil can't be beat. Oh and a rubber.

By the way, I also now have a personal blog for those interested. You can see it at http://vbthedog.wordpress.com