It’s not all doom and gloom, there are of course many titles available right now.  At least I was able to get a sample chapter of “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies”

I got the notification that my Amazon Kindle order shipped today, with delivery expected in a couple of days.
In my excitement, I hopped over to the Kindle book store (accessed via Amazon.com as opposed to the .co.uk) to queue up some books and previews ready for its arrival.
It’s accurate to say that I’m left a little deflated and disappointed by the titles that are unavailable for UK buyers right now.  This could make for an interesting couple of days worth of tech news.

I  was initially surprised to find that there isn’t an obvious way to see any of the popular Best Sellers listings, be it NY Times or perhaps anything else localised for the UK.  All I could do was list _all_ of the Kindle books and sort by ‘Best Selling’.
Top of the list was Glenn Beck with “Arguing with Idiots”.  Maybe I should know more about him but other than him being on FOX and maybe talk radio, I don’t.  I decided to get queue up the “sample” of his book anyway.
BTW the list price of this book for Kindle is $13.79 (or £8.44) including VAT & international wireless delivery via Whispernet.  Match that against the Digital List Price and Print List Price of $29.99, as well as Amazons price for the Hardcover ($16.47) that’s a pretty decent saving.
Scrolling down the list, there wasn’t really anything on their Best Selling list that took my fancy.

I remembered that Dan Brown had a book out recently and thought I’d grab the sample of that too.  Unfortunately, it seems that none of his books are available on Kindle.  Let’s clarify that, none of his books are available on Kindle for UK customers.

The explanation from Amazon is “Due to copyright restrictions, certain Kindle Titles are not available everywhere.”
I bet this is going to become a talking point as Kindles are shipped around the world.

I decided to go through the New York Times best seller list (http://www.nytimes.com/pages/books/bestseller) for Hardcover Fiction:

1. THE LOST SYMBOL, by Dan Brown
2. A TOUCH OF DEAD, by Charlaine Harris
3. THE HELP, by Kathryn Stockett
4. THE PROFESSIONAL, by Robert B. Parker
5. THE LAST SONG, by Nicholas Sparks

Oh dear, only one of the top 5 is currently available to UK buyers, The Help by Kathryn Stockett.

Perhaps the local market would be better so I went through the UK Sunday Times best sellers list for paper backs (http://tinyurl.com/d9av7f):

1. Cross Country, by James Patterson
2. The Gift, by Cecelia Ahern
3. The Private Patient, by PD James
4. Once In a Lifetime, by Cathy Kelly
5. Arctic Drift, by Clive and Dirk Cussler

Again, only one of the top 5 were available to UK buyers – The Gift by Cecelia Ahern, not my cup of tea at all.

There are at least 3 books on those two lists which I would be tempted with if I was bored at an airport, alas I’m unable to get them to my Kindle right now.
Additionally, I looked for books by Max Brooks (World War Z, Zombie Survival Guide) and found that they aren’t available to me either.  At this point, I’m starting to get serious buyers remorse so I’ve decided to stop looking for the moment.

Of course, let’s not forget that Internation Kindles have only started shipping today.  There is plenty of time in the next 48hrs for Amazon to iron out the copyright issues that they use to explain the titles that aren’t available.
Perhaps they should at least have a ‘notify me/download sample when this title is available’ mechanism, I hope they are working this through now.

It’s not all doom and gloom, there are of course many titles available right now.  At least I was able to get a sample chapter of “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies”

Related posts:

1. Moving to eBooks?

Opening the platform up with proper SDKs, whether sandboxed or via 1337 root access, is sure to propel the platform forward exponentially.  As it goes, I picked up a Macbook earlier in the week and have started exercising my brain with some Cocoa coding so that i’m up to speed by the time the SDK is released.

One final thing I thought i’d mention is battery life.  I’ve left it for 3 days now without charging it up.  Having used it as normal, including phone, SMS, WiFI, iTMS, iPOD, Safari (pretty much all of the functionality!) the battery indicator is currently at aprox. 50%.

Final Words 

Granted, the camera is a weak point as is the EDGE network and they’re both items which can’t be addressed in a software update.

So, am I bothered by the lack of camera? 
No, not really. 

Whilst it’s a nice to have, i’ve just looked through the pictures on my previous phone.  I’m not going to save any of them.  All I used the camera for previously was for opportunistic clicks.  I’ve generally got my ‘proper’ (not DSLR proper!) camera with me anyway.

Is the EDGE network a pain in the ass?
Sometimes, but it’s not as stupidly slow as some internet comments have portrayed. 

I’ve been able to find WiFi access when I needed it and haven’t gotten annoyed or frustrated with EDGE at all.

Unfortunately, what with the hype around the iPhone, it seems that the device is suffering from over popularity.  Its become an easy target for comparisons and complaints, a good example is my earlier post – written out of frustration that it wasn’t the all singing, all dancing cure for cancer that it had been hyped up to be. 

Compared to my previous phone, it’s definately a step up and in the right direction.  Yes there are shortfalls in comparison with established devices and platforms but in it’s own right, and IMO it’s a cool and useful device.
I’m just waiting for Last.FM to include iPhone scrobbling support!

[tags]Apple, Cocoa, iPhone Review, Macbook, N95, last.fm[/tags]

Related posts:

1. A more objective look at iPhone (part 1: Things the iPhone can't do)
2. A more objective look at iPhone (part 2: Things the iPhone does well)
3. Jailbreaking a UK iPhone