Head Tale

How many times have you been reading a book, come across a great quote and then, unless you're really anal diligent and somehow transcribed it, ended up forgetting all about it? 

I've always thought that the tipping point for e-books would be something that easily allowed you to track these quotes as you came across them.  (Do me a favour and go read that old blog entry because man, it's prescient when you hear what I'm about to say next!) 

And now, Amazon has released just such a feature for Kindle owners which track both the most highlighted books and individual passages from those books – with both all-time and recently highlighted lists for both books and passages.

Arguments rage on the Metafilter thread where I found this story about how much of an invasion of privacy this is and if its worse than the tracking Amazon does with any surfing you do on their site or what any other major Internet site does. 

But overall, I think it's pretty cool.  It might even become a new way to do a Coles notes-type speed reading of books that say, some blogger recommends but that you haven't got time to read for yourself.  They don't have all the features I suggested in my earlier blog post (tagging, favouriting) but if that happens, look out!

Now, the biggest hurdle is that the Kindle isn't library friendly.  I know I could never afford to actually buy copies – digital or dead tree – of every book I read.  But some suggest that the Kindle could create a business model that could even replace public libraries!  (Search for “public library” to find comment from Josh.)