Hawk’s Babble-Log

Dear Mr. Lynch,

I wrote a similar letter to Bezos.

In regards to your cute little Nook e-reader device:

Well done on choosing Android for the operation system! I love open-source software, especially when it’s free. I think that is a very good thing. As for what I want in a portable e-reader-type device, here’s what I want:

• Read e-books, obviously. I like the ability to read the e-books that I buy from y’all on multiple devices, including my computer. I believe you’ve already got this covered, well done. Amazon only lets me read books on my Kindle, nothing else. Boo.

• Net access (of course), with full access to whatever port/protocal I’d like to use.

• Web browser. A descent one, good enough to check my gmail with. It’d be real nice if it were a good, capable version of Firefox and were able to play YouTube/Hulu videos.

• Color e-paper. You can see a demo of this stuff here on YouTube. It’s got a refresh rate fast enough to play video.

• Music player with OggVorbis support. I actually don’t care if it plays MP3s, but pretty much everyone else on the planet would.

• Headphone jack. Built-in speakers are nice, but not useful.

• Storage. And I’m not talking about 256M. I mean enough storage to make my head spin and store all my media (e-books, pictures, music, videos, movies, etc) plus anything else I may want to put on it.

• Full hardware keyboard, like my Kindle. Call me old-fashioned, but I dislike on-screen soft keyboards.

• Speaking of input devices, I don’t care about touchscreens. I actually don’t want to get my sweaty fingers on my the screen. Then I’m always wiping it off and cleaning it. I’m very happy with a well-designed interface and a hardware keyboard with cursor-keys (direction keys) or some kind of trackball-type device.

• Full video support; watch movies with headphones. I have many digitized movies. Some I ripped myself, some I bought from Amazon Unbox. I don’t expect to be able to watch Amazon Unbox movies on your little Nook device, but that’d be nice. However, I do expect to be able to watch my own ripped DVDs. I bought the DVD, I should be able to watch it on whatever device I want.

• A GPS receiver would be nice, but I don’t think it’s vital.

• VoIP. Just imagine sitting down with your Nook, checking your gmail, and then pulling up a Nook-version of Skype for use with a Bluetooth headset and making a quick call to your buddy on the other side of the planet. It may bring down AT&T’s network, but that’s not your problem. That’s just incentive for them to make it suck less.

• And, most importantly… an API / SDK (Application Programming Interface / Software Development Kit). Let people create with it! That’s what Android is all about! If you open it up and let the geeks in, they will create most of what I’ve written above for you. You’ll still need to upgrade the hardware, but us geeks will take it from there. Read this for good reasons to open it up.

I know that’s a tall order, but I believe it can be done with current, modern technology. Thanks for your time.