Everyone on the Lendle team is incredibly excited about the new Kindle lineup. Daring Fireball’s John Gruber sums up the appeal of the Kindle Touch perfectly: “Everything good about last year’s Kindle remains, everything bad about last year’s Kindle is gone.”
There’s a lot to say about the Kindle Fire, but we’ll leave it at this: For the first time ever, Lendlers will be able to use Lendle on an actual Kindle. We think that’s huge.
To mark the occasion, we’re going to give away 1 Kindle Fire ($199 value) and 1 Kindle Touch 3G ($189 value).
The rules are simple:
Every new user you refer WITH YOUR REFERRAL CODE counts as one entry. All existing referrals will count retroactively. All referrals until the day we end the contest will count.
In addition:
Every new user who signs up with a referral code is entered to win. All existing users who signed up with a referral code are retroactively entered to win.
Contest is open to Patrons and non-patrons. No purchase necessary. When the contest ends, we’ll pick two random entrants. First pick wins a Kindle Fire, second pick wins a Kindle Touch.
Expect full details for both giveaways in Monday’s newsletter and in an update to this post.
Meanwhile, what are you waiting for?
Start referring new Lendlers with your referral code!
Way back when we were all living in the same city, we headed out to our local Junior College to watch a live satellite feed of one of Steve Jobs’s first keynote presentations as CEO of Apple. (The one where Noah Wiley walked out on stage as Steve Jobs.)
This morning, we didn’t get to see a live satellite feed, but we did follow along with This is My Next’s liveblog of Amazon’s Kindle announcements, headed up by Jeff Bezos.
Early impressions:
- The whole event was very, very Apple like. 1) Lead with impressive stats. 2) Show off the new products. 3) There is no step 3.
- Barnes and Noble? OUCH. Our headline is a joke, but you can bet the Nook Color won’t be $250 for much longer.
- Apple? On notice, but price seemed like the only factor that should cause any real concern for Tim Cook and Co.
- There are now 4 Kindle models. That feels like 1 too many. (Kindle, Kindle Touch, Kindle Touch 3G, Kindle Fire.)
- $79 Kindle nixes the keyboard, but isn’t touch-able. Questionable choice. This is the model to nix.
- $50 premium for 3G when Wi-Fi is ubiquitous seems a bit steep, even for a lifetime of 3G connectivity. Seems a safe bet to say the Wi-Fi-only model will be the bigger seller by a wide margin.
- The “Silk” web browser was talked-up and hyped almost as though Bezos considers it to be the Kindle Fire’s killer app.
- Probably because, as reports had suggested, there is no built-in email app.
- There wasn’t a lot of talk about reading on the Kindle Fire.
- Developers?
- Publishers?
- Authors?
- Would have been nice to see any of the above on stage.
- We saw apps, but we didn’t see the underlying OS. That’s sort of a big deal.
- Bezos knocked the idea of syncing, but people like the comfort of having a local backup. Cloud-only seems premature.
Of course, all of these thoughts come with the caveat that live blogs are often hard to decipher, and light on detail. We may have missed some of the nuance.
