The site and videos addressed some of the misgivings I have about eBooks in general. First, there is a full text search feature, something required to use Kindle for anything resembling research. Second, there's also the ability to annotate as you read, the electronic equivalent of underlining and writing in the margins. Without either of these features, the device could be little more than a reading-for-fun device. However, I wonder if Kindle provides a means for organizing these annotations (and by extension the book text itself) through tagging or some other means of categorization. That's the kind of feature that would actually give an eReader like Kindle an advantage over print books. Since the demo video brags about the ability to export annotations from the Kindle, I'm not optimistic this feature exists.

An additional misgiving I've always had about eBooks is storage. Sure, a device like Kindle holds hundreds of books, but what about those of us whose home libraries run in the thousands? Kindle has an SD card slot so there is the possibility of external storage of overflow, but I don't want to maintain a library of SD cards anymore than I wanted to maintain a library of floppies in the 1990s. That said, a collection of SD cards certainly takes up a lot less room than a library of print books (though I suspect a room lined with shelves of SD cards will be slightly less decorative than my current library at home).

Fortunately, Amazon will handle online storage in the same manner they do with Unbox video downloads via the Media Library. Every eBook you buy for Kindle will be stored in your online Amazon library so that you can re-download it later. No word, however, on whether or not these eBooks will have restrictions similar to those on Unbox, in which there are often limits on how often you can download an item.

Pricing for titles on Kindle is a big step up from previous eBook efforts. The single biggest reason that I have never purchased an eBook of any kind is the the cost. With few exceptions, the price for eBooks on Amazon in the past were the same as buying the item in print. Isn't one of the biggest selling points of eBooks supposed to be the lower cost of production? If the cost is the same despite no physical product, I feel like I'm getting ripped off, regardless of convenience. Albums on iTunes cost less than CDs, and now eBooks on Amazon cost less than print books, which is exactly how things should be. (In addition, with Kindle's ability to manipulate font size, any book can now become a large text edition with one setting change.) Kudos to Amazon for making this happen. Finally.

But what about rentals and/or library loans? Is there any chance that Kindle owners will be able to obtain books for a limited amount of time? Unbox offers consumers a choice between rentals (less expensive and limited in time) and purchases (more expensive and permanent), so it would be logical to do the same with eBooks. For now, however, users can only purchase eBooks. Will there be any means by which a lending library can purchase titles for Kindle and then loan them out to patrons who have a device of their own? Doubtful. Libraries' only option will likely be to amass a collection of digital files and then loan out Kindle devices to patrons with selected content preloaded, similar to what's being done at some libraries with iPods. This hardly seems the most efficient use for Kindle, and I wonder if the terms of service even allow this.

Formats appear to be limited. Presumably I can't buy an eBook from another provider and expect it to work in Kindle. Word documents can be imported, but PDFs apparently can't. Would the iPod have succeeded if it didn't play MP3s?

A major reason Kindle actually looks viable is Amazon's huge library of available titles. When I browsed available titles this morning, the site pulled up 91,325 results. Not too shabby for the first day. However, when I searched for the 4 books that I'm currently reading (The Power Broker by Robert Caro, Fame Junkies by Jake Halpern, Ladies and Gentleman, the Bronx Is Burning by Jonathan Mahler, and Manhunt by James Swanson), only one (Manhunt) is available on Kindle right now.

So maybe I've complained a lot, but I'm still very, very intrigued. This is the first eReader that I've ever given any real thought to actually buying. It is a slick little device. A bit on the ugly side, but still innovative, particularly for providing book shopping and downloading directly on the device. Even if Amazon opted for a notoriously unreliable wireless carrier like Sprint, at least they have a wireless carrier.

Your move, Sony.

Thus far, the only thing stopping me from switching all of my email accounts to Gmail accounts was the lack of IMAP access. I have 3 different computers from which I regularly access all of my mail accounts. When I read or delete or file an email on one machine, I need the change to show up on the other machines, too. IMAP is essential for this to work smoothly.

IMAP is also essential for the smooth running of an email-based reference service in which several librarians all access questions from the same mail account.

My two main non-work email accounts are with Netzero and Gmail. Neither of these accounts offer IMAP, so I forward all mail in these accounts to corresponding addresses on an IMAP server I run myself. This accomplishes what I need but adds an extra layer that increases the risk of complication -- particularly because I run the server myself.

Starting tonight, Gmail appears to be offering users IMAP access to their mail. According to Download Squad, IMAP instructions are beginning to appear in both the settings and help sections of the Gmail site.

Armed with this information, I logged into one of my Gmail accounts (the one listed over in the sidebar of this site), but IMAP wasn't available. I then logged into a different Gmail account and was ecstatic to find IMAP available in my settings. Not only does this eliminate an extra layer of potential error to my mail, but ensures that someone better qualified than me is running the server.

This does not, however, solve all my email problems. At work, we recently switched to Exchange Server, and no one has turned on the IMAP switch yet. As a result, I can only access my email using Outlook or Entourage, two applications I truly loathe. Now, Outlook does allow me to set up a rule to redirect all my email to an external IMAP account, but for some unknown reason this process strips out all the addresses in the "To" field of each message, replacing them with the address to which the mail is being redirected. So now I never know whether a message was sent just to me, to several other people and me, or solely to someone else with me as a "BCC." More importantly, this renders the "Reply All" button in my mail client absolutely useless. Another odd quirk? Outlook redirects HTML emails as plain text, meaning any formatting in the original message is lost. The only workaround I can come up with is for someone in IT to go into Active Directory and forward my mail to an external address from there. This would eliminate my reliance on Outlook's fatally flawed redirect rule. Sadly, however, my department's IT staff hasn't been granted Active Directory access by the larger institution, so no one can actually set this up for me.

With Gmail now offering IMAP, I now know exactly where I want my work email forwarded -- assuming I can find someone to forward it.

[Download Squad] Gmail gets IMAP