February 10, 2009

Kindle 2.0

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KINDLE 2.0….Brad Stone is liveblogging the release of the Kindle 2.0 book reader:

10:21 a.m. | The Reveal: Mr. Bezos is showcasing the device: The Kindle2 has resdesigned page-turning buttons along its sides, a thinner profile, a metal back, and standard round keys — none of the angular weirdness of the original model. It has 16 shades of gray, crisper photos, clear text, 25 percent faster page turns and 25 percent more battery life. “You can read for 2 weeks on a single charge,” says Mr. Bezos.

….10:26 a.m. | Interface Updates: Mr. Bezos is demonstrating the new Kindle and the joystick-like controller. The old version of the Kindle had an awkward scroll wheel and a separate vertical screen that helped users maneuver a cursor up and down its screen. Kindle users can use the five-way controller to highlight a word and automatically look it up.

That certainly sounds nice. Does this mean I should go out and buy one? Or would it be yet another electronic gadget that I use a few times and then set aside to collect dust? Consider this an open thread to persuade me one way or the other.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

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