Jeff Bezos, who is the boss of what all pooey pretend journalists on the internet (hello!) probably call “the ecommerce giant Amazon”, has got his signature on the front page of his company’s website again, much like an Antony Worrall Thompson soup whisk. It must open him up to the risks of identity theft, but it’s all in aid of some just-announced brand new devices whose names all include the word “Kindle”.
In the UK, all this means for now is that one can buy a slightly cheaper, uglier flat electric thing for reading books on. But in America, there are some more new things where at last the interface can be manipulated by wiping fingers on the screen instead of miserably applying pressure to plastic buttons. (One or two retain the comforting papery feel of John Major, so as to not hurt your eyes, but the other is called “Kindle Fire” and is all glowy and can play videos. Think of the latter as a Škoda Superb to Ian Pad’s Bentley – both of those cars have cool outsliding umbrellas concealed in their rear doors, but you really shouldn’t read too much into that similarity.)
Each has a web browser, which is not a new invention but which should be more useful with a poke-sensitive screen, and which importantly encompasses some new technology that sounds inconsequential at first but in fact may be, uh, consequential after all. I’m not so concerned they will come at your privacy like a flannel, but clearly none of this whole wide picture is cause for Ian Google to rub his hands together with pleasure.
(I shall not buy anything, not least because I just bought an antiquated Braun alarm clock off eBay and feel guilt, but if you were to do that with any of the aforelinked Amazon-facing links then I would use the lucrative referral fees to get some batteries for that clock.)