Search by Category/Author

I often find that I sometimes want to search for text in books limited to a particular category, author or series, especially when searching for a word or name that might appear in many unrelated books. The underlying implementation would be relatively easy since it is just a simple restriction on the already implemented search feature. Most of the work would be figuring out how to present this in the UI. Here are some possibilities:

• A category-specific search could simply be added to the available actions in the menu shown when viewing category items.
• Add "advanced search" to list of options shown when you type search text (currently the list is "my items", "store", "google", "wikipedia", "dictionary", "goto". This would bring up a dialog that would let you limit the search by category, author, and other available attributes.
• Add ability to specify keywords in search area, as in "Darcy author:Austen".
• When searching from inside a book that is within one or more categories containing more than one book or search options for each category, e.g. "fiction", "currently reading". When there is more than one book by the same author, the author could be added to the list.
• For Author searches, you can already sort results by Author and scroll to the page for the Author. This could be tedious if you have many books on your Kindle and get a large number of hits. Instead, after the results are shown, you could hit the menu button again to get options to filter the results.

Introduction

Despite the fact that I program computers for a living, and am not intimidated with technology, I have never tended to be the first to buy consumer electronics. I did not get a cell phone until long after many of my friends and colleagues and still have yet to get a smart phone. So when Amazon first introduced its Kindle reader, I was intrigued but had little interest in getting one, especially at its original $400 price point. But I have always been an avid reader, and was beginning to get frustrated with the need to find places to store all of the books I had acquired but perhaps might not read again for a long time. So when I got a chance to play with my sister-in-law's 2nd generation Kindle last spring and Amazon then dropped the price below $200, I finally succumbed at bought one just in time for my summer vacation. I was hooked from the first day I owned it, and didn't hesitate to buy the 3rd generation version when it came out a couple of months later.

My Kindle has been my constant companion on my commutes to and from work, sitting in my backyard, and even when I walk my dogs in the woods (I have slow dogs!). Here is what I love about it:

• I can now carry many books around with me. If I am reading more than one book at the same time (I sometimes might be reading a non-fiction book or two in parallel with a novel), I don't have to decide which one to take with me when I leave the house. When reading books in a series, I can carry the entire series with me and refer to previous books when I like.
• I like the instant gratification of being able to start reading a book minutes after deciding that I want to buy it. (I am sure this is Amazon's favorite feature!)
• I can easily search my books for references to particular places, characters or the like. No more flipping randomly back through the book in search of some key reference.
• The size and form factor are just right: neither to small to read comfortably nor too large or heavy to carry around or read in places like a crowded subway car. In its leather case, it has the same size and appearance of my Moleskine notebook. It only weighs a pound in its case, and half that naked, so it is not tiring to hold up.
• The e-ink screen is easy to read from in bright sunlight and can display text sharply down to font sizes that are smaller than most people will want to use. The lack of backlighting is more than made up for by the light built into my cover for the handful of times that I have needed to use it. The adjustable font size is handy when reading in different lighting conditions or when running on the treadmill.
• The battery life has been fantastic. As long as I don't spend a lot of times doing things that inherently are battery draining (playing games, browsing the internet, using the light), it usually goes two weeks before I have to recharge it and probably would last much longer if I didn't use the search feature so often.
• The text to speech mode, while not nearly as good as a human reader, is quite good enough to be understandable and has come in handy when I want to listen to a book while doing tedious tasks such as folding laundry or painting walls.

As much as I love my Kindle, in the course of using it I have observed many things that I think could be improved and missing features that could be offered. I am not talking about backlit screens or the ability to watch videos, since those are the domain of devices like the iPad. Until the hardware technology gets to the point where these features can be implemented without giving up the reflective display, light weight and great battery life that make the Kindle such a great e-reader, those will never be features one should look for in a Kindle. Rather, I am interested in the kind of improvements that could be made through improvements to the operating system, addition of downloadable apps, and improvements to Amazon's web site - the kind of changes that we can hope for without needing to wait for the next generation of hardware. That is the subject of this blog.

Future posts will be devoted to specific suggestions for features to improve the Kindle experience. I will try to restrict each post to a discussion of a single feature or set of related features.