Waterproofing the vacation or pool Kindle. M-Edge via Forbes - Update

Waterproofing your vacation and Kindle 
Forbes's article on waterproofing today's portable electronic devices opens with a story on a couple who took their Kindles out to sea on an inflatable raft.
  During a vacation to St. John , Patrick Mish (of M-Edge Accessories) and his wife (she gets no name in this Forbes article :-) ) were able to read books and magazines on their Kindles while relaxing in the Caribbean -- even, the article says, tossing the costly e-readers into the air a few times and letting them splash into the water.

'Mish says onlookers were so flabbergasted that they swam out to the couples' raft to investigate. "We said, 'They're in waterproof cases!,'" he laughs. "After that, we were dubbed 'the Kindle people.'" '

Mish developed his waterproof Kindle case, called the Guardian, to enable Kindle owners to take their e-readers to beaches, pools, etc., making a case that is not just protective of the screen and its buttons and other controls, it also floats.  Good thinking! if it's meant to allow tossing it into the ocean.

The "Guardian," one of Patrick Mish's M-Edge offerings (and what a sweet article for his business, which is popular among users of Kindle and other e-readers) uses special hinges and latches to form a watertight seal around e-readers and includes three internal, air-filled "buoyancy chambers" that keep the device afloat and upright for in-water, even hands-free, reading, per the website, as it floats level on the water's surface.  I can imagine trying to read that way as it bobs on the water.

This case, which is scheduled to go on sale June 9 for $80, took about a year to produce, and three internal, air-filled buoyancy chambers ensure the case will float, screen up, in water.

M-Edge products for the 6" Kindle are buyable from Amazon but the Guardian is not shown there yet.  Search results that include the Kindle DX are here.

If $80 is beyond the budget for this nicely constructed protection, there are other products claiming to be waterproof (and some use protection against rain, snow, dirt, sand, etc).

I forgot to say that some, including Jeff Bezos, use Ziplock bags for reading the Kindle in the bathtub. Not sure I'd risk doing that in sea waters though. I carried a Ziplock bag when visiting Egypt in case of sandstorms but didn't run into one.
But if the M-Edge waterproof case price were lower, I'd consider it for the protection from drops too.

Maybe The Guardian will be a tad less expensive when it shows up at Amazon? Apparently not, so I struck that out.  You can find it now at Amazon at the same price.

UPDATE - June 10 -  Original post date: 6/8/10, 8:54 PM
Wired has a couple of caveats to consider:
  "You can't access the power button, so if your machine turns itself off while you're re-enacting PT-109 with rubber duckies, you have to dry the case off, exit the tub, and extricate your Kindle to turn it back on again.  Shiny plastic-screen overlay robs the reader of some of its direct-sunlight skills.  Heavy: essentially triples your reader's weight.  Gotta leave it unlatched when you board a plane.  Why? Decrease in pressure could wreck the case's flexible-plastic portion."

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 Guide to finding Free or Low-Cost Kindle books and Sources  Top 100 free bestsellers
   Check often:  Latest temporarily free non-classics or late-listed ones.

Seneca Grade School Library and its Kindle program

Kathy Parker, school librarian for 33 years for Seneca (IL) Grade School, is active on Twitter (@MariansLibrary) and reads on a Kindle—and now so do many of her seventh and eighth graders who use the Amazon Kindle in a language arts program she helped launch last year.

  The school bought six Kindles in 2009 and downloaded some titles that summer.

' By the fall, seventh and eighth graders were sharing 18 devices and reading novels, ranging from Gary Schmidt's The Wednesday Wars (Clarion, 2007) to Lisa Graff's The Things About Georgie (HarperCollins, 2007), for class assignments. Within six months, older students were bringing the devices home.

 The pilot program, which cost about $2,800, proved so successful that after a presentation to the Board of Education in December, Seneca CCSD 170 Superintendent Eric Misener helped secure funds to buy Kindles for every eighth-grade student, along with enough devices for one seventh-grade class to use this year. '

The article cites support from Twitter followers like Will DeLameter who runs the Edukindle website.  He alerted others, including M-Edge Accessories, which is donating covers for all the Kindles.

  Parker pointed out that her budget takes into account that each book can be downloaded onto up to six devices for the cost of the one book.

' She says it's well worth the investment as she's seen firsthand how students respond to being able to change fonts, using the text-to-speech feature, and even having the devices display what percentage of the book they've completed.

  "The bottom line for me is the Kindles have generated a love of reading among those students who would not have otherwise picked up a book," she says. '

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 See the ongoing Guide to finding Free or Low-Cost Kindle books and Sources
  Check often: Latest free non-classics, shortcut http://bit.ly/latestfreenonclassics.)

CES video/audio from TheKindleChronicles

The Kindle Chronicles podcast brings us audio and video interviews, with demos of newest E-readers at CES, by its roving reporters (Darlene too) and interviewer, Len Edgerly, whose reflections on CES are definitely unique and even poetically upbeat.

The podcast audio and 2 videos include time with (1) Patrick Mish, CEO of M-Edge, popular for creative covers and other Kindle accessories; (2) Joe Kralowetz, software director at enTourage Systems, who demos the eDGe Dualbook which has both an e-paper screen and an LCD color one for web activities -- and the 2 screens interact; (3) Neil Jones, CEO of InterRead, which makes the COOL-ER ereader, which has done well in the UK; (4) Maureen Mellon, direct of product marteting at Plastic Logic, whose Que, aimed at business professionals, made quite a splash this week, meeting predictions (here) that the Que "ProReader" would come in between $600 and $800.  Plastic Logic is selling the lower-cost 4-gig $650 model with WiFi but no cellular wireless, and the 8-gig $800 one will have 3G wireless.

Go take a look if curious about the new e-readers and the people behind them.

Photos: Kindle-2 vs Sony PRS-505 grays - M-Edge cover

I was putting together a set of cell-phone photos of a Kindle in the wild, to be used later on in this blog, but I decided to make a pointer here to the Kindle-related picture set now, for those who've been curious about any of the following:

Sony PRS-505 and Kindle-2 gray screens, at Target.  It's been said the Sony gray is lighter, but not particularly so, although it seems bluer while the Kindle leans more to a greenish tint.
  UPDATE: 4/24/09.  PC World's Melissa J. Perenson presents a "visual tour" contrasting the Sony PRS-700 and Kindle 2 units.

Posting a reply to a forum (to Ned-san).
The process is slow, and when you're through typing, the web-process tells you that you were unable to connect with the site, but the posting does goes through.  Same false error-message happens with Gmail-sends.


M-Edge Platform cover - upright on my lap in a dark, cool restaurant lobby on a hot day.  The food took so long I thought I'd take a pic of the Platform jacket in action, with a colorful background.  Not an uplifting news story though.


The M-Edge Platform, closed.
  Like the Amazon cover, it lies very flat but is 3/4" longer to provide the webbing that allows the front cover to be used as a stand.  As the pics indicated, it's also nicely padded.  The left-ledge is meant for an integrated light (separate purchase) when the new version is ready, but that edge makes it less fatiguing to hold with one hand, so I'm rethinking the separate light.
 While I like Amazon's notebook-style cover a lot, the M-Edge's stand-up feature is a real Plus. :-)  So I alternate the covers.  Their other covers.