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lauraredcloud at 01:05pm on 19/11/2010
lauraredcloud at 01:05pm on 19/11/2010Kindle ebook gifting debuted today, and I already have some suggestions for improvement:
* It appears there is no delivery delay option, so you must wait until the absolute last second to buy a kindle present.
WHAT. WHY DO THEY NOT HAVE THIS. SO EASY TO IMPLEMENT. Who buys presents the exact moment they want a person to receive them? Aside from Rory.
Luckily, it appears they also haven't implemented receiving kindle gifts directly on your kindle (you need to click through the email to confirm that you want it; I think this is so that you have an opportunity choose to receive store credit instead if it's a book you already have, admittedly a really nice feature, and also so that they can confirm your location so you don't accidentally receive US COPYRIGHT VIOLATING UK BOOKS, a pain-in-the-ass feature). So you won't spoil your Christmas morning surprise by staying up late reading while somebody is feverishly doing their last-minute online shopping in the next room.
You do have to check your email as part of the present-receiving process, but I don't see any way around that.
* Gifting is tied to email address, not Kindle/Amazon account, so you can buy gifts for people who don't have a kindle. In theory this is good, I guess, but why would you want to? (I guess they can convert the ebook into another format if they want, but it seems like a lot of strings to attach to a present.) This also means there are certain features which would be great which are not available: you can't check, for example, that your recipient has a kindle before you get them a gift. Nor can it check the person's kindle account to make sure they don't already have that book BEFORE you buy it (which would also be neat!)
* It would be cool if there were festive present-enhancing giftwrap-approximating options, like so you could see that somebody has gotten you a kindle gift, but you don't get to see what it is until a certain date. You could log into your account and see little present icons! I also have an idea for a "shake the present" option where it feeds you some random, but frustratingly non-identifying, information about the book, e.g. "This book is 1249 KB." "The physical version of this book weighs 1.2 pounds." "This book has 327 user reviews."
* It appears there is no delivery delay option, so you must wait until the absolute last second to buy a kindle present.
WHAT. WHY DO THEY NOT HAVE THIS. SO EASY TO IMPLEMENT. Who buys presents the exact moment they want a person to receive them? Aside from Rory.
Luckily, it appears they also haven't implemented receiving kindle gifts directly on your kindle (you need to click through the email to confirm that you want it; I think this is so that you have an opportunity choose to receive store credit instead if it's a book you already have, admittedly a really nice feature, and also so that they can confirm your location so you don't accidentally receive US COPYRIGHT VIOLATING UK BOOKS, a pain-in-the-ass feature). So you won't spoil your Christmas morning surprise by staying up late reading while somebody is feverishly doing their last-minute online shopping in the next room.
You do have to check your email as part of the present-receiving process, but I don't see any way around that.
* Gifting is tied to email address, not Kindle/Amazon account, so you can buy gifts for people who don't have a kindle. In theory this is good, I guess, but why would you want to? (I guess they can convert the ebook into another format if they want, but it seems like a lot of strings to attach to a present.) This also means there are certain features which would be great which are not available: you can't check, for example, that your recipient has a kindle before you get them a gift. Nor can it check the person's kindle account to make sure they don't already have that book BEFORE you buy it (which would also be neat!)
* It would be cool if there were festive present-enhancing giftwrap-approximating options, like so you could see that somebody has gotten you a kindle gift, but you don't get to see what it is until a certain date. You could log into your account and see little present icons! I also have an idea for a "shake the present" option where it feeds you some random, but frustratingly non-identifying, information about the book, e.g. "This book is 1249 KB." "The physical version of this book weighs 1.2 pounds." "This book has 327 user reviews."
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