No, Virginia, Santa Claus Won’t Have a New Kindle

After watching rumors about a new, textbook-friendly Kindle coming out soon, Amazon has finally stepped in and — squashed the rumor. According to a blog at the New York Times, there will be no new Kindle this year. No news about the potential for a new Kindle next year. Read the comments for perspective from current Kindle owners and students thinking about what it would be like having a single e-book instead of a giant pile of books.

NCSU Teams Up With Wake Tech

This is kinda cool. North Carolina State University has teamed up with Wake Technical College. The announcement’s at http://news.ncsu.edu/news/2008/08/125mkwaketech.php .

The “Partnership for Access to College”, also known as PAC, offers students in Wake Tech’s College/University Transfer curriculum to get guaranteed admission to NCSU after completing an associates degree at Wake Tech and NCSU program requirements. Students must have completed a first semester at Wake Tech with a 3.0 GPA and a minimum of 12 credit hours at the 100 or 200 level.

Once in the PAC program, participants will be able to take one course per semester (fall and spring) at NCSU. They’ll also have access to an NCSU PAC ad visor, NCSU libraries, and other NCSU student services.

This really gives Wake Tech students who want to go on to four-year colleges a path to aim for. I wonder how much textbook overlap there will be between the two schools?

Big Screen Kindle in the Works?

This is an interesting blog post about a big screen Kindle and what it might do for the textbook market. And when you think about it, prices on Kindles wouldn’t have to even drop that much for this to be a great idea. If you halved the price of textbooks when making them available electronically, the Kindle pays for itself in — what — a year?

Unfortunately there are a couple of big Kindle drawbacks. B&W only, for one. You also can’t mark it all over with a yellow highlighter and Post-It flags.