There are geniuses at work over at Amazon. Don't let the overpriced, first-gen-iPod looking Kindle 2 fool you.  Jeff Bezos may never talk me into believing the Kindle is worth the hefty $360 tag, but last week they almost snared me. Amazon's sticky web of relevancy and impulse-buying intelligence has gotten to me before (users who purchased Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Season Two also bought Angel, Seasons One through Five!), but never before has my consumer willpower been so tested. It began three weeks ago with an email from John, a coworker who knows I'm a Stephen King junkie. The truth is, anyone visiting my "library" at home would immediately recognize it as a Stephen King shrine. Proud first-editions gloat on the best shelves, lording over obviously less-favored books. The email's subject read Stephen King sells out again with Kindle.  Looking past the...

My family chose to keep it simple this year - no overwhelming trips to the mall, no electronic gadgetry, no outlandish excesses (unless you count the food, that's one excess we'll allow). Lucky me, I didn't even need to share my Amazon WishList or drop hints. A few of my favorite things found their way under my tree anyway. After thoroughly enjoying some Hesse on my iPhone, I have to admit I'm looking forward to continuing my exploration with a proper printed medium. The Glass Bead Game is something I've been meaning to read for about 15 years, and this paperback copy of Narcissus and Goldmund is a bonus. Generally speaking I prefer robots, vampires, and your garden variety supernatural yarns to philosophy and existentialism. But I think this will be good for me, and besides Stephen King won't have anything...

One of my favorite iPhone apps is called "Stanza." So far as I can tell, It's the only eBook reader for iPhone that's connected to an online library of free downloadable eBooks. Great for subway commuters like me. This week I'm re-reading Siddhartha, by Hermann Hesse. An incredible book that's chock-full of philosophy and discovery, and generates a lot of self-discovery along the way. The first time I read Siddhartha I was about 16 or 17 - How strange to read it again as an adult, let alone on a phone of all things. Here's one of my favorite passages - it brought to mind the work I do as an experience designer, but also made me consider my day-to-day mindset as an observer in the world. "He pondered deeply, like diving into a deep water he let himself sink down to...