I am late to the Kindle show.  Having grown up in Europe and going back there for vacation a fair bit (and reading books mostly on vacation and otherwise via DailyLit), I did not want to buy a US-only device.  So I jumped on the international Kindle, pre-ordering as soon as it was announced (something I may regret when the Nook or the Apple Tablet arrive).   I have now had my Kindle for a few days and have been reading the newspaper on it via the 14-day free trials of the NY Times and the Wall Street Journal.

The basic experience is great. It’s easy to navigate.  Move little stick right for next article and left for previous article.  Use page buttons to read more of an article.  I got used quickly to the e-ink flicker on page turn and the quality of the images and the text is outstanding.  But even after only a short period of usage I am already left wanting so much more.  Why can’t I easily tweet a headline?  Reblog a quote?  Comment?

Most importantly I come back to the question I asked in 2008: “Who Will Be My New York Times?” The second you have the paper on a great device like this, the shortcomings of simply recreating the physical newspaper experience become glaring. As I skip article after article, the reader becomes not one bit smarter.  It doesn’t allow me to import my social graph or delicious bookmarks or anything else that would allow it to learn about my interests and try to rank order the articles accordingly.  At a minimum, there ought to be an alternate reading order based on some kind of inferred importance (as in Techmeme).

So here’s my take after a few days with the Kindle.  EReaders will be great for newspapers, provided they can figure out how to create a “native” experience.  So far, there is no indication of that.