Like many internet addicts, I’ve gotten very good at merely scanning anything I run across rather than, say, actually reading the thing. A little tip to get you to actually start reading again, especially those longer articles:

Instapaper + their Read Later button + their Kindle integration + your Kindle = Simply a Better Way to Read Long Online Articles

or is it just mine?

For Christmas this year, my lovely wife bought me a Kindle 3, and I’m lovin’ the little thing. Been spending a bit of time with it almost every evening, and have already plowed my way through a few books along with a large chunk of my ridiculously large backlog of online marketing PDFs.

What’s that, you didn’t know you could send your PDFs to your Kindle? For an info collector like myself, that ability is a godsend. I literally have hundreds of PDFs frittered away in series of well-organized folders waiting to be read that day I have some free time while sitting in front of the computer. In other words, never.

But now that I can casually look through them while kicking back in the recliner or while putting a few miles on the recumbent, I’m actually reading — rather than just storing — the documents. A ton of great info there, just waiting for me to take the time to read it.

Anyway, about the title. As I said, I love this thing, but I worry that I may have a potential dud Kindle on my hands. Either that, or I don’t know how to turn the thing on and off. Almost every day, I find a time where I can’t seem to get the Kindle to turn on, forcing me to do a hard reset to get any sort of response out of it. Once she starts back up, all appears fine — all my books/PDFs are there, all my notes/bookmarks/etc. are in place. But it concerns me that one of these days it won’t start back up, and I’ll be without my latest addiction for a while.

So, the question dear readers, is it just me, or should I harass Amazon support and see about getting a replacement? Oh, and anyone have some cool Kindle tricks they want to share?

Shall we join the Young Earthers and wish the universe a Happy 6,009th? Nah, I prefer at least acting the rational being.

Instead, I’ll better spend my day celebrating the 5th birthday of the iPod. Maybe I’ll just load up a handful of Science Friday episodes and be awed by the natural world. Or load up on a little Open Source Sex and, well, just enjoy… Or maybe even grab a few Webmaster Radio episodes and see if I can figure out a way to double up my online income.