[Server-devel] The concept of "pushing" content to clients

[Anna]

I got my Mom a refurb Kindle for $50 for her birthday.  This past Thursday,
she visited me for a few hours and we did a bit of training over takeout
from Dreamland BBQ.

What in the world does that have to do with the XO/DXS/XSCE ecosystem, you
might be asking?

For one, there's "registration."  Mom entered her Amazon user/pass into the
Kindle.  Then it was "registered" and she could see the Kindle when she
looked at her Amazon account from her laptop.

After registration, I asked her to go into her Amazon account to put my
email address and the Tinderizer (I'll explain later) email address into
the "approved" email list.  That's so you can send things to
mom at kindle.comfrom an approved email address and it'll just
"magically" show up on her
Kindle.

I installed Calibre on her Windows laptop, which luckily went well.  She
understood it was like "iTunes for books."  (Mom has an iPhone and an iPad,
she knows iTunes.)  Then I showed her some free ebook sites where she could
get content, how to import the downloaded books into Calibre, and how to
put that content onto the Kindle.

Where Mom was really fascinated was how you can "push" content onto the
Kindle.  If you don't have a Kindle, here's how it works (remember Mom put
my email address into the "approved" list):

1.  I find something interesting that Mom might like to read
2.  I email mom at kindle.com that content in a .txt file attachment and
simply put the word "convert" in the subject
3.  Mom connects her Kindle to wifi and it automagically downloads the
content

Now, Mom is a huge fan of the NYT, she actually pays money to subscribe.  I
set her up with http://tinderizer.com like I use.  Sometimes the NYT has
very long articles that I'd like to read later on the e-ink Kindle.
 Tinderizer is a bookmarklet that, once you set it up (and setup is very
simple), it's "one click" to push it to the Kindle.  Once the Kindle is
connected to wifi, that content just "magically" shows up on the device.
 If I know I'm going to be offline for a while, or just want to sit out on
the porch in the sunlight, I'll browse for articles to push to the Kindle
to read later.  Instapaper is another option I've heard good things about,
but it doesn't sound as simple.

In my case, reading thoughtful, longform articles on my computer screen is
sometimes difficult, so I quite prefer them on the Kindle's eink screen.
 And reading offline minimizes distractions.

I know you're still wondering, what does this have to do with the
XO/DXS/XSCE ecosystem!  The concept of "pushing" content to client devices,
which then automagically shows up with no effort from the end user.  And
it's not a link, it's the full content, so the user only needs to have a
connection for a few minutes while the queued up content is pushed.

Many folks might think Amazon is evil or whatever, but their content
delivery system is notable and somewhat revolutionary as far as end users
are concerned.

Also, take note of this Kindle based project:  http://www.worldreader.org/

As we're going into XSCE 0.5 and thinking about value added stuff, lemme
just throw this concept in.

Anna Schoolfield
Birmingham
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