I'm getting tired of the Kindle's UI

I'm getting tired of the Kindle's UI. The Kindle 2 has been out for nearly a year now and the best the dev team has been able to give us is a list of every file on the device and a context sensitive menu. I will admit that the interface is simple and anyone can use it. It's also very easy to navigate, if you have less than 30 items. I have one hundred and seventy nine. It is a mess! Instead of having easy access to my books now, I have to dig through the mess by either paging through the list that can only be sorted by most recent access, title, or author (descending only) and can only be filtered by all, personal documents, subscriptions, or books. I cannot list audio or text to speech enabled books only. I cannot tag books and list them by tags (say Fiction, Business, Need to Read, Read, etc...). There is no form of library management whatsoever and I need it. I can't count how many books I've downloaded for free from Amazon that I haven't read just because they've been buried by the books and podcasts I've put on the device. (Quick tip, put a MP3 file in the Audible folder and it's treated as an audio book. Your position in the file is saved and you can skip ahead and back by 30 seconds. Combined with Songbird and the folder sync addon, it's the ultimate podcast player.) Organization is a mess and it needs improvement.

One solution I freely offer to Amazon is to create an actual Home Screen that appears when I press home on my device. Something that separates different media types such that they don't bury each other. I have 10+ publications I sync to my Kindle with Calibre that bury the set of books I'm currently reading every morning, so why not split the screen and list the 5 most recently updated publications and 5 most recently accessed books? Now, because left and right will have to be used to move between the different sections, let's use the keyboard to access these options. There are 44 buttons there and an ALT key; let's put them to use. ALT + L can skip directly to the classic file list with additional filtering and sorting options. ALT + P or S can go to the publication/subscription list, and ALT + K can open the Kindle Store.

Let's look at the Kindle Store for a moment here. Admit it, the Kindle's wireless access to the store is the reason you chose the Kindle over a Sony PRwhatever. Never mind touch screens and back lights, instant access to a new book once you finish your current one is where it's at. So why not put it on the home screen? Sure it's shameless advertising in the one screen that you will see the most on the device, but it's also instant access to the most used portions of the kindle store. You finish a book, click Home, and ooh! Brandon Sanderson's continuation of The Wheel of Time has just been published! Click, buy, read. I can't count how many times I've finished a book just to go to the store and purchase the next one in the series, which coincidentally was in the recommended list. This just shortens the process. It's useful to you the reader and to Amazon the merchant.

The Calendar pane. Who doesn't need a calendar? The Kindle's tied into the Internet, why not have it show you your Google calendar? Google offers a good API so it's possible to tie into it and Amazon can charge for the service. I wouldn't mind paying $1.5o monthly for instant access to my calendar. I would prefer that it be free, but hey, if Amazon can deliver a good calendar manager which ties into what I already use, I'll take it.

Lastly, what home screen doesn't have the current date and time? It's hardly unique. But how many home screens tie in a fun fact unique to that date. Amazon boasts Wikipedia integration, even going as far as including a button for it in the search interface. Why not put it to use and make the Kindle fun again? I've had the device for over 6 months now. It's still travels everywhere with me and I still love it, but it's not a toy for showing to other people anymore, it's a tool and I get annoyed being interrupted by other people when I try to use it. Throwing in a fun fact of the day is a great way to get me to share the device with others. Historical facts are always interesting. And hey, if you are interested enough to learn more, just slide the cursor down and click to see the Wikipedia article on it.

Amazon has a great device here and it's the first to market, which give it a strong foothold, but others are just on the horizon. Amazon's only strength is it's online store. Everything else about the device (DRM, poor library management, spotty text to speech support, no desktop reader) are weaknesses. Other companies are offering touch screens, desktop management software, back lights and other features that will pull customers away. The device is stagnating, and the only real new feature offered on the device since I bought it was the hobbling of the TTS.

This device is revolutionary. We can see that from how many other devices are copying it's online and note taking functionality. The revolution is over now though. We now understand that we want portable libraries with wireless store, dictionary, and encyclopedia access. The question very soon is going to be which one do I want, or which one do I want next. The answer there is the one that makes getting to what I want the easiest.