Feb 24 2009
The Traveling Kindle
While waiting for my Kindle to arrive tomorrow, I’ve looked on the UPS site, and have decided to trace it’s path, and trace it’s numbers, from the factory to where it is right now. Kindle ships by UPS, and it’s easier to cut and paste the tracking number, and then type in www.ups.com, and select the country, then paste the tracking number in the space, and I believe it is more correct. It is a different date, than what Amazon provides. Amazon says February 26th, UPS says February 25th.
Amazon is located where? Does anyone actually know where Amazon is, off hand? When I tried to find out their actual address, I looked on several places on the Amazon.com website, and had no luck in finding the location. I finally typed “Where is Amazon.com located?” on Google.
Results 1 - 10 of about 2,840,000 for Where is Amazon.com located?.
The result of my search began with Wikipedia, and it states that Amazon.com is located in Seattle. Does this mean that my kindle began it’s journey in Seattle? I’m not sure. This is the journey of my Kindle thus far:
INDIANAPOLIS,
IN, US 02/24/2009 2:26 A.M. DEPARTURE SCAN
INDIANAPOLIS,
IN, US 02/23/2009 11:58 A.M. ORIGIN SCAN
US 02/23/2009 3:33 A.M. BILLING INFORMATION RECEIVED
Physical Address of Amazon:
1200 12th Ave South
Seattle WA 98108
UNITED STATES
Customer Service:
Tel: (206)694-2992
Fax: (206)266-2950
As the next site notes, (from Bizrate.com) the actual address for Amazon.com is in Seattle. Well, I map-quested Seattle to Indianapolis: And I found it to be a very long trip:
Total Estimated Time: 33 hours 46 minutes
Total Estimated Distance: 2265.30 miles
Does the Kindle really go from Seattle, to Indianapolis? I live in Kansas City, why would Amazon fly it over me, and land it in Indianapolis?
So, I went back to the Amazon forum, and found this address for Amazon: Customer Center at 104-01 Foster Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11236. I have been to Brooklyn, and I’m sure this is a type of distribution center. Orders are probably received at a computer in Seattle, then the order is sent to New York, then the item is packaged and sent from New York to Indianapolis, and is sent from the Indianapolis post office, to your city. Indianapolis, by the way is about 8 hours away form Kansas City, or closer to 12.
In August of 2008, Amazon had sold over 240,000 Kindles. It does not, and will ever do what my computer, my Ipod Touch, or my Blackberry does. Each has it’s purpose. I, for one, would not want to read an entire book on my Blackberry or my Ipod Touch, but the capabilities is there, with the Mobi Pocket reader, and others. The capabilities of the mini notebook (netbook), is a good one to place Mobi Pocket reader on,but I found the books on Mobi Pocket Reader to be very expensive, or the free one’s kind of dull. Imagine, if you will, reading an entire novel on a Blackberry? The visual of that is kind of funny.
I looked up the profits that Amazon has made, (this is a bit behind, the information is taken from August 2008, you can think it probably has increased by a third, or even by 3/4’s now):
Doing a little back of the envelope math, that brings total sales of the device so far to between $86 million and $96 million (the price of the device was reduced to $360 from $400 last May). Then add the amounts spent on digital books, newspapers, and blogs purchased to read on the device, and you get a business that has easily brought in above $100 million so far. (Each $25 worth of digital reading material purchased per Kindle, add $6 million in total revenues).
(taken from this website: http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/08/01/we-know-how-many-kindles-amazon-has-sold-240000/)
I found the math interesting, so I looked a little further and found the numbers to go up significantly, with the book sales adding to the revenue. All this is leading to a very interesting amount of numbers, and journeys to keep an eye on.
I don’t think that Kindle will take the place of the smell, feel, ambiance of a book or bookstore. Personally, I don’t like audio books, and doubt I’ll ever use that feature. There are all kinds of numbers and reasoning, and philosophies about Kindle. That is a completely different blog post. When I get my Kindle, I’ll be able to discuss this further, as for now, I’m thinking about it’s journey.
