Amazon's new "Send To Kindle" button is nothing original. Its functionality is exactly what we've already seen (and used) with apps like Instapaper and Pocket. But it's an important move for Amazon, which stands to benefit from capturing more of our fractured attention spans.

The more we turn to Amazon for ebooks, games, videos, PDFs, etc. — and now any article on the Web — the more money Amazon can potentially make off of us. Of course, Amazon hopes we'll read and watch all those things on its Kindle hardware, whether a dedicated e-reader or a full-fledged tablet like the Fire. But Amazon knows not all of us will buy its devices, so it's also built apps for just about every major platform, including the Web.

The company may not drive revenue directly with each feature and app, or even every hardware sale. But any time Amazon ropes us into its ecosystem, the odds of us giving it more of our money at some point increases. 

Saving Things For Later Is Priceless

The premise of these time-shifting, read-stuff-later features is simple: You come across an interesting article while you're dicking around online, but you can't neglect your responsibilities long enough to read the entire thing. So you click a button and off it goes, into the cloud, where it's stripped of its gaudy visual fluff and can be recalled later in your reading app of choice. For some of us, having this option is indispensable.

With the rate at which new and worthwhile articles, videos and white papers fly at my face all day, I can't imagine not having the option to time-shift some of it. I would lose my mind. 

I've been using Instapaper five years and I love it. When Pocket launched, sure, I was tempted by its rave reviews and sleek design. But switching seemed like too much work only to attain roughly the same exact functionality.

On Instapaper, my favorite articles are neatly stored in topical folders and, more importantly, a massive queue of things to read in the future perpetually awaited me. That queue silently guilt trips me enough as is. I can't just abandon it! More than anything, I just didn't feel comfortable packing up all my things and moving into a new, very similar app. I didn't want a new place to read.

But Amazon's Kindle iPad app? Hmm, maybe. The thing is, I'm already reading there. I don't even have a Kindle, but I've amassed a virtual bookshelf within the Kindle app, where I find myself doing more and more sustained reading. 

Infiltrating Your Reading Habits One Button At A Time

If Amazon's "Send To Kindle" button winds up all over the Web, in news reading apps and in whatever replaces Google Reader, I just might be inclined to click it. The idea of time-shifting articles to the Kindle app is an easier one for me to swallow. The icon is already in my iPad's dock, right there next to Instapaper. Might as well, right?

This is exactly what Amazon wants. The more I turn to it for reading, watching and playing games, the more money it makes and the more likely I am to consider springing for a Kindle or Kindle Fire down the line.

For now, I'm still hooked on Instapaper and I use my iPad for too many things to consider switching to another tablet. But those things could change. In the meantime, I've got a shiny new bookmarklet in Chrome on the desktop, right near the one for Instapaper. Smooth move, Amazon. 

The New York Times is expanding its mobile footprint. The Gray Lady announced today that it is launching its digital content on Flipboard to both Android and Kindle Fire tablets. The Times Flipboard content had previously only been available on the iPhone and iPad.

In conjunction with its new Kindle Fire and Android Flipboard streams comes the Times’ own particular blend of pay walled content. The top news section of the Times will be free but in order to access other content from the publication, a digital subscription is required. The Times offers its NYTimes.com with smartphone apps access for $3.75 a week billed every four weeks ($15 per month). To lure readers in, the Times offers the first four weeks for $0.99. 

The Times continues to be a leader in monetizing digital content distribution on mobile devices, a problem that has plagued the news industry since the advent of Apple’s App Store in 2008. The publication has moved through the white space of the mobile distribution channels with iPhone and iPad apps, Windows Phone and Android and now a specific partnership with Flipboard on Android and Kindle Fire. The Times dubs its mobile distribution strategy “NYT Everywhere.”

From an aesthetic standpoint, the Gray Lady is still indeed… gray (the term Gray Lady was long ago applied to the New York Times because of its high ratio of print to graphics). Flipboard is an excellent app for showing off visual elements of online content but perusing the New York Times with the app still gives readers loads of text accompanied by the occasional picture.

The NYT Everywhere campaign is an interesting choice for the Times. Many publications are actually getting out of the native app game and going towards the mobile Web for distribution, creating sites that employ responsive design and HTML5. The Boston Globe has focused much of its mobile strategy on responsive design and The Financial Times infamously pulled its app from the Apple App Store and went 100% to the mobile Web. We at ReadWrite have also forsaken the native app route and built our site to be completely responsive. 

How do you read your news? Do you go to a publications app or its mobile website? Do you use third-party apps like Zite, Pulse or Flipboard? Let us know in the comments. 

Image courtesy of Shutterstock.

If I drop my iPhone 5 on the sidewalk, how easily will it be to repair the screen? What if my Kindle Fire's battery stops holding a charge? When we're shopping for new tablets and smartphones, we seldom take these kinds of things into consideration. Most of us just presume nothing bad will happen. And if it does, well, we'll deal with it when it happens. 

As far as the manufacturers are concerned, they're usually more interested in getting customers to stand in line for the new gadget in another year or two, so making it easy to fix today's devices is hardly a priority. If you look at the user manual of an iPad, Kindle Fire or Nexus 7, you won't see instructions on replacing the battery - or opening the device for any purpose. iPhones are held together using proprietary pentalobe screws specifically designed to keep you out of your device's innards. 

Whether we like it or not, we're living in the Age of Unrepairable Machines. As our devices get more portable and sleek, our ability to tweak and repair the hardware diminishes. (The ability to work with the software, of course, is a separate question.)

Some argue that this is okay. Most of us wouldn't want to fix our refrigerators or our watches if they break, so why bother with tablets and smartphones?  

Computers Used To Be Hobbyist Favorites

The thing is, historically, computers have been easily modified by their owners. In fact, that ability to fix, upgrade and otherwise tinker with computers was a big part of the genre's early appeal. So while you can't crack open an iPad to add more memory like you can with your laptop, there are still plenty of consumers who would prefer the do-it-yourself route to replacing busted screens and dead batteries. 

But how realistic is that in 2013? Just how fixable is that tablet you're thinking of buying?

Thankfully you don't have to wait until the screen shatters to find out. The folks over at iFixIt have been tearing down the hottest new gadgets as they're released and posting detailed, step-by-step reports on the guts of each one. We put together this handy chart of how iFixIt ranks popular smartphones and tablets:

Note: If you're the DIY Mr(s).-Fix-It type, we definitely recommend reading through your gadget's teardown report with care before breaking out the 54-bit driver set. And keep in mind that none of these manufacturers intend for you to open their devices, so do so at your own risk. 

Photo courtesy of iFixIt.

In the smartphone world, Android’s dominance has been built on the strength of its overseas deployment. On a global basis, Android controlled 68.4% of smartphone shipments in 2012. It would be natural to assume that Android’s tablet share would follow a similar pattern. 

You would be wrong. 

According to Boston-based mobile analytics firm Localytics, 59% of all Android tablets are not in fledgling foreign markets, but right here in the United States. Great Britain has 5% of Android tablets while Spain and Korea have 2% each. No other country has more than 1% of the Android tablet market share. 

This challenges the conventional wisdom of the smartphone market and mobile operating system wars. Android does well on a global basis because it has a variety of smartphones coming from a plethora of equipment manufacturers at many different price points. Locations like India, China and the Middle East have high Android adoption because of low price points and easy availability.

Looking at the Android tablet market from afar, you might think that it would play out similarly. A large variety of very cheap Android tablets have hit the market over the last year or so. If you really want an Android tablet for next to nothing, you can look at the Maylong Universe M-270 at $117 or the Archos 70 for $148. The Coby CT-MID7034 Android tablet can be found for the reasonable price of $78. Google and Asus have the Nexus 7 starting at $199 and Samsung has its robust line of Galaxy Tabs and the 10.1-inch Note. Heck, there are even $20 Android tablets!

With all the variety, you would think that foreign markets would be buying up Android tablets the same way they do smartphones. The is one big reason that's not happening:

Amazon. 

Amazon’s Kindle Fire and Fire HD lines make up 33% of all U.S. Android tablets. No other single tablet has more than 10% market share in the U.S., with the Barnes & Noble Nook taking 10%, Samsung’s Galaxy tablets at 9% and the Nexus 7 at 8%. 

About 89% of all Amazon Kindle Fire tablets live in the United States, buoying the number of all Android tablets worldwide. If Amazon Kindles were stripped from the overall data, the U.S. would have only 40% of all Android tablets in the world.

That brings up an interesting correlation. According to Localytic’s data, 37% of the world’s Android smartphones are U.S. based. Coincidence? Perhaps. But the U.S. definitely does feel the Amazon Effect when it comes to the amount of Android tablets available. 

It will be curious to see how well Amazon does across the globe when the Fire becomes more widely available. Outside the U.S., It is currently available in only a handful of markets in Western Europe and Asia.

The problem that Amazon has in distributing Kindles worldwide is not so much a matter of shipping or logistics. It is fairly simple to put a Kindle in a box and send it anywhere. The complication comes from the fact that for the Kindle to work properly, Amazon’s Appstore for Android needs to be deployed to each foreign market, adjusted for local currency and language and so forth. Amazon has started this process but does not yet have the deep cultural integration it needs to truly launch the Fire on a global basis. 

It should be noted that Localytics data may have some confirmation bias. As with other mobile analytics companies, Localytics tracks data by looking at the apps that people use on the device. (Localytics says that it can gather insights on app usage from 500 million unique devices worldwide.) 

The app will return data such as device type, operating system, screen size and other tidbits to Localytics. Hence, the company sees from the perspective of app usage as opposed to shipments or sales. From a pure shipment level, Strategy Analytics estiamtes Android at 56% of the U.S. market against 37% for iOS in 2012. 

One morning this week, at 4:25am Eastern time, I got an email from Amazon:

“Great news! You can now enjoy photos on your Kindle Fire using the Cloud Drive Photos app. Store your photos online and have them at your fingertips on your Fire.”

I had to laugh.

I Was Late To The Party

My first thought was "better late than never." Then I noticed the software had been released back in November, so the joke was actually on me.

Still, Amazon taking a year to release a decent cloud-based photo app had sent me right into the arms of a Nexus 7.

The Kindle Fire I got for my Christmas 2011 gift had been my first adventure into tablets. (I’m hooked on photos - which you might know if you read my post on Photo Finishing Your Memories Old and New.)

As an Android user (see Seniors Should Be Dialing In On Smartphones), I was expecting an App on the Kindle Fire like the “Gallery App” on my LG Spectrum smartphone. After all Amazon is an expert with the cloud so it should know how to store my JPEGs. There was no cloud photo app at the time.

Amazon Cloud Drive Couldn't Figure Out Photos

So I experimented by putting some images on my Amazon Cloud Drive. My Kindle and/or Amazon didn’t seem to know what to do with them. Inevitably when viewing the photos, some were always oriented wrong. Often it was the ones that I really wanted to show.

This was surprising, since Amazon seemed to know exactly what to do with my Word documents. It turned them into books that I could easily page through on my Kindle Fire.

Portfolio: A Third-Party Alternative

It wasn’t long before I discovered Portfolio, a neat $2.99 app for Android that worked with Microsoft’s Sky Drive among other things.

I didn’t really care whose cloud had my photos, I just wanted to show a few images using my Kindle Fire when I visited with friends. Portfolio worked really well for me. Just dropping the photos in a folder on my SkyDrive automatically created a slide show.

When I bought a Nexus 7 this holiday season, I was pleased to get my Gallery App back. Ease of access to my photos, more consistent sharing options and the speed of Chrome on the Nexus 7 relegated my Kindle Fire into a backup tablet that I keep in my upstairs office.

Amazon Cloud Drive Photos Rocks

But when I got the note from Amazon this morning, I had to give its Photo Cloud a try. I installed it on my Windows 8 tower, Windows 7 laptop and my now famous Mac Mini running Mountain Lion. Installation was simple and it workeds well on all of them - although, annoyingly, it did install Java Runtime on the Mac.

Uploading photos is as easy as right clicking or dragging and dropping. Unfortunately there is no Linux client yet.

Just to put it to the test, I used the software on Windows 8 to put photos from my Google Drive on the Amazon Cloud. On Windows 7, I uploaded pictures via my Lenovo laptop from the shared media library of my wife’s Windows 7 laptop. I also uploaded photos from Dropbox and the desktop on the Mac to the Amazon cloud. There is a nice option in the Mac version to import from iPhoto. You access it from the cute cloud icon in your menu bar. It is easy to choose what you want to import.

The pictures all show up in a nice slide show on my Kindle Fire. The only challenge so far is that I cannot seem to find the original handful of pictures that I uploaded last year. Of course I might have copies in a few other places.

E-readers are screwed.

That's the main takeaway from Wednesdays ominously worded report from IHS, anyway. The numbers are pretty dramatic: By the end of the year, sales of dedicated ebook reading devices will have dropped 36% from 2011. Come 2016, says IHS, total e-reader sale volume will be just two-thirds of what it was last year.

Yikes. Is this really the death of e-readers? 

It makes perfect sense that e-reader sales are falling off a cliff. Tablets are eating their lunch. Not only has Apple sold 84 million iPads to date, but the companies who have dominated the e-reader market are themselves shipping tablets now. 

Consumers are quite naturally drawn to these multi-function, multimedia-capable gadgets that can stream movies, browse the Web, take photos, play Letterpress and do just about anything else app developers can dream up. And yes, those same devices - whose prices keep falling - let you read books too.  

My iPad Is Great, But I Really Want A Kindle

When Steve Jobs first unveiled the iPad, I thought it was absurd. Never would I need to supplement my laptop and iPhone with this giant iPod Touch, I declared.

Today, I use my iPad constantly. It serves as my alarm clock, morning newspaper, TV content provider, futuristic radio, bedtime magazine, digital cookbook and much else. It even helps me do my job. What an incredible gizmo. 

But you know what's the very top of my wish list? Amazon's Kindle Paper White. An e-reader of the very sort whose grave is allegedly being dug by my shiny new iPad. 

The thing about my iPad is that there's too much going on there. It's not quite as busy and distraction-prone as my laptop, but when I'm staring into the growing screen of my tablet, my brain knows about all the options it has. I can check Twitter, refresh my Gmail inbox one more time, page through Flipboard, catch up on my ever-overflowing Instapaper queue or see what videos are bubbling up on YouTube, ShowYou or Frequency. And I don't even play games or use chat apps on my iPad. 

Reading comprises the vast majority of what I do on my iPad. Probably 90% of all the words that my brain processes in a given month come from that glowing, 9.7-inch Retina display. I catch up on Google Reader and Flipboard, but I also delve into longer content on Instapaper, Longform and digital magazines. The thing I can never seem to make my way to is the Kindle app, where the books are waiting. 

The Underrated Value Of A Single-Use Device

That's why I want a Kindle. After a day of dinging notifications, multitasking and hopping from app to app, my brain could really use the respite of a device that does only one thing. 

Why, you might ask, don't I just pick up a paperback book and put the gadgets away?

I certainly do that from time to time, but the inescapable reality is that more and more content exists in digital space. Like analog records, I'll always have a physical bookshelf, but most of what I consume will be digital. There's just more new stuff there, and it's more easily accessible. Some big name authors are now going directly through Amazon, with or without a print edition. If I get a PDF copy of a new book or want to get a sample a chapter, I need to turn to a gadget to read those things. E-readers might be on the decline, but e-books aren't going anywhere. 

Perhaps I could just turn off my iPad's Wi-Fi, launch the Kindle app and, for crying out loud, exercise a little self-control. I do that from time to time, too. And it works. But sometimes I'd like to leave the backlit, multifunction gadgets at home and not even have the option to do other stuff. I'd also like to do read an e-book on the beach without squinting to see the text or risk dropping a $600 device in the sand. 

So the Kindle it is. I very much have room for both devices in my life, and I doubt I'm the only one.

All things considered, it makes complete sense that dedicated e-readers are selling less - and that that decline will continue as tablet prices drop. But I don't think we should write off e-readers off quite yet. At least, I hope not. I've got a hell of a reading queue to catch up on.