Going where no electronic book has gone before, Kindle tentatively steps into the waters of advertising and TV combined by working with Showtime to offer users a free, downloadable version of the pilot script of its new series "Nurse Jackie" starring Edie Falco. What's the next step? An ikindlephone?

The smaller, more colorful and cheaper version of the Kindle

is seen as tackier, clumsier and lamer by New York Times' reviewer David Pogue. Do you agree?

Yesterday's New York Times gave us item #10 of our Kindle Can't Do list. One that we had not thought about...but will strike romantics and operators as an obvious one. No, the Kindle will not provide you with a great pick up line or as Ellen Feldman puts it, it may deprive us of an  "ineffable kinship among book lovers!" No more spotting a cover and sharing that sense that you know something about that person that is deeper than what they appear to be. You know something about their soul....

* For those of us who've carried Kindles out there in the real world, this argument only holds so far. Cause what we have experienced is "Kindle fellowship". The "Oh! another Kindle owner" -- or strangers' avid curiosity about seeing someone holding the "infamous" tablet. It does not compete directly with a cover, a dog or a baby but trust me: it is up there!

** As we end this mini series, one concludes that looking at a new technology with suspicion and sometimes resentment is only natural.

Mark Mapstone, [@markpastone on ] kindly responded to our challenge. He did so in a comment...but it deserves its own post...

I'm up for a challenge: 10 wonderful reasons to embrace digital books.

1: Less materialism

Embracing any digital formats will either consciously or subconsciously change the way we think about, show and share material possessions. Many people know about 'less is more' and often want a minimal lifestyle, but can't actually introduce the changes required to do so. Digital print, whilst initially is a shock to the system, gradually starts this change to an ultimately 'lighter' way of living. Those people that value, showing off their reading achievements by displaying a vast library of books, will still want this understandably, and this 'need' in a digital format, will push forword application development which takes the library from an e-reader to a tv/projector/display, pulling book covers and spine imagery from online locations and presents them accordingly to reflect a traditional bookshelf of bound manuscripts.

2: Portability

At some point in Lionel Shriver's The Post-Birthday World, Irina, the main character who is a children's book illustrator, comes up with an idea -- one that mirrors the book's narrative: the young hero of her next book will live two different lives and both lives will have fulfilling outcomes. And to translate the concept physically, Irina imagines a book that the young reader will simply flip upside down at the end of the first story, to start reading the second one, again, from the beginning.

Imaginative and so visual! something that e-books simply put, can't do....

In this Newsvine Poll entitled "Do Kindle owners hate books?" I stumbled on an obvious "What the Kindle Can't Do?" -- "Without power, a Kindle is nothing but a piece of junk. One can read books without power, as I did in the weeks after Katrina." Worse, it can die in the middle of a page -- exactly at that moment where you're most involved in the story....and at that crucial moment, there is no turning the page and moving on.

Unless, of course, you are prepared and have taken one of these along.