Got a Kindle this week, and am experiencing the now well-known pros and cons.

Yes, the paging buttons along the side represent a mystifying design choice that should never have passed the most rudimentary usability testing. But it's not hard to develop handling habits that don't scoot you unwillingly backwards and forwards through a book. Using the Kindle case helps.

Yes, the gray background makes it tough to read in low light -- wondrous though it is in bright sunlight. My wife discarded this thing instantly as "too dark." There should be background shade control. I would also like an optional back light for in-bed reading.

Yes, page-flipping is sluggish, but that's easy to get used to during normal reading. It does make it impossible to riffle through a book.

Yes, the on-screen UI is rudimentary, sometimes confusing, and apparently developed by interplanetary illiterates.

So. The Kindle doesn't close the deal for mainstream use. But it is perfect for frequent fliers like me, which seems to be the most enthusiastic user profile in the online reviews. I usually cannot carry even one book in my small, tightly packed carry-on, and I don't want to manage a larger bag in my two- and three-day weekly trips.

The most useful feature? The Kindle store lets you download a gratifyingly large chunk of its books, free of charge. Good money-saver there -- it has already dissuaded me from buying one book I was sure I wanted, the writing of which turned out to be dull as a plank.

The "What Went Wrong" articles have been pouring out for weeks. In analyzing the Clinton primary defeat, a few consensus themes are calcifying a definition of political failure:

• Too much entitlement
• Bill gone berserk
• Underestimating the opponent
• Feuding campaign leaders
• Short-sighted electoral strategy and financial planning

It might be more interesting, and more instructive, to consider the simple equation of victory that enabled Obama to run through the heavy Clintonian scrimmage line of political heavyweights and score the nomination. Here, consensus wisdom talks of superior oratory, focus on change, natural appeal to youth, separation from dynastic branding, and powerful inspirational rhetoric.

But all these factors are tied together in the Obama campaign's understanding and application of Web 2.0 principles, especially the long tail and social networking. In this primary campaign, as in the competition between old media and new media for cultural mindshare, the battle was between blockbuster tactics and long tail tactics. The currency in this battle was threefold: voter involvement, delegate commitment, and dollars.

When Obama talked about "old politics," he might have said "short tail politics" or "blockbuster mentality." From the start, the Clinton campaign was founded on blockbuster resources: a few huge donors and a few huge states. Like a book publisher, Clinton & Co. planned on a few high-volume products underwriting the low-profit assets like caucus states and small-time donors.

In contrast, the Obama strategy adopted long tail realities, recognizing that low-profit assets can match high-profit assets in the aggregate ... if you have enough of them. And to aggregate masses of low-profit asset points, the campaign turned to the primary Web 2.0 business model: social networking. The Obama campaign site is basically the Facebook of a political movement, whose apps and widgets encourage extended networking, deeper involvement, and harvesting small donations.

In Peter Baker's and Jim Runtenberg's NY Times analysis, the authors state, "The [Clinton] campaign was built on the assumption of overwhelming force." That's true, and in the blockbuster model the campaign was, in fact, unmatchable. But in this primary season, as in the extended sunset season for many blockbuster media institutions, the long tail principles of social networking and granular values won the day. And probably changed politics forever.

Saw Sex and the City with my wife. I thought it was reasonably diverting, certainly colorful, and at many points airily preposterous. I went into the theater owning a glancing familiarity with the TV series, but not enough to know the names of the four major characters. I knew they struggled for fulfillment in love and fashion.

I have roughly the same level of familiarity with Sarah Jessica Parker. I can't remember much of her work that I have seen, but I know her to be an attractive woman. She is far from my notion of a sexpot, but when I've seen her on Letterman she has struck me as smart, bouyant, and engaging.

So the one aspect of the film that astounded me was the extraordinary level of effort, degree of skill, and absolute dedication to image destruction that must have been brought to the assignment of making her look absolutely awful. Lighting, photography, clothes, hair -- masters of all these arts and more were evidently hired on to wreck her glamor cred. From the absurd bird on her head in the wedding scene to the tightly drawn-back hair, from the starkly photographed haggard face to the slathered eyeliner, this was a supposedly over-privileged character made to look like a woman stressed by a calamitous life for decades.

Borders is back in the e-commerce business. That's fine; I'm sure I'm not the only person who would welcome an alternative to the always-dreadful Amazon interface. Not that I'd give up Amazon -- I'm not suggesting that for a second. The combination of deep familiarity, rich community knowledge, and tremendous execution is simply unbeatable.

But the Borders look-and-feel, which is designed to simulate store browsing, is attractive. And somehow, the books "selected" for me (though Borders has not mined any information about me that I'm aware of) were uncannily apt on my first visit. But what's this? Jill Taylor's "Stroke of Insight" won't ship for 2-4 weeks?! Amazon measures the delivery time in hours, urging me to bang in my order pronto.

And that isn't even the long-term problem for Borders. The real competition is Kindle. I can start reading that book in minutes, at less than half price.

Beautiful site, Borders. Funny how irrelevance can be so pretty.

Was he trying to put a good light on it? Or does Jan van der Cruysse have a talent for understatement? After a Boeing 747 split in half following an aborted takeoff, the Brussells airport spokesman said "The plane is very seriously damaged."

Yes, very. Brings to mind a few other classically cool responses to, um, temporary setbacks.

"The ocean liner took on a bit of water."
--Spokesperson for the R.M.S. Titanic, April 16, 1912.

"Got a bit warm up there."
--German Air Ministry, operator of the Hindenburg, May 4, 1937.

"We apologize for making the air smell bad this morning."
--Spokesperson, Bhopal pesticide plant, December 3, 1984.

"I don't know anything about 'Black Death.' But there's a bug going around for sure."
--Anonymous London doctor, 1351

"Reduced view seats now at half price."
--Facility administrator, Circus Maximus, 140 A.D.

"Low blood sugar can make anyone light-headed."
--Publicist for Britney Spears.

"Some tiny particles escaped through a small leak. You can't even see them."
--Site manager, Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, April 26, 1986

"Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job."
--President Bush, September 2005

Memo to Amazon
RE: The Kindle

Either bring that damn thing into the marketplace or stop plastering ads for it all over my Amazon experience. Your little apology does nothing for me.

That is all.

I don't need extraordinary service from a hotel. In fact, an excess of personality can get annoying. But I'm impressed by casual virtuosity in the hospitality business. I stayed at the Hyatt Regency in Austin for SXSW, and noticed from the start that every encounter with a staffer was smooth and helpful. But it was when I was leaving that something inexplicable and deeply impressive happened.

I went down to the lobby early. Hung out on a couch twittering and emailing. Finally walked outside to catch a cab to the airport. The uniformed guy called over the taxi, grabbed my bag, threw it into the trunk, and said "Have a good trip, Mr. Hill." Um, wha? I hadn't checked out at the desk, hadn't had any contact with anyone in the lobby. No tag on the luggage.

That's some hospitality mojo.

Hulu's reported imminent emergence from beta seems like a good/bad news thing. Like many, I have enjoyed Hulu much more than I anticipated when it was first announced. I have used it to get up to speed with Firefly and Friday Night Lights -- as such, Hulu has partially displaced my addiction to Netflix streaming. The impressive interface, especially easy pop-outs of the player window, really helps. Performance is another matter. At home, all is good. But bring the connection quality down a notch or two -- like in hotels, when I really want my Hulu fix -- and the jitters set in harshly. I'm not technical enough to peer under the hood, but it looks to me like Hulu doesn't buffer in pause mode, so you can't buffer into a video like on YouTube.

What will happen when the masses come flooding in? Oh wait -- maybe there isn't any massive demand for Hulu's rail-thin catalog.

After one week in which coverage of MicroHoo was more saturating than anything in recent memory, I would like to propose legislation banning this phrase:

pass regulatory muster

People. There must be other ways of saying it.

Interesting piece in the NYTimes about impressive survival rates in airplane accidents -- the ones that are serious, but not the hopelessly catastrophic plummets. The point is that passengers should pay more attention to the pre-takeoff safety speech that flight attendants rip through.

First of all, if the flight attendants themselves didn't seem fall-down bored as they race through their mumbled instructions, maybe they'd attract some attention. More important, tell us important stuff! The universal spiel begins with a tutorial on how to operate a seat belt. Come on, now. If you start your act with brain dead material that would make a six-year-old snicker, you can expect your captive audience to tune out.

How about this for an opening line? "Good morning folks. Please give me your attention as I describe how to stay alive in a crash." That would make my Raleigh-to-Dulles companions lower their newspapers.

The much-anticipated guidelines from the FTC (Freakishly Timid Commission) regarding behavioral targeting vs. privacy delivered an anticlimactic denouement. In a typo-infested statement, the blunt-toothed government agency borrowed principles in play since the mid-1990s to shape a wet-noodle platform of privacy and security principles. The basic points:

* When gathering behavioral data, put up a clear privacy policy.

* Provide "reasonable security" for the gathered data.

* Don't hang onto the data longer than necessary.

* Get explicit permission to collect "sensitive data" (however that might eventually be defined).

* If you change the privacy policy, let people know and get permission all over again.

... aaand, that's just about it. In truth, self-regulation will always result in a mixed bag of compliance. The only way to raise the game is to raise the standards. The FTC just looks foolish breaking out principles that responsible publishers have agreed on for years.

I woke up to Gmail colored labels today. Made me think my job was a game of Candy Land. I like them -- anything that helps convey the shape of my email heap in a glance is good. More colors would be good; Google is offering 24 presets. A side benefit to the popup interface for choosing a label color is the label renaming feature. No longer must you go into Edit Labels and hit rename. Google should bundle in the label delete feature, too.

As long as Gmail is adding value to the Inbox item line, I have two urgent wish-list features to propose:

1) Preview mouseover popup. We get a few words of the email in the Inbox, but not enough. Gmail is too clicky, and though it performs well, I spend way too much time waiting for emails to open. Then I often have to mark them as unread, when I'm postponing action on them. (My procrastination issues are a separate problem.)

2) Annotation. I want to put sticky notes all over my Inbox. Let me insert a note into the Inbox item, and let it expand into visibility when I mouse over a small annotation icon. Just like inserting a comment in Excel.

The goal is to make Gmail navigation as complete as possible without opening items. I don't want to click through to an actual email until I know I'm going to take action on it. Am I missing any preview or annotation plugins?

Not that he can match Al Gore's politech savvy, but Barack Obama is bidding for the wired vote by making open file standards part of his platform. That's got to piss off Microsoft. More important, it puts computing and online living issues into the campaign. Why shouldn't they be? There are about 185-million internet users in the U.S. according to comScore. Let's have a tech-only debate covering the candidates' policies on spam, file-sharing, domain trademarking, online sales tax, ad-blocking, disruptive technology, and their personal content preferences.

Yippee -- I can finally get the Google Maps pointer to my home address positioned on my house, instead of down the street where it has always pointed. This thanks to the new Edit feature. Google Maps becomes Wikipedia, with user-edited location pointers. But is this good? Wikipedia is (potentially) a description of all human knowledge, so is naturally a venture for the group mind. But geography? Google Maps is (potentially) a description of all human address knowledge. Will I be unable to find my midtown hotel because a disgruntled guest moved the address pointer into Queens?

I'm doing the keynote panel at Blog World & New Media Expo in Vegas this afternoon (5:15 PST). Also on the panel: Richard Jalichandra (CEO, Technorati), Roger L. Simon (Pajamas Media), Jeremy Wright (b5 Media), and moderator Jason Shelling (ex-Google, now founder of The Secret Agency). Jason put up a comment page for question submission -- here it is. Have at it ... questions about my dogs are particularly welcome, if outrageously off-topic.