DVD Blog Review

Amazon has been an important, quite possibly the most important, player in the development of digital publishing using both their Kindle reader family and their huge library of Kindle books as development and marketing tools. November 2007 saw the launch of the original Kindle. Amazon followed up with the upgraded Kindle 2.0 in February of 2009, and the large display Kindle DX model launched in the summer of 2009.

With a market share of 60% of all e-book readers sold in the USA, the Kindle readers dominated the market. Sony trailed in second place with a still respectable 35% share. Needless to say, other electronics manufacturers quickly saw the potential in the nascent e-book reader market and either developed or updated their own readers.

Competitors like Plastic Logic, Sony, Bookeen, iRex and Barnes and Noble fought for their share of the rapidly growing market, but Amazon’s lead position seemed to be almost impregnable. It was only with the launch of the Apple iPad that any credible competition emerged – slightly surprising since the two devices are very different and are, you would suppose, aimed at different market segments.

Differences in the devices and their intended applications notwithstanding, e-book reader prices have tumbled since the launch of the iPad. You can now pick up the Kindle 2.0 for just $ 189 – a huge reduction over the launch price of $ 359 – and a significant drop from the pre-iPad price of $ 259. The newly upgraded Kindle DX can be yours for just $ 379, down from $ 489. Barnes and Noble’s Nook reader is now on sale at just $ 199.

Although the iPad seems to have provoked a round of price cuts among the manufacturers of e-books, the same cannot be said about the price of the e-books to read on these devices. Prior to the launch of the iPad, Apple had negotiated a deal with the major publishing houses which let them set the price of their e-book editions at pretty much whatever they wanted – as long as they did not allow the same e-book to be offered cheaper on any other platform. This was seen as good news by the publishers, who had been unhappy with Amazon’s policy of selling all e-books for $ 9.99 or less.

Amazon had to back down from this – but it’s not necessarily a bad thing for them, or Barnes and Noble for that matter. Amazon has always appeared to be more interested in selling books – and e-books – rather than hardware. That’s the only possible explanation for the fact that they have made it possible to read Kindle books on so many different devices. At the moment, you can read Kindle books on the PC, the Mac, your Blackberry, the iPod Touch, the iPad and any mobile device running Android. So companies like Barnes and Noble, Amazon and now Apple, who have a stake in the future sale of e-books over the life of a reader, can afford to sell the hardware cheaper and profit over the life of the device.

It may be that the future pricing of e-book readers and e-books will tend to favor such companies over manufacturers who are involved only in hardware production. Looking at the number of different devices which Kindle books can be read on, you would have to suspect that, whether or not the iPad becomes the reader of choice for many users, Amazon will continue to have a huge say in the future of books and e-books for the foreseeable future.

Check out the Amazon Kindle for yourself and view the wide range of Kindle accessories available to help you personalise your reader.

Depression is a mental disorder that is often characterized by lengthy periods of sadness and melancholy, say the experts from the field of psychiatry.

But just because someone mopes around and hates the world around him or her, it doesn’t necessarily mean that he/she is suffering from depression, but if this kind of behavior, the feeling of emptiness, loss of self-worth and absolute lack of hope for happiness continues , then, that individual could be, indeed, depressed. Still, there are various kinds of depression too.

Manic or Bipolar depression – characterized by sudden and extreme changes in mood where one minute he or she is in an elevated state of euphoria while the next minute (day or week) he or she is feeling as if he or she is in a personal hell.

Postpartum depression is characterized by a prolonged sadness and a prolonged feeling of emptiness by a new mother where physical stress during child birth, an uncertain sense of responsibility towards the new born baby can be just some of the possible reasons why some new mothers go through this.

Dysthimia is characterized by a slight similarity with depression, although this kind has been proven to be a lot less severe, however. as with any case of depression, it should be sorted out immediately.

Cyclothemia – characterized by only a slight similarity with Manic or Bipolar depression wherein the sufferer of this mental disease has a problem with rapid changes in mood.

Seasonal Affective Disorder is characterized by being depressed only during specific seasons (i.e. Winter, Spring, Summer or Fall). However, studies prove that more people actually fall ill during the Winter and Fall seasons. Or they could suffer from severe mood swings, wherein a person’s mood may shift from happy to sad to angry in quite a short period of time.

‘Clinical depression’ or as some call it, ‘major depression’, is the correct medical term for depression. Actually, clinical depression is more a disorder than an illness, because it refers only to those who are suffering from the symptoms that cause depression.

However, in spite of being a real disorder, clinical depression can be treated. Doctors are usually highly optimistic that patients suffering from clinical depression will soon be well on their way to good mental health as long as they are treated as soon as they have been diagnosed. Patients who have sought treatment for clinical depression have proven to be quite successful in their quest, given that 80 percent of those treated have found relief from their disorder.

For those who may be seeking answers to questions related to clinical depression, the depression section of the health center is highly recommended, as well as books on psychiatry and the Internet – which can offer a lot of helpful information, although self treatment is very much disapproved of. Clinical depression may not pose as much of a threat as the other types of mental illness, but it is best to leave it in the hands of professionals who can safely attend to and cure this disorder.

Clinical depression can be an extremely debilitating illness and is extremely distressing to suffer or witness. Learn more here: Treating Depression This article, About Clinical Depression has free reprint rights.