I've been anxiously waiting for the technology that will replace the 40 boxes of books that I always have to lug around when I move from one place to the other. The kindle looks like a very good step on the right direction, in fact I will probably get one before I get guitar hero and rockband but there are some improvements that I would love to see in a book reader that the kindle doesn't have yet.

I love to read in the hot tub, the bath tub, and in swimming pools, but I can only read small paperback books there. Small because it's hard to hold a large book away from the water for a long time, and paperback, because if they happen to fall into the water they are cheap to replace. So the first improvement I would like to see over traditional books is that it should be waterproof. In fact, it should float! That would expand the range of options on when and where I can read a book.

The other problem I see with books as they are right now is that I have to hold them, which leads to back pain when I try to read for 16 hours at a time. So I would like to have a hands free headset where I could read while laying in bed or when relaxing in a sofa with my hands resting by my side. This would have the advantage that I don't have to have the light on. This was a big problem when I was married, because my ex-wife could not sleep if I had any light on, so on sleepless nights I had to get up and go to a different room in order to read.

And the third improvement that would rock would be to have the choice between reading and hearing the same book. When I am in the middle of reading something and I have to get in my car, I am limited to reading in the red lights, or to put that book on hold and listen to a book on tape. Same thing for running, after being curled up in the same position for a while, the body demands some exercise. Being able to continue listening to the book while going for a run would be very nice.

And since some of these use cases require a very light and compact reader, it would be nice if the reader itself was small, and the book-like interface was just an attachment, a skin that we could connect to the book reader, but that the book reader could be disconnected when using the goggles or the headphones.

Hopefully Amazon will add some of these improvements in their 2.0 version of the kindle