We so LOVE hot new products, the Geek and the Gadfly do. We’re getting pretty excited by Amazon’s new Kindle. Amazon has done an amazing thing with the Kindle, which is to get it right enough in its first version that you can see how it will play out and be a successful product. It is, indeed, the iPod for book readers.

First clue: Multiple people from different walks of life who don’t know each other each have remarked to the Gadfly on how interesting and engaging they find the idea of the Kindle. The Geek (of course) was the first to do so, by ordering the Kindle early enough that he got one of the first. But the Gadfly suspected him of just being a geek and wanting the device to check it out technically. But then the Gadfly got a ride from his friend Michael (also geeky), who had one in his car with him and professed to actually being reading books. And then his friend Sara, who is the chief editor of Publishers Weekly (like the bible of the book industry!) and a major thought leader in book publishing, brought hers on vacation with her and was clearly using it to read books . The clincher: the Gadfly’s 22-year-old son ordered a Kindle online because he loves the idea of being able to bring books when he travels without carting the actual books.

The Gadfly reported all this to the Geek and got this evaluation in return:

“First off, it’s not a book and using a Kindle is not a ‘book experience’. That said, the Kindle will change the way you read. I now use the Kindle to read all of my newspapers (San Francisco Chronicle, Wall Street Journal, and New York Times). I’ve also completely read half a dozen books (three non-fiction including one highly technical book and three science fiction books) and have started four new ones. I am convinced that I will read just about all of my future books (as long as they don’t contain too many illustrations or pictures) using the Kindle. Here are my reasons why:

“1) It’s lighter than a book: I can hold it with one hand for a very long time while I’m reading. I can book surf and read a chapter here and a chapter there…I no longer have decide ahead of time what I want to carry with me on my trips.

“2) I can buy books on impulse. I’ve bought more books in the last few weeks on the Kindle than I did in the last six months in print!

“3) It’s really fast to download and you can store a ton of books (literally) especially if you add a 2GB SD card. (To offset the cost of the SD card, the books are 40%-70% cheaper than their printed versions.)

“4) I love the fact that Amazon stores everything you bought and you can move easily between local memory and remote storage.

“5) The device is really well designed as a starting point: The key/button layout is a bit frustrating in the beginning, but you get used to holding the Kindle after reading the first couple of books and then it becomes intuitive. The screen isn’t as good as paper, but it’s easier on the eyes than a LCD screen and works well out doors. The battery life is pretty good as long as you use the wireless on only when you need it; I’ve read two complete books on one charge.

“6) It’s a completely different experience than the Sony Portable Reader System PRS-500, primarily because the Kindle is not tied to the personal computer. Just turn it on and go. It could be the difference between a device designed by an electronics manufacturer and a device designed by a major bookseller….

“The Kindle is a 1.0 device and has lots of problems. But it’s good enough that you learn to overcome them to get something that will change the way you read. In fact, I think the Kindle is a bigger breakthrough device than the iPhone.”

There you have it: The Gadfly’s partner thinks Kindle is a really big deal! (Gadfly might suspect Geek of being particularly motivated by the fact that Amazon’s inspiration for the design of Kindle clearly came from the Star Trek PADD.)

Having had these experiences with friends and partners about the Kindle, Gadfly finds himself going back to his days as a pundit and thinking that this is exactly what makes for a successful product, very much the same kind of reaction people had to the iPod, the PalmPilot, the IBM PC, even VisiCalc, all great products in version 1.0.

Gadfly is tempted to opine that the trick in this case is a technical trick that most commentators are reluctant to describe because it’s too techie for consumers: Amazon built an EV-DO cellular phone into the device and then made a deal with Sprint to allow them to bundle the cost of the service into the price of the device and the books that you buy. So there’s no subscription cost for the device or for the wireless service, but it works almost everywhere in the U.S. EV-DO is not available almost anywhere else in the world and does not cover 100% of the US, but it’s much more available than WiFi signals, which is why it was such a brilliant thing to make it a free part of the Kindle. But it actually doesn’t matter; the fact is that this device is completely worthy of a Steve Jobs Merit Award for product design and it’s amazing that it came from a retailer, Amazon.com. Jeff Bezos should get recognition (since I’m pretty sure he personally drove the project through his company) for adding real value to the book industry and showing that Jobs isn’t the only guy who can make really cool products the first time out the door!

We need more geeks. Personally, we love geeks. But the truth is that geeks are critical to our country’s economic and technical excellence.

Last year, the National Academies of Science and Engineering published a report called “Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Energizing and Employing America for a Brighter Economic Future.” The premise of the report is that the United States is being challenged in science and technology by global competitors such as China, India, Israel and the European Union. China’s universities graduate more than 600,000 people every year in engineering, computer science, and information technology; U.S. universities graduates 222,000 people every year in the same majors. Our ability to build and fuel great innovative companies is based in the quality of our workforce. Ask any high tech CEO and he or she will tell you they are challenged to fill their technical and engineering positions. It’s not just a question of cost, but of the quality and quantity of potential domestic candidates.

The issue is complex and involves our attitudes toward the rest of the world, during a time when the rest of the world isn’t so happy with us. We need to work to solve that and make it easier for those smart graduates from other countries come here to invent new stuff. But the United States also needs to put science back into our own classrooms.

I propose a simple solution: add science to the SAT Reasoning Test test along with reading, writing, and math. By making science a required subject for testing prior to admission to college, we would ensure that all of America’s college students would be grounded with a solid science foundation and would encourage a greater number of college students to major in science and technology fields.

An entrepreneur I respect: “I had a VC in my office today pitching us on taking their money and he said something interesting; he talked about our profitability as a species of strangulation, in that we have willingly choked off a lot of potential growth expenses to continue to bootstrap. He’s right. But there’s nothing like the discipline of fueling hires thru cashflow to keep you honest…”

He’s right? Must have been some MBA-programmed associate who tried that line out on my guy. Sometimes I’m embarrassed to call myself a venture capitalist, when I hear other VCs talk like that. Building businesses isn’t a zero-sum game, where there’s only just so much business and if you don’t get all of it, right now and without regard to operating or gross margins, you will never get it.

I recommend reading Joe Nocera’s column about Beliefnet in today’s New York Times (subscription might be required, but I can’t figure out the current policy on URLs), for a more rational view on how business gets done. The lead sentence: “I found the Chapter 11 period exhilarating.”