Tag Archives | Amazon Kindle

E-Reader Companies Ready Their iPad Apps

Posted by Harry McCracken on March 22, 2010 at 5:11 am

Amazon is providing a sneak peek of its Kindle reader for the iPad. The page is titled “Kindle Apps for Tablet Computers Including the iPad,” which sounds like confirmation that other new versions for (mostly) still-to-come devices are also in the works–I’m guessing ones for Windows-based Slate PCs and for Android. And judging from the images on Amazon’s preview page, it looks like the apps may be slicker than the sparse and disappointing Kindle apps that the company has released to date.

Kindle will have company on the iPad: The New York Times is reporting that Barnes & Noble is also working on a reader. Engadget says that the Hearst-backed Skiff platform will “almost certainly” show up as well (an assertion for which its source is…me). And then there’s Apple’s own iBooks.

After the jump, a couple of screenshots of the Kindle app. No word on how quickly it’ll show up after the iPad does on April 3rd, but presumably it’s in Amazon’s interest to give Apple’s bookstore as little of a head start as possible.

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Kindle Arrives on the Mac

Posted by Harry McCracken on March 18, 2010 at 4:10 am

Amazon has released its Kindle for Mac software, letting OS users get at all those e-books in Kindle format. It should be a boon to anyone who has a Kindle, has bought books for it, and wants to read ’em on a Mac–but I’m on the road sans Mac at the moment, so it’ll be a few days until I can try it for myself. If you snag it, let us know what you think.

TUAW says it’s “no-frills,” which is a description I’d apply to all the Amazon and Barnes & Noble e-reader apps I’ve tried for every PC and mobile platform. I’d like to see a company with access to as many books as these two release reader apps that are truly slick and full-featured. Maybe Apple? (You gotta think that it’ll make tomes from its iPad iBooks Store available on Macs and PCs eventually.)

At the moment, my main phone is a Droid, so I also await a Kindle reader the Android…something I also suspect is in the works.

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Five Possible Superkindles. Which One(s) Will Amazon Build?

Posted by Harry McCracken on February 4, 2010 at 11:21 am

So Amazon.com has bought itself a startup with an innovative touch-screen technology. The only logical assumption is that it intends to build a touch-enabled Kindle. You’ve gotta think that it’ll take a while to incorporate the new technology into a future Kindle. And given that the last all-new Kindle shipped nearly a year ago, there are probably at least two future Kindles in the works: a next-generation one and a next-next-generation one.

Trying to figure out where the Kindle is headed was aways interesting food for thought, but it got even more interesting when Apple showed off the iPad last week. The current Kindle and the iPad are a study in contrasts: The Kindle is a monochrome, long-life device, button-driven built almost entirely for reading books; the iPad is a color, short-life, touch-screen Swiss Army Knife.

But the only scenario in which the Kindle is unaffected by the iPad (and possibly iPad-like gizmos from other companies) is one in which the iPad flops almost instantaneously. That seems unlikely. So here are five possible  “Superkindles” (to steal New York Times times reporter Nick Bilton’s term).

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Can the Kindle Play Doom? Of Course Not.

Posted by Jared Newman on January 22, 2010 at 5:41 pm

With Amazon planning to open a Kindle app store later this year, Brad Nicholson at Destructoid asked developer Sonic Boom what sorts of games would be possible on the e-reader.

The answer, from Sonic Boom’s chief operating officer Josh Grant, left me scratching my head. Word, puzzle and card games are on the way, Grant said, and beyond that, they’re looking at book tie-in applications that “take advantage of the literary aspects of the device.” He avoided getting into the details of what exactly the Kindle is capable of.

Now, I’m not expecting that the Kindle should run Doom. Elsewhere, I’ve mused that Space Invaders would be awesome, but I’m not even sure that’s possible with the slow refresh rate of E-Ink displays and a processor originally intended for reading, not gaming. Still, it would’ve been nice if Sonic Boom shed some light on the matter.

It seems safe to say that if a game can be played on paper — or a product made of paper — the Kindle can handle it. But how far can and will developers take that ability? Will card games be limited to Solitaire, Freecell and their ilk, or will we see something as elaborate as online Texas Hold’em? (And would Amazon even allow that kind of bandwidth use?)

I’m also thinking we might see some board games. Electronic Arts, which Amazon has mentioned as a developer, already offers a bunch of Hasbro classics for mobile phones, including Scrabble, Trivial Pursuit and Monopoly. Those certainly seem better suited for the Kindle than Madden NFL 10 or Need for Speed: Shift.

Of course, none of these potential offerings will be as robust as what you can get with a smartphone or — dare I say it –a tablet, but as long as they enrich the Kindle experience, there’s nothing wrong with that.

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Kindle is Now a Platform

Posted by Harry McCracken on January 21, 2010 at 12:19 am

Amazon.com has released a Software Development Kit for its Kindle e-reader, allowing third-party developers to create apps for it. Amazon will distribute programs and give their creators 70 percent of the profits. The Kindle’s slow monochrome screen limits what developers will be able to do: Other than the e-reader functionality, the best-known Kindle app to date is Amazon’s own Web browser, which remains a crude “experiment” after two years on the market. But one app that’s already been announced–Zagat’s user reviews–sounds like a good example of something that can make sense.

You think it’s an utter coincidence this interesting news came out one week before Apple will apparently tell the world about its tablet?

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Kindle Goes International

Posted by Harry McCracken on December 14, 2009 at 4:05 am

Amazon, which started selling the Kindle internationally back in October without fully localizing it, is now distributing the Kindle iPhone app in sixty countries. Good news for folks around the world who are interested in reading bestsellers and other recent, still-in-copyright tomes on their iPhones. (I have a Kindle but do most of my Kindling on my iPhone these days–reading a few pages at a time when I’m in line at the grocery store or otherwise confronted with a sliver of free time I can devote to a book.)

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