Thursday, October 22, 2009

Kindle books for your PC's ! and probably Macs

UPDATE 10/24/09
Amazon did post a blog entry in their Kindle blog about the new feature coming that will mean you do not need a Kindle to read your purchased Kindle books but can read them on your Windows PC.
' Kindle for PC Coming Soon
1:34 PM PDT, October 22, 2009
The Kindle team is excited to announce that soon, you'll be able to read Kindle books on your computer. Our free application for your Windows PC is coming--no Kindle required. Even when you don't have your Kindle with you, you can access your Kindle books, and Whispersync automatically synchronizes your last page read and annotations between devices....'
They link you to the information page for this and encourage you to sign up for notification that the feature is ready.

Ari Blackthorne points us (in the Comments for this blog entry) to MacRumors, for whom Eric Slivka writes on October 23:
' Amazon yesterday announced the launch of "Kindle for PC", a free Windows application that will allow users to read e-Books purchased from the company's Kindle Store on their computers. While the news release made no mention of a Mac version of the application, Fast Company reports (via 9 to 5 Mac) that a Mac version is in fact under development.

An Amazon spokesperson told me late Thursday: "Yes, we are working on a Kindle app for Mac" '
Original posting follows:
KindleZen points us to ZDnet's story that Kindlebooks will now be readable on not only iPods and iPhones but also PC's running Windows 7, Vista, and XP. This on top of the new Kindle International shows a very aggressive strategy suddenly.

This will be downloadable next month. Amazing.

The feature set, in Amazon’s own words:
* Purchase, download, and read hundreds of thousands of books available in the Kindle Store
* Access their entire library of previously purchased Kindle books stored on Amazon’s servers for free
* Choose from over 10 different font sizes and adjust words per line
* Add and automatically synchronize bookmarks and last page read
* View notes and highlights marked on Kindle and Kindle DX
* Zoom in and out of text with a pinch of the fingers (Windows 7 users only)
* Turn pages with a finger swipe (available in a future release for Windows 7 users)
Am on vacation so posting of questions & feedback are a bit delayed but always welcome. Below are ways to Share this post if you'd like others to see it.
-- The Send to Kindle button works well only on Firefox currently.

Send to Kindle


(Older posts have older Kindle model info. For latest models, see CURRENT KINDLES page. )
If interested, you can also follow my add'l blog-related news at Facebook and Twitter
Questions & feedback are welcome in the Comment areas (tho' spam is deleted). Thanks!

4 comments:

  1. Kindle books for your Mac, too. Apparently:

    http://www.macrumors.com/2009/10/23/kindle-software-for-mac-under-development/

    ReplyDelete
  2. Ari, that is really good news!
    Thanks for this.

    - Andrys

    ReplyDelete
  3. ...and BlackBerry too, it seems.

    http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-10381272-1.html

    ReplyDelete
  4. Batman,
    That's good solid info. Many thanks. I want to hear your interview when I get back too.

    - Andrys

    ReplyDelete

NOTE: TO AVOID SPAM being posted instantly, this blog uses the blogger.com "DELAY" feature.

Am often away much of the day, and postings won't show up right away. Posts done to use referrer-links may never show up.

Usually, am online enough to release comments within a day though, so the hard-to-read match-text tests for commenting won't be needed this way.

Feedback and questions are welcome. Thanks for participating.

Technical Problems?
If you're having problems leaving a Comment, Google's blogger-help asks that you clear the 'blogger.com' cookies on your browser's Tools or Options menu bar and that will fix the Comment-box problems (until they have a permanent fix).

IF that doesn't work either, then UNcheck the "keep me signed in" box -- Google-help says that should allow your comment to post (it's a workaround to a current bug).
Apologies for the problems.

TIP: There's a size limit. If longer than 3500 characters or so, in a text editor, make two posts out of it.

[Valid RSS]