Sunday, April 28, 2013

Kindle Fire and Kindle Paperwhite News: Paperwhite Software Update v5.3.5 enhancements. Word Games Pack for Kindle Fire tablets



7 Dragons Inc. releases an update to Word Games Pack, Free, for Kindle Tablet

The 7 Dragons group has been one of my favorite app makers since the early Kindle days.  Now they've released Word Games Pack for Kindle Fire owners - the word-game app updated April 22 (v2.8) to have 5 word games rather than 1 and from a paid app to a free one with 8-10 categories, with options to unlock the other categories via In App Purchases (or one can buy the also updated Paid Version for $1).

As mentioned, the free app is a combination of 5 word games -- Word Search, Kriss Cross, Quote Falls, Hangman, and Speed Words.

The app has received high marks by customers for the first, paid version, originally only for 1st Gen Kindle Fire but extended now to all Kindle tablets, and at Barnes & Noble, where the paid app has an average rating of 4.5 stars from a total of 356 reviews as of today, with 262 of them 5 stars and 77 4 stars.  That's unusually favorable.



Kindle Paperwhite Software Upgrade to v5.3.5

The Amazon Kindle Forum had a notice I missed about a software update with feature enhancements for the Kindle Paperwhite (US)   (UK Paperwhite: here; Global Paperwhite: here.) [Bracketed notes are mine.]

Amazon Kindle Forum Notice and thread
"Initial post: Apr 24, 2013 2:59:11 PM PDT
Brian S., Amazon Official, says:
' We have a new, free software update available for Kindle Paperwhite which can be found here: http://www.amazon.com/kindlesoftwareupdates/paperwhite [U.S.]

    [Here's the UK-only software update page]

The software update will be delivered wirelessly and includes feature enhancements and general improvements for your Kindle Paperwhite.  This update automatically downloads and installs for Kindle Paperwhite customers; however, you can also manually download the software and update your device via USB cable.

The software update includes the following enhancements:

* View full definition when looking up a word -
When you look up a word in the dictionary, you can now view the full definition in the definition window.

* Search enhancements -
You can easily search for a highlighted word or phrase in your book, your items, or in the Kindle Store.  Highlight the word or phrase, select More, and then select Search.

If you have any questions or need help with this update, please post below. '

As ever, note that keeping your Kindle connected to a Wi-Fi network will drain your battery faster.  So, once you've got the update "over the air," put the Paperwhite back to "Airplane Mode ON" - which turns Wireless Off.  They still have not put the "Wireless Off" and "On" back on the front menu as they recently did for the Kindle Touch, removing the 'airplane' icon, which many of us wish they would do, as it is very inconvenient to have it on a secondary menu and many do not even know about the wireless-off feature, causing more battery drain and confusion over that.  Amazon: please do this in the next update.

Only if you'd rather not wait - DOWNLOADING and transferring the Update via USB
US:  Go to the Kindle Paperwhite Software Update v5.3.5 download section to get the instructions for the download and transfer to your Kindle via USB:
UK:  Go to the same for the UK-only page

  - Those v5.3.5 enhancements
The ability to get a full definition right away has LONG been wanted by me, at least, and with the earlier Kindle eReaders I loved the ability to search my entire Kindle, including all text-based newspapers and magazines (and personal docs) on the device, for any word.  It's terrific to search for a news event and quickly see all device "items" that include the word(s), within context of the surrounding words, and with a hyperlink to each 'location' holding the word(s).

  This is one of the reasons the Kindle is so popular over other eReaders that don't have features like this as well as the many sync'd annotation features (including personal, password-protected webpage backup of those, which are printable and editable as well as shareable if wanted.



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2 comments:

  1. Nice little update (at least this one has some visible changes!).

    I think I send kindle-feedback shortly after getting my first Kindle Touch about the lack of ability to search (book, my items, kindle store) using selection phrase as you can with Kindle Keyboard. Well, it is still not an option on KT but at least KPW now does it. Often there will be references to other books in the one I'm reading and I like to read the Kindle Store description. Or I want to search for a word or term that appears on the current page. They made that inconvenient by forcing you to type it in instead of simply selecting it..

    Love the 'full definition' feature too.

    Hopefully KT will get this too.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Tom, as with you the Search entire Kindle for a word (or phrase) is large with me. Not only that, it's really fast. I knew I had some personal docs that had to do with election news from a send-to-kindle of a web document, and I knew that my New Yorker subscription would have the word too.

    So I opened a book about politics and highlighted the word "election" on a page and then Searched all my Items for any instance of that in other content on my Kindle.

    It gave me within 5 seconds a list of all New Yorker issues on my device (text based magazine) with that word, same with all books, the personal docs I knew had the word, and the results gave surrounding text for the words for context and of course linked me to each occurrence and brought me to any selected one very quickly. Am very happy with that.

    The dictionary improvement should say "fullER definition" as long definitions don't fit the box area made for them, but it's MUCH better than the few lines we saw before.

    KT's are out of stock again. What is Amazon's thinking on that model (with TTS on it)?


    ReplyDelete

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