Staples starts selling Kindles todayStaples gets the Kindle 3's today, per CNET's reminder, and will sell some accessories for it as well. The DX is due in their stores mid-November.
Everything that Wired knows so far about Amazon's Android App Store
Wired/GadgetLab's Priya Ganapati has an interesting article on all they know so far about Amazon’s long-awaited Android App Store.
She reports that "The company has reportedly sent welcome kits to some developers to entice them to start signing on to the store, according to reports in The Wall Street Journal and Engadget."
"Spam, poor quality of apps, and the inability to easily find apps are major problems in the Android Market...For consumers, it will be exciting if Amazon can bring features such as recommendations, wish lists and deals to its app store."
As with Apple's app store, developers will have to pay $100 to sign up for Amazon's, and Amazon will decide what gets into its store, per a TechCrunch report. At launch it will be U.S. only but it shouldn't be long, most agree, before Amazon goes global with them -- they had said on the Kindle forums (when Every Word and Shuffled Rows came out) that the apps would eventually be available internationally.
From Commenters at the Wired story:
" RichardL
[ Re Apple's App Store and Google's Android Market being difficult for developers to market in]
Amazon may be able to provide an alternative market for apps that works better for consumers and is a healthier option for developers to use to monetize their products."
" Aardfark
I for one find the Apple App Store unnecessarily hard to use. I want to be able to search within a category, for instance, or search only free apps. Or both. Or see a count of the number of apps that match a given search. Simple things like that. It would be nice to be able to save searches, create and share recommendation lists... there's lots of ways the App Store could be improved.
Apple has certainly filtered out some amount of garbage, and their popularity lists and rating/reviewing systems are good to have, but they haven't created anything near as good a store as they're capable of. "
You can see more at the Wired story that I didn't include here.
Kindle 3's (UK: Kindle 3's), DX Graphite
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I don't think the Amazon Android Apps store is going to be a KINDLE apps store. It's a competitor to Google's (and Verizon's) app store for android.
ReplyDeleteI wish it weren't so - would love a calendar app for the kindle - but there it is.
Woody,
ReplyDeleteThey put out a call for developers to do apps specifically for the Kindle and put out some pretty strict rules about the price of the apps based on how much 3G bandwidth might be needed since Amazon says they provide that upfront.
Some can be free, but if the app requires 3G use, then for certain amounts used (spelled out), they have to set fees.
I do think that they will also do what you describe...
I'd be shocked not to get a calendar or notepad app for the Kindle.
Right now I'm using http://bit.ly/g_tasks in the web browser (when I open up my gmail on the computer, the calendar has all the tasks in it, in date order. I love it).
Tasks feature: Not editable in Kindle, just readable -- it goes to the 'android' link and it's not exactly a super match but it does read the tasks when I'm out.
It might even allow adding a task (I can't remember) but definitely no editing.
I just add 'notes' into an existing Kindle file for making notes while out. And can search the file too.
The Calendar in gmail is difficult to read on the Kindle, though the URL http://bit.ly/g_mail works well for gmail itself (as a quick-look type of thing), to a point (I've described in a blog entry the tedium of replying to a gmail note with the Kindle3 right now (easier w/ the Kindle 2, ironically).