READABILITY FOR ANDROID AVAILABLE MONDAY BUT ONLY AT AMAZON APPSTORE FOR FIRST WEEKAt 11am ET, Monday, Readability's Android App will finally be available, but only at the Amazon Appstore on your device, for the first week.
Readability's CEO Rich Ziade told The Verge
' We've been talking to Amazon for a while because their heritage is so grounded in reading with the Kindle products... We even went to great lengths to scale up the Readability experience on the Kindle Fire so that the type and interface is right-sized...
...
Readability jumps immediately to the head of the Android class thanks to a beautiful, typography-based UI, and functionality identical to its iOS counterpart.
It's clearly designed for Android 4.0 and beyond, with basically no support for the Menu button, but those without Ice Cream Sandwich should get used to it quickly. We're fans already, and we're betting Monday's going to make a lot of Android users into happy new Readability users. '
ADDED NOTE
SendToReader [to Kindle]
Most popular, so far, with those I know, for this type of capability for the e-Ink Kindle readers, has been the web tool SendtoReader, and for reasons why that is so, see the many comments and feedback on that.
I haven't tried the regular web SendToReader with the Kindle Fire yet. Would really like to hear/read feedback by any readers who have.
Update
Question about another Android App of this type, which I've never heard anything about and the one review is not a verified Amazon purchase.
ALSO, it is an Amazon store app for Android devices in general but not shown as available for Kindle Fire owners (as is true for the popular Dropbox).
Push to Kindle by Fivefilters.org, released July 2, 2011, so, apparently an Android app before the Kindle Fire existed. One never knows if Amazon just hasn't allocated time to test it or it proved to be not trouble-free.
It's $2.30 on the Android Market (now known as Google Play and has 33 reviews and 4.9 stars average there from regular Android phone and tablet users (twenty-nine 5-stars, four 4-stars). For the Android Market, that's a high average.
Since many of us have Android smartphones or other supplementary tablets it might be of interest, but is $2 at Amazon and the coming Readability app for Android will be free, from what I can see.
Even with the web edition of Readability, there are web pages the content of which it won't send completely, so I'm always curious about other utilities like this and what experiences people have had.
Details and reader reviews are at Google Play [Market]
Update2
The authors of SendToReader (Sergey Pozhilov) and PushToKindle (Keyvan) have added comments below.
As many Kindleworld readers know, Sideloading non-Amazon apps from other websources that you have reason to trust is allowed by Amazon. See How to Sideload non-Amazon apps for the steps.
SendToReader offers a 3rd-party Kindle Fire app done by another software developer as an AddOn for SendToReader which gives the same results as when done via a computer browser, and it would probably work only with the Kindle Fire default web browser (Silk) but I've asked that question in Comments.
PushtoKindle's current Amazon-sold Android App apparently allows the web-articles sent, to be read by the Kindle Apps of other (non Kindle Fire) Android tablets. You can contact either author with questions via their linked names under the Comments area.
I personally haven't tried the apps and am just providing info for others like me who like to use this type of utility to be able to read longer web articles on the Kindles.
Instapaper has decided not to do an Android app, from what I've seen there.
As ever, appreciate any feedback on these.
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There is an option to Kindle Fire owners to install a "Web to Kindle" browser addon called "DroidToReader" which uses SENDtoREADER API and available to download at http://sendtoreader.com/addons/. So anyone interesetd in that type of application can do the following: 1.Enable the "installation of applications from unknown sources" (Settings->Device menu); 2. Download and install DroidToReader from the webpage mentioned above.
ReplyDeleteSide note: I'm sending ocassionaly web pages from Kindle Fire browser "Kindle" application on the same device (to its "reader" part) using my Sendtoreader account and Droidtoreader browser addon, no problem found. Everything is working the same way as it does on Kindle Keyboard. I even tested Sendtoreader with Kindle for Iphone... I guess most of iDevice owners have noticed that Kindle for iPhone/iPad had been updated recently and now has a separate email address associated with it. I've sent few web pages that way too, and again, got no problem. Interesting thing, you can access any doc sent to any of your Kindles under the "Docs->Archive" tab in the Kindle for iOS. Though, it's quite hard to navigate there if there are too many items in your "Personal docs" on Amazon.
Sergey,
DeleteThanks for the info on DroidToReader web-addon to Kindle Fire which people can download at http://sendtoreader.com/addons/ and install in the way you mention.
Does this work only with Kindle Fire's default web browser (Silk) or will it also work with Dolphin web browsers?
We do get 5 gigs of personal docs space for free on Amazon server in our manageyourkindle space so that is quite a bit of space for personal docs.
Andrys, DroidToReader, when it's installed, takes its place as an option in the "Share page" menu. So it must be available in any browser on the device. It's easy to find it in the default browser - Silk, you just need to tap the menu button (in the middle of the bottom side of the screen) and then choose "DroidToReader" option. In Firefox the path to "Share" menu is a bit longer - "Menu" -> "Site Options" and finally "Share page" button. In any case, "Share page" seems to be a built-in thing in Android, so it must exist in any browser
DeleteThanks, Sergey. The DroidToReader Android app... that the 3rd party developer made for your SendToReader, that's clearer to me. People just install it as a non-Amazon app and then it becomes a browser menu option.
Delete(For a PC we had to install your program in different ways for different browsers, whether as a toolbar gizmo or a different kind of add-on.)
Andrys, thanks for mentioning Push to Kindle. I'm main developer behind the service.
ReplyDeleteRegarding Push to Kindle on the Amazon App Store, we submitted it before the Kindle Fire was released. Amazon, if I remember correctly, were supposed to contact developers if their apps were found to be incompatible with the Kindle Fire. We haven't been contacted yet so I don't know where things stand. I'll have to nudge them and see. (I don't own a Kindle Fire, it's not available in the UK yet, so I was unaware that it was not available for the Kindle Fire.)
The app uses our Kindle It web service, which is free to use: http://fivefilters.org/kindle-it/ - the results produced will be exactly the same as that produced by our web service.
The main advantage of our Android Push to Kindle app is that it hooks into the Android's share menu, making sending articles to the Kindle from the Android browser and other apps which use the share menu quite easy. Another advantage is that it can save articles for Amazon's own Kindle app - Amazon has not yet enabled the personal document service for its Android app (Kindle Fire being an exception) so as a workaround we offer the option of downloading articles to your phone/tablet in a location the Kindle app will search when starting up (essentially automating the side-loading process).
Happy to answer any other questions you or your readers may have.
Thanks again for the mention,
Keyvan from FiveFilters.org
Keyvan,
DeleteBeing able to send the body of an article to your Kindle app? I'm not clear on your paragraph. Do you mean enabling a non-Kindle Fire tablet to read a personal doc (made from a web-page article) via the tablet's Kindle app?
I think the $2 fee may have caused a slow-down on the Kindle Fire app approval or it got lost because it was sent way before the Kindle Fire was ready.
At any rate, with their exclusive deal with Readability for the first week of the app's introduction, they probably aren't pushing other similar tools until after it. I have no idea but it's a thought.
Congratulations on your ratings for your app for other Android tablets, which IS sold at the Amazon app store. Hope this works out soon for Kindle Fire app approval. I'd call them to ask since you didn't receive word on it from them after all ths time while they approved the normal Android one.
Ardys,
DeleteRe: "Do you mean enabling a non-Kindle Fire tablet to read a personal doc (made from a web-page article) via the tablet's Kindle app?"
Yes. At the moment to use Kindle's personal document service, which most send-to-kindle services rely on, you need a Kindle email address associated with your Kindle device or app. Amazon has only enabled this service for Kindle e-ink device(s), Kindle Fire, and the Kindle app for iOS devices. The Kindle app for regular Android devices is still lacking this feature (although Amazon has indicated they will offer it at some point). So one feature of the Push to Kindle app is to allow Android users to save web articles to be read with Amazon's Kindle for Android app. That's until the personal document service comes to Kindle for Android. All a little confusing. Hope that explanation was a little clearer. :)
Keyvan, thanks. Yes, good clarification. I can see why it's rated well by users of other Android devices then.
DeleteI THINK that Amazon may be hesitating to sell the app for Kindle Fire is that they need to do something about the Personal Docs situation for Kindle Fire apps in that Kindle Fire users DO have a Personal Docs folder and the personal docs would be expected to be there on the Amazon server for backup and syncing.
Yet, the Amazon servers don't "see" the document sent to the Kindle Fire's built-in Kindle-reader this way and therefore it's a very-personal document in that sense (which is a feature that some will want).
I mean, it's put into the Kindle app folder but doesn't go through the Amazon servers.
Andrys, apologies for the slip up with your name in my previous reply!
ReplyDeleteAnd yes, you're right that the approach we're taking at the moment to make articles available for the Kindle for Android app bypasses Amazon's servers - so no syncing with other Kindle devices for articles saved in this way. We might try to do a separate version for the Kindle Fire, but I'm hoping Amazon will soon update the Kindle for Android app and enable the personal documents service - like they did in December for the Kindle for iOS app.
No problem. My name is unusual so that happens more often than not. Well, at least the other Android users can get it direct.
DeleteI have always put private non-Amazon docs or books in my pc's Kindle folder (if I converted them to mobi first with Mobipocket CreatorPro (free), not sending them to Amazon first (but doing it by USB cable) and they show up fine in the Kindle app but are not on the Amazon servers, which is how I like it for most documents. Some things we actually don't want backed up on other servers.
It'd be nice if Amazon approved an app that just did that...
Good luck on it all!
Andrys, good point. The personal documents service from Amazon is very convenient but I'm also uncomfortable having so much sent through to their servers. It's the same feeling that's kept me from using read later services like Readability and Instapaper - as much as I like them, I don't feel comfortable having articles I want to read submitted to and saved on someone else's server. (Readability, in its first incarnation, was quite nice in that it would do all its work on your own machine, so no sending articles away for processing/archiving.) With the web tools we offer on fivefilters.org, we've made an effort to also provide self-hosted versions so users do not have to pass everything through our servers. We're actually working on releasing the source code to our Kindle It service so users can host that themselves too.
DeleteBy the way, here's the response from Amazon regarding our app being unavailable for the Kindle Fire: "Push to Kindle v 1.6 requires android device to push contents to kindle by using share button not supported by Kindle Fire". I'm assuming that means when you view an article in the Kindle Fire browser, the share menu either does not exist or has been reworked by Amazon so developers cannot insert their own apps into it.
This article totally confused me, as I had never heard of Readability and you give no context. A sentence at the beginning of the article telling me what Readability does, and even a link to the app, would have prevented a good deal of irritation for me, as I had to go over to the Adroid App store to look up the app before the article made any sense to me. I love your blog, this is an exception.
ReplyDeleteTo "Unknown"
ReplyDeleteAt the time I wrote that, it was a heads-up for the time when the app would be ready, and there -was no link- at the time yet.
However, I should have prefaced it by an explanation. On the other hand, the very next paragraph said:
"SendToReader [to Kindle]
Most popular, so far, with those I know, for this type of capability for the e-Ink Kindle readers, has been the web tool SendtoReader, and for reasons why that is so, see the many comments and feedback on that."
I mentioned "for this type of capability" and then linked you to the explanatory article on SendToReader and separetly to the the many comments from blog readers on how well it does in sending things to the Kindle.
Again, there was no app link to send you to at the time. Am glad you normally love the blog though! I appreciate that and am sorry to have put you through all that. I agree that I should have started it with "Readbility, Send Web Articles to your Kindle Fire with Readbility's new Android app, coming next week."
And basically, I could have linked you to Readability's normal page.
(Just back from a few days away.)