I'd forgotten I had taken the video, as my new-camera directory puts them in a separate directory, so I just looked at them last night.
Kindle-Edition Blog subscribers can't run the videos on their e-Ink Kindles, so I've put the Youtube links in, and I think it's best to view them there anyway. Since most want to see details with more clarity, you should view them in HD if your Internet system is a very fast one.
Youtube videos default to an average image quality: 480p.
To change the video "quality" to 1080p (which both of these are) or to 720p if that's easier on the Internet system, you'd tap the gear/wheel seen at the right bottom of a video and "Change quality" before choosing one of the bigger rectangle/screen options in the same area.
Example at the right,
from the Kindle Fire magazine
demo video below.
The Kindle Paperwhite, first ...
(Link: http://bit.ly/kpaperw-demo ) (Youtube)
We were able to try this front-lit e-Ink Kindle e-reader for ourselves, and it was very responsive. It has 25 levels of brightness, starting with zero, a setting which comes out on video as more white than the lit display, which at first takes on a bluish tinge until the camera gets used to the light reflected by it.
The staffer went through quite a few options in a short time, with some explanations too. The demos and Q&A were in the large lobby of the Barker Hangar.
The Kindle Fire HD 8.9" used for a demo of magazine features.
(Link: http://bit.ly/kfhdmag ) (Youtube)
The Kindle Fire HD 8.9-inch model isn't due out until November 20, but the magazine
features are exactly the same for the 7" Kindle Fire HD, which we were able to try that day, but I took this video when VP Dave Limp demo'd the features on the larger Kindle Fire.
I was especially interested in how effective the text-view is now. These are very readable (on the 7-inch Kindle Fire HD also), and remind me of hidden booklets within a magazine, callable when you want eye-relief. Functioning is quite a bit smoother.
Check often: Temporarily-free recently published Kindle books
Guide to finding Free Kindle books and Sources. Top 100 free bestsellers. Liked-books under $1
UK-Only: recently published free books, bestsellers, or £5 Max ones
Also, UK customers should see the UK store's Top 100 free bestsellers.
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Thanks for the vids. I did not realise that cover view works with books in the cloud. I love that. It would make me keep less books on the actual device. I wonder if its just for books? I have quite a lot of personal docs in my archive. I think they should work towards letting users store collections in the cloud, or arrange their archived books into collections so its easier to navigate when you have a huge archive.
ReplyDeleteQZA,
DeleteThey'd tend to use generic covers for personal docs (that's what I have on my carousel)
They should allow some kind of collections organization somewhere with Kindle Fire owners at all. Yes, having collections in the clouds would be nice but could slow their servers down too, tracking everyone's changes, as some have posted in the Kindle Forum that they have 16,000 to 20,000 Kindle books each because they collect them from the 600 freebies released each day for a couple of days or hours. But then then some of them have complained that the listing of the 16,000+ books on the server and on their device is too slow...)
The reality is that isn't sustainable if more than a few do it, but Amazon allows the free space for e-books bought from Amazon itself.
Absolutely agree, Andrys. I would be fine with Amazon setting up the following software enhancements:
ReplyDelete1) Allow Book Cover View for the library on all software. PC, Mac, iOS, Kindle (any device). Cloud or Local.
2) Allow for any purchased book, in your Amazon Cloud account, to have a list of "Collection" categories. 5 maximum.
3) Allow for any document in a particular format (those recognized across all supported devices) to have the same "Collection" categories attached. 5 maximum.
4) Allow those remote software pieces to synchronize Collection information. At first, "download from Cloud" only. Later on, allow "upload to Cloud" too.
The above 4 changes would be awesome. Seeing as how Amazon has all our accounts linked to the books we buy, it really isn't very difficult (from a programming standpoint) to link those same Book objects in their database to a database of Collection names that belong to our account. It's not really a space or processing demand to implement such a system. If they want to control that, then they should say that the above optimizations only work on the first 1,000 books in your library and you have only 50 Collection names as a hard limit. Honestly, anyone who regularly reads, and needs to synchronize into a myriad of collections, more than 1,000 books (in, say, a year - we're talking about managing active content) needs something far beyond a Kindle, and anyone with 16,000 books in their library has a similar issue.
Maybe they should have a third category of content: Device, Cloud, or "Archive." User moves never-casually-read-but-want-to-track-ownership titles to this space which is only visible when managing one's account online.
But then again, I've wanted browse-library-by-cover for years and now I have it; one out of three software optimizations to go. If they could only get to "synchronize-collections-to/from-cloud" and "user-selectable-screensavers" I think I'd consider actually flying to Amazon's offices to give Bezos a hug. Personally. :)
Oh, and if I could figure out how to get Whispersync for Voice working that would be awesome. My Fire HD is still having all sorts of issues. Wife and I were listening to Dorian on our trip yesterday in the car; get to the hotel, open up Fire HD, open the Dorian book, and lost track of my place. Back to the beginning. Ungh.
Tyler,
DeleteNice wish list. Be sure to let kindle-feedback@amazon.com know.
Re #1 to allow cover view on the apps for iOS devices:
I think they need to think of storage space available on those devices (even if of a temporary image variety, which would involve having to clear the cache and best not by Amazon as they'd be deleting something on a foreign device) and of course maybe they shouldn't be examining them that closely, not to mention the time it would take (people are sensitive about how long it takes for a page to load) and then the decision whether to use it for load-heavy graphics, which further eat into time displaying a page.
On #2, I really like the idea of the simple Collections feature but then have wondered how that would affect the 31 categories I have for my designated Collections on my e-Ink readers. How do they keep track of my own categories for all those books if needing to show different and fewer Collections on the Kindle Fire for the same books...
I wish they'd keep the Collection data for not only the books on the reader but in the Cloud and then somehow also on the Kindle Fire... Dream on, I guess! Hope springs, from time to time :-)
But your simplified system is attractive when you realize the Kindle Fire has no organizational feature at all! However, remember that for our most active favorites (I see no limit yet), we can move our Favorites around below the Carousel so that certain types of books are together. Mine more than fill up the page and wipe out the Carousel when I press the Star icon.
It IS nice to see those covers for Archived items! Never thought they'd do it, but with faster tablet devices, it makes sense.
Re the Kindle Fire -- sometimes if your thumb touches the lower part of the screen, it moves your page on that long field that shows how far into the book you are, moving it too far to the right.
At that point, I press the "<--" arrow to go "back" and that has always worked for me. I hope it works for you too...
Thanks, I'll try that, at some point - the Audible thing is really not my cup of tea, so it's not a huge deal if it's a semi-broken feature (or something that is prone to user error :) ).
ReplyDeleteIn terms of covers - at least, for books that are downloaded/local to a device, the covers are already there... the covers are included in the binary file that is downloaded. So those covers take up zero extra space. As for ones on the Cloud, well, that's more of a "cache space" issue. Probably work-around-able, though.
For Collections - I would see this as an easy-to-implement feature. At least, for Amazon-purchased, not side-loaded-or-uploaded-to-Cloud content. Because all Amazon does is say "Database item 238125419857 links to user " - well, have a DB entry that says "User links user-defined text string 'Science Fiction' to database item 238125419857" - pretty easy then to key off Collections. It's harder to do for non-Amazon content but far from impossible.
My guess is that both the Collections and screensaver software must have some kind of extremely tricky issue of some kind that a non-Kindle-software-programmer would not readily know about. For me, one who dabbles quite frequently in programming, this is a no-brainer, much easier than Whispersync, so there must be something else there, "under the covers."
Here's to praying it's resolved.
Oh, and btw - got shipping confirmation on my PaperWhite. UPS says it'll be here tomorrow! AWESOME!!!!!!!
Tyler, will look fwd to hearing from you on your Paperwhite!
DeleteRe links -- hard to say. I did network programming for years, and active links used constantly, cloudwise, activated when the user turns wireless, etc. can be a weight. Amazon has many millions of users whose books would need this.
And in the e-Ink Collections case, it's a Many to One situation, as one book can be in many collections, which are just tags but link carrying (even to just a copy of the original book) can be a problem when people go to 'manageyourkindle' page and then try to go through their 10,000 to 20,000 Kindle books (as they've stated when wondering why it's so "slow" to do so :-) ).
The screensaver or sleepscreen software is probably just a wish to keep that valuable real estate free for revenue from ads... But for people who just will not abide ads, no matter the savings for them, Amazon should offer them purchasable customized sleepscreens.