KINDLE NEWS: Kindle Fire's fast rise in actual use noted ... Amzn appstore app updated yesterday...Kindle Blogger on 'Best Reads of 2011' list - UPDATE

Amazon Appstore app updated to version 2.2.0

UPDATE - Commenter Jenni pointed out today that the Kindle Fire's built-in app for the Amazon Android Appstore is Version 2.38.6 while this update for the Amazon store is Version 2.2.0.

  The Update Tuesday, also reported in detail at Android App Central is about the Amazon app store for Android used on devices that are not the Kindle Fire.

  In fact, I don't see the option to show/not show notifications on the Kindle Fire's own built-in store app, but a clue was that no "compatability testing" app would be needed or improved for the Kindle Fire version!

  So, the v2.2.0 Amazon app store app is only for OTHER devices using Amazon's Android Appstore, and is used as an alternative to Google's Android Market and of course so that people can go get Amazon's "Free Android App of the Day"

In fact, part of the annoyance for me was seeing so many notifications from Amazon's apps that are seen

I'm linking to the details in AndroidCentral report and the even more detailed at AndroidPolice (with screen shots of notification options), for those whom this update affects (many of us have Android smartphones and other Android tablets -- in my case the Samsung Galaxy S2 phone and the Samsung 10.1" Galaxy Tab tablet.

On the Kindle Fire, there are no notification options (I'd assumed they were on the manageyourkindle page but they're not), so the notification changes are apparently only for the Amazon Android AppStore app that is used by all other devices, which CAN go to Google's Android Market for app files.

Sidenote - Android Market is now Google Play.
  Android Market's name and URL have just been changed by Google from market.android.com to Google Play, with the URL https://play.google.com/store, which is where you're taken if you type the old Android Market address.

---

Earlier today, for the Amazon Android AppStore app used by other devices:
  The Verge's Andrew Webster lists the changes.

We no longer have to see the notifications every day or several times a day, as there's now an option to be notified or not about app downloads, installations, and updates -- and we can now tweak the settings.

  Since I don't install every app I download (the free ones are just kept at Amazon until I want to use them), I really don't like being notified constantly that they are ready to be installed.  So, this is a very welcome change for me.

There are also app compatability checks and messaging in connection with payment options.
Photo credit: hothardware.com

KINDLE FIRE AND USAGE STATS
Tuesday, a day before the iPad 3 (or iPad HD) announcement today, Gigaom.com and several other online 'zines carried stories on Mobile ad provider Jumptap's MobileSTAT report, that

• the Kindle Fire's traffic ('in-use' stats) jumped, from 4 percent at launch in November, to 20% in December and to 33% in January.
  
  The iPad's mobile traffic dropped from 65 percent in November to 48 percent in January.
• helped increase overall tablet traffic by an average of 50% through January.

Gigaom's Ryan Kim Ryan Kim adds:

' But the Kindle Fire is showing that it is not just a cheap plaything.  According to the data, people are actually using it despite its rougher edges compared to the iPad.  In January, Flurry noted that the Kindle Fire had just barely eclipsed the Galaxy Tab as the most used Android tablet.  Based on Jumptap’s figures, it looks like the Fire has outpaced the rest of the Android pack. '

In the graph above,
  .  the Apple iPad market share is in light blue.
  .  the Kindle Fire market share is shown in blue-green, and
  .  the All others market share is shown in dark blue.

You can see the relative changes for each.  Click the graph to get the larger, more readable graph at Gigaom.

Jumptap tracks the advertising on its network of 95 million U.S. users, involving 21,000 apps and websites.  They also found that "Android and [Apple] iOS represent 91 percent of the mobile OS market, with Android enjoying 58.8 percent of mobile market share while iOS follows with 32.2 percent.  More detail and another graph are at the gigaom site.  Of course, the new iPad will have an effect on relative growth shown for the next few months.


KINDLE BLOGGER JOHN COG FINDS THAT ONE OF HIS BLOG ARTICLES MADE THE READER'S DIGEST BEST READS of 2011

From Me and My Kindle (Website: www.beyond-black-friday.com), here's Cog's introduction about his discovery:

' A funny thing happened when I found Reader’s Digest‘s list of the “Best Reads of 2011.”  A post from my blog was #4 on the list!

  Woody Allen wrote the #3 article on the list, and Roseanne Barr wrote the #13 article.  (And I also recognized the names Christopher Hitchens and David Brooks).  The editors of Reader’s Digest had selected “the most unforgettable articles” for the entire year from newspapers, magazines, and from the internet, but it still took me a while to fully accept what had happened.  The “best reads” of the year came from The New York Times, Vanity Fair magazine, The Atlantic, National Geographic, and — from this blog! '

Heady stuff, but he's always been an engaging, creative blogger.  To see which of his stories made the Best Reads list for the last year, read the full story on his blog.

I use Cog's name here despite his using a pseudonym on the blog, since his postings are often available at Teleread under his everyday name, and he's been interviewed about his blog at Len Edgerly's The Kindle Chronicles podcast, and is this week's featured interview, focusing on his co-authoring of the new Kindle word game for Kindle Keyboards (non-Touch models) AND the $79 Kindle Basic (no Keyboard/No Touch) Throw in the Vowel



Kindle Touch 3G, US-only   Kindle Touch WiFi (US)   Kindle Touch WiFi-Only, outside US    Kindle Basic   (UK: KBasic)   Kindle Fire
Kindle Keybd 3G   (UK: Kindle Keybd 3G)   K3 Special Offers   K3-3G Special Offers   DX

---

Check often: Temporarily-free recently published ones
  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.

  *Click* to Return to the HOME PAGE.  Or click on the web browser's BACK button 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!

Kindle News - 10/21/11 - Kindle Format 8. EFF 'clears' Amazon's Silk browser, Android tablet market share: big jump, Steve Jobs on Android, Amazon to do ao phone?

AMAZON'S NEW "KINDLE FORMAT 8"  (KF8)- with HTML5 Support ... Also, Android tablet sales growth

Despite what has effectively been a one-tablet market, FierceWireless' Phil Goldstein writes that research firm Strategy Analytics is reporting that the Android tablet market share grew from 2.3% to 26.9% in 12 months.

  And that's before the Kindle Fire hits.  The Kindle Fire is of course Android-based.  Google just intro'd Android 4.0, called "Ice Cream Sandwich" enticing buyers again with powerful memories of childhood's ideal-food types (which I didn't outgrow).  Android 4 bridges the differences between Android smartphones and "Honeycomb," which was designed to optimize use of tablet space.

  Andy Rubin, Google's sr. vp for mobile, said this week that there are 6 million tablets running Android but readily concedes that it's dwarfed by Apple's 30 million.  The operating system version "Ice Cream Sandwich" will eliminate the need for tablet-specific apps.  There's a link at the end of this blog entry to the news story on Steve Jobs'  promise to focus on destroying Android for stealing from Apple's work.

Kindle Format 8  ('KF8')
I first heard about the Kindle format enhancements from a tweet by the vigilant Mike Cane leading to his take on it.

  Amazon's announcement
  Amazon's MOBI format and the ePub format are HTML-based, but Amazon's addition of HTML5-based options will add flexibility and layout control missing from the current Mobi version7 at a time when ePub revision 3 has  finally been put in place to make for a more consistent experience on different reading systems.  (HTML5 is the base language of ePub3.)
  The KF8 format change from Mobi7 is also timed with the release of the Kindle Fire Android tablet.

The types of books that will benefit from KF8 are those that benefit from complex graphic layout -- textbooks, children's books, comics, graphics-oriented books, cookbooks, etc.  There'll be over 150 new formatting capabilities, including fixed layouts, nested tables, sidebars, etc.

  You can see the List of supported HTML tags and CSS elements, which will be very familiar to HTML programmers and gives an idea of what they'll be able to do in the way of page layout.

Essentially, the HTML5 support includes the following (from Amazon's table):

CSS3 support	Floating elements
Fixed layouts	Text on background images
Embedded fonts	Numbered and bulleted lists
Drop caps	And much more

Some important points in Amazon's KF8 FAQ

• Embedded fonts are supported, so those of us who couldn't stand the TOPAZ format (preferred by publishers who felt they wanted more control over the Look but who didn't seem to know how ugly those books could be and the software problems they could cause) have reason to be hopeful.
  
  
• The Kindle Publisher Tools for KF8 including KindleGen2 and Kindle Previewer 2 will be available soon. Publishers can still submit only what they did before and the conversion (w/o the special features) will be done, but they'll be getting, soon, Guidelines on how to take advantage of the new capabilities.  
  
  
• The Kindle Fire will be the first Kindle device to support KF8, and in the coming months Amazon will roll out KF8 to their latest generation e-Ink devices as well as their free Kindle reading apps.
  
  
• Mobi files: "All currently supported content will continue to work."
  
  
• "ALL Kindle books currently available in the Kindle Store will be available on Kindle Fire."
  
  
• Publishers won't have to provide two versions of titles, since the upcoming updates to the publishing tools will take care of that.  KindleGen2 will convert submitted content "so that it works on all Kindle devices and apps."
     Publishers will be able to preview, with Kindle Previewer 2, how their titles will look on the range of Kindle devices and apps.
  
    This would mean that current Kindles would be able to read the books formatted with KF8 but without seeing the enhancements that allow the many new features mentioned.

OTHER NEWS
I'll just give links to these for those interested in the many Kindle-related news stories on the Net over the last two days when I couldn't be here. The shorter links are noted at the end of each for Kindle-edition subscribers.

CNet's Seth Rosenblatt's headline is "Amazon's Silk browser: Now EFF approved. Really!"
  Customers can turn off the "cloud acceleration" feature if they have privacy concerns.  Most of it is aggregated information and it's more important that the Silk browser get you to secure sites fast (since they have slower processes) than to bring you back to their servers first, etc.  But some concerns remain.  (Link: cnet.co/silk-eff-ok )

Will Amazon produce a Kindle phone? (Link: cnet.co/amznphonemaybe )

Steve Jobs reveals to biographer Walter Isaacson his strong intent to destroy Android.  (Link: tcrn.ch/sjobs-android )
  The reactions in comments are interesting.  There's a fine line between "inspired by" and "stealing from"... (Two words: Xerox, PARC)



Kindle Touch 3G   Kindle Touch WiFi   Kindle Basic   (UK: KBasic)   Kindle Fire Kindle Keybd 3G   (UK: Kindle Keybd 3G)   K3 Special Offers   K3-3G Special Offers   DX

---

Check often: Temporarily-free late-listed non-classics or recently published ones   Guide to finding Free Kindle books and Sources.  Top 100 free bestsellers.  Liked-books under $1 UK-Only: recently published non-classics, bestsellers, or £5 Max ones     Also, UK customers should see the UK store's Top 100 free bestsellers. 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!