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Amazon Kindle To Get Apps and EA Games

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the in-glorious-greyscale dept.

Lanxon writes "Amazon currently encourages publishers and authors to sell their books and magazines digitally, but the upcoming Kindle Development Kit (KDK), which goes into beta next month, says Wired, will allow software developers to create a variety of different applications. Amazon has already confirmed a Zagat guide for restaurant reviews from Hallmark and a selection of word games and puzzles, such as Sudoku, from Sonic Boom. EA Mobile is also set to release games on the Kindle."The kit itself is expected to be available next month.

2 of 111 comments (clear)

  1. One step closer to jailbreak by goldaryn · · Score: 4, Informative

    People can already SSH into their Kindles. If I were Amazon, I would be worried about this kind of support making jailbreaks more attractive, possibly putting a nail into the coffin of their future ebook sales.

    1. Re:One step closer to jailbreak by donovansmith · · Score: 4, Informative

      Right now, if you get a nook you're largely stuck buying your books from Barnes & Noble. You can't just go to any ebook retailer and pick up whatever you want.

      Actually, since the Nook supports Adobe Digital Editions you can go to any store that uses ADE to purchase books. The Sony Reader Store and BooksOnBoard I believe are two of the larger ones. Also, it allows you to check out ebooks from libraries that use the Overdrive system. The Nook also supports the eReader PDB format and DRM scheme, which opens up the eReader and Fictionwise stores. The Nook probably has the broadest DRM format support of any ebook reader out right now.

      If they can open up the platform (either with a jailbreak, or an official update, or an app, or whatever) then you'll be able to buy your ebooks wherever you want. Amazon will lose it's vendor lock-in... But they'll pick up sales from folks with nooks and Sonys and whatever else.

      The problem is that each major ebook manufacturer is using both a different format and different DRM scheme for their books. Kindle uses either Mobipocket DRM files or their own Topaz format. The Nook appears to use the old eReader/Peanut Press DRM scheme with the EPUB file format. Sony uses the closest thing to a standard in DRM'd ebooks: Adobe Digital Editions protected EPUB. So neither the Nook nor the Sony Readers can use files purchased from the Kindle store and that won't change unless Amazon licenses their software to other companies, which I doubt will happen.