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Amazon Kindle To Get Apps and EA Games
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.
Can we get on with it already? I have a drawer full of devices.....
music lover since 1969
With the refresh rate of the Kindle, and FPS will involve you shooting at the place where the bad guy was 5 seconds before.
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.
Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't the kindle (and E Ink in general) most efficient as displaying the same thing? Why would I want something with a frame rate killing my kindle battery?
Just my bent $0.02
Wonder if it has anything to do with this?
I'm excited about the possibilities, but worried that some developers will port their apps to Kindle because they can, without considering if it's a good match for Kindle. The Kindle really is a content consumption platform, not a content creation platform (you read, not write, on it). I can see a Twitter client working, however, since 140 characters is about the most I'd ever want to type on a Kindle keyboard. I think Amazon is conscious of this, as they are avoiding the term "app" in favor of "active content."
In any case, the Kindle's very slow refresh rate poses UI challenges that haven't really been faced before. I'm interested to see how developers contend with it. Another possible issue is battery life. The Kindle's battery is actually very, very small. The reason it lasts so long is that only page turns draw current, and even then only a small amount of current, and then you have to read a whole page before you draw current again. If you're refreshing every three seconds instead of every two minutes, you're going to see a serious drop in battery life, especially if the apps expect wireless connectivity. My two week Kindle battery could drop to two days easily.
The Kindle for me is still just for reading. While it CAN do email and web browsing and minesweeper, I use my iPhone for all those things. And while my iPhone CAN read my Kindle books, I use my Kindle for that. Reading is so central a part of my life that I'm not willing to sacrifice the quality of the experience on a convergence device- especially one that will start ringing or flash push notifications in the middle of a very suspenseful book.
But really, the whole thing reeks of Apple envy. This and the royalties change tells me that they feel VERY threatened by the Apple tablet.
You're Wrong
No I'm not.
I said "if you get a Kindle you're largely stuck buying your books from Amazon."
Look at that link you provided.
Project Gutenberg is free public domain books... FreeKindleBooks is just the Gutenberg stuff reformatted for Kindle. PDFBooks is the Gutenberg stuff in PDF for the Kindle. World Public Library is just that - a library. The disclaimer on Mobipocket indicates that only demos and free books can be read on the Kindle. ManyBooks is again the Gutenberg stuff. Munseys is more free stuff. MobileRead is free out-of-copyright books. Zinepal is just RSS converted to Kindle.
So, of that list you provided... You can buy your books from Amazon (380,000 titles) or Fictionwise (no indication of how many titles are available) or Webscriptions (1,000 titles) or Feedbooks (4,000 titles) or Christian Classics Ethereal Library (no indication of how many titles are available).
Which means that by far the largest retailer of Kindle ebooks is Amazon. You'll notice that there's no mention of any other big-name book retailers on that page, because the Kindle can't read ebooks from Barnes & Noble, nor can it read ebooks from Borders. So, if you've got a Kindle, you're largely stuck buying your ebooks from them.
Sure, if I just want a copy of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea I've got plenty of choices. I can download it for free from any number of places.
But if I want to purchase a copy of a new book like Under the Dome, I have to buy it from Amazon.
"Work is the curse of the drinking classes." -Oscar Wilde
Let me get this straight. My Kindle doesn't have the functionality to store my library in categories, meaning I have to hack in metatags on all my ebooks using the note-taking feature and search that if I wan't find just my books on Computer Science or Science Fiction, the recent upgrade to my Kindle allows me to view PDF files, but not zoom in on their page content, meaning I still can't read PDF's on it unless I pack a magnifying glass, and I have no way of exporting the personal notes I take on it to a text file or other non-kindle-readable format.
I don't mind these shortcomings, because the whole point of my Kindle is not having to reading books on my cellphone or computer monitor, but now I'm supposed to believe I will soon be getting games on this device currently lacking so many basic features? I'm not drinking this kool aide.
i ~ Celebrating Science, Cyberspace, Speculation
The Kindle application framework is Java based. You write "booklets" that work like Java applets. Under the hood the Kindle runs a Linux kernel, so in theory you could just write native C apps, but I doubt Amazon will give developers access to that.
Some more info about hacking your Kindle:
http://igorsk.blogspot.com/2007/12/hacking-kindle-part-3-root-shell-and.html