Some Kindle News

[temporus]

Amazon, possibly succumbing to the pressure of more ereaders ready to break onto the market, will soon be making available a Kindle App for the desktop.  (Thanks for the tip dqg_neal )

[/SARCASM]
Shocking really.
[/END SARCASM]

Once they made a Kindle app for the iPhone, it was just a matter of time before they came up with something for anywhere else.  Looks like Mac will get the short shrift here, as the info page only lists details for a Windows system.  Now, in my opinion, this will be cool.  And it would mean that I'd still be able to access all the books I've got, even if something happened to my Kindle or if I just plain forgot it.  But the fact is, that the Nook has this feature going out the gate.  In fact, you can go to B&N and download the free app for your system now, and start using it today.

This is market pressures coming to bear.  I wonder how long before new features start showing up in the upgrades.  I'd love native PDF reading.  (Probably won't happen, but I'd still love it.)  I also wouldn't mind a loan feature.  Especially with the Kindle apps available as free downloads, I'd be able to loan out some of my books to friends and try to drive up readership among the authors I like. 

Comments

[dqg-neal.livejournal.com]

It is the competition that Amazon needed to start advancing features. I wonder if a price war will be the next step.

[temporus.livejournal.com]

I concur. I think the initial price war will be on the readers themselves, to drive the cost down towards $100, which seems to be the price point where people would consider it a good alternative. Consider, that to break even on the full initial priced device, I will have to somehow save around $400 on my purchases of Kindle books. That's a lot of discounted books. I'm not sure yet, that I've saved even $100 on all the books I've bought so far. (With the number of freebies, I definitely have saved over $100, not even including all the Project Gutenberg content) Now, if I had stopped purchasing new books, and only bought digital, the number would be higher. I think, with this new free app for the PC, I might feel a little less pressure to buy physical copies. Afterall, I could load it up on the wife's netbook, and even my laptop, and we can share digital copies more easily. Right now, I have to hand off my Kindle to the wife to let her read a book on it. This gives us more options.

[jongibbs.livejournal.com]

{sigh} I can't keep up with all this new-fangled technology :(

[temporus.livejournal.com]

This one is easy. It's a program. You install those, and then click run.

:P

[jongibbs.livejournal.com]

'...click run...'

You see, that's a problem in itself. I've usually sprinted a good fifty yards from my PC before I remember it's talking about the program ;)