Kindle Books on Your iPhone/Pod Touch!

As rumored, Amazon has now released a Kindle ebook application for the iPhone. It took me 30 seconds this morning to find it and install it on both my iPod Touch and my Wife's iPhone. You enter the Amazon account that is used with your Kindle and you will immediately have access to all the books you had previously purchased on your Kindle. You can sort by Title or Author. You can GO to your most recent book/page. You can add, delete, or goto bookmarks, and everything you update in the Kindle app will be updated on your Kindle via whispernet as well!

If anyone doubted how well the Kindles new and old would do, you need to step back and realize that it's not about the hardware. Amazon make it's money selling ebooks. You can now shop for and buy Kindle formatted ebooks from your iPhone, and whispernet will keep everything synced between your Kindle-capable devices.

The Kindle application is free and available from the App store right now. Be warned, as I predict several hundred thousand people will be downloading it today.

Read Well!

Amazon Kindle and iPod Touch DVDs

http://www.amazon.com/gp/mpd/permalink/m2S5YCKCJJ64W8:m1KUZNR4TVZSMM

Today it is out, and I've ordered one for my wife. I read everything posted online about it, including what Amazon itself has to say, and I like what I see, mostly. I'll post a thorough review once I've got one in my hands. Still more ugly than cute. I'll have a better perspective once I can hold one.

It is not yet clear how much web connectivity it will have. I know it will take you to Wikipedia and Amazon itself. I don't know, for example, if I'll be able to read this blog from it though. If it is a generic web browser that can access any web page then it'll be a hit. I suspect they have fixed links and don't let you browse the internet mainly because it is using a cell phone data service that is paid for in part by the cost of the e-books you buy. Spend time browsing the web and not buying anything and the data access bill will climb past the subscription Amazon pays.

I found some cheap software at my local Staples store to allow copying DVDs to my iPod Touch. Not quite ready to recommend it, as it took more than 5 hours to transcode one 2-hour DVD movie. I can't help but think this software is poorly coded if it takes longer to transcode than it actually takes to watch a movie. I'll try it on a faster PC tonight, and if I can get better performance from it I'll review it here. It DID succeed in converting a DVD to a video file I could sync to my iPod Touch. Slowly.

4D