Amazon quickly and quietly rolled out its iPhone client yesterday. It's available in the iTunes App store right now.
I downloaded and installed the Amazon Kindle App for my iPhone. I plugged in my Amazon user name and password and all my Amazon books appeared instantly. Interestingly, the current novel I'm reading, Dogville, a free e-book that SciFi publisher Tor made available this past fall, did not show up, only purchases from Amazon.
Perhaps most interesting is the Whispersync feature, recently announced with the Kindle 2.0 roll out. Whispersync will synchronize your reading progress across the Amazon supported devices you own. For example, if you are on page 50 of a novel and pick up your iPhone to read, it will take you to page 50. If you read 10 pages on yoru phone and then return to your Kindle, it will track your progress and start you on page 60.
A deeper review of both Amazon's iPhone application and the Kindle 2.0 are forthcoming.
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
iPhone Reading and Sync Now Available!
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8 comments:
2 questions:
1. will it work with an iPod touch (my husband is thinking about buying one)
2. Do you have to own a Kindle or can can people who only have iPod's now buy Kindle books?
android, please...
Yes, it works with just the iPhone or iPod touch, no Kindle hardware required. Get the app and log in to Amazon using it and you are then registered (it counts as one device) to buy Kindle content.
I've posted a quick overview of the limitations of the Kindle Iphone App on my blog:
http://booksontheknob.blogspot.com/2009/03/kindle-marries-iphone.html
Along with pictures of all three Kindle devices, open to the same book:
http://booksontheknob.blogspot.com/2009/03/kindle-iphone-pictures.html
Karen
http://booksontheknob.blogspot.com
This is such a fantastic thing! I'm saving for a Kindle2 and am thrilled to hear I can now have access to Amazon Kindle titles NOW on my itouch. I still want a Kindle, but for now, this is the next best thing!
The whispersync thing--what if you're reading a book on your Kindle, and your wife is reading the same book at the same time on her iPhone (you're both tied to the same amz account)? Does she constantly lose her place because the iPhone bumps her ahead to the page you're on? Or are you able to exclude books from this feature title-by-title? Or, do you have to invoke the sync yourself each time (and therefore can be unsynced if you wish)?
Good question about when you and someone else are reading the same book on different devices with the same account. I haven't seen a way to disable it, although I believe you can ignore the sync requests on both devices.
I used it last night and found it to be a nice feature. I opened a book on my iPhone, it jumped right to where I was on the Kindle and when I got back home my Kindle picked up where I left off on the iPhone. Good use of sync technology.
Joe,
If you go to Manage you Kindle at Amazon, then at the very, very bottom, below the booklist, there is a tiny blurb about whispersync. Open up that section (orange arrow pointer) and then you have a spot you can click for more info. On that page is a button on the far right that lets you turn off automatic whispersync. Until I did this, my mother and I kept moving the last page read around on each other. Once it was off, we stopped getting each others notes and the last page stayed put (those who complain it changes on them probably have this feature enabled and two or more Kindles on their account). With that feature turned off, you can still sync to last page read manually (it tells you which kindle is on which location number and lets you choose).
No way to control it by title and no way to allow to named kindles to sync (which is what I would like - sync MY iphone and kindle, leave mom's out of it).
About half the time when I read on my Itouch and then go to my kindle, I click sync to last page read and it still doesn't sync to the last location that I read in the book. Sometimes it will be off by hundreds of locations. It's really annoying but I still love my Kindle 2 and that I can read on my Itouch.
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