The iPad has been announced. But does it mean Kindle will be dead? No, not at all. Remeber, iPad is still a multimedia device. You can do a lot of things including reading ebooks; but it’s not focused on reading ebooks. Those who prefer to read a lot of fiction, and text-only non-fiction still need a reader like kindle. However, iPad might be more acceptable for technical ebooks and e-textbooks. It’s for sure that young generations will prefer iPad to Kindle, and if the e-textbook market takes off through iPad it’ll be widely acceptable. If amazon can sell ebooks on iPad as they are doing with iPhone/iPodTouch, there is no reason to believe that amazon’s kindle store will be gone forever. Kindle as a reading device will still be there. However, I suspect the Kindle DX will no longer be a viable device, and it will be dead. Remeber, amazon has already tried to experiment with Kindle DX for universitites, and sadly, it failed. I think 6” kindle will still be sold, and it’ll evolve to different level as a reading device as technology evolves.

The iPad is basically a larger screen iPodTouch with tweaks here and there. It doesn’t have many more features than a iPodTouch except the integration of iWork. That basically make it a productivity device. In other words, it’s a multimedia and productivity device. On the other hand, Kindle has many unique features as a reading device that you never heard of. I think, as long as, amazon try to keep Kindle as a reading device with some social networking capability (not facebook, rather book-related) it’ll be alive for long. I would rather say, all other eInk devices other than Kindle will be dead pretty soon.

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From FOX News:

From CNBC:

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That’s a big news. Amazon has decided to release SDK for Kindle so that people can contribute making applications for Kindle just like AApple’s iPhone. It’ll be available in February as beta-test. There are some news that Amazon already gave access to SDK to some companies like Handmark to develop active Zagat restaurant guides for the Kindle, while Sonic Boom is making word games and puzzles for the device.

Here is what you expect to get in February:

• A limited beta test of the KDK  to download the kit
• The KDK will include sample code, documentation, and the Kindle Simulator
• Test the content on the Kindle Simulator
• Simulates will be available for both the 6-inch Kindle or 9.7-inch Kindle DX on Mac, PC

You can see webpage for KDK on amazon here. You can also submit your email to be beta tester.

Here is more what the amazon KDK website details:

Revenue Share

User revenue will be split 70% to the developer and 30% to Amazon net of delivery fees of $0.15 / MB. Remember that unlike smart phones, the Kindle user does not pay a monthly wireless fee or enter into an annual wireless contract. Kindle active content must be priced to cover the costs of downloads and on-going usage.

Pricing Options

Active content will be available to customers in the Kindle Store later this year. Your active content can be priced three ways:

• Free – Active content applications that are smaller than 1MB and use less than 100KB/user/month of wireless data may be offered at no charge to customers. Amazon will pay the wireless costs associated with delivery and maintenance.
• One-time Purchase – Customers will be charged once when purchasing active content. Content must have nominal (less than 100KB/user/month) ongoing wireless usage.
• Monthly Subscription – Customers will be charged once per month for active content.

Active content applications have an upper size limit of 100MB. Applications larger than 10MB will not be delivered wirelessly but can be downloaded from the Kindle Store to a computer and transferred to the user’s Kindle via USB.

Developer Guidelines

Voice over IP functionality, advertising, offensive materials, collection of customer information without express customer knowledge and consent, or usage of the Amazon or Kindle brand in any way are not allowed. In addition, active content must meet all Amazon technical requirements, not be a generic reader, and not contain malicious code.

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Amazon has finally decided to offer 70% of the sales price of Kindle ebooks to the content providers. This is the similar model followed by Apple for AppStore. However, there is a catch. Amazon put some conditions to get that 70% share. The AppleInsider elaborates:

• The author or publisher-supplied list price must be between $2.99 and $9.99
• This list price must be at least 20 percent below the lowest physical list price for the physical book
• The title is made available for sale in all geographies for which the author or publisher has rights
• The title will be included in a broad set of features in the Kindle Store, such as text-to-speech. This list of features will grow over time as Amazon continues to add more functionality to Kindle and the Kindle Store.
• Under this royalty option, books must be offered at or below price parity with competition, including physical book prices. Amazon will provide tools to automate that process, and the 70 percent royalty will be calculated off the sales price.

The speculation is that Amazon has decided to go with such plan fearing Apple will follow the similar plan for upcoming iSlate to be announced next week. There is still some debates on whether such move by amazon will benefit or attract big publishers if they are forced to follow the conditions. However, amazon’s move will certainly help indie authors.

Kindle Wireless Reading Device (6” Display, Global Wireless, Latest Generation)Kindle DX Wireless Reading Device (9.7” Display, U.S. Wireless)

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Some people are selling Nook at Amazon.com. Nook is not currently available in B&N online store. If you order it now, you will probably get it after February 12. I found on the amazon store that some people are even selling it as high as $600. However, you can also find some rarely used ones at $275. If you’re very much interested in Nook, you can probably afford that. Here is the link to amazon store.

Barnes and Noble NOOK ebook reader

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Engadget got an snapshoot of amazon website - on the right corner it says: “Kindle DX Now with Global Wireless.” Not yet, really; but amazon is probably ready to ship Kindle DX globally like Kindle 2. There will be no Kindle DX (U.S. wireless) then. If you go to amazon website or it’s kindle site, you don’t see that anymore, rather you’ll see something on free 2-day shipping.

Remember, Kindle DX is out of stock now. It’ll take 2-3 weeks to get it if you order now. It seems that new supply of Kindle DX will come with global wireless service as it happened with kindle 2. That makes more sense now.

Kindle DX Wireless Reading Device (9.7” Display, U.S. Wireless, Latest Generation)Amazon Kindle DX Leather Cover (Fits 9.7” Display, Latest Generation Kindle DX)

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[caption id=”attachment_1323” align=”alignleft” width=”180” caption=”Courtesy: NewsWeek”][/caption] NewsWeek has recently published an interview with Jeff Bezos. Among many other issues, when he was asked whether P-Book will eventually go away, he said that he believed so:

I don’t know how long it will take. You know, we love stories and we love narrative; we love to get lost in an author’s world. That’s not going to go away; that’s going to thrive. But the physical book really has had a 500-year run. It’s probably the most successful technology ever. It’s hard to come up with things that have had a longer run. If Gutenberg were alive today, he would recognize the physical book and know how to operate it immediately. Given how much change there has been everywhere else, what’s remarkable is how stable the book has been for so long. But no technology, not even one as elegant as the book, lasts forever.

Should I care whether p-books will be vanished someday? I don’t care about it. Some people might say ebooks are not subtle & elegent enough to replace p-books. So do I, now. It’s important to remember that ebook technology is still evolving. If some technology evolves we have to wait for that to reach a certain level of maturity. The technology behind p-books has already evolved to such a mature level that we can’t think of its lack of existence. To me, it’s important to believe in technology that changes all our old habit, and replace the old technology with a newer and improved one which ultimately redefine the whole concept of book. Think about all other digital media that can be embedded in an ebook. Book is, this way, being redefined, with empowering technology. The vanishing of p-books will not take place in our lifetime, rather p-book will survive and redefine its existence in the form of print-on-demand (POD). Might that’s the way p-book will survive forever. And I’m happy with that. When Mr Bezos was asked whether Kindle ereader would be something Amazon continue to sell, he said:

Our goal with the Kindle device is separate from the Kindle bookstore. With the Kindle bookstore, wherever you want to read we’re going to support you. And then for the Kindle device, we want that to be the world’s best purpose-built reading device. It’s not a Swiss Army knife. It’s not going to do a bunch of different things. We believe that reading deserves a dedicated device, and we want Kindle to be that device. It’s like a digital camera. I like having the digital camera on my smart phone, but I also like having a dedicated camera for when I want to take real pictures.

Okay, that’s good - kindle is like a digital camera; but is the content of digital camera - pictures- is locked to a certain brand of digital camera? Portability is an important factor now in ereader market. Why not amazon sell ebooks in various formats compatible to other devices in the market, continue to develop kindle as the ‘world’s best purpose-built reading device’. We want open competition both in ebook and ereader markets. Amazon should make attempt to develop kindle distinguishable from others, even provide some extra features with the ebooks downloaded on kindle that other ereaders can’t provide. That’s the way they can lure people to buy kindle, not keeping ebooks locked only on kindle. Let the customers decide which ereaders they want to stick with. Otherwise it doesn’t make sense to say “the customers are always right” as title of the NewsWeek interview says.

Kindle Wireless Reading Device (6” Display, Global Wireless, Latest Generation)Amazon Kindle Leather Cover (Fits 6” Display, Latest Generation Kindle)Kindle DX Wireless Reading Device (9.7” Display, U.S. Wireless, Latest Generation)Mighty Bright XtraFlex2 Clip-On Light (Kindle Version) Black [Amazon Frustration-Free Packaging]

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Okay, Amazon might be unhappy, probably all publishers as well; but the truth is DRM is not the solution to prevent sharing of ebooks in this digital era when programing has become much more collaborative on the net, and access to internet has become easier than ever. For a long time Amazon got immunity from publishing ebooks with their own DRM. Amazon, from the very beginning was unwilling to release any software to read ebooks on any devices other than on kindle; but due to fierce competition from others, specially, from B&N, in recent times, Amazon had to compromise with that kind of attitude. Now we have Kindle for iPhone, Kindle for PC, and Kindle for Mac on the way. And the irony is that Amazon, in the face of competition, needed to do what they had done to keep their market share, and unintended consequence of that is the cracking of its DRM. The Register reports that

An Israeli hacker says he has broken copyright protections built in to Amazon’s Kindle for PC, a feat that allows ebooks stored on the application to work with other devices.

The software is written in python and titled unswindle. It can crack the mobi format so that you can read in any device. You also need another python program titled mobiDeDRM along with this to crack any ebook. However, it’s not clear whether the program can also crack amazon other formats like awz and tpz. If not, probably that’s true, Amazon still has upperhand and prevail in the market with DRM by converting all ebooks in awz or tpz format before they also get hacked.

You can find these programs on internet by goggling a little bit.

Kindle Wireless Reading Device (6” Display, Global Wireless, Latest Generation)Amazon Kindle Leather Cover (Fits 6” Display, Latest Generation Kindle)Mighty Bright XtraFlex2 Clip-On Light (Kindle Version) Black [Amazon Frustration-Free Packaging]2-Year Extended Warranty for Kindle (6” Display, Global Wireless, Latest Generation)

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Kindle for iPhone (also for iPodTouch) is now available 63 countries. Remember kindle books and kindle are available in around 100 countries; but iTune store is available for only 77 countries. So even if amazon wants to, they can provide kindle for iPhone application in all countries where kindle is available.

Here is the list of countries the application is available:

• Argentina, Australia, Austria
• Belgium, Brazil
• Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Croatia, Czech Republic
• Denmark, Dominican Republic
• Ecuador, El Salvador, Estonia
• Finland, France
• Greece, Guatemala, Germany
• Honduras, Hong Kong, Hungary
• India, Ireland, Israel, Italy
• Jamaica, Japan
• Korea
• Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg
• Mexico
• Netherlands, Norway, New Zealand, Nicaragua
• Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Portugal
• Republic of Malta, Republic of Moldova, Romania, Russia
• Spain, Switzerland, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Sweden
• Taiwan, Thailand
• United Kingdom, Uruguay
• Venezuela, Vietnam

Kindle Wireless Reading Device (6” Display, Global Wireless, Latest Generation)Kindle DX Wireless Reading Device (9.7” Display, U.S. Wireless, Latest Generation)

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Gizmodo Australiahas published a very disheatening piece for Australian kindle lovers or prospective kindle buyers: …..there seems to be something happening with publishers pulling out of the kindle Store – or at least the Australian store. “The first book I purchased for the kindle was Raymond Feist’s Krondor: The Betrayal. It’s the first book in a collection of three, all of which were available on the kindle Store when I first received the device. Instead of buying all three at once though, I opted to pick up the first book, and use the “Save for Later” feature to mark the other two for future purchase. The problem though, is that when I went back to buy those books after completing the first, they were no longer available. They still sit in my “Save for Later” basket, but searching for them, or the author, on the kindle Store brings up no results. While the original book still sits on my device, I don’t have any access to purchasing its sequels on the kindle. But the situation is even bigger than just my single experience. Yesterday while searching for the books, ensuring it wasn’t my imagination playing tricks on me, I noticed that the kindle Store boasted it had 285,000 odd books available to purchase. This morning, that number is sitting at 283, 292. Amazon rep Laura Porco said the other day that the number was around 288,000. So what’s going on? Why has the Store stopped selling almost 5000 books in the past week (or 2000 overnight)? I’ve put the question to Amazon, but they have an Apple-like “no comment” response mechanism, so don’t expect too much in the way of details. Still, in the future it’s worth noting that you should probably buy all the books in a series from the outset to avoid any disappointment that might arise…”

Some angry comments on this piece which really support the claim:

“It’s already difficult to find new release books on the store from Australia ….. If they start making it harder by removing books then they’re going to get a surge of disapproval from me and hopefully everyone else who purchased a kindle in Australia.”

“I’ve found this as well. 9 out of the 10 books that I’d pre-selected for purchasing were removed from Australian sale by the time my kindle arrived. I should have just bought them all pre-delivery. The book at the top of my list? Heat Wave by Richard Castle. Now I can’t even by books by Michael Crichton, Stephen King or James Patterson.”

“Someone ought to start a graph. I wonder when the losses will bottom out. The best option at the moment is to create a fake U.S. billing address and buy books from the U.S. kindle store.”

kindle Wireless Reading Device (6” Display, U.S. & International Wireless, Latest Generation)kindle dx Wireless Reading Device (9.7” Display, U.S. Wireless, Latest Generation)

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