What matters more to you: content or the way you get it?

I ask this question because Alan Kaufman at the Evergreen Review seems to believe the delivery method is the most important. So important that he even invokes Godwin’s Law on himself when talking about the current trend of books moving from paper to devices like the Kindle.

All physical books must go up the chimney stack. Such was the methodology of the SS who forced their prisoners to run naked races round and round the barracks yard in the Polish winter, a race that no one was meant to win.

The book is fast becoming the despised Jew of our culture. Der Jude is now Der Book. Hi-tech propogandists tell us that the book is a tree-murdering, space-devouring, inferior form of technology; that society would simply be better-off altogether if we euthanized it even as we begin to carry around, like good little Aryans, whole libraries in our pockets, downloaded on the Uber-Kindle.

What an ass.

He seems to believe that e-books are responsible for bookstores closing. They aren’t. The vast majority of the population that reads doesn’t have e-readers, but they do often buy their books online, and that’s what’s killing bookstores.

He also seems to believe that e-readers hearld a new age where only the biggest, most important authors get published. This is nonsense. If that was the case, I won’t have a short story for sale in the Kindle store (for those who don’t have a Kindle, download the free Kindle ap for the PC and then you can read my story if you like).

The writer of the article is simply wrong, and comparing the transition from paper to e-readers to the Holocaust is just insulting on many, many levels.

Further, everything is starting to digital. Does it really matter if the movie you are watching is on cable, on a DVD, on a DVR or some sort of streaming video format? Does it matter if music comes to you as an MP3, a CD, or on a record? The content is basically the same across the various delivery systems. The content is what matters.

For fun, here’s a poll:

Desde Ayer Amazon ha puesto de forma gratuita a los propietarios del mejor lector de ebooks del mercado, una actualización, la 2.3, que permite leer  PDF sin tener que hacer una conversión previa.

Ademas la bateria durará con la nueva actualización un 85% más.

Como lado negativo, la lectura del PDF depende de como esté creado el mismo,ya que unos se ven mejor que otros y no podemos hacer Zoom. Supongo que en breve Amazon sacará una actualización que nos permita hacer Zoom.

El Nook, su gran competidor, está creando mucha expectación. Amazon tiene una ventaja de estar posicionado en el mercado y no creo que se dejen adelantar. En los vídeos de presentación del Nook, que normalmente tienen que sacar sus virtudes, hemos visto defectos como que el famoso menú en color se ralentiza,el paso de páginas es tedioso. Habrá que esperar a ver críticas oficiales,cuando salga a la venta oficialmente. Actualmente están todas las reservas agotadas y no habrá stock hasta la entrada del 2010. Amazon ya vende el Kindle en más de 100 países. Y hasta ahí puedo leer.

Web de Amazon con información sobre la actualización.

(Audrey) Before coming to Delhi, Thane made a luxury purchase for himself. He justified it as his birthday gift and so took the dive into the Amazon Kindle.

This little product has been far more useful than either of us ever imagined. For starters, we save money on books. Anything written before 1923 is out of copyright, and, thanks to the Gutenberg Project, Amazon’s own efforts, and other attempts, tens of thousands of classic books are available for free online. Mostly the file formats are not immediately Kindle compatible, but Amazon will convert any file in 5 minutes or less for free over e-mail. Using this method, we’ve also managed to put everything from academic articles to travel guides to city maps on this handy e-book. If you want to read more modern works, then yes you do have to cough up about 10 bucks a book. I’d be outraged in America, where I have access to excellent libraries, but all books we get in India are on a purchase-only basis anyways, so it’s a wash whether they’re electronic or paper.

Perhaps most importantly, the Kindle holds hundreds of books and so we travel lighter. It even goes in a nice little case that keeps it safe.

For all these reasons, much to Thane’s chagrin, we now share his Kindle. As I’ve traveled around Delhi with it the past week or two I’ve gotten a variety of reactions. I mainly read it on the metro, and reading on transportation in general hasn’t really caught on in India for reasons that remain totally obscure to me. So generally I read and everybody in sight watches me read. With books this amounts to little except stares, but with the Kindle…

A lot of times people just point and say “what is that”. I’m then left trying to explain about electronic readers (kind of like a mini-computer but with real ink?). I think I fail more often than I succeed in describing the device properly. Sometimes people have heard about e-readers and then the conversation is more fruitful. Today on the train, fairly inexplicably, a Sikh gentlemen asked me if it was a Bible. The security people at the metro (everybody and all baggage is scanned for metal upon entry) go back and forth between whether the Kindle qualifies as a computer, in which case they often want me to turn it on, or whether it’s a book, in which case go on through. Almost everybody asks how much it costs… and almost everybody seems appalled when I name the price we paid (300 USD).

One thing is for sure—the Kindle interests Indians big time. And it seems that Amazon has figured that out–as of a month ago, the Kindle is officially available in India.

As mentioned in my earlier post Amazon has released a new firmware update for the Kindle. The Kindle 2 now has an extended battery life of up to 85% (with wireless on), support for native PDF documents (previously only available on the Kindle DX) and as an added bonus – manual screen rotation. The Kindle DX now boasts better cropping of  PDF files and an extended page timeout (from 5 mins to 20 mins).

For a full list of version 2.3 highlights (and manual updating) have a look at Amazon’s site here.

Amazon announced yesterday that they are releasing a new firmware update for the Kindle which will extend battery life by up to 85% (with wireless on) and will support native PDF documents.

News release via Amazon:

SEATTLE–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Nov. 24, 2009– Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) today announced two new enhancements to the latest generation Kindle—85 percent more battery life and a native PDF reader. Kindle now has battery life of up to seven days even with wireless turned on, a significant improvement from the previous battery life of four days. Battery life with wireless turned off remains at the previous level of up to two weeks. Battery power management for portable wireless devices is a complex technical area, and the battery life improvement announced today is the result of a six month firmware improvement and testing program.

Amazon also announced today that the 6-inch Kindle now has a built-in native PDF reader that enables Kindle customers to read professional and personal documents in their original PDF format without conversion. Kindle is in stock and available for immediate shipment today at www.amazon.com/kindle.

“Kindle, already the #1 bestselling, most wished for, and most gifted product on all of Amazon.com, is now even better—with 85 percent more battery life and a built-in PDF reader,” said Ian Freed, Vice President, Amazon Kindle. “These two significant enhancements are available now.”

To read their personal or professional documents, Kindle customers simply email PDFs to their Kindle email address or move them over using a USB connection. Customers that prefer to have their PDF documents converted to the Kindle format simply type “Convert” in the subject of the e-mail when sending documents to their “@kindle.com” address.

Amazon also announced today that previous purchasers of the new Kindle will also receive the 85 percent battery life improvements with wireless on, and native PDF support via a firmware update automatically delivered via Whispernet wireless. Native PDF support will also be available for some earlier versions of Kindle via an automatic Whispernet wireless firmware update.

I usually keep my wireless off but guess I’ll be keeping it on now until the new firmware update comes through Let us know if you’ve received your new firmware…

An ebook reader, sometimes called digital book reader or e-reader, is a portable electronic device that replaces hardcover or paper books. It allows the user to carry hundreds of books in electronic format and read them in a display designed to give the user almost the same experience as reading a paper book with less strain to the eyes. It is the perfect gadget for avid readers of ebooks.

Read more…

Are you ready Nook? I hope so, because Amazon is ready to get it on. Amazon announced today that a new firmware update will bring the world’s most popular e-reader (at the moment) a boosted battery life of 85% more. According to Amazon, 85% more battery with 3G on equates to a full week of ON time. Before the update is applied, Kindles only lasted 4 days with 3G on. With 3G off, the Kindle will operate for two weeks.

These e-reader wars are getting interesting. I’m digging this new firmware update. Alas, competition can only make everything better in the long run. I’d say in about 3-4 years, an e-reader would look very attractive given that the price drops to $100 – $150 and the battery can run for weeks or even a month.

Amazon

Smashwords.com is one of the three places I’m focusing my Amber Scott Project on. The other two are Amazon Kindle and Scribd.com. Smashwords has been sending me newsletters since I put my NaNoWriMo work in progress up with them. First, how cool that they support NaNoWriMo and writers in such a way. And second, they are in works to place their qualifying titles with Barnes and Noble, Sony, and (drum roll please) Amazon Kindle. WooHoo!

Why is this so exciting? For one, it demonstrates just how serious they are about the success of their writers. And for another, this will save me a huge potential headache because I won’t have to necessarily know html or DTP for Play Fling’s Kindle uploading. All I have to do is adhere to Smashwords style guide and take responsibility for marketing my books.

I’ll take it!

:}Amber Scott

I’ve been recently crushing on Stop Motion videos and last night I was fascinated by this Amazon Kindle TV ad. I thought it was cute and happy without being obnoxious.

It almost made me want a Kindle until I remembered this music video.

Maybe I’m being a bit crazy, but they’re a bit too similar. One is obviously higher budget than the other one, but I believe that in this case there’s beauty in simplicity.

Slipdown Mountain Publications LLC author Lisa A. Shiel completes her month-long virtual book tour for her new book The Evolution Conspiracy, Vol I: Exposing Life’s Inexplicable Origins & The Cult of Darwin this week. Here’s the schedule:

Monday, 23 Nov — Spunk on a Stick’s Tips (guest post)

Monday, 23 Nov — The Exminer (interview)

Tuesday, 24 Nov — The Hot Author Report

Wednesday, 25 Nov — The Hot Author Report (interview)

Wednesday, 25 Nov — Marta’s Meanderings (review and excerpt)

Friday, 27 Nov — The Hot Author Report (5 things you didn’t know)

Friday, 27 Nov — Reader Views (review)

Drop in at one of Lisa’s stops this week and start a discussion. Lisa will reply to all comments and questions.

The book is currently available online in print at Amazon and Barnes & Noble (and most other outlets), as a PDF on Scribd, and in the Kindle bookstore (and, of course, iTunes for the Kindle app).

Remember that you can now read Kindle books using the free Kindle for PC desktop application even if you don’t own a Kindle! You can find out more by reading my blog post about it.

What future are we talking about? WE ARE THE FUTURE! If you’re one of the people out there who believe that the world will end in 2012, then it’s only 3 years away. I’ll only be 21! How much can the future hold for all of us then?

I love reading books. Chick lits are a genre of books too. I love collecting books, though i absolutely hate it when they turn yellow. But then again, that’s the most awesome part of it all. Irony? Absolutely and definitely not. It’s part and parcel of growing up. The little inperfections here and there are filled with different stories. I always take time to browse through the books whenever I’m at the library and what attracts me to the book – the book cover. I’m a visual person and I don’t mind if a book is not that fantastic but as long as the book cover is nice, I’m sold.Well, I believe that there are many people out there like me.

And that is why I really don’t get it when the future of books involves online/e books. I admit that why should we pay for the tangible books when it’s free on the internet but the feeling is just not the same. I read the pdf version of New Moon, Eclipse, Breaking Dawn and another series of book – House of Night, all of which are online books. It is just not the same as holding the book and reading it. No yellowing of pages and let’s not forget that how books have unique paper smell. The fonts were small and weird and my laptop is definitely heavier than the book itself. Well, maybe that’s the reason why : Amazon Kindle – voted 20 best gadgets of the decade (2000 – 2009) . Saves paper for printing books ( environmentalists would be so proud of it), no more yellowing of books, no more time wasted making a trip down to the library etc.

What would happen to publishers and book cover illustrators anymore? Only time will tell and i don’t like how it’s moving towards already.

Now, isn’t it the same with the music industry. The problem of piracy for both books and music is so atrocious, how can anyone ever earn anything. And not only that, music is also going online too. What’s with the iTunes store selling tracks at $0.99, who would bother to go down to the actual CD store to buy music anymore?

For me, what I do with books, I do with music. What i meant by that was if it was a CD by my favorite artistes, I would buy the CD, even the different versions of the same CD. With websites like Youtube, Myspace, Facebook etc., where music is available everywhere, it is virtually impossible not to pirate. Not to mention that now we can simply just click-and-drag music to our mobile phones too.

I foresee more music stores dying after Sembawang Music Store. With the competition so fierce in the music industry, why should artistes even sell music through middlemen (e.g music stores) anymore?

Now, I’ll take a back seat, smell my books, clean my CD collections and see how else the future of it evolves.

The publication Strategic Project Portfolio Management is also available on Amazon’s electronic book device, the Amazon Kindle:
http://www.amazon.com/Strategic-Project-Portfolio-Management-Organization/dp/B002SVQD9Q/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1257532789&sr=8-3

As I posted recently I have reconsidered my relationship with the Amazon’s Kindle. Having read the limited warranty that came with the device as well as what is posted on the website it seemed clear to me that after one year there was no guarantee. At the time I was aggravated, unhappy and perplexed. I was wrong too. Sometimes you have to make that phone call.

Of course I did not make it. My wife did since she had originally bought me the Kindle and had worked out the (now) 3 replacement Kindles. She spoke with them (although finding the right customer service number was a little bit tough) about the fact that my Kindle had simply died. They said no problem and sent a replacement Kindle to arrive THE NEXT DAY at Amazon’s expense. It was already loaded with my contact information such that as soon as I charged it up and turned it on it was easy to download the books that I had previously purchased into the replacement device from the content manager.

I am pleased, impressed and yes still a little perplexed. While I still hold that Amazon should send a replacement Kindle to any customer that complains their Kindle has stopped working (which they have done) as long as the customer sends back the old one (still at Amazon’s expense which is the case). But I have two questions.

1) Why don’t they publicize this feature? Possible answer – Amazon does not want to advertise that the device is somewhat fragile since that could undermine overall customer perception particularly in view of the new e-reader devices on the market. Anyone that calls will receive a replacement Kindle but one HAS to call.

2) Did anyone from Amazon actually read my blog post such that they decided to send me a replacement Kindle? I’m hardly one to be over-impressed with my own impact or self-importance so I highly doubt that.
Sales of e-books had reached just shy of $ 100 million as of August 2009 according to the Association of American Publishers. Additionally analysts are calling for sales to triple again over the next 13 months. And the Kindle is Amazon’s best selling item across ALL of its markets.

The Kindle aims to be the I-pod of e-readers. I think Amazon has a good shot there. However I do think they missed an opportunity with me to ‘buy’ up to the newer device the Kindle 2 or large screen tablet. I would have paid 50% (or less) of the purchase price of one of those newer devices. Instead I have a refurbished original Kindle – which I am grateful for but it was an opportunity lost as far as I am concerned.
Of course I could just be being greedy. Amazon continues to prove to be one of the leaders in customer service and satisfaction. And that’s high ground to hold.

This week, I posted 28 examples of Kindle book designs our Five Rainbows Services for Authors and Publishers company has created over the past 18 months or so.

Admittedly, I posted them in hopes of generating more business for the company. But, in addition, I want to demonstrate that there are ways to make almost any book — with or without photos or graphics, with or without special formatting needs — look good on the Kindle.

These examples include novels, illustrated children’s books, self-help, and business books. I have posted from four to twelve screen shots for each book to show the variety of formatting possibilities. These screen shots are taken directly on the Kindle using its built-in feature for that purpose (if you want to make your own screen shots on a Kindle 1, make sure you’ve got an SD card installed — the keyboard shortcut is CTRL+SHIFT+G, which creates a gif of the current screen that you can retrieve via the USB connection).

Spend some time browsing. You might even find a book you’ve just got to read!

If you have any questions about the design choices made, feel free to post them right here.

Slipdown Mountain Publications LLC author (and my charming daughter) Lisa A. Shiel continues her month-long virtual book tour for her new book The Evolution Conspiracy, Vol I: Exposing Life’s Inexplicable Origins & The Cult of Darwin. Here’s this week’s schedule:

Monday, 16 Nov — Broowaha (interview)

Tuesday, 17 Nov — Divine Caroline

Wednesday, 18 Nov — The Book Rack

Thursday, 19 Nov — Brizmus Blogs Books

Friday, 2o Nov — Beyond the Books

Be sure to stop in at one or more venues this week and start a discussion, whether you agree or disagree with the book’s premise. Lisa will reply to all comments and questions.

The book is currently available online in print at Amazon and Barnes & Noble (and most other outlets), as a PDF on Scribd, and in the Kindle bookstore (and, of course, iTunes for the Kindle app).

Remember that you can now read Kindle books using the free Kindle for PC desktop application even if you don’t own a Kindle! You can find out more by reading my blog post about it.

This week I focused on finishing up my letter of recommendation packets, which meant that I had to finish writing my statement of purpose, updating my curriculum vitae, and opening online applications for each school. This process ended up taking way longer than expected. Even with Veteran’s Day holiday in the middle of the week, I am still not done. My goal now is to finish everything and get the packets out by Monday because it’s getting perilously close to crunch time.

The only problem is I can’t decide on which introduction to use of the four that I’ve written. I worry that one is too controversial, the other too naive. I don’t know if I should bring up a favorite childhood novel or mention this-and-that theorist. I want to sound intelligent, passionate about literary research, hardworking, and capable. I want to send out a piece of writing that I will be proud of, something that accurately represents me as an English enthusiast and budding scholar and as an awesome possum human being.  All in 500-1000 words. Piece of cake, right?

SCCUR 2009 at CSU Dominguez Hills

I think the pressure is really starting to get to me now that eighth week of Fall quarter is approaching. Next Saturday, I’m presenting my 199 research project at the Southern California Conference for Undergraduate Research (SCCUR) so my presentation has to be revised. I need to publish the latest issue for the research journal; my thesis advisor wants to see a good chunk of my senior thesis written up. And there’s quizzes, finals and grad school applications. Responsibilities are piling up. I just hope I’m not in over my head.

Its days (or weeks) like this when I need a nice pick-me-up. So here’s my happy list for today:

• Taking a lovely stroll through campus (instead of the usual NYC power walk to class)
• Eating spicy grilled cheese sandwiches
• Getting a fast response from Yale about my fee waiver (brownie points from promptness!)
• Having the whole weekend ahead of me to work on applications
• Receiving a very nice kiss-and-make-up email from my Milton TA after everyone got mad at him for grading the midterm really hard
• Reading Madame Bovary on my new Amazon Kindle
• Being featured on the UCLA University Librarian’s blog (my thesis project is also the third one listed here!)

I was really excited about the last thing in a nerdy nerdy way. As an undergraduate, one sometimes worries about being seen as inexperienced, unreliable, or unprepared. You worry that people don’t take you seriously or respect your ideas. So it totally makes my day when I feel like I’m slowly being accepted into that shiny magical realm of scholarship.

Our Five Rainbows Services company does a lot of Kindle conversions for small, indie publishers and self-published authors. Some of the source files we receive are easy to convert. Some are difficult.

Some, however, pose real problems that can be very costly to circumvent.

We never provide a firm quote on a conversion until we have reviewed whatever source files are available. Our preference is to start with a Microsoft Word or Open Office document (WordPerfect sometimes creates its own unique problems).

Often, we can get what we need from the PDF file submitted to a printer for a print edition, but too often the PDF is loaded with all kinds of problems, some of which stem directly from the way the InDesign file was created (and then used to generate the PDF). However, just as often, trying to extract the needed data from a PDF creates a whole new set of problems — extraneous hyphens and line breaks and headers/footers inserted on each page in line with the main text are the most common. Another common problem is the use of ligatures, as it is often impossible to extract them into readable text. Fixing all those errors can take a lot of time.

Sometimes, it proves easiest to pull what we need directly from the InDesign file…but that depends greatly on how the InDesign file was created.

So, if you’re designing books in InDesign and want to make it easy, and much less expensive, to convert those books to the Kindle format, here are a few things to consider.

1. Use master pages for all running headers and footers. You’d be surprised at how many people — for reasons I don’t understand — try to insert the headers and footers individually on each page.
2. Use defined styles for all formatting (particularly paragraph and character styles) as opposed to manually styling each one as you go. And give those styles names that make it obvious what the defined style is doing (e.g., “Chapter Title” or “Inline Subheading”). This will make it easy to map the InDesign styles to styles for the Kindle.
3. Make sure the main portion of the text flows in proper sequence from text box to text box. It’s OK, however, to put each chapter in its own file (indd) and accumulate all those files into an InDesign book (indb) file (in fact, doing so will make it much, much easier to create an ePub if you later decide you want that, too).
4. Whenever feasible, put the chapter titles, chapter numbers, chapter epigraphs, etc. in the body of each chapter’s text and apply appropriate styles to format and align them. Otherwise, the Kindle designer will have to spend time (read: cost you more money) to place each one of those individually.
5. Whenever possible, use anchored graphics (anchored to the appropriate place in the text) instead of unanchored, placed graphics. Otherwise, it becomes difficult to keep track of where they go. (InDesign’s export to RTF or ePub will typically use a left-to-right then top-to-bottom methodology to decide where to put all the various text and graphics boxes).
6. Don’t force hyphens to break words or force a new line in the middle of a paragraph. This almost always requires the Kindle designer to search for all hyphens and line breaks one-by-one and remove the extraneous ones.
7. Don’t use multiple blank lines  to add white space between paragraphs. Instead, use a paragraph style to increase the “space before” or “space after” setting.

There are other things you can do to make life easier for your Kindle designer but the above items will go a long way to saving time — and, thus, money — in the Kindle design process.

If you really want to keep the cost of Kindle conversion low, take the time to create a Word document of your book that:

• Uses Word’s defined styles (Heading1, Heading2, Heading3, etc.) for titles, headings, subheadings, etc.
• Uses only Word’s default font
• Uses no tabs or forced line breaks or mid-word hyphens
• Uses Word’s default bulleted and numbered lists features (don’t try to design your own or use fancy bullet or number characters)
• Leaves out the headers and footers (that includes page numbers)

Any fancy formatting and multiple fonts will be lost in the Kindle. If you also have a PDF of the book’s final design as sent to the printer, by all means send that along, too. We can see the fancy formatting used in the PDF and create appropriate format options for the Kindle edition (within the Kindle’s limited capabilities).

The more of the suggestions above that you can implement, the less expensive the Kindle conversion process will be.

Over the past couple of years we have seen a shift in the way people use their mobile handsets. Originally used to make simple voice calls, the mobile handset has not only changed the way we interactive with each other but also how we purchase and consume a range of services and content.

It was therefore of interest that analytics firm, Flurry, published a report last week that showed over the past four months the number of book “applications” being downloaded onto the iPhone has exceeded that of games – with one out of five new apps launching in October being a book.

With the increasing focus on supporting mobile developers to bring new content and services to market easier and faster than ever before, 2010 is likely to see the way people use their handsets continue to evolve.

So, what chance to dedicated devices that offer just a single function hold? Over the past few weeks we have seen the global launch of the Amazon Kindle and more recently the launch of a dedicated Twitter device called Twitter Peek, both claiming to make it easier to perform a single function. But both of these “functions” were already available to Smartphone users and carried a minimal, if any, expense. It could also be argued they performed these functions better, with the Amazon Kindle offering a black and white screen, and the Twitter Peek not supporting multiple user accounts.

With the increasing sophistication of Smartphones, bigger screens, increased connectivity and lowering costs, is there a market for single function devices?

Specifications: You may be wondering why we are not comparing the Kindle with the new Sony PRS 700. Although it is the newer model with lots of new features, the screen of the PRS 700 is just not as good as the Sony PRS 505. As the main factor of a digital reader is, well, its readability, I personally much prefer the 505 and think that it remains a good rival to the new Kindle 2. To put it out straight, the Kindle 2 is a more powerful device than the Sony PRS 505, in terms of battery life, storage, etc. But in terms of simplicity, pricing and ease-of-use, the older Sony model got lots to offer. The Amazon model currently costs about $90 more than the other model.

For starters, both readers use the same type of screen, i.e. with a 800 x 600 resolution and 4 bit (16 gray levels) color support. The Amazon model has a 2GB of built in memory, while the Sony only has 128MB. On the bright side, The Sony model supports SD cards and memory Stick Duo cards. The Kindle 2 also has a better battery lifespan, where it can last up to two weeks on a single charge.

Design: I personally prefer design of he Sony PRS 505 over the Kindle 2. Amazon’s model is white in color with rounded corners and circular buttons. The 505 on the other hand, has a more serious-looking design and is available in both silver and black. I though the Kindle looks a little like a toy. Both models are of roughly the same weight and size.

Features & Performance: There is no doubt that the Kindle 2 has much more features than the Sony model. In terms of readability though, I personally think that the PRS 505 is more readable than Amazon’s model. It seems to have better contrasts and can easily be read even under bright lighting conditions. The Kindle 2’s screen did not fare so well under bright lights.

For more real reviews and product information on the Amazon reader, visit Amazon Kindle 2 For more info on the Sony mode, visit Sony PRS 505

See Also : Cheap Price Amazon kindle Cheap Amazon kindle Amazon Kindle 2 kindle amazon online Reader Ebook

[UPDATE: I tried again, and Kindle for PC is now downloading all my books swiftly and reliably. Not sure why it wasn't before...]

I’ve been playing with Amazon.com’s new Kindle for PC application over the past 24 hours, and while the idea of having access to my Kindle books on my PC remains mighty appealing, the software as it stands in beta form is a bare-bones disappointment.

I mentioned yesterday that the Windows app was refusing to let me download books I’d already purchased. As of this morning it’s still choking about a third of the time. But I’ve been able to get access to part of my library.

And here’s a book in the process of being read:

Kindle for PC does indeed let you read Kindle books; it also syncs your location from other places you’ve been reading (such as your Kindle or iPhone) and shows you highlights and notes you’ve made on a Kindle.

The thing is, a Windows PC is the most powerful device to gain access to Kindle content so far, and this beta version of Kindle for PC does very little to make use of all that power. You can’t search. You can’t highlight or make new notes. You can’t buy books within the software–it sends you over to Amazon.com in your browser.

Windows PCs have tons of pixels and millions of colors, but the books I’ve read so far don’t make much use of them to make pictures look better. Here’s a page from a book that was originally in color: The tiny spot illustration still is, but the photos are now in black and white, and you can’t zoom ‘em.

All in all, it’s a considerably more rudimentary e-reading experience than what you get with Barnes & Noble’s PC software, which does highlighting and notes, lets you search, and has a two-page display mode. Come to think of it, Kindle for the PC is nearly identical in features to the iPhone app. But the end result feels more spartan–for one thing, wouldn’t you be more likely to want to take copious notes on a laptop with a comfy keyboard than on an iPhone?

The Kindle software has a “Future Improvements” link that takes you to a page where Amazon says it’s considering implementing search, highlighting, notes, and better image handling. I hope it does. Actually, I wonder why it didn’t wait to release this app until it had some or all of those items. (Maybe it wanted to get something out before Barnes & Noble’s Nook e-reader shows up later this month.)

One thing I’m still not clear on about Amazon’s attitude towards the Kindle: Does it see the iPhone, Windows, and coming-soon Mac versions as full-blown versions of Kindle, or as conveniences for folks who own a Kindle e-reader and do most of their reading on it? I’d love to think that the software versions might not only catch up with the hardware, but surpass it…

Amazon Kindle for PC now available. (Free download for Windows 7, Vista & XP). Amazon has released a Kindle for PC app, available as a free 5.17MB download for Windows 7, Vista, and XP.

Much like the Kindle for iPhone app, Kindle for PC syncs your Amazon e-book downloads and shows them on your computer for convenient reading either when you’re away from your svelte e-book reader or if you chose not to buy it in the first place. A Mac version, Amazon says, is “coming soon”.

Though not necessarily revolutionary, the Kindle for PC app does the job. Among other benefits, it syncs your last read page with Whispersync, syncs Kindle notes, and promises to use Windows 7’s touch technology, allowing readers to pinch-zoom, and, in future releases, turn pages with finger swipes.

Amazon is reportedly working on the ability to create notes and highlights on your PC and a search function. What you can’t do is view blogs, newspapers or magazines.