Personal Document Service coming to Fire, Kindle apps
I’ve written recently about major changes to the way the Kindle service deals with personal documents.
For some personal documents in some circumstances, you can download them to some Kindles. There, was that ambiguous enough for you? 😉
Amazon backs up personal documents to a free 5gb cloud drive, syncs the personal documents between devices, and backs up your notes.
It appears to be imperfect, still. I did the software update on my Kindle Keyboard 3G, Free 3G + Wi-Fi. It worked, my shortcut key for VoiceGuide works, for example.
However, it still doesn’t see the personal documents in the archives that my Mindle (that’s what I call the $79 Kindle) on the same account sees. Interestingly, from
http://www.amazon.com/manageyourkindle
I can send a personal document to any of the Kindles on my account…even a Kindle 1.
My expectation was that I’d be able to download to my Kindle Keyboard (formerly a K3) after it was updated. Maybe that will only work on documents from here on? More testing (on my part) is needed.
I thought I would share this e-mail with you that Amazon sent me*:
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Dear Kindle Customer,
As a past user of the Kindle Personal Documents Service, we are pleased to let you know about some improvements:
• Your documents are now automatically archived in your Kindle library (you can control this from the Manage Your Kindle page at www.amazon.com/manageyourkindle).
• Archived documents can be re-downloaded from your archive to the all-new Kindle and Kindle Touch devices, as well as Kindle Keyboard (Kindle 3rd Generation–requires the latest software update v3.3 from www.amazon.com/kindlesoftwareupdates) – you will be able to find and download your documents from any of these devices that are registered to your account.
• Now (just as with Kindle books) Whispersync automatically synchronizes your last page read, bookmarks and annotations for your documents (with the exception of PDFs) across devices.
We expect to extend these features to Kindle Fire and Kindle apps (such as Kindle Cloud Reader, Kindle for Android, Kindle for iPhone, Kindle for PC, and Kindle for Mac) in the coming months. You can control these new features from the Manage Your Kindle page at www.amazon.com/manageyourkindle where you can see a list of your archived documents, re-deliver documents to your Kindle, delete any document from archive, or even turn off archiving for your account.
Learn more about the Kindle Personal Documents Service from our help pages at www.amazon.com/kindlepersonaldocuments.
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Notice that they say they expect to extend it to the reader apps and to have it on the Fire.
That’s good news…I’m looking forward to it working on my KK, and to having it on my apps.
* My understanding is that an e-mail belongs to both parties (and can be released publicly) unless the sender specifies it is private or puts some other restriction on it in the e-mail.
This post by Bufo Calvin first appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog.
I Love My Kindle 
October 16, 2011 at 2:48 am |
Bufo, I can see and download all of my personal documents to ALL of my devices. Devices only, not any of the Apps such as Kindle for PC. It even has a listing for all of my older personal docs as well. Sent some from my K3 (oops KK) to my wife’s KK and to another KK on the account. Worked easily … only my KK has the new 3.3n upgrade, but all (3.1s) can read the personal docs I sent to them. The PDs are in their own subgroup on MYK. I was shocked that even the older PDs were available and sendable. Tried with quite a few with no problems.
October 16, 2011 at 3:45 am |
Thanks for writing, Harold!
I can send them from MYK…I can’t see them in the Archived Items list on my KK. Are you able to do that?
Also, my personal documents at MYK only go back to September 28, 2011…yours are dated farther back than that?
October 16, 2011 at 6:40 am |
I got the same email. It seems I can push anything in my archive to my KDX. I’m not sure about the other direction. How does it know what non-Amazon docs are on my KDX without a S/W update?
“Pushing” documents is of course not the same as “syncing”. I’ll give it a few days and then see if any non-Amazon stuff has made it to my archive. My KDX is still on 2.5.4, and there’s been absolutely no indication that they are contemplating any software updates for 1st or 2nd generation devices.
October 16, 2011 at 12:27 pm |
Thanks for writing, Edward!
I would think people would be completely up in arms if personal documents they put on their Kindles (not sending through Amazon’s conversion service) were automatically uploaded to Amazon’s servers without their knowledge. I would guess that their could be at least the threat of legal action, and that it would successful and quite messy for Amazon.
You aren’t the only person to bring that up, certainly. My understanding is that only documents sent to Amazon for placement on your Kindle will be archived…not those you sideloaded. Amazon will only know about documents you voluntarily sent to them…it won’t know about those others.
October 16, 2011 at 1:50 pm
Interesting, I had actually been thinking more about side-loaded docs — as that is what I would mostly like to have archived along with the emailed docs. As the “1984” issues showed, they do have the capability to “reach into” your device from their side if they want to.
As for the legal issue — I would think that could be rather easily addressed in software using an opt-in/opt-out mechanism for archiving of non-Amazon documents. If the default is opt-out, and the software lets me opt-in on a document by document basis, I don’t see the problem.
If I could email them my side-loaded docs with some kind of notation saying “don’t convert”, that in effect achieves the opt-in nicely without any major changes to the existing software infrastructure either on the device, or on Amazon’s servers.
In any event what happens now is that if I email them something to be converted (like from “Send to Kindle”), they convert it as usual, and now in addition maintain a copy on the archive for me (if I’ve set up my “manage my kindle” page appropriately). I wonder what they’d do if I email them a document already in .prc/.mobi format?
I’m going to wait until I get my KT and KF before I try and figure this out in detail — as it seems like this is still very much a work in progress. I’m still not sure what capabilities 3.3 gives you vis a vis personal documents that I don’t already have on my KDX with 2.5.4.
October 16, 2011 at 2:09 pm
Thanks for writing, Edward!
Yes, Amazon could do permissions to allow them to do pretty much whatever you think is okay and they can do technically. However, if they simply took and copied things from your Kindle without getting permission first…I think that’s big trouble.
It’s also very different to delete a file you’ve already sent to somebody than it is to look around a drive’s memory to see what else is there that hasn’t gone through your system before. I’m not saying it couldn’t be done, but it’s very different.
I plan to run some more experiments with my Mindle, and then I’ll have more data.
October 16, 2011 at 4:26 pm |
PDs that I’d sent to my KK prior to the updated did not appear in Archived Items, only those that I send afterwards. So I deleted the former, and now everything I send now has the expected behavior. Finally all Kindles appear as delivery targets (not apps), and synching works.
Hoping they hook up kindle.amazon.com so you can view highlights/notes there. They do show up in Recent Activity (but as generic ‘personal document’ highlights/notes) but not elsewhere.
October 25, 2011 at 12:30 pm |
I still haven’t gotten the v3.3 update on my K3. I even left my K3 with wireless on at home for at least 24 hours, even doing a “sync and download” but no update. I must be low on the list.
October 25, 2011 at 12:59 pm |
Thanks for writing, Steven!
You can also download it manually…that’s what I did:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html/ref=help_search_1-3?ie=UTF8&nodeId=200529700&qid=1319547532&sr=1-3