Kindle for PC, Kindle for Mac updated: version 1.10.1
New versions of the free reader apps for Kindle for PC and Kindle for Mac have been released:
Kindle for PC and Kindle for Mac Version 1.10.1
I’m looking for the big changes (unless these are just bug fixes), but I wanted to let you know right away. 
Update: I’ve heard that this doesn’t really add new features, just performance enhancements.
This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog.
New update 5.04 update available for the Kindle Touch, Kindle for PC updated
Thanks to regular reader and commenter Tom Semple for the heads-up on this.
There is a new update available for the Kindle Touch (5.0.4).
The description isn’t very explicit: “This update features general software improvements for Kindle Touch.”
I won’t get a chance to test it until later, but if you want to get it right away, you can at
Kindle Touch Software Update Page
There are instructions there for using your USB cable to transfer it to your KT.
You can also just wait, and you should get it when connected to wi-fi…that’s easier, but it’s hard to say when it will happen.
Tom also tells me that Kindle for PC has been updated to accommodate KF8 (Kindle Format 8). I’m not where I can test that one, either.
If you get either of these and notice differences, feel free to let me know.
Thanks, Tom!
This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog.
Flash! Kindle for PC updated with Collections, copy and paste!
Big, big, big!
Kindle for PC looks quite different with a brand new update…and includes the ability to import your Collections (and create them on the PC).
I have my K4PC set to update automatically…but it didn’t, and I’ve had that happen before.
Open K4PC, and do
Help-Future Improvements…
Even though the Future Improvements page hasn’t been updated with a new description, go ahead and
Download the new version
It went smoothly for me, although I’m seeing some things in the Kindle community where people say they crashed…I’m on Vista Home Premium on this machine.
It looks quite different. For one thing, Home is now called Library.
It prompted me to add Collections…although you can also do it through the File menu.
You can also duplicate Collections…that’s a nice touch.
It’s showing me my total items, as well as downloaded and archives…again, a nice touch.
There is a Recommended for You link…it looked like it was only going to pull up Kindle books, but it didn’t find anything for me.
There was a fascinating addition, and I don’t see how you’d realize it was there. Highlight a name in a book (a person, a place), and you’ll have some new choices:
Note that Report Content Error? Interesting!
When you click the Book Extras by Shelfari, you get a description…which you can edit or you can add something new:
This should contribute to massive updating of the Shelfari extras…I wanted to alter this one right away.
When I clicked to View All Book Extras, you get all kinds of things…perfect for a homework assignment. You get character descriptions, a synopsis (which is “spoiler-blinded” until you click on it), alternate covers, quotations, themes…really nice!
Hey…we can copy and paste now! I highlighted a fairly large selection, copied it, pasted it into Notepad…it even gave me citation data! It was a bit misleading, but it gave it to me:
Carroll, Lewis (1997-05-01). Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (Kindle Locations 543-553). Public Domain Books. Kindle Edition.
Misleading because Lewis Carroll wasn’t born in 1997, of course. He also wasn’t born on May 1…I’m thinking that’s the publication date of the edition.
They are really making this much better for school work…and that may also tie into the tablet.
If you don’t have Kindle for PC at all yet, start here:
Try it out, let me know what you think!
This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog.
Flash! Kindle for PC updated
I have to say, just like its namesake, Amazon never stands still.
Now, they’ve added some nice additions to the free
There are three new things:
We’ll take these one at a time, then I’ll tell you how to do the update…or if you can’t wait, just go to the above link and download it.
Dictionary
The Kindle has an on-board dictionary, and you can use it to look up words. That’s now been added to the Kindle for PC. You can also look up words and phrases in Google and Wikipedia. Unlike the Kindle, you don’t just put your cursor in front of the word…you select the word (by double-clicking or by dragging over). The definition will appear at the bottom of the screen. The first time you do it, you apparently have to download the dictionary…at least, I did. It had a kind of scary message about the dictionary not being in the archives, but of course, it was.
You’ll also get a choice to Lookup…select that, and you’ll see Google and Wikipedia as options. Be careful, though! It didn’t open a new window for me, it knocked me off of the last thing I had open…like this post I’m composing. That may not be true for everybody, and it wouldn’t be a problem if you only had Kindle for PC open. The short definition appears in a hover window at the bottom (like it does on your Kindle) and you can choose to see the full definition.
If you want to turn off the dictionary, you can do that in Options.
List View
Oh, I like this one! Regular readers know, I’m not that visual a person. I’d rather look at the numbers than look at a graph. When you are in the home screen, you’ll see two buttons to your right of the sync button:
The one on your right, with the little boxes, represents tile view. The one on your left will list your titles…sort of like an Excel spreadsheet without the lines. You can sort by clicking the column titles…much easier, in my opinion.
Multiple Columns
There’s another new button. You’ll see it when you have a book open. It’s to your right of the full screen button:
It’s the one on your far right here.
That will display your book in multiple columns, like you might see in a magazine.
All in all, these are a few nice changes.
To update your Kindle for PC, you can go to the link I gave at the top and choose to download. If you already had K4PC open, it will ask you to close it. The whole thing took about three minutes, I’d say. It was all pretty painless and worked fine for me.
One other little thing I noticed: if you go to Tools-Options, you can now see and change where your Kindle content is stored…that’s a nice touch.
I did notice that it was taking longer to get back to Home from the book…not a big deal, but it did seem to degrade performance a little.
I’m looking forward to the next thing to come down the river! 
This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog.
Flash! Search added to Kindle for PC
I tweeted this a couple of days ago, after seeing a tweet from Andrys A Kindle World of about it. I hadn’t had a chance to test it until today.
Amazon has updated its free Kindle for PC app. They seem to have done two main things: changed the background of the homescreen so you see that same “kid under a tree” graphic; and added in-book search.
The first one isn’t an advantage to me…I’d say I liked it better before. However, I do have some color vision deficiency, and I tend to prefer flatter looks, perhaps for that reason.
The second change, though, that of adding search, is a great plus! After you get the update (more on that in a bit), you can either type into a search box in your upper right with a book open, or (and this is really cool) highlight something and have the option to search without typing.
So, you have Alice in Wonderland open (that’s my normal test book…for a lot of the things I do, it’s good to use a public domain title). You can just double-click the word dodo. You’ll get a choice to highlight, highlight and add a note, or search. If you choose Search, you’ll get a sidebar with the results. I really like this, compared to the Kindle. You still see the text that you were reading, plus you get the context of each of the appearances of the word. You get the context on the Kindle as well, but it’s in a different screen and you have to go Back to get back to what you were reading. There’s a big red “You are here” bar above your current context…that’s a nice touch!
If you click one of the context quotes, you will jump there on the main screen…and you can use Back to get back to where you were.
It’s a very nice implementation. You can’t interact with the results bar, except by clicking on it to go somewhere…no copying that list and pasting, but that’s okay. I always hope that a more interactive document will enable text-to-speech (in this case, I tried Windows Narrator), but it didn’t.
Bottom line: I like it.
Now, as to how to get it…
I have my options (Tools-Options) set up to automatically apply updates…but it didn’t do it. I reopened the program, did a Sync & Check…nope. So, I went to Help-Future Improvements. That did get me to a link for the update. I think you can get to it directly here:
If you already have Kindle for PC open, it will probably restart it and install it…that’s fine, I didn’t lose anything doing that, and you shouldn’t either.
Just another way Amazon is improving the product…thanks, Amazon!
This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog.
