Round up #70: what I read where, Android gets Real Page Numbers, buy a couch and get a free Kindle Fire

Round up #70: what I read where, Android gets Real Page Numbers, buy a couch and get a free Kindle Fire

The ILMK Round ups are short pieces which may or may not be expanded later.

Kindle for Android updated with Real Page Numbers

I had heard there was an update to Kindle for Android, which I have on my Samsung Captivate.

Before updating, I wanted to record some stats:

Version: 3.3.0.405

Storage:

• Total 31.91MB
• Applications 13.39MB
• Data 18.52MB

Then I updated the app by going to the Amazon Appstore on my phone, and then to My Apps, and choosing it to update.

The update took (both download and installation) took about a minute or so.

Under What’s New, it said

• Reduced app size
• Real page numbers: track your progress with page numbers that matched the printed book. Available for thousands of titles in the Kindle store
• Several bug fixes

I opened a book with page numbers, and yes, they displayed. When I used Go To, that also gave me the choice to go to a Page…and told me my current page.

After the update, my information was:

Version: 3.4.1.1

Storage:

• Total: 28.79MB
• Applications: 204KB
• Data: 28.59MB

As you can see the Applications memory was reduced considerably.

Data is a lot higher, which is interesting. I did remove the book I downloaded from the device, so I’m not quite sure what that is. It could be the APNX files that download with page numbers, but I thought those were pretty small, and I don’t have many books on it. Still, it is smaller overall.

Does this mean Real Page Numbers are coming to the Android-based Kindle Fire?

Maybe. 🙂

The Kindle Fire doesn’t just run the vanilla Kindle for Android app.

The version number on my Kindle Fire (which I got to by doing Settings Gear – More – Applications, All Applications) is 4.1.2.12. Maybe that’s the same one that runs on other tablets, but it isn’t the same as my phone.

“Would you like a free Kindle Fire with that couch?”

Thanks to Maggie Woods, who alerted me in this

Bufo’s Amazon Author Central page thread

about an “It means something, but I’m not quite sure what” advertising deal. 🙂

Gardner-White, a furniture store in the Detroit area with heavy rotation TV ads, is giving away a free Kindle Fire with a purchase of at least $1599:

Gardner-White ad

They do exclude electronics, so no big screen TV for your Amazon Instant Videos to go with watching them on your Fire…but you could get a couch, and couches and Kindle Fires do seem to go together. 😉

A book for every place, and every place with a book

I’ve mentioned before about how I used to keep different paperbooks in different rooms in the house…and I’d read which ever one happened to be where I was. 🙂 I like jumping from book to book, and that’s clearly easier with a Kindle.

However, I was noticing today that I’m reading different books on different Kindles. 🙂

• Wonders in the Sky: Unexplained Aerial Objects from Antiquity to Modern Times by Jacques Vallee and Chris Aubeck. Vallee is a brilliant author, but I’m not liking this book anywhere near as much as some of Vallee’s earlier work. I read this one on my Kindle Touch before going to sleep
• Inside Pee-wee’s Playhouse: The Untold, Unauthorized, and Unpredictable Story of a Pop Phenomenon by Caseen Gaines. I’m enjoying this one! Paul Reubens didn’t talk to the author…apparently, planning to write “Pee Wee’s” history of the show at some point. It’s interesting, all the inside stuff. I understand it from my own background…how it can be every person for themselves. I’m sight-reading this one on my Kindle Fire
• The Ballad of the Sad Cafe by Carson McCullers. I read this one on my Mindle ($79/$109 model). It’s interesting…this is a well-respected book, and certainly, some of it is striking….but it also comes across to me as a bit contrived. I can see how people absolutely love it, and I don’t want to take anything away from that. I would say it requires a certain mindset, like the “willing suspension of disbelief” for science fiction/fantasy.
• A Princess of Mars (I’m not linking because I’m using a text file from Project Gutenberg) by Edgar Rice Burroughs. I’m listening to this in my car on my Kindle Fire, using Droid Talker and text-to-speech, I wanted to go back through this before the John Carter movie is released, although I’ve read the whole series before. You can see some of the inspiration for other work in it…and it’s fun to speculate about what will and won’t be in the movie.

So, I may get up in the morning, read a bit of Ballad, write, listen to Princess on the way to work, read about Pee Wee while walking from place to place at work or on a break or lunch, listen to Princess again on the way back, and read Wonders at night.

I know a lot of people read one book start to finish and then move on to a next one. That just has never been my style: how about you?

Xfinity on the Fire

It’s interesting…according to this

Comcast official forum

Comcast has had “teams” working on a Kindle Fire compatible app for months. These are statements from a reputed Comcast employee, and you can see them over the course of a few months. Is the Kindle Fire’s version of Android that different and difficult? Maybe…for me, it took a couple of versions of Netflix before the audio and video were in sync.

Harry Potter and the empty EBR

Speaking of things that are taking a while…where are those Harry Potter e-book editions? No, no, not the pirated ones: those are everywhere. 😉 The legitimate ones were expected in October of 2011

Earlier Post

Here it is half-way through February, and there is no sign of them. Unless they are under a cloak of invisibility or something, it seems that producing them may be harder than they thought.

Yes, I’m still sure they will sell millions, and I think the books will be read for decades…but I do feel like the bloom might be off the rose a bit at this point. If it gets delayed until the fall of 2012, which seems possible…will the mainstream hype be the same? I’m not sure…well, for one thing, you can’t show fans lined up to get them in their pajamas at home…ooh, on that free Kindle Fire they got with the couch! 😉

This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog.