Hasta La Gadget!

Greyscale screenshot of A Bard’s Tale

Amazon’s Kindle reader isn’t going to get amenities like color, video capability, a camera, or an accelerometer in the foreseeable future. But that doesn’t mean we won’t see a rich variety of specialized applications for it. A recent high-profile hire at Amazon offers one possibility for the future of Kindle apps, while two Kindle-watchers have offered different forecasts.

Amazon recently hired away Andre Vrignaud, Microsoft’s Director of Game Platform Strategy. Now, Vrignaud worked on many different platforms at Microsoft, from XBox and XBox Live to PCs and mobile phones; presumably, he’ll do the same for Amazon, especially since Amazon already offers casual game downloads for Windows PCs. A revitalized, multiplatform game streaming or download service for Amazon is intriguing, but let’s set it aside for now to focus on gaming for Kindle.

Here, Vrignaud and Amazon face a challenge, as they have to chart a game platform strategy that works within the Kindle’s limitations. These aren’t just technical, but are circumscribed by the Kindle’s user base, few of whom are likely to use the Kindle for heavy gaming even if they’re interested in it.

The sweet spot seems to be black-and-white word games, like you might find in a book or newspaper. The Kindle already has two word-puzzle games available, Every Word and Shuffled Row. It’s easy to imagine crosswords, Sudoku, Scrabble, and the like for Kindle — it’s almost unfair to call this casual gaming, since its fans are so passionate. And I’d wager there might even be a market for vintage text-based computer games, many of which are terrific to play for a few minutes at a clip. Any five-hour airport delay would be a lot more interesting if I could bang out Zork or A Bard’s Tale or entertain my son with Oregon Trail on that terrific Kindle battery while I was waiting. (Note: I’m deliberately the pit of hell that is casual gaming for Facebook, but clearly those companies could clean up here too.)

But games are just the beginning of an ecosystem of Kindle apps. We’ve already looked at a few ways you can make Kindle 3’s much-improved browser work like a champ for news reading, but just like with smartphones, a dedicated RSS application could potentially suit some users even better.

At iReader Review, RSS readers are listed along with email clients, weather apps, finance apps, and chat as functions currently performed using the browser that would make natural apps for Kindle. The author makes a strong case for these apps as indicative of the kinds of apps that will do well on the Kindle — providing focused information in a client specifically tailored to the Kindle device and Kindle user.

Livescribe’s app store provides a potential model for the Kindle; an array of pencil-and-paper games, translation services, and reference applications, all perfectly suited for a simple text interface and black-and-white display.

Finally, there’s the one-in-a-million possibility. One of the biggest knocks on Amazon had been that its Kindle supports its own unique formats but not ePub, an e-book standard many other companies have rallied around. There’s no way Amazon would ever allow an application that duplicates its e-reader function, allowing you to read DRMed or cracked Amazon e-books. Amazon even has a clause in its terms of service forbidding generic readers.

Popular Sun-Times tech columnist Andy Ihnatko, though, recently claimed in a podcast that several app makers were working on building an ePub client for Kindle — and that Amazon had given them the go-ahead.

Now, some people think Ihnatko was confused or misinformed, and it’s quite possible that Amazon could allow a reader for open, non-DRMed ePub files while still barring all the books you bought from Barnes & Noble.

Still, it’s an intriguing possibility — and Amazon could certainly use an App marketplace to open the Kindle to becoming a general document viewer (and casual writer) of a wide range of files without writing a line of code themselves.

See Also:

• Photos: Putting Kindle 2 and Kindle 3 Head-to-Head
• Amazon Kindle Third Generation With 3G + Wi-Fi
• Why Does the New Kindle Have A Microphone?
• Simple Tip Turns Kindle into Ultimate News Reader
• Amazon Now Offers WiiWare Games
• Amazon Launches Casual Game Download Service
• Tablet Wars: Amazon Adds Apps to Kindle

Kindle DX Promotional Photo from Amazon.com

It’s easy to figure out why e-readers and tablets are the size that they are: They’re all about the size of paperback books, whether trade (iPad) or mass-market (the Kindle 3). Some oversized models, like the Kindle DX, are closer to big hardcovers. But why are books the size that they are? It turns out it’s because of sheep. Sheepskin, to be exact.

Carl Pyrdum, who writes the blog Got Medieval while he finishes his Ph.D. in Literature at Yale, has the skinny on book sizes. You see, before Europeans learned how to make paper from the Arabs (who’d learned it from the Chinese), books were made from parchment, which was usually made from sheepskin. Sometimes, they’d use calfskin, too; if it was really primo stuff, it was called vellum. Like reading a whole book made out of veal.

We eventually mostly gave up on parchment, because it was expensive, and hard to work with. (There’s a reason medieval monks wrote manuscripts; preparing the parchment was penance.) But all of today’s book sizes (and by proxy, most of our gadget sizes) were established in the Middle Ages, and printers and paper makers carried them over. Booksellers and publishers still use these terms today:

• Fold a sheet of parchment once (two leaves/four pages per sheet) for a folio; if you fold sheets of paper once without a cover, you’ve got a tabloid.
• Twice for a quarto (8pp/s), the size of a big dictionary or big laptop;
• Three times for an octavo (16pp/s), a hardcover or Kindle DX;
• Four times for a duodecimo (24 pp/s), a trade paperback/iPad
• Four times (a slightly different way) for a 16mo (yes, they gave up), aka mass-market paperback/e-reader;
• Five times for a 32mo, aka notepad/old-school smartphone sized
• Six times for a 64mo, or as Erasmus called it, a Codex Nano.

All images via Got Medieval.

Story continues …

Eager to get on the new Apple TV‘s cheap 99-cent TV show rentals but not so pumped to wait four weeks for it to ship? No worries: Amazon’s also now offering 99-cent rentals purchases of various ABC and FOX shows, which means a whole host of Amazon VOD-compatible devices just got some cheaper streaming options as well — and hey, Roku just cut prices on its entire lineup of Amazon- and Netflix- compatible players, so you can get in the game for as little as $60. Of course, the Apple TV also features day-and-date movie rentals, local streaming, AirPlay, and that slick iPhone / iPod touch Remote app, but only your heart truly knows if those are worth an extra few bucks and a month of fevered desire.

Update: As our astute commenters are pointing out, these are actually listed as 99-cent purchases, making this a far better deal entirely. We don’t know if that’s for real or just an error right now, though — we’re double checking and we’ll let you know.

Update 2: Yep, we’ve confirmed that these are 99-cent purchases, making this a much better deal than Apple’s rental model — although only you can decide whether you actually need permanent streaming access to Dollhouse Season 2.

[Thanks, Stephen]

Amazon streaming 99-cent ABC and Fox shows… right now (update: purchases, not rentals!) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 01 Sep 2010 17:28:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Ever wonder if Staples is going to have to change its name at some point? Surely some time in the not-too-distant future, actual staples will be a relic of the way people published, once upon a time. Maybe a company-wide abbreviation will be in order. How about S-ples? Or Stapes? The latter, according to Wikipedia is “the stirrup-shaped small bone or ossicle in the middle ear.” You guys can work with that, right? Maybe build an ad campaign around it?

I bring all of this up because, for a company that makes as much as it does selling paper product and the like, Staples has always had an eye on technology. In fact, the office supply mega chain has just inked a deal with Amazon to begin stocking Kindles. The store is set to carry three models–the Wi-Fi-only, the 3G, and the Kindle DX.

Staples is the second major retailer to carry the eBook reader. Target began carrying the device earlier this year. Borders and Barnes & Noble, of course, are focused on their own readers, the Kobo and Nook, the latter of which is also available in Best Buy stores.

We told you it was coming, now the Samsung Epic 4G is on sale at Sprint for a cool $249.99 plus two year life commitment. In other words, it’s time to let Sprint know whether this Galaxy S variant (with — gasp — working GPS) is worth the $50 premium over HTC’s EVO 4G. Well, is it?

Update: As usual, Amazon’s offering a discount showing a $199.99 listing for new contracts. It still shows a pre-order status (with 2-3 weeks ship time) but that’s likely to change any minute now.

[Thanks, Jonathan P. and Jason J.]

Samsung Epic 4G now on sale at Sprint (update: save $50 at Amazon) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 31 Aug 2010 04:15:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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