It comes as no real surprise that Amazon’s bestselling Kindle Fire tablet is going to make the company some money despite estimates that say the hardware is being sold at, or even slightly below, the cost of manufacturing.  They basically brought eReading to the mainstream at a time when people barely understood what the idea meant, after which I tend to give them the benefit of the doubt when it comes to identifying profitable ways to create content sales.  What has come as a surprise to many is exactly how much average profit the company many stand to make on each unit.

Ross Sandler, an analyst from RBC Capital, has managed to estimate that your average Kindle Fire will be the source of around $136 of income for the company during its lifetime.  Naturally this is speculative to a certain extent, but it was based on an independently conducted survey of over 200 Kindle Fire owners regarding their spending habits thus far.  The findings are actually somewhat surprising to me and I have to wonder if they don’t reflect a certain amount of skewing due to early adopters with narrow expectations of the tablet’s potential.

Personally, despite having had the Kindle Fire since the day it came out, I can’t imagine sitting through so much as a single book on it.  It works for the occasional article or academic publication when needed, and I couldn’t be much happier with the PDF functionality for my own purposes, but owning E INK eReaders has left me with higher expectations.  It was therefore interesting to find that the most popular use for the Kindle Fire among those surveys was eBook reading by a wide margin (71% citing this as among their most frequent uses.

Also interesting is the fact that video streaming, which has seemed to be Amazon’s primary focus with the Fire so far, is relatively unpopular with only 13% of those surveyed reporting it as a frequently used feature.  That seems to include all video streaming, including things like Hulu Plus and Netflix, which works against Amazon even further given their efforts to built the Instant Video service into something impressive.

So where is all of this money that the Kindle Fire will supposedly earn coming from?  It looks like the current numbers support an estimation of around 5 eBooks per quarter, 3 apps per quarter, and a noticeable but unaccounted for increase in the number of general Amazon purchases each quarter.  My inclination would be to say that this is an overestimation of eBook purchasing and an underestimation of app appeal that will turn around once people get more comfortable with the capabilities of the tablet, but that is admittedly a matter of personal observation with no backing in numerical research.

The problem with any survey of this sort is that it the recent surge in Kindle Fire owner numbers has led to potential inaccuracies.  This is especially the case since all those surveyed came to own the Fire during 4th quarter 2011, nearly half of them as gift recipients.  It is hard to know for sure if things will change once the primary pool of new owners is made up of people buying for themselves.  Even so, chances are good that the numbers will level out somewhere along these lines.  Amazon clearly made a smart move here, and the Kindle Fire is going to pay off big in the long run.

We are well aware now what the big Apple announcement for January was: their new iBooks Author program.  It is a program that allows for easy creation of books, most notably textbooks, for free.  iBooks might have failed to kill the Kindle platform, even given the whole Agency Model collusion with publishers (the legality of which we’ll have to wait and see about), but that doesn’t mean they’re ready to give up.  After some experimentation with the new program I find myself conflicted.  I wanted it to be mediocre, but it’s not.  And therein lies the problem.

You see, there is a bit of a problem with the program’s EULA.  It won’t be a deal breaker for just anybody, but there is definitely important information to be aware of.  By using the iBooks Author program, you are agreeing that not only will anything you sell be available in Apple’s eBook store but also will never never be sold for the Kindle, Nook, or any other non-Apple device.

Before going into the subtleties of the wording, and there are a few arguments with varying degrees of merit that have been made toward the harmlessness of this clause, consider that this can definitely be read as a response to the recent Amazon effort to gain author exclusivity.  The only difference is that Amazon brings in authors with a chance at more money while Apple just quietly restricts their distribution rights with a clause that users not only never explicitly accept, but don’t even see unless they go out of their way.

That said, there are a few situations where I think this will be an extremely valuable thing to have.  If you are planning to create and distribute your work permanently free of charge, I have yet to find a more intuitive, affordable tool for making textbooks or manuals.  If your book was always intended to be marketed primarily to users of the iBooks store, this probably won’t have much of an impact on you.

Now, let’s acknowledge some ambiguities in the wording and clarify some of the many common points of contention:

Restrictions Only Apply To iBook Format:  FALSE

The definition of “Work” used in the EULA clearly indicates that anything generated using the software counts.  It does not matter if you export to PDF, for example.

Apple Is Stealing Author Copyrights:  FALSE

Anything you create is yours from the moment you create it unless you explicitly hand over permission.  What Apple is doing is telling you where you can sell it.  Using iBooks Author allows them to restrict distribution of your work, but otherwise seems to offer them no rights to it.

All This Applies To Is The Formatted Product, Not The Content:  AMBIGUOUS

Leaving aside the textbook for a moment and assuming we are talking about a book that is completely text based.  If you want to release a Kindle version, it would seem possible to just copy the text and reformat.  The wording of the EULA describes “Work” recursively as “any book or other work you generate using this software”.  This can, and hopefully would be, read to mean that only the final, fully formatted output is affected, but the ambiguity is troubling.

It Is Free Software, They Have A Right To Expect A Return:  TRUE-ISH

Nobody is forcing you to use this program.  It is being provided free of charge by Apple and provides far greater functionality than any other free program out there for the same purposes.  Most such restrictions are aimed toward restriction the active use of the software rather than restricting how a creator can manage their own work, though.  Neither illegal nor unprecedented, but odd and somewhat troubling.

Not A Consumer Targeted Software Anyway:  FALSE

This one comes up a lot.  Despite the large number of advertisements being done involving the cooperation of such publishers as Pearson and McGraw Hill in the iBooks Textbook initiative, there has been no indication that they are contributing work under the same agreement.  This is free software pointed at teachers and authors in the advertising (particularly the promo video).  It has bundled templates to simplify the work, a simple drag and drop interface, and tons of automation.  There is depth for those who need it, but definitely not aimed solely at experienced professional textbook publishers.

Apple Can Prevent A Finished Book From Ever Being Sold:  TRUE

All that is required for a book to be covered by these restrictions is that it be a product of iBooks Author.  Publication is neither automated nor guaranteed, and just because Apple turns you down does not mean that you are free to market your work through another platform or sell through your own means.

Apple Offers Better/Worse Royalties Than The Competition Anyway:  FALSE

Apple is effectively offering the same cut of all sales to authors as the vast majority of authors receive when selling for the Kindle and nearly the same (within 5%) as that offered to Nook sellers.

Now, I’m not about to claim that this is the most horrible thing ever done to authors or even that it is deliberately malicious.  Some have claimed that just as this is a 1.0 software, so is the EULA in early versions too and ambiguity will inevitably be removed.  If so, and there was no intent to deceive or control, so be it.  It is already a complicated enough process to get anything out of your eBooks that authors should be aware of what they are getting into, though.  I, for one, wouldn’t want to be locked out of the Kindle platform by accident when that’s where all the readers are.

This is good software.  Possibly great software.  But the limitations aren’t the same as you get when publishing a Kindle Edition, where all you need to worry about is not selling things cheaper elsewhere.  Under the current wording it seems to literally stop you from reaching an audience.  That’s just unpleasant, and something that people need to be aware of when deciding whether or not iBooks Author is for them.

The Kindle Library Lending service launched in the fall of 2011 started with 11.000 libraries.  The number has grown to about 15,000 libraries and counting in the US, and 18,000 worldwide.  This new service offered via a partnership between Amazon and OverDrive has been very instrumental in facilitating this big jump in membership. more

Kindle Library Lending is available to anyone who has an e-ink Kindle, Kindle Fire, or Kindle reading app.  The books can be downloaded via Wi-Fi or USB.  Loan periods vary by library.

So it looks like a win win situation for both parties.  Customers who want to keep a book can purchase them on Amazon.  Amazon has the broad customer base and selection of books to bring to the table.  I do hope that they can eliminate some of the steps to downloading a book.  In some cases it takes a lot of digging to even find the e-book collection on the library’s website.

OverDrive is the repository that is used for holding digital book collections.  This includes both e-books and audiobooks.  The e-book collections are available on the Kindle, Nook, and any other e-reader that supports ePub format.  E-books can also be accessed on the computer.  If the service is offered at your local library, a link to it should be fairly prominent on the library’s website.

Most states have a digital library account with OverDrive.  North Carolina’s is called the NC Digital Library.  From there, select libraries subscribe to the account and offer e-books.  If your library doesn’t currently offer them, keep checking back.  More libraries are constantly being added to the service.  I see articles about individual libraries launching e-book lending all the time.

Between Kindle Library Lending from my local library and the Kindle Owner’s Lending Library, I’ve been able to find a lot of good reading material for free.  There are also a lot of reduced priced Kindle books available as well.  Each month features 100 Kindle Books under $3.99.  The major bestsellers aren’t available on either yet unfortunately, but they do offer a chance to explore new authors and catch up on older bestsellers.

Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) just released a new software program called Send to Kindle that makes it easier to send most printable documents to both the e-ink Kindles and the Kindle Fire.

I downloaded the new “Send to Kindle” app on to my Kindle Touch with ease using the detailed instructions that Amazon provides and the prompts from my browser.

Right now this program is only available on Windows, but a Mac version is coming soon.  Once downloaded, you can access the application in two ways.  Through Windows Explorer, you can right click on the document and select “Send to Kindle”.  You can also go into a program such as Microsoft Word that supports printing and select “Send to Kindle” from the list of printer options.

To test it out, I sent my resume to my Kindle.  It appeared on my home screen within seconds, and formatted nicely to fit the screen.  Just make sure the Wi-Fi or 3G access is enabled.  Something like this is much more useful for sending documents like articles set up as a PDF that would be easier to read on the Kindle than the computer.  I could have used this during graduate school when all of my classes required reading a lot of PDF articles.

The Send to Kindle program is also great for storing documents and can be used to email the documents to contacts on your pre approved contact list.  Instructions on how to manage your Kindle’s email address are available as a link from the Send to Kindle page.  Just search for send to kindle in the AMazon search box.

Send to Kindle works on all Kindles and devices that support it such as the iPad, iPhone, and iPod.  There’s no mention of Blackberry or even Android yet.

As with all of your other Kindle content, any documents you send to your Kindle is stored in the archives for retrieval from your Amazon account anytime.   Send to Kindle also saves your last page read, bookmarks, and highlights and includes the ability to sync across devices.

With such easy access to portable storage and unlimited cloud storage, there should be no more excuses for losing a document again.  So much for the “the dog ate my homework” excuse.

Amazon has just released the updated 6.2.2 firmware update for the Kindle Fire.  While the documentation for this update has not yet hit their support pages, customers will find it being downloaded to their device in the near future, should they not have made the effort to turn off automatic updating of the software.  Until patch notes are released or a more thorough exploration of the new features can be made we know very little, but there are a few clear things going on.

First and most obvious, users will find that the Kindle Fire’s Silk browser now has the ability to take up your entire screen.  This is a huge improvement in many situations and more than welcome, even if the patch did nothing else. The 7″ screen tends to tread the line between too large for mobile sites and too small for standard sites in a way that makes this new feature extremely appealing.  More options is almost always better.

Aside from that, the patch does break any rooting that has been done on the device so far.  There are conflicting reports at this time regarding the potential to immediately re-root with an updated BurritoRoot, but right now it seems likely that at least a few days will be needed to let the dust settle and new solutions arise.  Should you be interested in trying what some people say is a working root method for 6.2.2, look up Justin Case’s “BurritoRoot 2″.  It is already quite simple to find and appears to be equally simple to use, though I have not yet had a chance to attempt it myself and as such can’t advocate one way or the other.

This facet of the update seems especially strange given how disinterested Amazon has claimed to be regarding the potential for rooting their device around the time of launch, but it is hardly the first time.  Given how quickly reports have come in that indicate rooting is again possible, obviously they are not trying too hard.  I tend to see it as a nod to convention rather than a serious effort to lock off the Kindle Fire, but I also freely admit that I have no direct knowledge of the process that is being used to unlock it and as such can’t speak to the difficulty involved.

We’ll get back to you with more information as it becomes available.  There appears to be no visible negative impact on any of the normal every day uses for the Kindle Fire, so aside from those who have rooted the device there is no reason to try to avoid it.

Should you want to manually update your device rather than waiting to be picked up automatically, you can download from this link.  Just connect your device to a computer and copy the downloaded file to the “kindleupdates” folder.  On your Kindle‘s screen, open the Settings menu and choose Device > Update your Kindle.  That’s all there is to it.  Enjoy the new browsing capabilities!

The December numbers are in for Amazon’s rather controversial Kindle Owners‘ Lending Library (KOLL) and for some people they turned out to be quite good.  Right around 295,000 rentals were made of the approximately 70,000 titles available to be checked out in December alone.  Given the $500,000 fund allotted to compensate KDP exclusive authors for these rentals, that means approximately $1.70 per lent copy was handed out.  Things went over so well, in fact, that Amazon is throwing another $200,000 into the pool for January’s authors.  This will bring the total to be divided up to $700,000, though of course it will also quite possibly be divided among even more authors this time around.

Among the more notable success stories, we know that the top ten most popular KOLL authors put together nabbed over $70,000 from these rentals alone.  That is around a 30% increase over other monthly income from the same works.  The top earner was Carolyn McCray, author of a number of paranormal romance and mystery/thriller titles, who is quoted in the Amazon Press Release as saying that “KDP Select truly is a career altering program”.  Romance writer Amber Scott, 16yr old children’s author Rachel Yu, and the puzzle book producing Grabarchuk family made up the rest of the highlighted triumphs, with over $6,000 in KOLL related income apiece.

In these cases, obviously there has been no significant downside to the program.  The fact that participation in it requires exclusively making one’s work available exclusively to Kindle owners may have more of an effect on many others, however.  What the press release numbers do not tell us is the average income that an author managed to pick up this month, aside from the fact that it was a measurable percentage increase over participating authors’ usual monthly income from Kindle Store proceeds.  It would be interesting, if pretty much impossible, to compare how many authors saw a jump in profits compared to the number who actually lost income due to exclusivity.  It seems safe to assume that this was the case for at least some people.

As with anything related to self publishing, however, most of the success will have to come through some form of author driven advertising.  Random hits by interested browsers are nice, but word of mouth is frequently not enough to drive sales on its own even for a skilled and prolific writer.  The lending community opens the door to new readers, but so far is not arranged in such a way as to point readers toward any particular title.

Overall this success is a plus for any fan of the Kindle.  Owning one gains some ongoing perks in the form of book rentals, success stories among authors will surely lead to even more participants, and Amazon has immediately shown themselves likely to increase the compensation pool.  We’ll be watching the program here in months to come as the situation stabilizes.  You can’t really assume that holiday Kindle sales are having anything but a positive effect on everything related to the eReading line, so it might be the end of first quarter before we can say anything definitive about ongoing positive trends.  Still, off to a good note.

Users of both the Amazon Kindle and PCs in general may be pleased to note that Amazon has released a new software tool for the PC that will make it a great deal simpler to transfer personal documents to a Kindle device.  Simply called Send to Kindle for PC, this program will both insert an option to “Send to Kindle” in the context menu for any compatible file and add a printer option to print directly to your Kindle Library in a PDF format.  It isn’t a groundbreaking development that will revolutionize the way we think of eReaders, Tablets, Kindles, or computers, but Amazon has actually addressed one of the most common hassles of using their devices in a simple yet thoroughly useful way.

The workings are simple enough.  Install the package and log into your account at the prompt and you are ready to go.  In the case of files you already have laying around on your computer, simply right-click and click “Send to Kindle”.  You will be prompted to edit the title and author of the work and given the option to deliver to any registered Kindle device attached to your account.  There is a check box present for anything that you desire to have added to your Kindle Library archive.  To the best of my knowledge, working mostly from trial and error, leaving this box unchecked will prevent a copy from being saved in cloud storage.

Printing via Send to Kindle is equally simple.  Just open whatever it is that you wish to have sent and choose the Print option as if you were looking for a paper copy.  Send to Kindle will be listed among your computer’s printers.  From there you will get exactly the same prompts mentioned above, with a note at the bottom of the window that the resulting document will be in PDF format.

This pretty much eliminates the need for USB transfer cables on Kindle eReaders in any situation where reliable WiFi access is available.  It seems to take less than a minute for things to upload, process, and arrive at the destination device(s), with some delay to be expected for much larger files (max 50mb).  This will not take the place of your cable for music or video files, which means that it is obviously more targeted toward eReaders, but documents and photos can be sent directly to the Kindle Fire if desired just like any other Kindle.

It’s nice to see that despite the overwhelming fascination with the Kindle Fire these past few months, Amazon has not forgotten its eReading customers.  This is extremely useful, and gets around the annoyances of physical connection and emailed documents.  While at present it does not include any sort of document conversion, it wouldn’t be at all surprising to find out that at some point Amazon simply tells users to start sending EPUBs this way and removes the need for even something as simple as Calibre.  Give it a try and see what you think.  The Send to Kindle download is only 5mb or so and makes the Kindle even more useful.

It shouldn’t come as too much of a shock, but the Kindle Fire took the top spot as the bestselling, wished for, and gifted item on Amazon.  Right behind the new Kindle tablet were the Kindle Touch, and regular Kindle.

Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN)  is keeping quiet about exact numbers, but reports are going around that they hit around the 4-5 million mark.  Around a million Kindles were sold each week in December.  The prices are said to be one of the biggest reasons for the record breaking sales figures.

In addition to the Kindles themselves, sales of accessories and apps got a big boost.

With all that said, the holidays are now over, and we’re firmly into 2012.  2011 was the year of the tablet, and 2012 will most likely continue that trend.

I think the Kindle Fire will continue to be very successful.  Reviews went up after Amazon released the update that improved navigation.  Amazon is good at listening to its consumers, so more improvements are sure to come.

I think that the tablet market has already and will continue to split.  The Kindle Fire is much smaller than the iPad and is geared for consumers who want a multifunctional, portable tablet without too many bells and whistles.  All tablets will compete for the market share, and the Kindle Fire has definitely taken a hit at the iPad’s sales.  However, the direct competition for the iPad is projected to be the new Asus Eee Transformer Prime.

The reason for this is that the Prime and the iPad have much more powerful processors, and can be used as a makeshift laptop.  They are both compatible with external keyboards.  The decision on what tablet to buy simply depends on what you want to use it for, and how much you’re willing to pay.

There are rumors about a bigger Kindle Fire, and smaller iPad in the works, but any concrete details on them are yet to be seen.

Tablets in general has a solid foothold in the market, and now it is just a matter of seeing how they will continue to develop competition and feature wise.

There have been several posts about the Amazon Kindle Library Lending program that was launched earlier this fall on here, but there hasn’t really been a good explanation of how the whole thing works.  With that in mind, I found a good step by step guide for searching for and downloading Kindle books from your local library.

My local library recently added the program, and I downloaded a book on my Kindle Touch.  There isn’t a huge selection available yet, but I can tell that they are steadily adding new titles.  Authors such as Janet Evanovich and James Patterson are available on the list.

I think the biggest challenge for library patrons is getting to the list of e-books that the library offers.  Durham County Library hides their e-book link under a series of pages, so I have to really dig to find it.  Placing a link in a prominent place so that patrons can access it will go a long way to help this program flourish.

Once you find the link, the process kind of guides you through each step.  Search for the book you want.  Click on the “Get for Kindle” link.  You will then be taken to your Amazon account where you just click “Get Library Book.”  A more detailed overview, and video of the process can be found here.

The check out time varies by library.  14 days is about the average length.  The downloaded book becomes part of the list of titles on your Kindle, and you can view it in your digital items list on you Amazon account.

Most of the newer Kindles rely on wi-fi, however, even if you don’t have wi-fi access, you can hook up your Kindle to the computer and download the book via USB.  You can choose that option when viewing the library book in your digital items list.  That option came in handy when I was stuck out in the middle of the country with no wi-fi access.  I love how this program brings the library to you rather than you having to drive to a physical location.

So, I encourage you to check out your library’s website to see if they offer Kindle e-books.  The number of libraries offering the service is growing, and will continue to do so.  If you can’t find a link to it on the  library’s website, librarians and staff are always there to help.

Don’t have a Kindle?  You can download library books on all of the Kindle apps for the computer, iPad, and smartphones just like you do with other Kindle e-books.

One of the biggest obstacles that Amazon is going to have to overcome in order to continue expanding its Kindle line at a decent rate is the complicated international release process.  That hasn’t stopped them so far, of course.  Some analysts are anticipating, for example, that the Kindle Fire will control as much as 50% of the Android Tablet market in 2012.  A great start, but it still doesn’t really make an impact against the market dominating iPad which is already around in over a dozen countries.

The first step in improving their new tablet’s presence is coming in January 2012 when according to supposed insider sources speaking to tech blog Know Your Mobile the UK will be the first country outside the United States to get the Kindle Fire.  It isn’t exactly a surprise, given the history of Kindle releases and the ease of localization, but it is a step in the right direction.  What’s important will be what comes next, which could end up being somewhat unpredictable given the peculiarities of the device.

Obviously the first instinct is to look to Anglophone countries that require minimal modification of the user interface.  Amazon has spent a lot of effort on getting things working properly, after all, and the need for redesign may at times be significant when dealing with alternate languages.  I would guess that this will not be the primary factor in determining who comes next, though.  Given the Kindle Fire’s emphasis on consuming a variety of media (especially video) via data streaming, chances are good that they will go where the content rights are most easily acquired.

This will likely sync up somewhat with the Anglophone list, I’m sure, but there’s definitely the chance of unexpected choices given the increasing general wariness being expressed in many of Amazon’s more established markets over their huge influence.  The one thing that Amazon has to know that they can’t do with the Kindle Fire is release it like the Barnes & Noble Nook Tablet. While the Netflix streaming is nice, as are most of the content apps that are currently available, the device itself is completely built around Amazon.com integration and would be crippled by the lack of their servers.

Regardless of the less immediate future, UK customers can look forward to a great experience.  The Kindle Fire has become a hit in America for good reasons and will have had time in the interim to be polished even further.  The video streaming is wonderful and likely to be tied to Amazon’s LOVEFiLM brand rather than the Amazon.co.uk Prime service.  Music and cloud storage in general seem to work wonderfully for almost everybody, and indications are good that the vast majority of WiFi connectivity issues will have been addressed prior to this launch.  Even the reading experience isn’t precisely bad, however much better the Kindle E INK eReaders might be.  Expect official announcement early on as we enter 2012.

It’s undeniable that the release of the Kindle Fire, and along with it the competing Nook Tablet, has shaken up the Tablet PC market.  Since launch Amazon has already firmly taken second place next to the Apple iPad, selling as many as 5 million units in the 4th quarter of 2011 alone.  Barnes & Noble is also doing pretty well, having moved more than a million of their own tablet in the same time period.  The way things are going with these two, there has even been some speculation that there is no room for dedicated hardware manufacturers with this kind of competition.

Both Amazon and Barnes & Noble are selling their tablets at near, or possibly even below, the cost of production.  The goal is to get people hooked into the platform and make ongoing profits based on media sales.  Effectively, the hardware has become secondary now that it can be treated as a conduit for consumption rather than an end in and of itself. Amazon is doing a better job on this side of things than Barnes & Noble so far.

The Nook Tablet has the technically superior hardware, with double the RAM and double the storage space among other things, but doesn’t make very good use of it.  The storage is restricted and the interface doesn’t seem to run significantly smoother than the Kindle Fire‘s.  There is an SD slot to expand the available memory of the device, but to get a sufficiently large one to make a difference you can expect to add a significant percentage onto the already comparatively more expensive price.  None of this means that it is a bad tablet, it’s actually quite excellent and highly recommended, but it is worth noting that B&N has a way to go before they are really making the best use out of their device’s potential.

The Kindle Fire, on the other hand, lacks some of the power of the Nook.  What it does have is a deeper integration with Amazon.com’s storefront and content.  Unlike B&N, Amazon has their own source of video and music for customers to take advantage of, as well as a robust cloud storage service that makes up for a lot of the seeming shortcomings of the hardware.  The lower price certainly doesn’t hurt sales numbers either, especially given the inevitable comparison of both products to each other and the iPad.

We can expect sales for both tablets to be improving even more through the next year.  The Kindle line, and the Kindle Fire in particular, is one of Amazon’s biggest marketing priorities, while the Nook line is pretty much the only thing B&N has going for it right now in terms of profitability.  What remains to be seen is what effect the next iteration of the Kindle tablet line brings.  A larger tablet could cement Amazon’s place on top of tablets for the foreseeable future, second only to Apple, but it could also severely damage the company’s reputation if something goes wrong and open the door to a big push by Barnes & Noble.

Either way we have good products to work with, but both Kindle Fire and Nook Tablet are built for content consumption and that means active ongoing support.  The more popular each one becomes, the more incentive the associated company has to expand the platform, and the more valuable the tablet in question becomes for owners.  It will be interesting to see the back and forth as the competition heats up in months to come.

There is always going to be a certain amount of skepticism that has to be exercised toward online reviews of any sort.  Those who are least satisfied will also always be the most motivated to post something, and there isn’t necessarily any way to confirm whether the problem being experienced was in any way the related to the product experience that another customer might get.  With something like the Kindle Direct Publishing platform, or the Amazon Appstore for Android now that the Kindle Fire is around, this can be especially problematic for a provider.

These authors and developers often have no other major avenue through which to sell the product of their labor, which means that a misinformed negative review can have a major impact.  However much we might wish it weren’t so, the first thing many people look at when considering a new book, app, toy, etc., is the overall review.  Particularly the number of truly negative ones.  Now, Amazon has done some good by adding in a product review rating system that allows users to tag particularly helpful or unhelpful contributions, but that only matters if you actually go so far as to read them.

If you are considering a purchase, especially with regard to digital content from the Appstore, it might be particularly helpful to read carefully.  Right now, as the attempt to cater to an impressively diverse selection of Android devices can be problematic, many apps are overrun by 1-Star reviews for being incompatible with specific phones or tablets.  It is not unknown for this to be the case even when owners of these devices could clearly see that their device was not listed as compatible.  Don’t let this sort of behavior dissuade you from picking up an otherwise excellent piece of software.

If you are writing the review of an eBook or App, there are a couple things to keep in mind:

First, unlike what you might expect, anything 3-Star and below is considered a negative review.  If you rate a product below 4-Stars, you are essentially telling Amazon that this is not a product that you would recommend to anybody.  If the average product rating drops to 3-Star, that is exactly how the site will treat it and potential customers will rarely, if ever, be directed to it based on their interests.  This can have a devastating effect on the income of the creator.

Second, it is bad form to judge a product based on what you wish it did rather than how well it does what it claimed.  If a book presents itself as a romance but is actually about corporate espionage, then there’s plenty of room for complaint.  If you felt that the calendar app you downloaded would have been better if it had the ability to import the Smurfs theme as an event reminder, that would generally be considered outside the realm of what you are meant to review unless sound file importing was specifically advertised.  5-Stars means that the purchase is a good example of exactly what it claimed to be.  4-Stars means that it generally met expectations, but probably could have been more successful.  Anything 3-Star and below means something was significantly wrong with it.

Please try not to penalize authors or developers who choose to make content for the Kindle and Kindle Fire due to things out of their control.  If Amazon takes longer than you would like to deliver your files, it isn’t their fault.  If you had hoped that despite being advertised for Honeycomb an App would work on your Android 2.1 device, the failure is not the developer’s fault.  Negative reviews on individual products that Amazon.com provides will generally not have any effect on the company as a whole, and often it is likely that they never see these complaints at all unless representatives are specifically directed to them.  Keep in mind who might be affected by your criticisms.

The Kindle Fire has made a big splash in the Tablet PC marketplace, driving prices down across the board and seemingly speeding along the release of direct competition from Amazon’s fellow eBook vendors.  Sadly, at the moment the Kindle Fire is only available in the US.  Chances are good, in fact, that there is going to be an extremely long wait before device is released anywhere else.  It is simply too reliant on the integration with Amazon’s Cloud Servers, Video Streaming, Android Appstore, and other such things that have not been prepared for other markets yet.

That doesn’t mean that people outside the US will want to overlook the Kindle Fire, of course.  Combine the $200 price tag with the almost complete lack of security measures to prevent Rooting of the device and you have a decent 7″ Android Tablet even if the quality of the custom OS is lost.  It does the job, if you’re willing to put up with all of the related complications of buying, shipping, rooting, etc.

The Kindle Fire isn’t the only option in this price range, though.  In fact the Kobo Vox, a similar competing tablet from an eBook vendor, is already available in the UK.  Even if it had nothing else going for it, and it does, the Vox’s availability would be enough to make it a major player in the new $200 tablet niche.  In addition to that, there is no need to root the device to get full functionality just about anywhere.  It comes with full access to the Android Marketplace already enabled, unlike either its Kindle or Nook competitors.

Admittedly the hardware isn’t as nice as the competition.  Neither the screen nor the processor is as nice as in the Kindle, which is itself criticized as lacking power by many.  They have made next to no effort to make the Kobo specifically ready for anything aside from the reading, which will already have some shortcomings given the backlit screen.  Since the primary competition will be rooted devices from the US, at least at first, this shouldn’t be too big a deal but it isn’t necessarily a recipe for long-term success.

As much as I’m a big fan of my Kindle Fire, neither option here thrills.  The Fire is amazing in many ways, but a big part of that is the seamless integration with Amazon’s services.  You lose that the second you take it out of the country.  The Vox, on the other hand, has no really exciting features.  When your tablet’s big claim to fame is extensive Facebook integration for a reading app, it is a stretch to see success in the future.  Either way you’re getting a 7″ tablet that runs Android 2.3 for around $200 (depending on local taxes and the cost of importing) but not much else.

As such, it seems unlikely that the Kindle Fire has much to fear from the Vox at the moment.  What will decide things is not where the two devices stand right this minute, but where they go from here on.  If Kobo can come around and start offering some really impressive incentives to use their tablet before Amazon extends their web service line sufficiently, there will be some real problems.  For now, the Kindle Fire wins ever so slightly based on narrowly superior hardware and nothing else.  Firm footing this is not.

Amazon’s audiobook subsidiary, Audible, has a long standing promotion for new subscribers that could make your next Kindle upgrade significantly more affordable than expected.  It is not a new thing, in fact I am pretty sure that I’ve mentioned it here before from time to time, but since Amazon hasn’t been spending a lot of time advertising it recently I thought it would be worth another mention.  The way it works is simple enough to summarize here.

We’re making the assumption here that you enjoy the occasional audiobook.  Many people do, for a wide variety of reasons.  If you haven’t had a chance to check out the quality and usefulness of Audible’s selection, but you would like to consider making use of this promotional credit, do not succumb to the instinct to try out the service with a 30-Day Free Trial.  Yes, this is available, but you are only able to make use of one promo every 2 years according to the present terms & conditions and doing so would make you ineligible.  your best bet is to ask around for somebody who is already a member and try out something they have picked up.  It shouldn’t be hard to find someone, in my experience.

That addressed, it’s a simple enough arrangement.  By making the commitment of a 12 month membership plan at $14.95 per month, you get one book each month and $100 any qualifying product.  This includes any number of electronics from MP3 players and headphones to GPS devices.  There are even some tablets and laptops in the selection.  Most importantly, as far as I’m concerned, is that every Kindle product currently available is included in the promo.  This means that your Kindle Fire could be picked up for just $99, assuming you wouldn’t rather just have a free Kindle Touch.

To take advantage, head over to this Amazon promo page.  Under the heading “How to get your $100 promotional code” there is a link to sign up.  Your new audible membership will be tied directly into your Amazon.com account as soon as the transaction is complete.  This offer should be good until at least January 31, 2012.  It may be extended beyond that point, and has been in the past with no notice or fanfare, but you never know for sure.

There’s little risk in this if you are an audiobook fan.  Signing up for 12 books at $15 each isn’t exactly a ripoff on Amazon’s part, and they do not insist that you remain an active member to listen to them.  These days you can download your Audible selection to practically anything, up to 3 devices at a time, and take it to go.  The readings are above average, for the most part, and the service has been around long enough that reviews are plentiful and often highly informative.

Should you find yourself regretting the decision shortly after signing up, have no worries.  The program can be cancelled at any point in the first 30 days.  In that case you would be given the option to either pay the difference on your Kindle Fire (or whatever device you purchased with the $100 discount) or send it back unopened.

In order to make sure that the maximum number of people are able to get their new Kindle purchases in time for Christmas, Amazon has decided to offer Free Two Day Shipping to anybody who completes their transaction before 8pm Pacific Time (UTC-8) on December 21st.  This offer extends to every model currently available, from the $79 Kindle 4 to the $199 Kindle Fire tablet, and will cover shipping to any location in the continental United States.

The Kindle line, and eReaders in general at this point really, make excellent gifts.  The price has come down to the point of being practically large-scale impulse purchases, and the fact that you can expect ongoing support and content updates for the indefinite future makes a strong case or the practicality of ownership. Owning a Kindle eReader provides access to practically any title on the market today at the touch of a button with no need to worry about shipping, travel, or retail crowds.  This last one is likely to be a welcome benefit for people doing their holiday shopping this late in the year.

Additionally, according to Amazon the Kindle Fire is the most gifted, most wished for, bestselling item on the entire site and has been since before it was even released.  Like the eReader counterparts, it provides users with access to a huge library of content.  In addition to eBooks, you can also draw on a large App Store, all of Amazon Instant Video, and basically any digital content Amazon handles.  Top that off with access to services like Netflix, Pandora, Hulu Plus, and other content streaming services and you have a media consumption experience it is hard to argue against.  Keep in mind that each Kindle Fire comes with a month of free Amazon Prime membership and the access to all the benefits that that entails (free Instant Video selections, free 2-Day Shipping, etc), which means that anybody who gets one as a gift will have a chance to most of its more enjoyable features even without any post-purchase investment.

Keep in mind when considering Kindles as gifts that you can also include eBooks to go with them.  At present, all US customers have the option of choosing to gift a Kindle Edition eBook to anybody with an email address.  This will work as a cheaper gift option for anybody who might already be using a Kindle app for iOS or Android, incidentally.  Also, while I have no personal experience with the feature, you can also apparently also schedule your purchase’s delivery for exactly when you want them to get it.  This could help a lot when it comes to scheduling since, even with instant delivery and a smartphone, it is annoying to be making last second gift acquisitions.

If you’re interested in taking advantage of Amazon’s offer, keep an eye on the clock.  This will certainly not be extended, given their lack of direct control over shipping matters.

Enjoy your holidays!

Amazon has a habit of releasing some very functional mobile apps that subtly encourage customers to use their site more often.  Of course the fact that they do this by making these apps into genuinely useful ways to save money makes it rather hard to fault them on it.  The most recent of these, and the first one to be released specifically for owners of the new Kindle Fire, is the completely free Amazon Santa app.

At the most basic level, it’s nothing more than a pleasantly festive holiday wallpaper thrown across an Amazon.com wishlist building application.  It provides the user with a few categories – Music, Books, Video Games, Toys & Games, Movies & TV, Everything Else – to flip through, which can be run through endlessly (or close enough based on my experimenting and the claim of over 500,000 listed products).  Presumably these are sorted out based on current popularity, since the product page notes that dynamic updating is a part of the experience.

The reason I consider this one worth recommending, despite having a fairly narrow range of application, is the appeal to children for the benefit of parents.  The Amazon Santa app lets each kid pick out their own favorites in a separate wish list, then send it off to Santa.  While I can’t necessarily vouch for anything that is happening in the North Pole, I can definitely confirm that Amazon will send along some notice to the Kindle Fire owner’s registered email account.  This includes a short list of selections from the list, a link to the full list, and other relavent information.

It’s worth noting at this point that the company is quick to explain how their privacy applies to kids.  Specifically, that no information is in any way linked to the individual identity of a child on Amazon’s part.  Also, that it is preferred for parents to handle all naming of wish lists and registration of accounts under their own names.  While it is always tricky to market anything toward children in a manner that might pass on important information, in this case it would be difficult to think of Amazon picking up anything unless a parent goes out of their way to put a real name on the related list.

Now, I’ll openly add the disclaimer that I do not personally have children, nor do I do any particularly intensive shopping for the ones I am related to.  That aside, the parents I know were quite fond of the idea and their children (all ages 5-12) had no trouble using the app.  I’m told that at least one friend now has trouble retrieving her Kindle as a result, but that’s a completely unrelated problem

The reviews among the broader audience are generally positive, 4 Stars at the time I’m writing this, but there are a couple complaints.  There isn’t sorting, nor can you really narrow down what you want to look at beyond the main categories.  You also will not be able to make use of the app unless you happen to have a Kindle Fire or an iPad.  Definitely important things to note, but if you have the opportunity I would definitely give this one a try.  The value is great, especially considering the price.

While overall the response the the Kindle Fire has been overwhelmingly positive, there have been a number of ongoing complaints that hold some merit.  Some professional critics, as well as Amazon.com reviewers, have been incredibly negative.  In response to some of the more important issues, Amazon is planning to release a content update within the next two weeks.  That does not necessarily tell us what will be addressed, of course, but educated guesses are possible.

Much of this is speculation, of course, but there are a few things that need to be taken care of right now that Amazon would be foolish to delay on.  My predictions:

Likely To Be Addressed

Connectivity Issues

Some users have experienced ongoing problems with their WiFi connections.  Whether these take the form of a complete inability to connect or an intermittent and unreliable connection, they get in the way of enjoying what is meant to be a portable means of streaming internet content.

Privacy & Parental Controls

Let’s face it, no matter how this was marketed it would end up in the hands of kids.  It’s durable, gives easy access to books and movies, and lasts for hours.  It makes little sense, then, to have such vague and occasionally buggy parental controls.  Censorship might be bad, but few people think that everything a parent enjoys is suitable for their children.

Expect something that will allow either blocking of media content based on content ratings or a Whitelist system to designate child-approved titles.  The ability to remove items from the home screen’s shelf and the account’s app selection will be vital in this area as well.

Responsiveness

While usually fine, in my experience, the Kindle Fire occasionally has a spurt of input lag that gets in the way of a seamless user experience.  My understanding is that this some people far harder than it has me, possibly depending on what the tablet is being used for.  Look for some degree of performance optimization to address this.

Possible Update Features

Improved Browser Configuration

The Silk web browser is a decent enough application for a mobile device, but has yet to really impress people.  A great deal of that is that it will take time for the predictive features made possible by the two part browser setup to begin paying off in any major way, but we can’t count on that ever happening until proof shows up.  For now it would be enough to get the ability to prioritize mobile versions of sites, since the 7″ screen is less than ideal in some cases.

Categories

Missing up to this point has been the ability to organize your purchases, be they books or apps, in any way.  They are simply either on the Kindle Fire or in the Cloud.  This is something that I am certain will come up down the line, but it is unclear how much of a priority it will be.

Improved Netflix Streaming Option

Let’s face it, the Nook Tablet is currently doing precisely one thing that is clearly superior to the Kindle Fire.  It draws from the HD stream on Netflix content and downscales rather than the other way around.  No reason this should not be an option for Kindle owners, though this may be dependent more on a Netflix agreement than a device update.

We’ll know soon enough what is going to be addressed. and I think it is fair to assume that while the vital fixes will be quick they will also be followed by more substantial feature improvements as time goes on.  If nothing else, if the next generation of Kindle Fire is expected as early as six months from now then they’ll want to be optimizing in the meantime.

There’s been some trouble since the launch of the Kindle Fire.  While responses have been overwhelmingly positive on most fronts, there is a substantial crowd that has been unable to get themselves online with their new tablet at all.  As any amount of hands-on experience will quickly demonstrate, a Kindle Fire without internet access loses a lot of its potential usefulness.  No video streaming, no app store, no store whatsoever for that matter…it isn’t isn’t as much fun!

So what’s the problem, and how do you fix it?  Well, that’s a bit complicated as it turns out.  There are a number of possible issues, so we’ll start with the simplest fixes.  I’ll assume that you’ve already tried rebooting your device, just in case.

Update Your Kindle Fire’s Firmware

While it doesn’t help everybody who tries, the 6.2 update for the Kindle Fire seems to have resolved a lot of connectivity problems.  This is especially true of instances where connections are intermittent and hard/impossible to maintain.

The simplest way to update is to just get online through another network.  If that is not an option, just head over to the Kindle Fire Support page and follow the instructions under “Kindle Resources > Software Update”.

Reset and Update Router Firmware

Pretty much any wireless router you are likely to have will have the option to reset the on-board firmware to factory settings.  If at all possible, follow the instructions included in your manual.  The hardware is too varied to make it worth trying to walk you through it here.

Once that is accomplished, some users have experienced no further troubles.  In general it is recommended that you update to the most recent firmware to have been released by your manufacturer.  This seems to fix even more Kindle Fire issues.

Alternatively, some have had luck installing alternate firmware such as DD-WRT to their router.  If you have a supported device, this would definitely be my own personal choice.  It is simple enough to do by following directions and tends to offer greater control than what most manufacturers provide.  Use only at your own risk, of course.

Change Your Network Settings

In some rare instances, it can simply be a matter of problems with basic details not working with the tablet.  Extremely long SSIDs, for example, have been known to prevent connection entirely.  Setting a Static IP for the Kindle Fire sometimes helps as well.  As a last resort, forcing Wireless N broadcasting and manually setting the Channel sometimes seems to do some good.

Call Amazon

If none of this works for you, or it simply isn’t an option, the best option is probably to get in touch with Amazon.  They have been compiling details on ongoing problems and will hopefully begin having more luck the more information they have available.  Some routers have proven to be completely incompatible so far, for example.

Remember that as a last resort (and I believe that the vast majority of problems can be solved by taking these troubleshooting steps) Amazon very rarely balks at accepting returns from dissatisfied customers.  There’s no real motivation to keep around something that can’t perform the basic tasks you purchased it for.  Wait on further firmware updates and try again later.

The big news of the day is Amazon’s introduction of a potentially huge incentive for authors to make their content exclusive to the Kindle platform.  Starting immediately, any author or publisher who chooses to go entirely Kindle will be eligible for a share of the monthly Kindle Owners’ Lending Library fund after 90 days. it isn’t a guarantee of immediate profit any more than self publishing is an inevitable path to success, but for successfully marketed books it can spell some great new income in return for withdrawing from overall less profitable competing stores.

The payment scheme is based on the total number of rentals in the Lending Library, the percentage of rentals of a given book within that larger number, and the amount of money placed into the monthly fund by Amazon.  The promise they have given in the press release is for equal distribution based on the popularity of a title, meaning that if 500,000 people each borrow a book then every rental will earn one dollar.  If fewer than that join in, which seems likely at first since the pickings have been slim enough to prevent much excitement in the program so far, then each could be worth significantly more.  Best case scenario, this has the possibility of being more profitable than actual sales revenue for some authors.

Since at present the monthly installments are expected to remain at $500,000 through at least the entirety of 2012, the only real question is how much interest can be drummed up for a given title and the service as a whole.  Amazon does not release numbers on this, but the success of both the Amazon Prime program and the Kindle in all its many iterations would seem to indicate an impressive amount of overlap being likely, especially as the Kindle Fire continues to enjoy ongoing popularity and extra Amazon Prime functionality.  Each such instance is eligible to participate, supporting a favorite author if nothing else.

The fact that this requires the authors and publishers in question to completely withdraw from the Nook, Kobo, and other platforms will likely cause more ideological upset than financial distress for participants.  In general many make as much as 90% of their digital sales revenue through the KDP program already, according to some sources.  In doing so, however, these individuals may incur some bad press overall.  No author wishing to make a living on their craft is likely to easily make the decision to turn down an increase in income, but there is the very real possibility that this could be a crippling blow to other eBook vendors.

This is clearly a move on Amazon’s part to increase the Kindle platform’s lead over the competition.  Not only does the new program mean that more high quality titles will be showing up in the free-ish category that the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library represents, it decreases the value of competing devices by taking away the content they need to thrive.  Self publishing is an increasingly important area to control, given how much the Agency Model pricing scheme imposed on digital book vendors cripples competition over pricing of products passing through traditional publishing. It’s easier to get your books out on the market than ever before thanks to Kindle Direct Publishing, but it’s worth weighing the decision carefully when it could mean fewer options in the long run.

Don’t mistake me for being against the program.  I’m not.  Anything that supports authors and makes books more readily available to readers with Kindles is wonderful in my eyes.  There is definitely reason to worry about it being too successful in the end, however.

I was browsing through some random reviews, recommendations, and complaints about the Kindle Fire a bit earlier, trying to get a feel for the reactions as people get used to them, when I came across the truly unbelievable claim that the Kindle Fire‘s major flaw as a family device was its lack of parental controls.  Now, there are a few reasons to get something besides the Kindle Fire for use with kids, such as some games not yet being available through the Amazon App Store or wanting to avoid the guilt of competing with your own children over the use of a favorite toy, but Parental Controls just don’t make the list.  In an effort to help people better understand their device, let’s go over how this works.

How to Turn On Parental Controls

• Open the App tab on your Kindle Fire
• Load the integrated Appstore
• From the menu bar on the bottom of the screen, select “Settings”
• Edit settings under both “Parental Controls” and “In-App Purchasing” as desired

What Parental Controls Do

By enabling Parental Controls on your Kindle Fire, you can prevent unauthorized purchasing.  This works in two ways.  Simply switching the setting to “On” will require entry of your Amazon account password before any purchase of anything in an App.  There is a second setting in the same menu tree that blocks in-app purchases entirely.  You also get the option to set a four digit PIN that can be used in lieu of your password, which can be convenient and is always going to be faster than entering a really secure password.

What Parental Controls Can’t Do

The most important things that the basic settings will fail to do are prevent purchasing and prevent app access.  The former is simple enough.  You can disable Mobile 1-Click Purchasing from the “Your Apps & Devices” settings on Amazon.com.

• Under the main drop-down menu, select Appstore for Android>Your Apps and Devices
• From there, select 1-Click Settings
• Your primary payment method will be displayed.  Click “Edit” to the right of it
• You will then see a button saying “Turn off 1-Click” under the heading “Mobile 1-Click: Kindle Fire”

Simple enough, you just can’t do it easily from directly inside the Kindle Fire‘s menu system.

As far as the app access goes, to the best of my knowledge there is no work-around.  If you have an app that doesn’t require a password, anybody can use it.

Why Bother With Parental Controls?

There was a great deal of controversy over some of the iPad’s apps earlier this year when their micro-transaction model, coupled with an emphasis on entertaining small children, resulted in ridiculously large charges being run up without parental consent.  There are always going to be games on the Appstore, of course, and it would be silly for us to expect them to avoid something as profitable and tempting as micro-transactions, so it’s probably best to be prepared.  Amazon admittedly seems to be doing great at keeping on top of all of their potential customer service disasters so far, but something is going to slip through eventually.  Don’t be the one to find out too late that you owe $10,000 over digital Smurf accessories after leaving a child alone with your Kindle Fire.

After all the effort that Amazon spent advertising the benefits of the Kindle Fire‘s new Silk web browser, I think it is fair to say that it has been a disappointment to a few people so far.  Not only has the anticipated speed improvement been minimal so far, but in some cases it can even take longer to browse a page using Silk with its signature web caching ability turned on than getting it normally by toggling off the accelerated page loading.  While this is demonstrably the case right this minute, however, that may not mean it is time to give up hope for the future.

There was never much of an indication that Silk would result in less data being downloaded overall, as far as I can tell.  The intention was increased efficiency, thanks to removing the need for your Kindle Fire to make connections to multiple different servers for a given page, but nothing huge in terms of simply reducing the amount of transfer.  The way it works means that the faster your internet connection is, the less you will benefit from this part of the feature.  Establishing multiple connections is less of a problem on a high speed, low latency network.  This is a large source of the most common complaints, most likely.

By maintaining an ongoing data stream, Silk will supposedly eventually be able to send along associated and anticipated site data while you wander the internet.  As more data is gathered regarding customer browsing habits, particularly in terms of large trends in behavior (visitors tending to move directly from the main page of a web site to its current headlines or daily sales page, for example) the browser should begin to perform significantly better.  There are no guarantees, of course, particularly if the majority of your browsing is through little-visited sites, but the potential is there.

The failure to meet customer expectations in this case is understandable.  The idea behind the browser is impressive enough to be worth bragging about, but the fact that the eventual results rely on Amazon’s machine learning algorithms means that it would inevitably take time to get the best out of it.

There is every reason to believe that they can turn all this around.  The Silk browser really does do some neat things compared to the alternatives.  Among other things, Amazon has proven to be pretty effective at predicting peoples’ habits based on what they look at.  There wouldn’t have been nearly as much outcry against the advertising on the Kindle Library Lending checkout page if it wasn’t at least somewhat accurate based on minimal data.

Put that together with the fact that they have clearly made a huge investment in the success of the Kindle Fire and the line of products that will surely descend from it and functionality is pretty well assured.  The big question now is whether it will be in time to drum up interest again.  Without the big initial splash of excitement that real speed improvements would have provided at launch, it might prove hard to make it happen.  Perhaps the Kindle Fire‘s larger sequel, when it comes along in a couple months, will take long enough for potential to become reality.

Several weeks back, speculation rose about the possibility for Amazon’s following in the footsteps of Apple with a Siri-like product of their own for the Kindle Fire.  Siri, for those who aren’t aware, is a virtual digital assistant for the iPhone.  It allows users to conversationally ask questions and make requests that the software will try to accommodate.  For the most part it does an impressive job and when Siri can’t cope it will come up with a variety of witty or whimsical responses tailored to the user input.

The cause for speculation with regard to Amazon stems from their acquisition of Yap, a voice to text company whose specialty is transcribing voicemail.  While Amazon wasn’t mentioned by name in the acquisition, the company that Yap merged with lists its headquarters at an Amazon building.  There are a few reasons to make a move like this, of course, but it is fairly clear that the idea of copying Apple’s efforts was not one of them.

The most important thing to keep in mind is that Yap is absolutely nothing like Siri.  Yes they both involve accurately pulling information out of the spoken word, but that is as far as it goes.  Siri is an attempt at artificial intelligence that will try to understand user intent by pulling key words and phrases out of what it hears.  Yap’s specialty is simply putting words on “paper”, so to speak, in a cheap and fast manner.  Cloud computing is Amazon’s new big thing, of course, so the fact that Yap does its work mechanically on the cloud servers also fits in well with their philosophy.

What this could be a precursor to is an Kindle Fire type of smartphone.  While Amazon has not yet announced any official plans to add such a device to their growing selection of hardware, it’s a possibility.  The Yap software would be helpful for both its original voicemail applications as well as for voice commands, in this case.  The voice command idea in general would likely go over well on future Kindle Tablets, but since the only mic we’ve seen in a Kindle has been the disabled one inside every Kindle 3 it might actually be a bit surprising.   There is also the chance that this was simply a matter of acquiring Intellectual Property to guard against lawsuits and license to other companies.

Quite possibly my favorite potential use for this would be on demand transcription of audio files.  This would come in handy for practically anybody who regularly needs to deal with presentations or meetings, especially in business environments that require fast turnaround on their reference material.  That might be a long shot, though.

Regardless of how Amazon decides to actually make use of the Yap acquisition, there’s just no chance it will be as a Siri clone.  The Kindle Fire is great at what it does, but it lacks the hardware to make a Siri possible.  Even if that hardware were present, the speech to text component of such a feature would be only a small part of a huge endeavor.  It would be great to have that kind of capability, but it’s overoptimistic for the foreseeable future.

Kindle owners found themselves targeted recently in a fairly unpleasant way.  Penguin USA, one of the largest publishers in the world, decided that it would be a smart business move to pull their entire collection of publications from libraries across the country for Kindle owners.  Everybody else, including owners of competing eReaders like the Barnes & Noble Nook Simple Touch, could still get these books.  Now, while things have been temporarily dealt with since then – Penguin has temporarily stopped singling out the Kindle users entirely – new Penguin books will not be made available anymore and there is reason to believe that the event will recur unless Penguin and OverDrive (the service providing eBook lending services for most libraries these days) are able to work out a deal by the end of the year.

Neither Penguin nor OverDrive has said anything about the exact details of Penguin’s problems.  OverDrive was simply sent word to disable the “Get for Kindle” functionality for all Penguin eBooks immediately.  There was not even a warning sent to the affected libraries before the change took effect, which led to a great deal of ill will.  These libraries purchase each copy of the eBooks they rent out and as such were left sitting on the results of essentially wasted money that could not be lent out despite Kindle-owning customer demand.  The expected outcry for massive refunds, which would certainly have garnered a great deal of public sympathy, might well explain Penguin’s temporary capitulation.

Many have believably argued that this is a direct response to the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library that Amazon launched recently for their Prime members.  The timing certainly fits.  Amazon got around the fact that major publishers have refused to buy into this new program by focusing on their KDP titles, smaller publishers, and by outright purchase of each rented eBook that they could get their hands on through wholesale arrangements.  This last move is what causes the ill will since many publishers and authors feel that this exceeds the scope of their current relationships with Amazon.

While nobody involved in the Prime lending library is directly losing money, a major worry in the industry is that eBooks will lose perceived value.  If customers start thinking of eBooks as somehow inherently cheaper that printed books, then printed Book sales will suffer and publishers would be forced to rely on sales of the eBooks, which means being subject to Amazon and Barnes & Noble even more than they are now.  This is the same sort of reasoning that brought on the behind-the-scenes deal with Apple to fix prices of eBooks around the time the iBooks store opened up.

I would say that this is going to go poorly for Penguin.  While their need to react is understandable given that they feel wronged, the targeting was off a bit.  Instead of attacking Amazon directly, they have gone after their own readers.  Yes, the Amazon deal with OverDrive increases the incentive to purchase a Kindle, but going after libraries doesn’t do a lot to make you look better to a customer base that loves to read.  The Kindle is unlikely to be pushed out of the #1 slot in eBook Readers any time soon, even if all the major publishers pulled out of the library system in the same way.  It’s difficult to understand what Penguin is still hoping to accomplish here.

It was known well ahead of the official announcement for the device ever took place that the Kindle Fire would be intended for video more than anything else.  Perhaps due to that pressure and perhaps just as part of an overall trend in the market, the Nook Tablet was designed along similar lines.  While this doesn’t necessarily mean much on its own, it spurred along at least one other development that might mean a great deal more attention for the Android community as a whole.

Amazon’s intent to promote their own streaming video service is clear.  Their library has been growing quickly over time, including many titles being given away “free” with Amazon Prime.  This is naturally something of a concern for a company like Netflix that is suddenly faced with competition from somebody as big as Amazon.  Although Netflix has not commented on it, something definitely spurred them along to push forward their new tablet app upgrade for Android weeks or months ahead of iOS.

The Nook Tablet practically relies on Netflix and other streaming services to function, all the more so because Barnes & Noble currently offers nothing analogous to Amazon’s video services.  They also began advertising a uniquely deep connection with Netflix immediately following the reveal.  As Kindle Fire owners have likely noticed by now, the Netflix app in the Amazon App Store isn’t exactly lacking either.  They went for the maximum possible audience with this update and it seems likely to take.

The implications here go beyond benefits for owners of these new 7″ tablets, however nice those are to have.  This is one of the first times that the Android platform has received special attention ahead of the iOS equivalent.  That sort of thing does not happen without a fair degree of confidence in the potential profitability. If the Kindle Fire alone, or even the collection group of it and all of the competing $200 tablets springing up from companies like B&N and Kobo, is considered important enough to be prioritized ahead of the market dominating iPad then it could easily be a sign that tides are changing.

Part of the bar to Android’s widespread adoption in tablets has been the fact that quality development tends to get prioritized for the competition.  Whether you blame it on the fragmentation of the ecosystem due to frequent non-mandatory upgrades, lack of faith in Google’s offering as a whole, or the lack of a truly major name product to line up behind, the situation has now changed. With luck, this will build up some momentum.

While I have nothing against Apple or the iPad, some heated competition would go a long way toward not only improving their product but creating some genuinely functional alternatives.  The strength of iOS that everybody else lacks isn’t the iPad’s hardware or aesthetic.  Its main virtue is the functionality that primarily comes from the Apple App Store.  Neither the Kindle Fire nor the Amazon App Store is a match for Apple.  It isn’t likely that a single company or product will be any time soon.  What it does do is get the ball rolling, so to speak.

Amazon made what appeared to be some fairly big opponents in the earliest days of the Kindle.  All they had to do was decide to go with a closed format.  Unlike some companies who might have decided that a strong DRM scheme was plenty of protection, they made sure that Kindle owners were locked in by consciously failing to support the industry standard eBook format.  It struck many people, myself included, as manipulative and more than a little bit condescending.

Thinking back, many of my earliest complaints about the Kindle revolved around the EPUB format.  I was ideologically supportive of the Nook in a very strong way as a result.  They might have wanted to lock in customers via DRM, but at least things like outside purchases and library books would work if the user wanted to make the effort to access them.  MobiPocket format was already too outdated in many situations.

Oddly enough, in principle the objections remain to this day.  The difference is that now customers aren’t expected to buy into an unproven platform with no guarantee that success was ahead.  Keep in mind that the Kindle was not the first E Ink eReader.  Sony was already doing a fairly good job of fizzling out by then and has been taking a back seat in the field ever since as a result.

My own change of opinion regarding the importance of the eBook format conflict stems from purely practical matters.  We have reached a point where there is literally nothing you can’t do with a Kindle that can be done on another device.  Library books are plentiful, no author or publisher is likely to boycott the Kindle platform in favor of the competition, and on the off chance that you find a DRM-free eBook you want on your device you can convert it for free with Calibre (a practical necessity for the eBook enthusiast in case you haven’t adopted already. Google it!).  In a situation where the format itself offers no particular advantage inherent to itself, there is no longer much reason to cling to it.  There is a reason you don’t see much use of HD-DVD anymore, or Betamax before that.

As we move forward into the next generation of formats, HTML5 forms the underlying structure.  Kindle Format 8 looks to allow for as much, or as little, formatting as the person producing a given publication desires as a result.  This will improve Amazon’s ability to present their media equally well on practically any size display, which makes sense given speculation regarding future Kindle Tablet options.  Nobody else seems to have really adopted an equally versatile approach yet, and even if that happens it won’t necessarily change anything.  There is only so much you can do in order to essentially show off text in an attractive manner.

What it all comes down to is that customers will go where they get the best experience.  EPUB might be better than Mobi, but with the Kindle providing the better hardware and Amazon backing their product with strong infrastructure and a great book store that didn’t matter enough.  It’s one more format war down.