File this announcement under 'be careful what you wish for' because Amazon has listened to the howling whiners and delivered up their wildly popular Kindle Books for iPhone and iPod touch. Amazon has created an easy-to-use iPhone interface with "Kindle for iPhone" allowing users to wirelessly download books, magazines and blogs without a hitch. Adjusting text size, adding bookmarks and turning pages is made simple with one finger access.
When I first launched the app I signed into my Amazon account then moved onto my MacBook Air to order some free Kindle schwag. Books cannot be ordered directly from inside the iPhone app itself which is a bit of a buzz kill. You can place orders using iPhone's mobile Safari browser, from your desktop or from a Kindle device. I chose the desktop path, finding iPhone's browser a tad cumbersome for book searches.
I selected five (free) novels using Amazon's 1-click service, then went back to my iPhone and relaunched the Kindle app. All five titles downloaded in well under a minute with a Wi-Fi connection which still seemed surprisingly fast. You can sort books by recent, by title or by author and quickly delete ant title with the easy edit button.
Registered users can download the first chapter of any book for free before buying. A wicked nice feature no matter what device you own. Once you're signed into your account and selected a book from over 200,000 eBook titles, you'll see the "Send sample now" button on the right side of the page. You can't miss the "Try it free" heading or "Buy now" if you're set to purchase.
If you own a Kindle, Amazon makes sharing content seamless using 'Whispersync', allowing you to switch viewing from your iPhone back to Kindle, keeping reading locations and bookmarks synchronized between devices. Kindle users can download books already purchased onto iPhone for free since Amazon.com has them backed up.
The folks at Amazon have made an impressive effort bringing Kindle books to iPhone. It delivers on the promise of wirelessly transferring books to the iPhone with ease. It's also a clever way to entice reluctant gadget geeks into giving Kindle 2 a second glance.
There's no doubt that Amazon will unload a plethora of titles once this app catches on with some 17 million cult of iPhone faithful. The Kindle for iPhone app is free so there's no reason to avoid taking it for an epic test drive. I felt instant, tender man-love for this app after my first use and I'm not afraid to admit it. Well done Mr. Bezos!
You can use the Amazon app that's been available on the App Store for a while to buy Kindle titles directly from the iPhone, then switch to the Kindle app and download them via the 'Archived' section.
Posted by: Roland Dobbins | March 04, 2009 at 03:46 AM