Despite my unabashed enthusiasm for Amazon’s Kindle e-book reader, I’ve had my fair share of gripes. I’ve been particularly disappointed by Amazon’s failure to do more and get creative around this new platform. Back in January, I posted a list of Kindle ecosystem shortcomings including poor file management and inflexible pricing. I wasn’t alone. Joe Wikert, a publishing exec and Kindle user, has also written some solid critiques (see him on file management here or more broadly here).
So I was delighted to discover today (via the always excellent Yahoo group KindleKorner) that Amazon has unveiled a new web portal for Kindle users that improves the experience of using your reader and opens the door to a number of side uses and other possibilities. The site sits at http://kindle.amazon.com and is not to be confused with http://www.amazon.com/kindle/ which is where you go to buy a Kindle. The new site, and improvements to the usual “Manage Your Kindle” section of the regular Amazon site, also seems to be looking forward to the day when more people, or families, own multiple Kindles.
Here’s what you see after you sign in at the new site:
Note that the first time you sign in, as above, the “Reading List” only has a few of your Kindle purchases listed. As you poke around, the list fills out. The first thing you may notice here is that your entire purchase history can now be sorted by several criteria, hopefully with more (like purchase date) to come. Also, over in the “Content” column, the site uses small icons to indicate whether you have highlighted a passage in a book or put in notes. Click on the book title or one of the icons and you land on a new Kindle-special page that looks like this:
Here you can see passages I highlighted from Tom Friedman’s book Hot, Flat and Crowded. On this book page below the notes and highlights, Amazon lists a few reviews of the book from its site as well. Needless to say, this makes your notes and highlights much more useful and accessible. And it’s all synchronized behind the scenes without requiring any effort on the part of the reader — what we gadgeteers like to call automagically.
Still, the site needs improvement. I want to be able to manage my whole Kindle ecosystem from one dashboard-like panel that the new site could evolve into. There’s also a direct link to the “Manage Your Kindle” section of Amazon’s web site but clicking takes you away to that page — it’s not integrated and there’s no way back to the new page without using the back button on your browser.
As I mentioned earlier, the “Manage Your Kindle” section is also seeing some added features. There’s now a cool pull-down list for every ebook you’ve bought that sends a fresh copy to any Kindle, iPhone or iPod Touch registered to your account. Also added at some point is a delivery list that shows what’s been sent to each of your Kindle devices recently and anything that’s pending to be delivered.
There’s still plenty for Amazon to work on but with recent improvements to the Kindle web site and iPhone app, the company appears to be on the case. Of course, pricing may be going the wrong way — instead of new models we’re getting higher prices — but you can’t have everything and that’s a subject for another post.
Previous coverage:
Ignore the static: Kindle is great for reading (11/24/07)
Ignore that Cranky Mossberg and his Kindle whine (11/29/07)
The Kindle is for readers, the Kindle is for readers (6/20/08)
Apple will not slay Amazon’s Kindle, not even close (8/20/08)
Amazon: Follow Apple’s lead and don’t blow Kindle opportunity (1/27/09)
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