

Why I think the Amazon App Store will be a better deal for developers - loumf
http://www.loufranco.com/blog/files/amazon-kdk-better-for-developers.html

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kalid
I'm having trouble thinking of what apps I'd want for the kindle. When I have
it, I'm "reading mode" as just want to read my book.

The screen is 16-color greyscale and refreshes slowly (for apps); I'm having
trouble thinking of what app would be better on a kindle than an iPhone. The
screen size is the only real advantage I see. I'd love to proven wrong, but I
just don't see the Kindle store taking off.

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nckpark
I can see crosswords and similar games taking off for people who use their
kindle to read newspapers. It's one of the major (to some people) sections
missing from the kindle versions right now.

I think we could also see apps that use the kindle as a tool for producing
content, not just consuming it. Writing blog posts, kindle twitter apps, etc.
The keyboard leaves something to be desired, but I could still see this type
of thing being popular.

Basically, the successful apps won't be competing with what you see on the
iphone, they'll be unique to the device.

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patio11
_tool for producing content_

I wrote a four-line HN comment from my Kindle the other day, because my cell
phone ran out of batteries. It was _excruciating_. T H E L E tters appeared
one at a time with enough of a pause in between them that even with the non-
standard layout of the keyboard I had queued up two sentences and then had to
wait for literally 45 seconds while my Kindle caught up to me.

The thought of writing a substantive blog post on the Kindle scares me.

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gte910h
Look at the max data rate, its so low it is _per month_

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loumf
100k isn't much -- even per month. John Gruber says the Daring Fireball feed
is 36k zipped.

[http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/01/22/kindle-free-
wire...](http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/01/22/kindle-free-wireless)

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fierarul
Because of the millions upon millions of Kindle users waiting for the apps ? I
have yet to see a Kindle in real-life but I saw iPhones way before they were
officially launched in Europe. And there are shops selling iPod Touch all over
the place.

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Zev
Did you read the article? It seems to address this point at the end: _This
isn’t to say that Kindle will beat Apple in any quantifiable way (number of
apps, number of downloads, number of customers, etc), but I think that the
kinds of stories of real businesses being built on the Kindle store will be
quite different from the lottery that the iPhone app market appears to be._

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waterlesscloud
Has anyone seen more info on the SDK? Any real info at all?

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loumf
There isn't anything official. The Kindle has been hacked so we know that it
runs Linux, has a JVM and a bunch of obfuscated jars which look like the
actual Kindle software. Because of the GPL, Amazon has to release all of their
patches to the distro that they're using, but I don't think anyone has found
anything useful from that.

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GHFigs
How is the keyboard on the Kindle?

~~~
gcheong
I have a DX and I don't really like the keyboard all that much, my main gripe
being that you can't lock it into numeric mode. So say if you want to go to a
specific page number or location 123, instead of just typing 123 you have to
type alt-1, alt-2,alt-3 (or at least hold down the alt key). Other than that,
the keyboard is about as useful as any mobile phone type keyboard - which for
me means entry is quite slow.

