
Kindle Development Kit - fogus
http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html/?ie=UTF8&docId=1000476231
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kenshi
So yet another platform and market - which I think is great news for
developers.

I kind of have an insane dream where maybe instead of going for the usual
platform candidate of say, a C derived language, Java platform or some kind of
Web derived platform (widgets, WebOS et al), maybe someone will take a risk on
doing something different.

Imagine if the Kindle platform was say, Scheme or Lua based? With a very
simple (shallow not deep) set of libraries to access the screen, storage and
network facilities.

It will never happen of course. But I wish someone would do it.

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francoisdevlin
Or, you could hope for Java and use Clojure :)

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kenshi
Yeah you can embed various languages into C-based and Java-based platforms.
It's not quite the same thing as the official platform being based on such
languages.

The official platform will always have more mindshare, and thus support, in
the way of things like:

\- open source code

\- developer support/discussion

\- systems libraries designed with the strengths/weaknesses of the platform in
mind

~~~
francoisdevlin
Play with Clojure's Java interop facilities. You'll find you get all three of
those points for free.

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jsz0
Text driven apps are an interesting idea. It doesn't exactly put the Kindle in
competition with Apple's products which is probably a smart move. It's
building on the Kindle's strength. Anyone who is choosing e-ink over a more
general purpose LCD/OLED tablet is definitely in it for the text. For
developers it seems like potentially a very easy platform to work with if your
primary concern is simply formatting & displaying text. As a result I bet
we'll see an entirely different set of applications making the Kindle a unique
platform. It's a very smart move by Amazon. Sell books on paper, sell them on
the iPhone, sell them on PCs, sell them on tablets -- but keep the e-ink
market of serious readers locked up for themselves.

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mark_l_watson
Easy prediction: this will be big even if range of applications is limited to
low bandwidth network apps.

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dgallagher
I like the idea that they're releasing a SDK for it. But there's a big
limitation of all Kindle's currently on the market, and that's the slow
refresh speed of the screen. If you have one, flipping pages in a book is
fine, but browsing a page on the web seems awfully slow (could be due to an
un-optimized browser).

I'm not sure what full-screen frame rate it supports, but my hunch is in the
2-3 FPS range or less (someone please correct me if I'm wrong - I'm guessing).
AFAIK there's not even a Doom port to hacked Kindle's yet, which is usually a
badge of honor saying "this device can play games and has some power to it".

Any apps developed for it would likely be staticly-displayed on screen. Board
games would work well, email clients, IM clients, to name a few. Amazon would
have to release a new model with a better screen to, say, address what Apple
appears to be doing with their upcoming tablet, and allow for applications
which require refresh rates which can display motion.

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andrewcooke
what's the technology? is it java based? i can't see any relevant details on
that page... [edit: i've searched around and can find no answer, although the
underlying os is apparently linux] [edit2: see
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1066942>]

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ashinohara
It could be Java. The IDE in the picture up top looks very similar to Eclipse
(although Eclipse handles more than just Java).

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davidw
Java is a safe bet for this kind of thing: you can sandbox things up pretty
well and keep people from doing Evil Things. Also, it's pretty popular with
Big Companies, so it's a likely bet for that reason as well.

~~~
rubinelli
_Kindle Simulator... on Mac, PC, and Linux desktops._

Simultaneous release? It could be another VM, but it smells like Java to me.

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Groxx
_In addition, active content must meet all Amazon technical requirements, not
be a generic reader, and not contain malicious code._

"Not be a generic reader"? That shoots my goals down, as well as shooting down
the goals of anyone interested in really making the Kindle an open platform
for reading. I'd be willing to bet that will be arbitrarily extended to nearly
any "reader" application that they perceive as threatening _any_ of their
market.

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davidw
There's no real information on that page:-/

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carson
This will probably spur B&N to do the same thing for the Nook. Or maybe Amazon
saw that coming since the Nook is an Android device and that seems like an
obvious advantage for developing apps.

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rbanffy
I believe Android-based devices will play important roles in this ecosystem,
specially if devices with animation-friendly displays become the norm.

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j_baker
Personally, I like the Kindle because it's simple. Does it really _need_ an
SDK? How is this making the kindle a better product?

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georgecmu
The big question for me is whether apps would have access to whispernet and
how limited this access would be.

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nirmal
It seems that as long as your app is doing < 100KB/user/month of wireless data
then it is free. Once you do more than that, you have to start charging a
monthly fee. So you can use as much Whispernet as you want but be prepared to
have that change your price point.

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Tawheed
Lame attempt to get some attention before the Kindle gets killed by the
impending Tablet?

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rbanffy
It will take some magic for Apple to convince book publishers the Newton ][ is
a better proposition than Amazon's. Amazon sells the paper versions too.

But I won't risk a prediction here. With OLED, PixelQi and that other Qualcomm
color display competing, there is too much noise to predict what will happen
to any individual product. The ecosystem will thrive, but who will inhabit is
is a mistery to me.

~~~
stcredzero
_It will take some magic for Apple to convince book publishers the Newton ][
is a better proposition than Amazon's._

No need. Apple could just run the upcoming OS X version of Kindle (perhaps
virtualized) on their tablet. Amazon could respond by detecting this and
disabling their software, but I doubt they'd do it.

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rbanffy
As ianferrel and ableal explained, the day Kindle software becomes the obvious
way to read e-books on the Newton ][ (I love that name - too bad it won't be),
Amazon wins.

Apple will do whatever it takes to prevent Amazon from controlling the
ecosystem.

~~~
stcredzero
My point is that Apple doesn't have to "win" in this way. Why does Apple care
if Amazon "controls the ecosystem," when they can still sell high margin
hardware? Does Apple have to control the Web because they publish Safari?
Safari was a play to assure the continued viability of OS X. Apple doesn't
necessarily want to "win". They want to make money. "Winning" isn't necessary
in every case for that.

