kishorebhargava

A few weeks ago, I read with interest that the Kindle software would be upgraded soon. I kept a keen lookout for the upgrade. This morning I saw a tweet from Atul indicating the software was now available. For some strange reason my Kindle and I were separated, I was at a clients office and my Kindle was at home. The moment I got back, I settled in with the World Cup match between Brazil and North Korea and while multi-tasking decided to do the upgrade.

The upgrade page at Amazon describes the process in very simple and easy to follow steps. The easiest option of course is to just do the over-the-air upgrade, but I was not sure if I wanted the extra charge on my Amazon account. I decided to go the route of downloading the upgrade file instead. The back of the Kindle shows which version you own. It turns out I own a  Global Wireless edition. Downloaded the file and transferred it to the Kindle and started the process.

The process was quite smooth really. The settings menu now showed an “update” option so I just clicked that and it did the rest all on its own.

The upgrade was successful and the device just rebooted itself. Very neat indeed, no tense moments of being “bricked”. Now to explore the new features.

Font: The first thing you notice, is the font, it suddenly looks a lot crisper and sharper and more readable. The font key (Aa) also shows more sizes available so you can go much smaller and much bigger than the earlier options.

Collections: Something I was missing on the Kindle. Since I use Calibre to manage most of my content, having an option to create a collection on the device was a feature I wanted. Easy to use, Menu -> Create Collection once you have a collection, just add the books to it. Select the book to add -> toggle right on book -> add to collection-> select collection -> Done.

The rest of the new stuff seems to be hidden in the “Settings” menu.

Popular Highlights: Turned on by default, this lets you browse what the rest of the Kindle community is saying about the book that you are currently reading. Since I am currently reading “What the Dog Saw: and Other Adventures” by Malcolm Gladwell the popular highlights for this were several and it was fun browsing through them. This feature came under some flak from a lot of users for they did not really want their highlights shared without permission. I don’t recall the last status of this, but with amount of noise on “privacy” issues on the net these days I am sure it will be dealt with appropriately.

Social Networks: Now this had to happen. The Kindle now lets you Twitter or connect with Facebook account. Once you link your accounts, you can highlight a passage from the book you are reading and it share via these networks. Pretty decent I thought.

Some of the features I have not yet bothered to check, but will in the next couple of days:

PDF Pan and zoom: PDFs on the Kindle have been something that has had a lot of people excited. I have not really bothered much with PDFs since I prefer stuff to be in either text, html or mobi formats. Much lighter and easier to read in any case. But now you can pan and zoom on a PDF, allowing you to easily view smaller text, tables or graphics.

Two of the other features from the update include, Annotations Backup and Device Password. As of now I am not interested in locking the device but it could be a useful feature. Annotations on the other hand were being stored in a text file which could be transferred to the PC in any case and edited or backed up there. Not in a hurry to use that either, but will certainly keep it in mind.

Now while Brazil scores two goals, I am back to watching the match and single-tasking. In the meantime, if you have a Kindle, I’d certainly recommend the upgrade. Well worth it.

Cheers…Kishore
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