Amazon’s Kindle Cloud Reader Adds Complexity to a Quickly Shifting Market
The same day that Apple and five of the Big Six publishers were sued for allegedly conspiring to fix ebook prices, Amazon unveiled further ebook news. Yesterday, it launched its Kindle Cloud Reader, a browser-based application that allows users to buy and read Kindle ebooks on the cloud via a web browser. It also lets users download books for offline viewing.
The browser-based approach is a slight departure from device-specific apps that users are most familiar with. Formerly, iPad users that wanted to read their Kindle ebooks on the device had to use a Kindle app specific to the iPad. But due to recent Apple rule changes, Amazon could not sell ebooks directly through that app. That is, users could read their ebooks, but couldn’t buy more without leaving the app.
The Kindle Cloud Reader gets around the rule by bypassing Apple’s app ecosystem entirely. It does so by displaying ebooks in web browsers, which work across many different devices. Users can read and buy ebooks directly through their browser.
For now the Kindle Cloud Reader can run on any device with either a Chrome or Safari browser (including the iPad). Versions for other browsers, including Firefox and Internet Explorer, will be available “in the coming months,” according to Amazon’s announcement.
It’s an interesting development, and could expand the audience for Kindle ebooks—although it’s unknown how the Kindle Cloud Reader will interact with OverDrive’s forthcoming Kindle ebook library lending functionality, due later this year.
Using a browser to read ebooks, of course, is hardly a new idea. Indeed, last October—shortly after Amazon unveiled an early beta version of what would become the Kindle Cloud Reader—the Internet Archive hosted a conference called “Books in Browsers 2010: The Future of Reading on the Web,” which included demonstrations of several browser-based ereaders and applications.
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OCLC App Makes Connections
OCLC announced a clever new prototype online app yesterday called the WorldCat Identities Network, which creates a visual web connecting people, fictional characters, or corporations in the WorldCat Identities database.
The project, led by OCLC Research user interface designer JD Shipengrover, uses the WorldCat Search API to help create the maps, which can be used by patrons to visually browse the many items related to their favorite authors. (WorldCat links are plentifully supplied as the patron explores.) It’s an appealing way to encourage catalog browsing.
It can also be used to play a literary game of “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon.” A blog post announcing the app uses the example of linking Jane Austen to Aldous Huxley (it’s Jane Austen to George Eliot, George Eliot to Henry James, Henry James to Joseph Conrad, Joseph Conrad to D.H. Lawrence, and D.H. Lawrence to Aldous Huxley).
Sometimes the connections are surprising: after a few minutes of browsing, I managed to link Thomas Pynchon and Tom Cruise. Definitely worth a look.
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