• Danish: tænde, fænge
• Finnish: sytyttää
• French: allumer
• German: entfachen
• Italian: accendere
• Old English: ǣlan
• Portuguese: acender
• Sicilian: addumari

• Danish: vække, sætte i brand, ophidse
• Finnish: sytyttää, kiihottaa
• French: exalter, inspirer, susciter
• German: entfachen
• Portuguese: inspirar, suscitar

• ttbc German: an zünden

Related terms

• kindling
• rekindle

Amazon Kindle is an electronic book (e-book) device launched in the United States by Amazon.com in November 2007. It uses an electronic paper display, reads the proprietary Kindle (AZW) format, and downloads content over Amazon Whispernet, which uses the Sprint EVDO network. The Kindle can be used stand alone without a computer. Whispernet is accessible through Kindle without any fee. On the release day, the Kindle Store had more than 88,000 digital titles available for download, but more than 125,000 titles are currently available. Amazon's first offering of the Kindle sold out in five and a half hours and the device remained out of stock until late April 2008. At launch it was priced at $399 but as of May 27, 2008 it now retails for $359.

Technical specifications

The Kindle features a 6" diagonal, 4-level grayscale electrophoretic display (E Ink material) with a resolution of 600×800 pixels (167 ppi), although the largest graphic image that can be displayed without being resized in a publication is 450x550 pixels. It measures 5.3 inches × 7.5 inches × 0.7 inches (134.5 mm × 190 mm × 19 mm) and weighs 10.3 ounces (295 grams). The Kindle has 256 MB of internal storage, of which 180 MB is available on a new device. An SD memory card expansion slot is present, officially supporting cards up to 4 GB in size. It has 64 MB of RAM. The battery lasts roughly two days with wireless on, and one week with wireless off. The battery charges in about two hours. A USB 2.0 port (mini-B connector) is available for connecting to a computer (where it acts as a USB flash drive). The Kindle features a headphone jack and one-year warranty. The device runs on a modified version of Linux based on the 2.6.10 kernel.

Content

The internal memory of the Amazon Kindle can hold approximately 200 non-illustrated titles. Users can download content from Amazon in the proprietary Kindle format (AZW), or load unprotected Mobipocket (PRC, MOBI) or plain text content. Amazon offers an email-based service that will convert HTML, DOC (Microsoft Word), PDF, JPEG, GIF, PNG, and BMP documents to AZW. It also supports audio in the form of MP3s and Audible 2, 3, and 4 audiobooks, which must be transferred to the Kindle over USB or on an SD card.

Users can download content through the Kindle Store. The Kindle Store is accessed through Whispernet, over Sprint's EVDO network, which Amazon provides free of charge. New releases and New York Times bestsellers are offered for approximately $10. Classics like Bleak House sell for around $1.99. The first chapters of many books are offered as a free sample. Subscriptions to newspapers cost between $5.99 and $14.99 per month, magazines between $1.25 and $3.49 per month, and blogs for $0.99-$1.99 per month. Users can send documents to a conversion service which will send a Kindle-formatted file to the device directly for $0.10 or to a personal e-mail account for free. Users can transfer converted documents from a computer to the Kindle via a USB cable or an SD card. Access to Wikipedia is offered at no additional charge.

The device comes with electronic editions of its owner's manual and the New Oxford American Dictionary.

The Kindle also contains several free experimental features. These include a basic Web browser and NowNow, an online research service which can produce answers to simple research questions (customer support questions are not answered). Users can also play music from MP3 files in random order in the background.

Product development

The Kindle was developed by a team led by Gregg Zehr. The team was based in Cupertino and was known as Lab126 during product development.

Useful Information

• Amazon does not sell the Kindle outside the United States, and Whispernet only works in the U.S. Users may also convert PDF files to supported formats using third-party software.
• The Kindle Terms of Use forbid transferring eBooks to someone else or using them on a different device. This has been criticized by the Free Software Foundation and free software advocates including Mark Pilgrim.
• The Kindle charges monthly for RSS subscription to select blogs, even though one may use the experimental web browser to navigate to and read blogs without cost.
• Text is fully justified but without hyphenation. Text can, however, be displayed left-justified via an undocumented feature.
• Using the experimental web browser, it is possible to download books directly on the Kindle (.mobi, .prc and .txt). Hyperlinks in a Mobipocket file can be used to download e-books but cannot be used to reference books stored in the Kindle's memory.

Digital Text Platform

Concurrently with the Kindle device, Amazon launched the Digital Text Platform, a system for authors to self-publish directly to the Kindle. Currently in open beta, the platform was promoted to established authors by e-mail. Authors can upload documents in several formats for delivery via Whispernet and charge between US$0.99 and $200 per download.

Popular Culture

• Current TV's infoMania parodied the Kindle with a faux tech review in May 2008.

See also

• List of e-book readers - similar devices

References

External links

• Official Kindle product page
• Official Kindle Store
• Kindle Coverage at Engadget
• Video: Charlie Rose Interview with CEO Jeff Bezos about the Kindle November 19, 2007
• Radio Podcast: OnPoint with Tom Ashbrook at On Point

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