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Library eBooks now Work on the HP TouchPad (via the Kindle App)

I’m sure you caught the news this morning that Amazon and OverDrive have started rolling out Kindle library ebook support today. They’ve already enabled about 60 libraries from OverDrive’s 11 thousand partner libraries here in the US, and more are being added by the minute. There’s one bit of news that probably got buried in the noise, and it could be critically important to TouchPad owner.

The library ebooks will work with all the Kindle apps, and according to my contact with OverDrive that includes the Kindle for TouchPad app. This is very big news because I have also been told that OverDrive are not planning an app for the TouchPad. Can you blame them? The hardware is dead and HP have even been firing whole swathes of the webOS team. There’s little reason to develop a free app for the TouchPad anymore.

If you want library ebooks on then you have 2 choices. You can either use the Kindle app or wait for a hacked Android firmware (there are Overdrive and Kindle apps for Android). Now, I don’t know that this will be terribly useful to touchPad owners, but I for one like to keep my options open.

I’m also trying to find more reading options for the TouchPad; it doesn’t have very many options (only 3 free apps so far). In fact, I’d say that it is a pretty poor ereader when compared to almost any other tablet on the market.

Of course, the nice thing about the TouchPad is that you should be able to use the web browser to checkout the ebook and send it to the Kindle app, and then open the Kindle app to read it. And you can do it all from the TouchPad (the same applies to other tablets and the iPad).The process isn’t as simple as it could be, but hey, it’s free library ebooks.

If you need help with this, check out Amazon’s help pages. The process seemed relatively straightforward.

P.S Brad, thanks for reminding me to double check this.


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