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The iPad app is getting support for the new magazines and other periodicals currently found on the Kindle Fire. That’s over 400 titles with new and rich formatting. You can buy a single issue or subscribe and Amazon will automatically deliver them to your gadget.
But wait, there’s more.
Andrys Basten of KindleWorld noticed last night that Amazon had released a new version Kindle 4PC. The only major change to K4PC 1.7.1 is that it adds support for PDF. Actually, it would probably be more accurate to say that Amazon tweaked PDF support so it worked better.
I was told last week that Amazon had added PDF support in the 1.7.0 update (at the same time as they added Kindle Print Replica format). Now, I’m sure it was there, only I didn’t notice because my copy of K4PC couldn’t read the PDF I tested. I had assumed that it simply didn’t support PDFs, when the problem is that it only supports most PDFs.
But on the upside, you can use most of the common PDF tools in K4PC now, including zoom, scroll, highlighting, dictionary/Google/search, and you can attach text notes. You can download the new version from Amazon.
PDF support does raise an interesting issue, though.
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On Sunday everyone noticed that Amazon had launched a new ebook format. I spent a little while Sunday afternoon playing with it and I shared what few details I noticed.
Paul Durrant of Durrant Publishing read my post about the new KPR format and he was inspired to do a little digging. He’s figured out how to extract the contents of a KPR ebook.
It turns out that KPR files aren’t just made from a PDF; they are PDF files. All Amazon did was to wrap the PDF in another file format in order to disguise the fact that it is a PDF. I’m told that the file isn’t even anything new; it’s a PDB file. I told you earlier this week that Amazon liked control over accessibility. I’d say that they just proved me right beyond a shadow of a doubt.
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Paul over at TeleRead finally beat me to something today. He got an email from one publisher that tipped him to a new Kindle ebook format.
Alongside Kindle (AZW) and Kindle (Topaz), Amazon now sell “print replica” ebooks. This is a completely new format and you need to update to the latest version of K4PC in order to use it. (It’s also US only, darnit.) If you read the help pages, it sounds like Amazon have created a format that is something like PDF. Also, look at the toolbar that I copied from K4PC. It looks a lot like most PDF tool bars I’ve seen.
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