Amazon is going to be releasing a new update to their Kindle Fire during the next few days, bringing it to version 6.3. There are a number of new improvements that really bolster the sharing and book extras that are sure to impress.
There are powerful new sharing features found in the latest update! You can now share your favorite passages and notes from the books you are reading on the Kindle Fire, without even leaving the book. You can now simply highlight a passage and select “Share” or choose the “Share” option from the toolbar within a book, write a note if you choose, and select which social network to share with. Passages or notes you decide to share will be displayed to other Kindle readers viewing the same book, and customers can also choose to share via Facebook and Twitter. Amazon already has a vibrant community of readers who choose to share favorite passages and notes from their reading through Kindle.amazon.com. This update brings these notes and highlights to Kindle Fire, so a reader can easily see what other readers are saying about their books.
One of the new features found in the Kindle Touch was X-Ray, which was powered by Shelfari. This is undergoing a revision of the Kindle Fire that can allow you to check out expanded character listings, biographies, and references throughout the book, as you are reading it. You can also elect to view descriptions of characters, a glossary of common terms used in the book, information on the authors and common locations referenced in the book, and more. To view Book Extras from within a book, customers simply tap the top of the screen to bring up the toolbar, tap the menu button and select “Book Extras.”
One of the great new features found in this update was the augment to the Silk Web Browser. The essence of this new way to browse the web is the automatic caching of websites you visit often, so they load faster. Your internet experience out of the box will not be drastically enhanced but when you regularly use it for a few months, you will notice the difference. Amazon has upgraded Silk with a new Reading View. Sometimes, unfortunately, that business article, blog post, or sports recap you clicked on is surrounded by a host of competing material. You only have to look at major blogs online to see advertising, affiliate sales and tons of other clutter that takes away from the mobile reading experience. With Reading View on Silk, the content that you’re interested in is elevated above the clutter. When invoked by the customer, Silk will load the body of the page in a reading-optimized, single screen view (even for multi-page articles). The full page is still available in the background, allowing the reader to easily toggle back to a traditional view to see other interesting features on the page.
Finally, other updates include fixes to movie rentals. In the past as soon as you rented the movie the time was ticking on how long you had with it. The latest fix does not expire your movie rental until you actually start watching it. This is great because you can rent a few movies and get to them on the weekend without them expiring in the meantime.
Like always, Amazon pushes out staggered firmware updates and you may not get it right away! If you simply cannot wait and want to get it right away you can download it HERE.
Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
