Each of us has probably heard of such an online store as Amazon - one of the largest portals modern Internet, which has a huge catalog e-books(over a million titles). Many users buy one of the branded e-readers Amazon Kindle and read tons of literature with it. But what if your good old reader died a long time, went as a gift to her nephew, or was cynically taken away by her wife, carried away by some new book like Fifty Shades of Grey? Then it's time to take a look at the official Kindle app, which turns your mobile device into a full-fledged Amazon e-reader with access to your existing library, including all collections, bookmarks, and comments you've created so far.
Program Amazon Kindle makes it possible to read books on all modern mobile devices, and, thanks to synchronization using Whispersync technology, the user can always continue reading exactly from the place where he left off the last time - even if he comfortably sat on the couch with his favorite tablet, and started his own acquaintance with a book on a smartphone.
By the way, it is tablets that are especially good for reading due to their large screen, but you can also customize the display “for yourself” on small smartphones. The user has options such as changing the font size, background color, indentation and text alignment. Initially, all user books are stored in a personal "cloud", each of them can be downloaded to the current device along with saved bookmarks and personal comments.
In addition to reading existing books, the application makes it easy to find and download fragments of new interesting literature from a huge catalog Amazon Kindle Store. Of course, you can immediately buy the book you like and add it to your library with a single click - on all devices, except for the iOS family of gadgets. The thing is, a couple of years ago Apple company demanded 30% of each sale through the Kindle app from Amazon. The online store refused such a "generous" offer and removed the function of buying books from the program. However, the owners of "apple" devices should not be upset - Amazon quickly came up with a "life hack" for its users by launching a web version of the application, which allows you to quickly buy your favorite literature and immediately return to reading.
In general, Kindle for mobile devices leaves a very pleasant impression and in terms of functionality it can even compete with Apple's standard iBooks service. Among the shortcomings, we note, perhaps, the lack of support for the Russian language in the program interface, and most importantly, the meager amount of Russian-language literature so far. It remains only to believe and hope that in the future the situation will change for the better.
It is clear that the Amazon program will not replace the full-fledged Kindle. But if the stars are lit, then they want to profitably sell them. Kindle for PC is, firstly, the ability to sell books to those consumers who have not bought an e-reader. Secondly, this is the attraction of users to the very fact of the existence of the Kindle. In short, a simple and cute application for reading books on a PC pursues many important goals for the manufacturer. And for us, users and readers, this is just an opportunity to get acquainted with the world of Kindle and discover a new convenient reader.How it works?
Kindle for PC is an extremely simple application. When you open it, you will be greeted by six buttons and a lot of empty space. To fill it with something, you need to buy a book in the Kindle library by clicking on the eloquent Shop in Kindle Store button. There is no other way to get reading material. In any case, no one has canceled DRM yet, as well as the Amazon e-book format. Fortunately for users, the library has a great variety of cheap (about $2) and useful books.Kindle for PC has some interesting technological advantages over other desktop readers. Have you noticed that the buttons in the application are quite large and located at a distance from each other? Of course, this was done not only for the sake of beauty and minimalism. The fact is that the application supports touch screen technology, which appeared in Windows 7. Because of this, owners of netbooks with a touch screen can exchange all readers for Kindle for PC.
And if you already have a Kindle but downloaded the app, there's a little surprise for you too. When the app and e-reader are synced, you will be able to read the same book on both devices. For example, when you read a book on your computer and close the application, you will find that it opens on the same page in your Kindle.
Should Kindle for PC be downloaded?
Obviously, the idea of "Amazon" is embodied at a high level. This simple, at first glance, application can give odds to many representatives of the PC reader market. So if you are still thinking about whether to download the application, download and install. It's definitely worth a try.Summer has come - the season of holidays, vacations in the country and big trips. Oddly enough, this is a time when many busy people find the opportunity and desire to read (not to mention schoolchildren who simply have to read in the summer). And many are thinking about e-books, as well as devices for reading them. offers to figure out if they are needed when everyone has a smartphone in their pocket and there are free programs for reading e-books?
While the Kindle is in the headline, there are, of course, other brands out there. It's just that Kindle is a standard and for many people is generally associated with an electronic reader, as such. And in Russia PocketBook is still popular, on the Internet you can find the brands InkBook, Kobo, Onyx Boox, Nook. If you're lucky, you might still be able to buy a device from the Sony Reader family, although the company recently announced that it was pulling out of the business and phasing out its readers. There are also "Chinese" cheap options, although for our taste, if possible, then you should not save on a reader - you, your child or your parents will look at its screen for long hours.
Advantages of Readers
The most important plus of individual devices for reading books is a special screen, which is fundamentally different from the screen of a smartphone or tablet in that it does not strain your eyes. The "readers" use the technology of "electronic ink" - in fact, what you see on their screens is "written" as if it were real ink, that is, the screen does not flicker. As a result, it does not irritate the eyes at all, absolutely, categorically. Reading from the screen of devices like Kindle or PocketBook is physiologically the same as reading from paper!
Other tangible bonuses are a long life on a single battery charge (from several weeks to several months), as well as - in expensive models - special buttons for turning pages, which are more convenient to use than “short” on the screen with your finger.
More bonuses:
- Hundreds or even thousands of electronic books fit into a typical reader;
- Expensive models have a screen backlight;
- Most readers can access the Internet (via Wi-Fi or 3G);
- With Kindle, you can also buy e-books in the Amazon store (although more and more in English).
Cons of "readers"
Serious minuses in "readers" two. First, it is still a separate device. Yes, it is small - smaller and lighter than any tablet, fits into any bags and backpacks. But - it's still another additional device, no matter how you sweeten the pill.
Secondly, of course, the price. Yes, there are Kindle and PocketBook for 5-8 thousand rubles (and Chinese crafts are even cheaper), but the cheapest Kindle with a full range of functions - Kindle Voyage - already costs 15,000 rubles. But he has not only a screen backlight and Internet access, but, more importantly, physical buttons for turning pages. He, yes, the new Kindle Oasis, but that price is completely merciless.
The high price is brightened up only by the fact that e-books are cheaper than paper counterparts.
Pros of Free Apps
The main plus is zero cost. Although there are paid counterparts, in general, these programs are more often free than not. Or cost a couple of dollars - everyone can afford.
The second tangible plus is that they live on smartphones and tablets, not being a separate device, that is, they are always at hand and it is almost impossible to forget to take them with you.
Another mini-plus, interesting, perhaps, to students: it is easier to copy or save the necessary passages from e-books on tablets, as well as make notes in different colors. Reader displays are black and white due to the limitations of electronic ink technology.
Cons of free apps
The main disadvantage: they work on traditional tablets and smartphones, the screens of which, although safe for the eyes, but only in small doses. You don't want to stare at an invisibly flickering iPad display (worse, a penny Chinese tablet) for hours, and we wouldn't recommend it to children and their grandparents either.
The second minus is that turning pages with a finger seems brutally inconvenient for us, in any case, if you read for hours. The hand is tired!
The third, significant drawback is that a smartphone or tablet will work without recharging well, if for several days. You can't go to the "taiga" with them.
conclusions
If your family reads a lot, then it's time to master the world of e-books. Depending on financial wealth, we would recommend choosing between free, "somewhat paid" and "heavily paid" in the following sequence: free programs -> cheap readers of obscure brands (but only with screens based on electronic ink) -> "good" models priced at 6-12 thousand rubles -> cool models with dedicated page turning buttons, 3G, high-resolution displays, etc.
The biggest - huge - plus of readers compared to programs is electronic ink technology, and everything else is just additional convenience. That is why, if there is no money for a "company", then you can take an "incomprehensible" reader - there would only be support for the Russian language, and an electronic ink screen.
There are simply too many flickering screens around us to further burden our eyes when reading.
P.S. By the way, even Amazon has tablets with regular screens - don't mix it up! The main advantage of any e-reader is the electronic ink screen (Ink, E-Ink, etc.). When choosing, strictly look at its presence in the characteristics, and a bright clue when viewed in a store is the lack of color - screens on electronic ink are always black and white.
Not every one of us can remember gadgets, the purchase of which turned his life upside down. In my case, the Amazon Kindle changed everything. With his help, I not only advanced my English thoroughly, but also learned Spanish at a basic level. A lot has been written about the Kindle, but in this article I would like to focus on the language aspects of its use, which reviews usually do not pay enough attention to.
I read a lot, mostly literature in foreign languages. Therefore, the choice of an e-book for me is largely dictated by how convenient it is to work with dictionaries. However, in addition to the well-implemented support for dictionaries, the Kindle has a number of other features that are useful for learning a language.
Initially, I will make a reservation that all of the following is true for the Amazon Kindle 6 sample of 2014 (with a touch screen), which I own. Later in the article, I refer to it as the new Kindle. Along the way, I also note some differences between the new Kindle and the previous version (Kindle 5 of 2012 with button controls), which for brevity we will call the old Kindle.
Most likely, the content of the article can be extended to the older devices of the modern Kindle line (such as the Kindle Paperwhite), however, since I personally did not deal with them, I can not vouch for this. By the way, I'm quite happy with the simplest, most basic version of the Kindle, because it has all the features I need for a minimal price. As of the date of this writing, the cost of the device was $79, and on sales days - in my memory - it dropped to $49 (excluding shipping to Russia and intermediary services, which adds another $20-25 to the price).
Search in dictionaries
In the old Kindle, dictionary lookups took quite a long time. I had to use the buttons to move the cursor to the right word, while only the first few lines of the corresponding dictionary entry were displayed on the screen, which were usually not enough. As a result, I had to go to the full text of the dictionary entry, then return to the text of the book ... All this was rather tedious.
In the new Kindle, thanks to the touchscreen, to access the dictionary, you can simply click on the word you are interested in or highlight the phrase. The dictionary will open in a pop-up window that takes up most of the screen, while the contents of the window can be scrolled. Most importantly, everything works fast enough.
The big plus of the new Kindle is the ability to quickly switch between dictionaries.
Those who read unadapted fiction, know that one dictionary is not enough for a full reading. The old Kindle could load multiple dictionaries, but the device only looked up one of them, the default dictionary for that language. It was impossible to quickly switch to another dictionary. Of course, it was very inconvenient.
Now you can easily switch from the default dictionary to any other dictionary.
As before, Kindle works with word forms. This means that when you click, for example, on the word “dogs” or “dog,” the Kindle will open a dictionary entry titled “dog.” However, the quality of support for word forms depends on the particular dictionary.
Another advantage of the new Kindle is that it has the ability to search dictionaries in other languages, that is, other than the language in which the book is written.
This is useful not only if the English-speaking hero suddenly says a phrase, for example, in French. It often happens that the language is spelled wrong in the downloaded book (by the way, this also happens with books bought on Amazon). For example, a book is written in Spanish, but the Kindle assumes that the book's language is English. Kindle of the previous version in such a situation will persistently refer to the English dictionary, and without additional manipulations with the book file, this problem will not be solved. The new Kindle will also search the English dictionary by default, but you can always manually select a different dictionary.
The Kindle buyer receives a set of dictionaries for the most common languages: they are automatically downloaded from the Internet the first time they try to access the dictionary.
Additional Kindle dictionaries can be purchased from Amazon. Just make sure that you are buying a dictionary in the full sense of the word. It turns out that not all books titled as a dictionary can be connected as such to the Kindle.
In addition, on the Internet you can find a large number of unofficial Kindle dictionaries created by enthusiasts for a variety of languages. It should be borne in mind that their quality varies, in particular, word forms are not always processed correctly, and sometimes searching in the dictionary leads to Kindle freezing. However, in general, you can work with them.
Search in "Wikipedia"
If the word is not in the selected dictionary, Kindle tries to find it in Wikipedia. You can also force the search in Wikipedia by selecting the appropriate item in the drop-down menu. Of course, this search only works when connected via Wi-Fi (or 3G for older Kindle models).
The search is carried out in the version of Wikipedia that corresponds to the language of the book. Yes, for of English language it is en.wikipedia.org , for Spanish it is es .wikipedia.org and so on. This cannot be changed. Searching for word forms is not possible here. In a pop-up window, the Kindle shows the beginning of the corresponding Wikipedia article without illustrations. If you wish, you can follow the link to the full text. By the way, in Wikipedia you can search not only for individual words, but also for phrases.
The ability to search Wikipedia appeared for the first time in the Kindle, and so far, in my opinion, its potential has not been fully realized. However, the fact that it exists is in itself a big plus, because with the help of Wikipedia, you can not only understand the meaning of a particular concept, but also, for example, decipher an unknown abbreviation.
If you dream, it would be nice to see future versions of Kindle search not only in Wikipedia, but also in popular online dictionaries such as Wiktionary or Urban Dictionary.
Vocabulary increase:Vocabulary Builder andflashcards
After reading a book or a certain fragment of it, you can repeat all unfamiliar words encountered in the text using the Vocabulary Builder function.
When activated, Kindle will display a list of words whose meaning you looked up in a dictionary. When you click on a word, you can see the fragments of the text where this word was used, and also, if necessary, refer to the dictionary again.
Flash cards (Flashcards) - another one useful tool for foreign language learners. It works in a similar way to programs like Anki. The user is sequentially shown cards with words in the target language, the task of a person is to remember the meaning of the word. If you can't remember, you can look in the dictionary. Those cards that the user, in his opinion, has mastered, are put aside, the more "stubborn" ones remain in the deck for later demonstration.
In terms of functionality, Kinde's built-in flash cards cannot compete with spaced repetition programs like Anki (and Amazon has something to work on here). At the same time, a huge plus is that the Kindle creates cards based on the books read and, when showing the cards, shows the words in the context in which they met the user on the pages of these books.
Thus, words are not studied on their own, but in relation to an already familiar text, which makes memorization easier. There is no need to spend precious time creating decks of cards: Kindle will do it for you.
Text simplification:Word Wise
Curious feature Word Wise, specifically designed for users who read in a non-native language. When it is activated, the most difficult words in the text will be provided with a brief description written in simpler and more understandable words. The description is given directly in the text, above the word. This function can be compared with an appeal to an explanatory dictionary. Here's what it looks like.
But you shouldn't be too embarrassed. This function works only with English-language books purchased on Amazon, and even then not with all, but only with those in the description of which there is an explicit indication of Word Wise support.
Translation
By selecting a phrase in the text, you can get its translation (including into Russian) using Bing Translator. I rarely use this opportunity, since I already know the target languages well and can translate mentally, resorting only to dictionaries. However, if you sometimes need to translate a phrase from a completely unfamiliar language, this feature can be useful. Like the search on Wikipedia, the option only works when connected to the Internet.
Interface language
This idea is not new, but few people use it. For a deeper immersion in the language you are learning, set it as your Kindle interface language - of course, if it is supported. By the way, the list of supported languages includes English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Russian, Dutch and Chinese.
1. Whether to look in the dictionary for all unfamiliar words or not is up to you. There are different opinions on this matter. My opinion - you need to read so that you feel psychologically comfortable. I turn to dictionaries quite often, but sometimes I catch myself reading many pages, omitting unknown words, and not losing the essence. So the choice is yours.
2. The subject of controversy is also the question of which dictionaries are better to use: monolingual (explanatory) or bilingual. Here, again, I advise you to proceed from your own feelings. But, if you prefer a bilingual dictionary, stock up on an sensible one anyway, it will come in handy sooner or later. In general, the more dictionaries you have, the better. So, for the Spanish language, I have six dictionaries installed (Spanish-Russian, Spanish-English and explanatory), and I really use all of them. Often I check the meaning of a word in several dictionaries at once, especially if the word is polysemantic and the context allows for several readings.
3. Choose books based on your language level. If, having opened a book, you do not understand almost anything in it without a dictionary, it is worth taking a lighter book. You can always come back to a book that turned out to be too difficult.
4. Take unfamiliar books. Or books that you read in your native language for a long time and have already thoroughly forgotten what they are talking about. In this case, the motivation will be higher, since you will be driven by your own interest in the plot.
5. Take books a notch above your level. Let me explain what I mean.
The entire huge array of literature that exists in the target language can be divided into several main groups according to the level of complexity (for simplicity, we consider only fiction) like this:
- adapted texts. I note that these texts also vary among themselves in terms of the amount of vocabulary used (from 200 to 3000 or more words).
- Non-adapted books written for children and adolescents who are native speakers.
- Unadapted books translated into the target language from other languages.
- Unadapted books originally written in the target language.
Do not "hang" at a certain stage. If you feel that you are becoming easy and comfortable, complicate your reading. Only in this way can you progress.
6. Focus on modernity. Language is a phenomenon that continuously changes over time. The literature of the middle of the last century is unlikely to give you an idea of the language norms. today. If you are learning a language for practice, limit your choice of books to modern literature.
7. Pay attention to differences between dialects of the target language. So, in the case of English, these are British and American variants, in Spanish - the language of Spain proper and numerous Latin American dialects. If you are targeting the language of a certain country, for example, if you are planning to work or study somewhere, you need to focus on regional peculiarities all the more.
8. Remember to enjoy reading. Yes, you have to come to terms with the fact that you will not be able to enjoy the process as much as when reading in your native language. You will not always be able to recognize all the shades and meanings that the author has invested in his work, you will not always understand humor (unless you already know the language at a level close to native speakers, and in this case you do not need these tips). However, this does not mean the impossibility of obtaining pleasure in principle. React to what you read. Empathize with the characters, laugh and cry with them. And then the foreign language, passed through your own feelings, will become more alive and close to you.
(reader from Amazon). Another great reading app for Android called Kindle was released by Amazon. The plethora of features, convenience, beauty, and efficiency of the Kindle leave nothing but the best experience. You will need an Amazon account to use this app. You can create it when the application starts.
The Kindle's main menu contains four windows: Home, Device, Archive, and Store. The "home" tab contains the latest literature, located in a convenient list. And just below you will find a list of popular books on Amazon. In the "per device" window, you will find the books you have downloaded. Kindle supports txt, pdf, mobi, docx documents. There is also a button for moving documents to the Kindle folder on the memory card. Archive tab - a list of books that you have read. And in the store you can view all available e-books.
Reading on Kindle is convenient and enjoyable. While reading, you will be able to follow the progress bar. By holding your finger on the screen, you will be taken to the menu, which houses the tools for quick navigation and movement. The app remembers where you left off. Despite the simplicity and ease of the interface, all the functions that you need to read are present. Once you touch the screen, you can see the progress bar (bottom in pages and percentages), as well as the author and title of the book (top). In the additional menu of the reader you will find the viewing settings. All font options, line spacing, indents from the edge of the screen, background, brightness control, and so on - all this is in the viewing settings. It is very easy to create and use your own notes afterwards. Highlighting desired text using a special tool, you leave a note. The color that the text will be highlighted with is up to you. All this you will find in Kindle.
Peculiarities:
- Shop for Amazon Books;
- Use the built-in dictionary (Google, Wikipedia);
- Take notes;
- Synchronization of your e-books (between all devices);
- Customizing your reading (Choose the desired font size, screen brightness, background color, and orientation (portrait or landscape) to read your books.);
- And much more!
Download the Amazon Kindle app for Android for free you can follow the link below.
Developer: Amazon Mobile LLC
Platform: Android (Varies by device)
Interface language: English
Condition: Free (Free)
Root: Not needed