Cover via Amazon

Amazon launches Kindle integration with public libraries

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Source: macworld.com

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Amazon on Wednesday announced the launch of its previously-promised Kindle library lending, which will allow Kindle and Kindle app users alike to borrow ebooks from 11,000 local libraries in the United States.
Kindle book borrowers can use all the features they’re accustomed to when reading Kindle Store-purchased books: notes, highlights, bookmarks, real page numbers, Facebook and Twitter integration, and Whispersync, which syncs your current page across any Kindle device or app you use.
To borrow Kindle books, you must visit your local library’s website. As Amazon notes, the service is only available if your library uses OverDrive’s digital offering. Once you’ve logged into your library’s website, you click Get for Kindle, sign into your Amazon account, and the book gets delivered to your Kindle (or Kindle app) wirelessly or over USB.
At least, that’s the theory. My own local library uses OverDrive, but at this writing, no Get for Kindle button was available. Amazon spokesperson Kinley Campbell told Macworld, “OverDrive is rolling out [Kindle integration] to the majority of their libraries today, and the rest in the next couple of days.” So if you don’t see the Kindle button yet, check again soon.
If you later purchase a book that you’ve previously borrowed, any notes or highlights you made while the book was on loan come along for the ride.

Borrowed Kindle books can be read using hardware Kindle readers, along with the iPhone or iPad apps, Kindle Cloud Reader, or apps for other devices.

Related articles

• Amazon launches Kindle integration with public libraries (macworld.com)
• Alternatives to the Kindle Library Lending (savings.com)
• How To Load Up Your Ereader with Ebooks For Free [Ebooks] (lifehacker.com)
• Amazon opens Kindle library (i-programmer.info)
• Amazon introduces lending library for Kindles (sfgate.com)
• OverDrive works on the Kindle! (henricolibrary.wordpress.com)
• The Impending Wrath and Friendship of the Kindle. (ebrarian.wordpress.com)

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iCloud could potentially do wonders for sync

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Source: macworld.com

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Cross-Device Productivity

By now we have heard all sorts of things about iCloud.

But the thing I am most interested in is how it will help me access documents that I am working with or need access to across my devices from my laptop to iPad to iPhone and my iMac at home.

I'm much more interested in how the service could theoretically improve my cross-device productivity.

Right now, iPad file management requires a combination of several kludgey methods.

Search the Web - including this very site - and you'll find plenty about the awesomeness of Dropbox, but not every iOS app supports it (including any of Apple's). The apps that do support Dropbox each rely upon their own implementation.

All this is true of Apple's own iDisk, too, except that we haven't spent much ink extolling that service's virtues.

(I don't use iDisk anymore. I found it slow and occasionally hungry for eating up my files.)

But if iCloud means we can stop relying on sending files between apps, we'll be thrilled.

Thus, my wish for iCloud is that it includes Dropbox-esque live document sharing and synchronization between Macs and iOS devices.

I want it to be built in such a way that developers can include it in their apps as easily as they can embed an Open dialog box (on the Mac) or call up the virtual keyboard (on iOS).

All the work - the syncing, the interface itself - should fall under Apple's purview, so that the experience is constant and equally available to all developers.

As I imagine it, I could create a document in Pages on my Mac and save it to iCloud.

When I go to my iPad, I can open the same document there from iCloud within the mobile Pages app.

And as with Google Docs, if I leave the document open on multiple devices at the same time, each of them automatically updates on-the-fly to remain current with whichever version I'm actually editing at that moment.

If iCloud merely simplifies that process with Dropbox-style syncing that's baked into the core of both Lion and iOS 5, I'll be on cloud nine.

But if Apple wants to send my joyousness levels into the stratosphere - and really, why wouldn't the company share that goal? - the process of saving files to and from iCloud will be seamless and nearly invisible.

Though I love Google Calendar, I prefer iCal overall, and iCal's Google Calendar support is weak.

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Steve Jobs: Making a dent in the universe | Computers | Mac Word | Macworld

Steve Jobs: Making a dent in the universe

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