Despite their clear commitment to the hardware version of the Kindle, Amazon continues to make the Kindle apps that run on the iPad and iPhone better. Today, version 2.2 of the app brings a full dictionary with it. This matches the functionality of Apple’s own iBooks app, but the Kindle implementation is even a little better.
Now in the Kindle app when you highlight a word, a definition will automatically appears at the bottom of the screen. And that’s not all — there you’ll also find links to further investigate the word on Google or Wikipedia. Though this dumps you out of the app and into the iPhone/iPad web browser, it’s a pretty nice feature.
The feature also includes a link for the “Full Definition” of the word. Clicking on this will take you to the new Oxford American Dictionary that is automatically downloaded with this 2.2 version of the app. This dictionary contains some 250,000 entries, Amazon says.
As I said, this dictionary functionality matches that of Apple’s own iBooks app. But those definitions are an extra click away (you highlight a word then select “Dictionary” which bring up the definition in a pop-up).
The latest iPad version of the Kindle app also allows you to search inside a book for the first time. This too matches iBooks functionality. (The in-book search for the iPhone has also been improved with 2.2.)
Other small improvements include better line spacing on the iPad version, and fast-app switching for iOS 4 devices.
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Introduced in November 2007, Kindle is an e-reader developed by Amazon.com to allow easy access to a vast library of electronic books to be downloaded and read on the device. Over 90,000 books were available for download at launch; that catalog grew to over 160,000 by August 2008 and was growing by over 25,000 titles per month. Books, newspapers, magazines and blogs are loaded onto the device wirelessly via Amazon’s free EVDO network (called WhisperNet) and are published in...
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The Apple iPad, formerly referred to as the Apple Tablet, is a touch-pad tablet computer announced in January 2010, and released in April 2010. It has internet capabilities running on either WiFi or 3G, and offers an optional dock with a full size mechanical keyboard. The iPad is a line of tablet computers designed, developed and marketed by Apple Inc. primarily as a platform for audio-visual media including books, periodicals, movies, music, games, and web content. Its size and...
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