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What formats does it handle? Can it handle EPUB for example?
No it cannot. It only supports Amazon's proprietary ebook formats: AZW and MOBI. I love the paperwhite, but the limited format support led me to choose a different ereader when I last bought a new one. Edit: I know I could convert between formats, but that process is not always perfect and can lose important formatting.
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You don't. You have 100% freedom to not work for Amazon. Don't buy a kindle. Don't use a kindle.
If I would have known that by buying Kindle I end up working for Amazon, I indeed wouldn't have bought one. It's deception. Please put on the box a big warning, "THIS DEVICE COLLECTS YOUR DATA", similar to those on cigarette boxes.
I have quite often seen people here and on other tech forums assume that purchasing a Kindle means being locked into Amazon's ecosystem, giving up personal details, and having the risk that your books might be deleted. But you don't have to use the Kindle's internet connectivity: I have owned three generations of Kindle, and with each one I activated airplane mode the second I unboxed the device and I never turned ai…
Why buy a kindle at all then? Any cheap budget tablet can read ebooks and stay off the internet.
Why is it subsidized? Obviously to make it more fun to buy books, but also collecting valuable data on your reading habits. Obviously they know _what_ you're reading but it seems useful to them also to know what you bookmark etc.
They also have all the hardware they need for location history tracking by remembering wifi broadcasts seen. Is it known if that's being uploaded?
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For this I recommend Calibre: https://calibre-ebook.com/ It will convert any format of E-Book to a compatible format for the Kindle (usually MOBI) and allows you to upload it directly. I use it often and it's an amazing piece of software!
I actually prefer KindleGen[0] to convert EPUB to MOBI - I find it produces a superior e-book. Edit: Oh no, Amazon removed KindleGen! When did that happen? I still have x86 copies for Linux and windows if anyone wants it. Supposedly "Kindle Previewer" can do the same thing, but a cursory glance looks like it no longer supports Linux... [0] https://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?ie=UTF8&docId=1000765...
As a former Kindle developer, I can say that most of what's mentioned in this article are metrics used to understand how the features are used (bookmarks, highlights, dictionnary, etc.), how much they are used, and in which country. This allows the teams to focus on features that are actively used, and sometimes lead to discontinuing features that see little to no use. Hope that helps.
As many people here have echoed - this boils down to the fact the data is being captured without an opt out. I don't doubt the developers are using it for 'morally acceptable' purposes, but I don't trust Amazon not to abuse that data later down the line! I really don't feel that anyone needs to know precisely what pages I have viewed in a specific book.
Efficiency is not always the best humanistic approach. So maybe they support unused features and maybe they let some features wither that lots of people like. Maybe it would make things cost a little more. I think people would be ok with some of those inefficiencies.
As a former Kindle developer, I can say that most of what's mentioned in this article are metrics used to understand how the features are used (bookmarks, highlights, dictionnary, etc.), how much they are used, and in which country. This allows the teams to focus on features that are actively used, and sometimes lead to discontinuing features that see little to no use. Hope that helps.
Usefulness is NOT the same as usage.
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If I would have known that by buying Kindle I end up working for Amazon, I indeed wouldn't have bought one. It's deception. Please put on the box a big warning, "THIS DEVICE COLLECTS YOUR DATA", similar to those on cigarette boxes.
It’s called the terms of service?
As a former Kindle developer, I can say that most of what's mentioned in this article are metrics used to understand how the features are used (bookmarks, highlights, dictionnary, etc.), how much they are used, and in which country. This allows the teams to focus on features that are actively used, and sometimes lead to discontinuing features that see little to no use. Hope that helps.
To sync a "last read page" across devices, you need to send a location back to Amazon. It's also appropriate to tie a location to a device, so you can pick the appropriate device to sync your position from. And, when you highlight a word, the translation, definition, and wiki page is brought up, so of course it's being sent to bing and wikipedia.
There are valid concerns here (there's too much information being sent overall - the location data doesn't need to be sent with every page turn, for example), but these concerns are being buried behind FUD about none of this data needing to be transmitted.
EDIT: Can I also point out the ironic nature of griping about Amazon's analytics collection while running an analytics suite on the webpage yourself?
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I have quite often seen people here and on other tech forums assume that purchasing a Kindle means being locked into Amazon's ecosystem, giving up personal details, and having the risk that your books might be deleted. But you don't have to use the Kindle's internet connectivity: I have owned three generations of Kindle, and with each one I activated airplane mode the second I unboxed the device and I never turned ai…