Kindle on Pandora?

[leathco]

So the Pandora makes for an awesome gaming machine. The vids of PS1 emulation look absolutely fantastic.


However, the size and format would also make for a great handheld for Kindle books through Amazon. I'm not sure how to load it up though, would there be a way to do it via WINE? It'd have to access Wi-Fi to download the books. Or would it be easier to get one of the other versions to run, like one of the numerous cell phone versions, Blackberry, Android, etc?


Any help would be greatly appreciated, I currently run Kindle for my Blackberry and have a book collection I'd love to enjoy on Pandora with its larger screen, yet more portable than a laptop. I won't have my Pandora ordered til next month (tax mmoney), but wanna work on this now so I know what to do when I get it. Thanks in advance!

 

[second exodous]

Not legally. WINE does not run on the Pandora and unless Amazon makes an app for the Pandora to read their books then the only way to get their books on your Pandora would be to build a books scanner, get them off your kindle, and then format them to something that can easily be viewed on the Pandora.


If you own a Kindle I'd recommend doing this anyway, it is in your rights to make copies of books you buy. Then again this is kinda a gray area, this is circumventing DRM, kinda, so it might not be legal yet it is with print books, go figure.

 

[leathco]

Darn. I knew a direct port would be impossible, but had my hopes up for Wine or one of the cell phone versions to be able to run via emulation of the phones OS or something.


I don't own Amazons hardware Kindle, I just run the software app through my Blackberry. I have access to the books though via SD card. I was hoping for Whispersync though, so that it'd be updated constantly no matter what I was reading on.


Thanks for the fast reply!

 

[second exodous]

I have a nook and am paranoid about them pulling the plug on me. These digital readers have the ability to take books off so you never really own the book. If there was an easy way to take the DRM out I would be there.


If you own a Kindle why do you want to read books on your Pandora anyway? After reading my nook I don't think I'll ever read a novel on anything but dead trees and e-ink. Text books and reference books I'll make an exception though.

 

[Blue Protoman]

He said he DOESN'T own a Kindle device. Also, leathco, dunno if you know this, but nothing (NOTHING) can be ported without the source code being available.

 

[second exodous]

Huh, read that completely wrong. I feel stupid.

 

[leathco]

hehe I guess I should have clarified, I KNEW it couldn't be ported, I was more hoping on a WINE like emulation layer for the Win version, or perhaps an emulator for a cell phone to make it run.


Ah well, still got my Kindle App for my cell phone, and also got loads of other stuff to do on it too. I'm ESPECIALLY looking forward to going to my friends place where we play Quake 3 every few months and pulling out my Pandora instead of my UMPC with a mouce and keyboard.

 

[Gerix]

It wouldn't allow you to sync your Kindle collection, but could you settle for using a format like epub? I'm sure a reader will get ported eventually, so you could still get your book fix that way. Project Gutenberg has quite a few books in epub format, but I've only really used it when I needed a quick copy of Hard Times.


I stayed away from the Kindle after reading about the DRM on FSF.

 

[wardred]

If Android gets working, don't they have a Kindle app for that?

 

[wardred]

I stayed away from the Kindle after reading about the DRM on FSF.

DRM is a pain, no matter the media. There are tools to break it - very illegal in the U.S. - if you really want to, and there is a TON of public domain works, and even some publishers that go without DRM. O'Reilly and Baen Books. Pretty much the same situation we're in for video - DVDs, BlueRay, and streaming are all pretty much encumbered for "popular" media.


I own one and am happy with it. If we HAVE to have DRM, I wish the largest stores would get together on the format. The Kindle and Nook having different formats is a pain. Somebody's going to end up with the "beta" device...assuming that the readers don't simply devolve to apps on phones and slates.

 

[Gerix]

Sorry. I guess when I said "DRM" I actually meant "portability." And by "portability," I mean "between systems." I'm glad you like it, though.


P.S. Amazon allegedly released the Kindle source code. And yet not.

 

[wardred]

Sorry. I guess when I said "DRM" I actually meant "portability." And by "portability," I mean "between systems." I'm glad you like it, though.

Yeah, I got that. And while I'm a believer in this, I'm not a purist.


For a short while I went so far as to boycott anybody who sold DRMd works and lobbied for insane copyright laws...which meant no popular movies, games, books, etc. Sadly I gave up on that. It doesn't have to be that way - music is mostly DRM free, but it's too much of a pain to fight, and I'm not making a difference if I do it all by my lonesome. I'm definitely not a lobbyist or activist. All I was doing was not going to the movies with my friends.


Anything I buy from Amazon, unless I'm willing to go through the trouble of illegally removing the DRM, is stuck on Amazon... 'Course, especially for my pulp media books, it's like being stuck on Steam. Unfortunately that's true of the Nook as well, or any DRMed literature. When legally possible I get my popular fiction fix without DRM - the Kindle will read non-DRMd books just fine. They do have to be mobi format rather than e-pub, thanks Mr. Bezos for that, but even that isn't an insurmountable obstacle. I have the DX, so it'll read PDFs as well.


The most evil DRM I've run into is the web only, expires in a quarter or two E-Text books.


Edit: As far as portability, none of the big players want to play with each other. So if a book is DRMd, it's almost by definition locked into the device that uses that DRM scheme. There was little reason that B&N and Amazon and Sony, etc., couldn't have come up with a "universal" DRM where you register any of your e-readers to an account and have your books downloadable to your e-book reader of choice. They'd rather bet big on being "The One" provider of media, and letting everybody else suffer re-purchasing their media when the "Beta" e-reader finally fails.


It's not that different from being locked into a console platform for games - though I'll admit the effort to port a game is a lot more significant than the effort to copy/paste a book and fix minor formatting issues.

 

[Blue Protoman]

I think there's an ebook reader on the Pandora File Archive; dunno how good it is, though.