just found i can get this working on my kindle 4 after all
unpacked & installed manually, edited the external.policy, and ran the kindlet. no access to the virtual keyboard to edit the connection settings, but quitting the kindlet then editing /mnt/us/developer/KindleVNC/work/bm.properties to set the ip/port/password then restarting the kindlet solved that.
i first tried connecting to os x's built-in screen sharing, as someone earlier in the thread mentioned it worked for them, but for me the connection would immediately drop every time. tried an alternative vnc server on my mac (vine server) and it works perfectly