Fire OS 3.1 Now Available

[anthony81]

Goodreads integration combines the world’s largest e-reading community and the world’s largest community of book lovers—see what your friends are reading, share highlights, and rate the books you read

Second Screen lets you fling movies and TV shows from your tablet to your TV—use your TV as the primary screen and your tablet as a customized display for X-Ray

New enterprise features make Kindle Fire tablets ready for work

Additional new features of this free software update include cloud Collections, dictation, wireless printing, and more

http://www.digitalbookworld.com/2013...rating-system/

[DreamWriter]

Here's a link to Amazon's press release: Fire OS 3.1 Now Available

Goodreads integration combines the world’s largest e-reading community and the world’s largest community of book lovers—see what your friends are reading, share highlights, and rate the books you read

Second Screen lets you fling movies and TV shows from your tablet to your TV—use your TV as the primary screen and your tablet as a customized display for X-Ray

New enterprise features make Kindle Fire tablets ready for work

Additional new features of this free software update include cloud Collections, dictation, wireless printing, and more

SEATTLE--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 18, 2013-- (NASDAQ: AMZN)—Amazon today announced that Fire OS 3.1, a free software update for the new Kindle Fire HD and Kindle Fire HDX, is now available. This free, over-the-air update will be delivered automatically in the coming weeks, or you can visit www.amazon.com/kindlesoftwareupdates to download and install the update starting today.

“The response to our new family of Kindle Fire tablets has been fantastic, and we’re excited to add new features we think our customers will love,” said Peter Larsen, Vice President, Amazon Kindle. “This free, over-the-air Fire OS update brings new features like Goodreads integration, Second Screen, Cloud Collections, enterprise support, wireless printing, and more.”

Goodreads

Fire OS 3.1 brings deep integration with Goodreads, the world’s largest community of book lovers, making it even easier to find great books and have engaged discussions about them. For the first time, Goodreads is integrated directly into the reading experience, so there’s no need to leave a book and open a Goodreads app. With Goodreads, you can:

• Effortlessly capture and share favorite quotes with Goodreads friends from inside the book
• See what friends are reading with the Goodreads updates feed and add books to your want-to-read shelf, making choosing a new book easier than ever
• Rate and review a book you’ve just finished and immediately share it with Goodreads friends
• Import all of the books you’ve purchased from Amazon—print and Kindle books—into your Goodreads account

Second Screen

Fling TV shows and movies from your tablet to your big-screen TV. Second Screen turns your TV into the primary screen and frees up your Fire HDX to provide playback controls, a customized display for X-Ray, or simply a place to email, browse the web, and more while you watch a movie. Second Screen is available for PlayStation 3 and Samsung TVs, and will be available starting later this year for PlayStation 4.

Enterprise and Bring-Your-Own-Device (BYOD) Support

Fire OS 3.1 delivers the ability to connect to secure enterprise Wi-Fi networks and access corporate apps, documents and resources like SharePoint; native VPN client for instant access to corporate networks; and a native SCEP (Simple Certificate Exchange Protocol) client to retrieve digital certificates for secure resources. Fire OS also now supports Kerberos authentication, which enables the ability to browse secure Intranet websites from the Silk browser. The new Kindle Fire tablets also include Kindle-specific device management APIs that integrate with existing mobile device management (MDM) systems to make it easy for IT departments to manage Kindle Fire.

Additional new features of Fire OS 3.1 include:

• Cloud Collections helps you organize your books, newspapers, magazines, and apps in customized collections for easy reference, and Amazon’s Whispersync technology synchronizes the collections across your Kindle devices and reading apps so they’re available on all of your devices.
• Voice dictation converts your speech to text—available in all languages when online; offline support available in US English.
• 1-Tap archive which frees up space on your Kindle Fire by identifying items that have not been recently used and provides a 1-tap option to store them in the Cloud for later retrieval.
• Wireless printing of photos, PDF, e-mails, contacts, calendar and docs.
• New accessibility enhancements that enable blind and visually impaired customers to save a separate accessibility profile for children in Kindle FreeTime, scroll lists automatically when swipe navigating, hear enhanced sound feedback and screen orientation changes announced, and have more control when editing text and navigating web content.
• Dozens more new features, performance and battery life improvements, and bug fixes.

Fire OS 3.1 is available on the new generation of Kindle tablets, including the $139 Kindle Fire HD, the 7” Kindle Fire HDX, and the 8.9” Kindle Fire HDX. Learn more: www.amazon.com/hdx.

[sirmaru]

I think I'll like these 2 features best:

Cloud Collections helps you organize your books, newspapers, magazines, and apps in customized collections for easy reference, and Amazon’s Whispersync technology synchronizes the collections across your Kindle devices and reading apps so they’re available on all of your devices.
- Voice dictation converts your speech to text—available in all languages when online; offline support available in US English.

I much prefer voice dictation for notes when I am reading an eBook than thumb typing. That Cloud Collection feature should be great as well. I downloaded the update and am now bringing my HDX to a full charge to receive it.

[nynaevelan]

I would love to know what improvements have been made from the old Goodreads app and the new Goodreads Integration. Could a kind soul or two share their impressions once your HDX updates??

EDIT: Also how does the new Cloud Collections work.

And shame on Amazon for not releasing this update on the PW2 at the same time, I am feeling like a one-legged step child right about now.

[Blossom]

I am curious about this 1-Tap archive? Can someone tell me how it works?

Originally Posted by nynaevelan

I would love to know what improvements have been made from the old Goodreads app and the new Goodreads Integration. Could a kind soul or two share their impressions once your HDX updates??

EDIT: Also how does the new Cloud Collections work.

And shame on Amazon for not releasing this update on the PW2 at the same time, I am feeling like a one-legged step child right about now.

+1

I hope they implement collections on the HDX better than they did on Kindle for iOS. On iOS app you get every collection you ever created going back for several years. This resulted in a lot of duplication and clutter. You can delete the ones you don't won't, but it would have been better if they let us import collections from a specific device rather than importing from all devices.

[sirmaru]

I upgraded and found my Collections under Books if one goes to the menu there. A Goodreads icon is also there. I rarely use Goodreads.

I had to adjust the Collections since all my variations of them were present and I had to delete those now obsolete. It looks great now but is really irrelevant.

I keep the two HDX eBooks I am currently reading on my Home page along with all the apps I use. Thus, placing the Collections there would be redundant.

[nynaevelan]

Originally Posted by sirmaru

I upgraded and found my Collections under Books if one goes to the menu there. A Goodreads icon is also there. I rarely use Goodreads.

I had to adjust the Collections since all my variations of them were present and I had to delete those now obsolete. It looks great now but is really irrelevant.

I keep the two HDX eBooks I am currently reading on my Home page along with all the apps I use. Thus, placing the Collections there would be redundant.

This was one of the main problems I had with the Import Collections feature on the eink devices, I had to get Amazon's tech team to delete all the collections associated with my account because there was so much clutter and corruption. Of course, since they started "improving" this for this update, now you can no longer fully import anything on your devices. I was hoping this feature would allow the users to be able to manage their collections via the Mange Your Kindle page or maybe the Cloud drive.

Oh well, hopefully they will do better with the "goodreads integration", though I won't hold my breath. I also hope they do not take too long delivering this to the pw2 since this is supposed to eventually have the feature.

[sirmaru]

Originally Posted by nynaevelan

This was one of the main problems I had with the Import Collections feature on the eink devices, I had to get Amazon's tech team to delete all the collections associated with my account because there was so much clutter and corruption. Of course, since they started "improving" this for this update, now you can no longer fully import anything on your devices. I was hoping this feature would allow the users to be able to manage their collections via the Mange Your Kindle page or maybe the Cloud drive.

Oh well, hopefully they will do better with the "goodreads integration", though I won't hold my breath. I also hope they do not take too long delivering this to the pw2 since this is supposed to eventually have the feature.

You can manage all your Collections on the HDX Book page. You can delete obsolete ones without affecting the content. Then it syncs to the PW 2013 and the K4PC. Now they are all the same. However, Collections on the Home Page of the HDX makes no sense unless one has very few apps.

Collections make a lot of sense on the PW 2013 since there are no apps there. Amazon should allow management of them on that device for all other devices. Maybe the next upgrade will allow it.

Goodreads is present on the HDX but I don't see the sense of it. I don't waste my time rating any of my eBooks. I did it today but will never do it again. I don't read based on the tastes of others. I select all the eBooks I like in an Excel spreadsheet with price and number of pages. Then I buy them based on the highest number of pages per dollar of cost. I only read history and biography books.

Finally, one can also now group apps into Collections. I don't see the sense of it since I only use about 15 apps and have them all on my Home page. It may be good for folks with hundreds of apps. They have Active Content in Collections as well but none of those work on the HDX, only on the PW 2013.

They were supposed to have a speech to text module somewhere but I think it was a mistake in the specs. The only change I see there is one can now highlight a word and start test to speech from that word instead of from the top of the page. That could be useful in a Bible Study if my voice is hoarse (highly unlikely.).

Finally, there is no sleep timer present, only a big clock with its own timer unrelated to anything else.

[nynaevelan]

Originally Posted by sirmaru

You can manage all your Collections on the HDX Book page. You can delete obsolete ones without affecting the content. Then it syncs to the PW 2013 and the K4PC. Now they are all the same. However, Collections on the Home Page of the HDX makes no sense unless one has very few apps.

What do you mean by this, it imports to the other devices automatically or is user intervention necessary? I am also confused by what apps and books have to do with each other, if the Collections are in the Book section how is it affecting the apps section, can you explain more?

Originally Posted by sirmaru

Goodreads is present on the HDX but I don't see the sense of it. I don't waste my time rating any of my eBooks. I did it today but will never do it again. I don't read based on the tastes of others. I select all the eBooks I like in an Excel spreadsheet with price and number of pages. Then I buy them based on the highest number of pages per dollar of cost. I only read history and biography books.

While I also do not read based on my friends lists, I do use the Goodreads app continuously both to shelve and manage my books but also to rate them. This helps me when I use the recommendation section on Goodreads when I am looking for something new and different. Also, what about the add Amazon purchases to Goodreads shelves, is this automatic or does this require user intervention?

Originally Posted by sirmaru

Finally, one can also now group apps into Collections. I don't see the sense of it since I only use about 15 apps and have them all on my Home page. It may be good for folks with hundreds of apps. They have Active Content in Collections as well but none of those work on the HDX, only on the PW 2013.

This also will be great for me, because I order a lot of the free a day apps, though most times I rarely get to them, so organizing all my apps would be a major plus for me.

I don't know about the Fire HDX, but you can delete unwanted collections within the Kindle for iOS app. But it only deletes them in that app, not universally. There is no way to delete them universally that I know of outside of calling CS. Once upon a time when you imported collections to a new device or app you would get the option to choose which device/app from which to import them. Apparently there is no option like that now.

[nynaevelan]

Originally Posted by jswinden

I don't know about the Fire HDX, but you can delete unwanted collections within the Kindle for iOS app. But it only deletes them in that app, not universally. There is no way to delete them universally that I know of outside of calling CS. Once upon a time when you imported collections to a new device or app you would get the option to choose which device/app from which to import them. Apparently there is no option like that now.

This is still available on the pw2 and the k4pc, unfortunately it works worse now than it did before. When I contacted CS, the rep stated the techs did something to it and you had to have all your books on the device in order for all the collections to import, but that doesn't work either. I tried importing with all my books on the device and only a subset and only about 10% of the collections import and none of them completely. And all the collections that you have ever completed and are associated with the device you are importing from imports onto the new device. Which is a major pain in the azz to get rid of. They just linger around forever. Which is why I was hoping Amazon was putting the control of our collections into our hands with this cloud collections thing.

[sirmaru]

I just figured out how to use the new Voice Dictation module in the upgrade. From now on the HDX keyboard shows a MICROPHONE icon inside the keyboard between the comma and the number keys icon. Tap it and it records PERFECTLY with my WiFi on. It even capitalizes where required and puts in punctuation. Thumb typing is OVER for me.

It posts the words in an open window as I speak them. I wonder if there is some way to go back if I make a mistake. I may call Mayday again to see how to handle mistakes.

I can record notes in my eBooks and notes to myself in Springpad and have them available on my PC when I go to it. I can go to Forums and Chat rooms and SPEAK instead of typing all the time. At my age typing triggers arthritis symptoms at times. This new feature ends those problems.

From what I understand from talking to Mayday, if WiFi is not on, it will still record in English but will take time to learn my speech.

With WiFi on it even records in foreign languages. I spoke in Japanese and it used Japanese characters with perfect punctuation.

I may start using this HDX to send emails now. I don't have a Japanese keyboard but this feature does NOT require one.

Wow, this feature alone is worth the price of the entire HDX !!

[Blossom]

Originally Posted by sirmaru

I just figured out how to use the new Voice Dictation module in the upgrade. From now on the HDX keyboard shows a MICROPHONE icon inside the keyboard between the comma and the number keys icon. Tap it and it records PERFECTLY with my WiFi on. It even capitalizes where required and puts in punctuation. Thumb typing is OVER for me.

From what I understand from talking to Mayday, if WiFi is not on, it will still record in English but will take time to learn my speech.

Wow, this feature alone is worth the price of the entire HDX !!

Most android devices have this option by default. Amazon is behind when it comes to it. I use this on my phone all the time.

[connie2000]

Originally Posted by jswinden

I don't know about the Fire HDX, but you can delete unwanted collections within the Kindle for iOS app. But it only deletes them in that app, not universally. There is no way to delete them universally that I know of outside of calling CS. Once upon a time when you imported collections to a new device or app you would get the option to choose which device/app from which to import them. Apparently there is no option like that now.

I just talked to customer service (kindle expert) and was told that the Cloud Collections will not sync with the Kindle for PC. And I have not been able to get it to do so. I am happy to have it on my Kindle Fire HD at least. Have you tried syncing to other Kindle devices?