Page numbers in iphone vs Real Kindle

[tompe]

Originally Posted by stevenmoy

If you are willing to pay for this service, that's another story. Suggest that to kindle2-feedback [at] amazon.com Your counter argument on not buying a book after browsing the store is not valid, Amazon will take into the cost of bandwidth used by your browsing as part of the cost do online business.

You know that you can browse books and download them from Feedbook. You can have a Kindle and never buy a book from Amazon and still use the network.

If you sell a device nowadays you know that people will experiment with it. So the cost for this is already taken into account.

I would say that your arguments here might hurt amazon since people that would otherwise have bought a Kindle will be kindle of disgusted with your reasoning.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by palex481

Eh a little hacking never hurt anyone. This theoretical method I suggested doesn't even work at the moment anyways. I bought an Amazon book, and had a PD book of the same title and only the Amazon book successfully synced with the server. I'm sure its more complicated than just title/author anyways though. The way I see it, Amazon can either add functionality or I'll find ways to add functionality for them.

As I said. Look at the meta data and especially the EXTH header. There is probably some important data there.

[palex481]

Originally Posted by tompe

As I said. Look at the meta data and especially the EXTH header. There is probably some important data there.

Would I have to unDRM a kindle purchased book to do this though?

[stevenmoy]

My last response to this thread:

I don't understand why potential kindle buyers are disgusted with my earlier post. But I sincerely wish WhisperSync won't go out of service because of service abuse.

[palex481]

Dude, It's only a proof of concept to see if it works... even if I could get it working, A.) its a pain in the ass to change every single book header. B.) No one save me and maybe about 5 other people would actually employ such tactics on any kind of large level. People buy a Kindle to avoid screwing with stuff like this all the time.

I doubt Amazon is going to be, like OMG, those 5 people transferring 5 kilobytes a day in illicit page number bookmarks is crippling us!!!! The humanity! Haha... Relax man. It will be alright.

For my official last word on this. I have legitimately requested this feature from Amazon today. Should I hear anything back on it(which I doubt), I will let everyone know.

[bwaldron]

Originally Posted by stevenmoy

But I sincerely wish WhisperSync won't go out of service because of service abuse.

Trust me, it won't.

[palex481]

Ok so I realize now the bookmark sync is really less important than I even thought. I didn't realize at first that you can type in a specific location in the iPhone. I thought that there was only a slider to select this. But there is a menu option I missed for location under the the book icon. So even with my own mobi files I load on both my kindle and the iPhone, I should be able to find the page relatively easily

[tompe]

Originally Posted by palex481

Would I have to unDRM a kindle purchased book to do this though?

No, the meta data is not encrypted.

[slm]

I think that Amazon supplies a copy of the book from the Amazon archive. The Amazon archive is just the books you've bought from Amazon--the same list you can see on the "Manage your Kindle" screen. I would bet that no electronic copy of the book is stored in your "archive" at all-just the information Amazon needs to access the file and add the right PID when it send the file to a device.
If all of these assumptions are true, there is no way to add external files to the archive.

You can, however, "publish" your ebook at Amazon using their self publishing tools, price it at zero and buy it. I'll bet that book will sync!!!

[pilotbob]

Originally Posted by slm

You can, however, "publish" your ebook at Amazon using their self publishing tools, price it at zero and buy it. I'll bet that book will sync!!!

Sure, but won't that make it publicly available to every Kindle owner?

BOb

[Thomas Ryan]

Originally Posted by slm

I think that Amazon supplies a copy of the book from the Amazon archive. The Amazon archive is just the books you've bought from Amazon--the same list you can see on the "Manage your Kindle" screen. I would bet that no electronic copy of the book is stored in your "archive" at all-just the information Amazon needs to access the file and add the right PID when it send the file to a device.
If all of these assumptions are true, there is no way to add external files to the archive.

You can, however, "publish" your ebook at Amazon using their self publishing tools, price it at zero and buy it. I'll bet that book will sync!!!

Bingo!!!
This makes a lot of sense to me.
The device says to a server "here is the last page read for (some hacked) book identified by number xyz", the server says "never heard of you".
I suppose you could masquerade some content to synch by transplanting a perfectly valid, purchased from Amazon, header onto that content, but that just hurts my head.

I like the publishing idea. Clever. Too bad it might not be a good idea for that "backup copy" of some book that I made for personal reasons.

To the "it costs Amazon" and "let's pay a subscription" ideas:

I suggest it wouldn't cost Amazon very much at all at the margin (extra) to let users synch up to a "small number" of personal, non Amazon purchased, ebooks.

In fact, if since sync is "on" by default (I think it is), then Amazon is most likely incurring much more relative extra "cost" than it needs to, relative to how many people actually use the feature. I would also guess Amazon is spending much more than it would if it gave users a "per book" (Amazon e-book or not) choice. In other words, by implementing this feature with more user control, Amazon could save $ and expand the feature to non Amazon content- a "win win" all around. (of course if they wanted to be greedy and charge for it, that's their prerogative - i.e. to induce you to buy Amazon content)

[Frankly, though, given EC2's daily throughput and S3 capacity, WhisperSync or even WhisperSync times 10 is probably rounding error. Likewise for WAN charges given all the other data flowing back and forth over Sprint's network. (OK - maybe only times 2) The "cost" premise may be specious]

[Thomas Ryan]

Originally Posted by tompe

You know that you can browse books and download them from Feedbook. You can have a Kindle and never buy a book from Amazon and still use the network.

Shhhhhhhh!!!! Do you have to tell everybody?