Ran across an interesting piece on Wired titled “9 Things You Didn’t Know You Could Do With Your Amazon Kindle.” I was pretty skeptical that I didn’t know about them, and when I checked it out I did indeed find I was aware of most of them. Sending documents to your Kindle via email, checking out library books, taking a screenshot, even having Instapaper send article links…all these things I knew about. And I would be surprised if most Kindle users didn’t know about them too.
But there were one or two things I hadn’t been aware of.
In particular, I hadn’t realized just how many games were available to play on the e-ink Kindle. There’s a whole category of them: solitaire, Scrabble, chess, even my old favorite Settlers of Catan. I’m not so sure I’d be willing to pay $5 for a black-and-white e-ink version of Settlers that only supported pass-and-play or vs-computer multi-player, when I have the Android version for use on my Fire tablets (and on Windows for that matter), but it’s interesting that it’s there. Some of those games are free; I might have to install them and try them out.
There was also an intriguing-looking app called Bookdrop that promised to let people sync a folder from their Dropbox directory onto their Kindle, but when I went to take a look I got the message that the app was unable to accept new users pending review. And apparently it’s been pending for several months now. Oh well; emailing the books in is still easy enough.
In any case, it’s interesting just how many things there are to do with the unassuming e-ink Kindle—even if it does tend to remove one of the Kindle’s putative advantages. The Kindle is supposed to be a better way to read a book because you can’t get distracted by non-book things, like games.
Uh, oops?
teleread.org 
Amazon dropped support for the games (“Active Content”) back in 2014:
https://the-digital-reader.com/2014/10/27/amazon-drops-support-kindle-active-content-kindle-voyage/
Active Content doesn’t work on Voyage, Oasis, the basic Kindle, or (I think) the 3rd-gen Paperwhite.
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Pretty sure that active content was a function of both hardware AND firmware and a Kindle needs both to display it so NO Kindle which has been updated in the last 3 years is capable of displaying such. I KNOW, with certainty, that the PW3 never could do so and the PW1 cannot do so any longer.
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Weird that Wired is saying they do in a current-dated article, then. I’d thought they were a reasonably reputable news source.
(And also odd that Amazon still lists those titles for sale if they don’t actually work anymore.)
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Yes, but e-ink Kindles never acquired an Instapaper app, only a clumsy, non-synching download workaround. That’s one reason I hardly ever use mine.
Amazon has never put its corporate heart into e-paper. It has given them just enough attention to keep down the competition but nothing more.
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You continue to be a never-ending source of misinformation. Perhaps it’s time to either learn more about your topic or just retire this site.
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BDR: Chris’s accuracy record on the whole is very good, and many could well have made the same mistake, given Wired’s reputation. The very biggest sin is not mistakes. It’s failure to recognize them. This is why we not only have a comments area, but even encourage people to point out errors. Ultimately we are probably more accurate than the mainstream media, which so often fails to issue corrections. If you’d like to pay a subscription fee, so we can hire an army of fact checkers and can do even better, then great. Otherwise please just stick to pointing out errors, as opposed to insulting Chris or anyone else. Meanwhile Chris will learn from experience and be more likely to check out Wired’s claims.
Thanks,
David the Hardly Infallible
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