Kindle Apps Blog

Kindle Chess

Kindle Chess is very likely to be among the first released apps. There are many ways to implement this game on Kindle platform.

The game will likely take advantage of Kindle’s free 3G Internet connectivity since onboard CPU isn’t doesn’t have enough computing power to challenge anyone except for very novice players. Experienced players will have to test their skill against server somewhere on the web or against their home PC that can use 100% of its computing power and memory to challenge the human player.

Another scenario would be human vs. human play. Kindle owners would be able to engage in either fast paced blitz tournament style games or take it easy and enjoy slow play-by-mail type matches at one turn a day or even a week. Since chess is social and highly competitive game I wouldn’t be surprised if some Kindle Chess application would also have social networking features.

If I were the owner of one of the online chess websites or existing PC chess games I would start working hard on creating a Kindle version and add value to the whole services by making it available on Kindle.

Implementing chess on Kindle isn’t likely to present a major ergonomic challenge since 64 squares on the board can easily be navigated with 5-way controller or player can just type their moves on the keyboard (e2e4)

Kindle Sudoku

Update: As of November 19, 2010 Electronic Arts has released a Kindle version of Sudoku on Amazon marketplace. You can download it here an start playing right away.

Since little is known right now about KDK and the way it will integrate with Kindle software I can only speculate about which Kindle apps will be available. And this is precisely what I’m going to do.

Kindle Sudoku is likely to the among the first application to appear in fact I believe that there will be multiple versions of it by several companies. Sudoku is a very popular game, it doesn’t require fast screen refresh, colors and any computing power or memory. On top of that it’s not encumbered by trademarks or copyrights so everyone is free to implement it in any way they like. Kindle keyboard and 5-way controller are good enough for playing Sudoku (I have to admit that touchscreen with a stylus would have been the most perfect).

In fact if you look at Amazon’s official KDK page, one sample app that is displayed on Kindle there is Sudoku.

I’ve been blogging about Kindle for a while over at blogkindle.com. However with a recent explosion in the number of eBook reader devices the blog has gravitated from solely covering news related to Kindle to comparative reviews of eBook reader that are competing with Kindle. Amazon’s announcement of Kindle SDK gives me a chance to recapture the focus on my favorite device.

Since there is quite a number of posts published over at the old blog on a regular basis, I’ve decided to start a new blog here. I’ll post reviews of new and upcoming applications for Amazon Kindle. I’m also interested in developing Kindle applications myself so once I get on board the KDK program I’ll write about my KDK development experience here too.

Stay tuned for more posts.