A Buck and Under in the Kindle Store: Kindle Apps Now in the Kindle Store



As we promised the other day, Kindle Nation Daily will report regularly on the Kindle Apps that will become available later this year in the new Kindle Apps Store.

But like the man said, that's "later this year," right?

Well, not really. There are already dozens of Kindle Apps, dressed as Kindle books, in the Kindle Store. Innovative, entrepreneurial developers have been trying their ideas out on Kindle owners since the Kindle's first days back in late 2007. Some have been hits and some have been misses, so caveat emptor, but today we'll take a look at a few of the Apps-like products that have been published so far, for a buck or under, as Kindle Books.

Let me say up front that these products provide just a quick, partial look at the kind of offerings we are likely to see in the Kindle Apps Store, where entrepreneurial independents will go head-to-head with some of the world's most popular web-based services and software developers to try to anticipate, create, and meet the needs and interests of Kindle owners. It's also quite clear to me that, unlike some other Apps stores I can think of, the Kindle Apps Store is unlikely to become a garden of delight for gamers and gadgetheads.

Reading will always be the primary activity for Kindles, so it's far more likely that the most successful Kindle Apps will focus on features that make life better, easier, and more productive for adults who love to read. There will be some programs that make it easier to use the Kindle for reading and to share what we are reading with others (not the ebooks themselves, but samples and our own reviews and responses to the ebooks.) There will be plenty of other Apps that help with household and work management, planning, and information sharing. I can imagine some great Apps related to entertainment and sports, and somewhere near the top of my wishlist would be Apps based on Strat-o-Matic, APBA, or Diamond Mind baseball. In the next few days I'll be inviting you to weigh in with your own ideas and views in the first major Kindle Nation Survey of 2010.


Meanwhile, let's take a look first at a few of the offerings of Puzux, an exciting 2009 Bay Area start-up that is the brainchild of Elad Ganot, an MBA student at Haas School of Business, and bills itself as "the first company to bring quality interactive content to Amazon's Kindle." Along with his classmate Eran Schitzer, engineer Dana Pelleg and programmer David Davies, Ganot has hit the Kindle Store first with a series of 99-cent "books" like Easy Crosswords for the Kindle and Easy Sudoku Puzzles for Kindle. Not exactly productivity tools here, but fun, and I have no doubt a group like this will sooner or later find trhe sweet spot, and I am guessing that they are working overtime this weekend with the launch of a Kindle Apps Store in the offing. You can find out more by checking out their Puzux page on Amazon.

Here are some of the other Apps that are currently masquerading as Kindle Book, each for a dollar or less? Do any of these strike your fancy?















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