Amazon has rolled out an updated version of the Kindle software for Apple’s mobile devices. The new app adds support for eBooks with audio and video content. This opens up the doors to all sorts of multimedia content.
For instance, the latest Kindle edition of Knitting for Dummies comes with 6 videos that can actually demonstrate how to perform different knitting techniques. And the new version of Rick Steves’: London 2010 includes 5 audio tours that you can use while navigating historic landmarks in the city.
Right now there are only about a dozen titles with audio and video features. But I suspect that list to grow pretty quickly — especially if Amazon makes the audio and video features available on other versions of the Kindle eBook reader. Right now the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch are the only devices that support all the new features. But I wouldn’t be surprised to see multimedia capabilities show up in the upcoming Android app. And then there are the Mac, PC, and BlackBerry versions of the Kindle eBook reader. As my buddy Dave Zatz suggests, maybe we’ll see a multimedia version of Amazon’s physical Kindle eBook reader soon as well.
It’s also worth noting that the multimedia titles take up much more disk space than text-only documents. This means you can only download them over WiFi, not 3G. And it also means that if Amazon does release a new Kindle device with multimedia support, it may include more storage space than current models.
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