Amazon has issued its latest software update for the Kindle Fire with a change that makes reading ebooks a lot more social.
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The 6.3 Kindle Fire software version, released Thursday, lets device owners share favorite passages and notes from their ebooks on Facebook and Twitter. Passages and notes can already be highlighted and seen by other Kindle Fire readers viewing the same book, but Amazon wanted to bring the sharing and conversation online.
Among the new updates is a feature called Book Extras. This allows users to see supplemental material -- from character descriptions and a glossary of common terms and locations used in the book to author information -- without leaving the book. This feature can be accessed by tapping the top of the screen to bring up the toolbar and menu button, where Book Extras is located.
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In addition, users who write, take notes, highlight passages and create personal documents within the device can store them in the Amazon Cloud and access them at any time via the Kindle Fire.
Amazon also announced an upgrade for its Kindle Fire browser, Silk. The browser can now load certain text on a website and isolate it from the rest of the crowded page.
"Silk will load the body of the page in a reading-optimized, single screen view (even for multi-page articles)," Amazon said in a press release. "The full page is still available in the background, allowing the reader to easily toggle back to a traditional view to see other interesting features on the page."
An additional perk of the new software upgrade include longer movie rentals, which allows rented films to not expire for a period of time after the user starts to watch it, opposed to when they start to download.
"Print replica textbooks" are also now available for purchase and are exact copies of printed textbooks in ebook form. Amazon notes that users can save up to 60% off the list price of textbooks by going digital.
To update your Kindle Fire, users should connect to a Wi-Fi network and tap the Quick Settings icon in the upper right corner of the device to "Sync." Updates should be performed when the device is fully charged.
BONUS: Amazon Kindle Fire, iPad’s First True Competitor [REVIEW]
"The $199 Amazon Kindle Fire is a worthy device. It’s not an iPad slayer, but it could be the first tablet to ably stand atop Mount Tabulous (or at least on a rock ledge just a few dozen feet lower) with Apple’s industry-dominating slab computer." Read the full review here.
Amazon Kindle Fire: Main Bookshelf Interface
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This story originally published on Mashable here.
