Amazon Releases Kindle For Mac App

Amazon.com has released its free Kindle for Mac application that allows users to read books from the Kindle Store on their Mac computers.

Kindle for Mac is Amazon's latest application aimed at expanding Kindle content to a wider range of devices. Kindle books can now be read on the iPhone, iPod touch, BlackBerry, PC and Mac. Amazon said it also plans a Kindle app for Apple's upcoming iPad tablet. Also look for Amazon to possibly release a Kindle app for Android somewhere down the road.

"Kindle for Mac is the perfect companion application for customers who own a Kindle or Kindle DX," said Jay Marine, director, Amazon Kindle.

"For those customers around the world who don't yet have a Kindle, Kindle for Mac is a great way to instantly access and read the most popular new releases as well as their old favorites."

Kindle for Mac features Amazon's Whispersync technology that automatically saves and synchronizes bookmarks and last page read across devices. Kindle for Mac allows users to read some on their Mac and some on a Kindle, while saving their place.

Amazon says several new features will be added to the Kindle for Map app in the near future, including full text search and the ability to create and edit notes and highlights.
 

 

Gowalla 2.0 Launches for iPhone

Gowalla is a service that has been getting a lot of buzz lately. If you're not familiar with it, it's a location-based social networksing service that comes in the form of mobile apps. Gowalla announced today, the availability of Gowalla 2.0 for the iPhone 3G and 3GS platforms.

Gowalla highlights the following new features with this version:

- Design – Gowalla developers have created a fresh new experience that is more flexible, readable and usable.

- Photos – Gowalla 2.0 gives users the ability to not only check in and create new spots; they can also upload a photo after checking in, browse photos from friends and see photos taken at that spot.

- Checkin Commenting – Now when a friend checks in someplace, other users in the community are able to tell that friend what they think.

- Multiple checkin messages – Users now have more opportunities to add messages even after they’ve left a checkin spot. Skipped typing a message? Come back and add one.

- Hot spots – The most popular spots nearby will be highlighted for users in a particular area to discover.

- Browse friends – and friends of friends. Browsing friends’ bookmarked spots and creating trips are two new features put in place by Gowalla’s developers by popular demand.

- Facebook, Twitter and web links – Building your Gowalla network is easier than ever with more ways to stay connected with friends through Facebook, Twitter and web links.

- Spot details – Address, phone numbers, Twitter names, Facebook pages and website will now be available in several checkin spots.

Gowalla will be heavily involved in SXSW (of which WebProNews will be covering the Interactive portion). Gowalla has updated its SXSW mini-site that details all of the SXSW initiatives the company will be rolling out, including: real world rewards, competitions, challenges and events.

 

New Twitterers and Tweets Slow in February

Each month, we look at Twitter's growth based on total tweets and new user registrations. This data is supplied by Matthew Daines, the lead developer for our own Twitter app Twellow.

In February, the number of new registrations fell, compared to the previous month, and tweeting in general rose, but the growth in the amount of tweeting slowed. "New registrations are down for February by 12.2%. Total tweets for the month rose slightly over January at 7.4%, the slowest pace since August," says Daines. "Tweets per user registration remained almost constant, dropping only 8 tenths of 1 percent."

"I did run a survey last month of 9,995 random Twitter IDs and found an estimated 20% of accounts were listed as suspended or not found, so actual registered user numbers probably run at about 80% of the numbers shown, which would be 94.8 million for February," he notes. "Tweets per user registration would be about 20% higher, which would be 14 for February."

Daines notes that he had to make slight adjustments to the past two months. "I had to revise the tweet numbers for December and January down due to a flaw in my calculations for those two months, but the tweets were still up by 16% and 19% for each month respectively."

This month Twitter is expected to launch an advertising platform, and it should be interesting to see the numbers after that. Twitter is also rumored to be readying some new features that have previously only been available via third-party apps.

Twitter to Get More Useful in Time for Monetization?

Twitter engineer Alex Payne tweeted over the weekend, "If you had some of the nifty site features that we Twitter employees have, you might not want to use a desktop client. (You will soon.)" Some took that to mean that Twitter was working on some new features for its own site, that would essentially render some popular third-party clients all but obsolete. The question is whether this is a legitimate concern for developers, or it has just been blown out of proportion. It could possibly be a combination of the two.

Technology blog TechCrunch took the tweet and ran with it, speculating that Twitter "appears to be on the verge of some big changes," and noting that the company recently hired a new "UI guru" (that's User Interface) from LinkedIn. Following this story, Payne quickly reacted through his Twitter account, downplaying the threat to third-party developers, saying things like, "I just mean that our web client team is building cool stuff. It’s going to inspire desktop app developers. Same data, new perspectives," and "It's all stuff that's available in the API, just a different view of it." He also retweeted more than one tweet mocking TechCrunch's reaction, such as this one from another Twitter employee:

Still, TechCrunch's MG Siegler may not be completely off base. Just because Twitter isn't taking anything away from developers, doesn't necessarily mean that users of certain third-party apps won't just as soon use Twitter.com instead, when the features they enjoy start being integrated there. If nothing else, such features could keep new users from worrying about looking for apps that do these things, because their needs will already be filled.

That's not to say Twitter would be wrong for doing so. User retention has been a problem for the company in the past, and anything that makes Twitter more usable has to be good for usage. Twitter is expected to announce its new ad platform/monetization model this month (finally), and while nobody knows exactly how that's going to shake out yet, it's likely in Twitter's best interest to have users going through Twitter itself.

Twitter has not been shy in the past about taking ideas that were born from the community, and integrating them into Twitter.com (the retweet feature comes to mind). The much larger Facebook has certainly been happy to borrow ideas from Twitter, so if Twitter wants to secure a stable future in this social networking/microblogging space, it is going to help if it looks at the ways users use the service through third-party apps, and utilizes some of these functionalities on its own.

As far as the developers are concerned, the more ideas Twitter takes for itself, the more innovating developers are going to have to do to keep their own apps relevant, and that can only be good for the Twitter community at large.

On a sidenote, Payne's original tweet on the matter appears to have been deleted (the URL linked to by Siegler, now goes to a "sorry that page doesn't exist!" page).  Update: Twitter does apparently have some missing tweet issues going on, so perhaps that is related.

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