I’ve completely fallen in love with my new toy (anyone that follows my babbling already knows that) and it’s basically been attached to my hand from the moment I opened the box. I would marry it if I could. Though I admit that there are some flaws:
I can only run one app at a time. I tried to leave the text-to-speech running while I ran notepad, but that didn’t work. Bummer. (Can you imagine taking notes about something you’re “reading,” or being able to IM someone while reading? That would be very cool.)
I would have really liked to be able to change the look of the front screen, but that doesn’t seem to be an option. At the very least I would have liked to be able to move Web, Docs, and Apps to the first three spots. I understand that they’re trying to shill their products, but I just want the things I use the most to be first on the list.
If you don’t want to spend a ton of money, turn in-app purchasing off. Some games really want to force you to buy their extras and try to trick you into hitting the wrong thing — app developers: that kind of trickery is lame and is a good way to make me never use your app again. Just saying.
The whole faves thing is cool, but I wish there was some way to rearrange everything. It would be cool if I could hold down on the icons and be offered the chance to move things around.
Enough with the complaining. Here’s some cool, FREE apps:
ColorNote Notepad — this has been incredibly useful to me. I can write a note and send it to myself through email either as a message or an attachment. I can also send notes to myself with Dropbox.
Dropbox — go get a free account. It’s fast, easy to use, and I can share things all over the place. Very useful.
ES File Explorer — you can move files around and do all kinds of things. Dead useful. Makes it easy to sideload content — move things from your computer with a cord, or simply with Dropbox.
Jorte Calendar — really easy to use. You might have a bit of trouble getting it to sync with Google calendar at first, but that’s easily handled by resetting the Kindle (hold the power button for like twenty seconds until it shuts down. DO NOT DO A FACTORY RESET, you will lose everything personal off your Kindle.)
Viki — watch kdramas and other movies and shows for free. Plays beautifully. Some videos might not have subtitles available, but they’re added to constantly.
Netflix — you need a Netflix streaming membership. Works all right, but if you’re on the edges of your WiFi range, the buffer is for crap and you end up with a scratchy, low quality playback.
Hulu — you need a Hulu Plus membership, which is about $8 a month. Content comes with commercial breaks, which is a bummer, but currently airing shows are available, so that’s cool. Hulu works great on the Kindle and looks beautiful.
Crackle — nice media app. You can watch movies or TV shows for free, just make sure you tap the face of the video to play. Otherwise it tries to get you to purchase the movie or episode from Amazon or whoever.
aVia Media Player — plays my avi files with or without subtitles and I haven’t had to load the codec update yet, so that works well. When the codec update prompt came up, I pushed to remind me later because the codec app isn’t supposed to be Kindle HD compatible and I don’t want to risk it. When I play a video, I use ES File Explorer to open my list of videos, then tap to play.
ElJay Livejournal — the app works well and you can load multiple accounts. I don’t use it as often as I could because I have email posts setup and I can email directly from ColorNote.
WordPress — nice app that works simply and supports multiple WordPress blogs. Gives me a bit of trouble loading categories to my posts. In dashboard mode, some things don’t want to work correctly. Still, great app if you need to fix a WordPress post or something on the fly.
Kingsoft Office — an office suite that works well. Might not be the greatest thing out there, but it’s free and does what’s needed.
Apps that might work:
DramaFever — you can get it from Google Play or if someone can give you a copy. You sideload the app and some people have said it works with a regular Kindle Fire HD, though I haven’t tried it. You need a Premium Membership to DramaFever, which I don’t have yet. (DramaFever is great if you love subtitled kdramas.)
