Amazon’s Kindle Knows Where You Are

Sounds to me like an invasion of privacy. Are they keeping the door open to make this available to 3rd parties in the future?

Amazon’s Kindle Plan = 1984 + Fahrenheit 451

It could be so much worse:

http://www.techcrunch.com/2007.....ones-home/

This report has already been thoroughly debunked. Igor (reverse engineering blog) is outside the U.S., and Sprint WhisperNet is not providing the data to resolve a location on any of the Kindle’s that owners around the country have tried this “feature” on.

I have doubts about the accuracy of CDMA over actual GPS.

My blackjack II puts my approximate location on the map without the GPS turned on, but its usually a few streets away from where I actually am. This won’t help with turn by turn directions.

Admittedly this is GSM but I can’t imagine it makes a difference. It’s still triangulating my position based on cell towers.

Think of this as a $400 devices that enables you to read e-books… ouch! With the trend for device convergence finally gathering momentum are consumers ready to adopt a $400 book reader? I’d argue that instead why not simply grab a funky Linux Tablet PC that will do the same job and much, much more.

Parul
http://www.bhopu.com

#6 You know, you guys just don’t get it. The world, the famous “market” you love to talk so much about, does not consist of people who would have a clue how to ” grab a funky Linux Tablet PC” or woud even have a clue what “a funky Linux Tablet PC” is. But many of those same people do need “devices that enables [them] to read e-books”Astounding thought, isn’t it?, for example because these books have fonts that can be enlarged. In other words, the world does not consist of people exactly like you and your friends. Strange but true,

Well said, Elder (#7). So many people put the Kindle down without realizing who its true target audience is. Well, the next Amazon earnings announcement (end Jan 2008) will tell us the real story.

Nice to see hidden features like Google Maps on the Kindle…

The EVDO connection is more useful than simply shopping on Amazon. It may not be the best device to browse the web, but thanks to the EVDO, it’s very easy to get content on the Kindle.

I’ve been experimenting public domain and creative commons downloads directly on the device using a file as a download guide and it works perfectly. It’s pretty much like having an access to a library directly on your Kindle: http://www.feedbooks.com/help/kindle

Next step will be getting RSS feeds on the device the same way…

I wrote about this on my Kindle blog, I dont think Amazon are tracking where you are, more likely it was a planned feature that got scrapped. Some lazy programmer probably forgot to remove the code.

Nice plagarism Techcrunch.

Why don’t you RTFA and realize that it was not “Discovered by Interface” but instead a guy named Igor Skochinsky who has his own blog.

I’ll print it here because you didn’t bother to do so: http://igorsk.blogspot.com/200.....l-and.html

Even better, if you put 2 minutes of effort into it instead of just monitoring Engadget, you probably could have contacted Igor and got a much richer story.

I agree, your method is much better. Blogtards.

Here’s why he’d do that (use Interface link). The Interface story is on Techmeme. If you’re one of their monitored blogs and you link to Interface, you’ll be listed as a referring blog under the blurb.

Bazily - It’s true that I did not discover the easter eggs and I stated as such on my blog (interface). I did reference Igor’s blog as the original source of the information on my blog post.

The image displaying Google Maps on the Kindle with positioning, however is of my Kindle and I did verify that the Kindle has CDMA based positioning as Igor does not live in the U.S. I don’t take any credit for finding these easter eggs though.

“…having an access to a library directly on your Kindle.”

This could be a good thing?

It doesn’t work, folks. DOES. NOT. WORK.

Stop spreading rumors about products you don’t own.