In no particular oder, here they are:

1. Tecarta NIV – even though the NIV is not my Bible of preference, this is a great app to use during messages/study with it’s integrated note taking facility, from which you can email to yourself or friends. Four stars.
2. Drop7 – a really simple, addictive game that allows me quick breaks during the day. I don’t know what it says about me when I describe it as simple and addictive! Four stars.
3. Tweetie 2 – for me the best app for Twitter – great display of timelines, DMs etc. It’s used all day. Five stars.
4. Boxcar – push notifications for status updates from Twitter, Facebook etc. I use it for Twitter updates to see if I want to follow up in Tweetie 2. Four stars.
5. Kindle for iPhone – great companion for the Kindle. See my post on my initial thoughts on the kindle. Four stars.
6. Olive Tree Bible Reader – in my opinion, the BEST Bible app available. I have a number of versions, NKJV, ESV, HSCB and NLT, plus a heap of books (before I purchased the Kindle) – powerful searching, easy to use, good study tool when away from my laptop and home desktop. It has come in handy too many times to recount. Five stars.
7. Sygic Mobile Maps – I don’t use GPS navigation that often, but when I need to, Sygic is excellent. Hardly any lag time; good text to speech; and an always improving interface and product. Four and a half stars.
8. 1Password – 1Password is a great app on the Mac platform, and this is the companion app for the iPhone. Stores web passwords and other key information such as PINs. Can also be utilised to generate extremely strong passwords for additional protection on the web. Four and a half stars.
9. Flight Control – a great game from a small Aussie developer. When you have a spare 5 to 15 minutes, the goal is to try and land planes on a series of different landing strips – an island, an aircradft carrier and outback Australia are three of the challenges. Great fun. Four and a half stars.
10. Evernote – a really good use of cloud computing. Online storage of documents at no charge for a reasonable monthly upload limit. Great to have 24/7 access to important documents. Four stars.

Other notables that didn’t make the cut are the official Arsenal app, Word Press 2.0, Things and CricInfo. These missed out as they are not essential, but they are great apps regardless.

These are the really pleasing attributes of the Kindle 2 (International Version):

• The speed of the transfer from the Kindle Store to the device
• The management of titles on the Kindle; both those purchased from the Kindle Store and those transferred from previous purchases on other devices
• The integration with the Kindle for iPhone app, whereby books are synchronised over both devices for ease of continuity of reading
• The iPhone app is as good an eBook reader for the iPhone that I have used – easily on par with Stanza
• The reading experience is pleasant and better than expected
• It’s lightweight, easily held and controllable with one hand
• Unobtrusive style, with clean lines that don’t distract from the reading experience
• The good level of third party software to assist in managing your Kindle and its library. The best that I have found is Calibre
• Lastly, with the addition of a Gelaskin cover (mine are in the photos here), the Kindle is easy to hold, and looks really good.

As it has been only two days, I haven’t yet used the included dictionary or the note taking features but they look promising and both appear functional and practical.

However, not all things are perfect. In my opinion there are a few issues that need to be addressed in the future (I have no doubt that Amazon will address these).

• The synchronisation between the Kindle and the iPhone appears only to be functional for books purchased from the Kindle store – titles loaded locally do not show up on the iPhone
• The quantity of titles available for international users is significantly less than those available to US users. In fact, I was unable to buy Nancy Wake, a book by Australian author Peter Fitzsimons, yet I could purchase this book if I lived in the US.
• Computer usage is restricted to Windows based PC’s at the moment. Kindle for Mac is coming, but no date has been given for it’s release. This is only an inconvenience as you can run Windows on any Intel based Mac. Having a Mac based client however, will complete the Kindle experience for me.

An interesting footnote is that eBooks outsold physical books at Amazon over the Christmas period.

We have literally hundreds of books – the legacy of a pastor married to a librarian, and space has become premium so the transition to digital books has been a no brainer for me. Over the past few years I have been buying eBooks for my various PDA’s that I have owned, so I already have a good collection to place on the new Kindle even without buying any new books from Amazon.

A great way to convert existing eBooks (PDF’s, Word Files etc) is to use Mobipocket Creator (Publisher). It’s a Windows-only application which is drag and drop for file conversion. The only problem I have encountered is that it doesn’t appear to work under virtualisation on my Mac. No dramas as I bring my work laptop home – the only time a dedicated Windows machine has been in my house for years!

The thought of having upwards of 1,500 of my books with me is a bit staggering, but I must confess there have been times when having access to my library when away from home would have been fantastic. Just as the iPod changed the way people listen to, and in many cases, purchase, music, I think the Kindle will  do that with books. The fact the Amazon is now producing an international version of the Kindle will only increase the usage of digital books – only time will tell if society embraces digital books as they have digital music.

Over the years I have also subscribed to Time magazine as well as many others. I generally keep about 10-15 issues before I think that I need to throw them out (again due to space constraints), now this becomes a moot point as there are many magazines that can be subscribed to on the Kindle which I will be able to keep as reference material for years to come and can also keep on my laptop and desktop through the Kindle for Desktop application.

My two requests to Amazon are:

1. Please finish developing the Kindle for Mac app
2. Make available the Kindle for iPhone app to people outside the US

As the Kindle also allows for the spoken word as you drive, it could also diminish the need for the purchase of Audio Books. What is certain is that due to the close parity of the Aussie dollar to the US$, the cost of Kindle books has become about 50% of their print equivalent – another fine reason to add to that of the space saving benefits for purchasing and using a Kindle. So in summary, my key reasons to acquire a Kindle are:

1. Portability
2. Cost versus print equivalents
3. The ability to be an audio book
4. Storage

I will give you my initial thoughts on using the Kindle after I have tried it for a couple of days – unfortunately you will have to wait. My wife says I can only use it after I open it for Christmas! I wished she believed in early presents.

Until then then, I will stick with reading my print books – I do have a few to get through that I have recently purchased.