Kindle users have long complained that e-reader esoterica like “Location 4483-4591 of 10022” are not exactly helpful when one is writing a bibliography or trying to find a passage in a real-life book, and while it has taken a while, Amazon has finally remedied this in the latest Kindle firmware update.
Wired’s Charlie Sorrel explains how it works:
Amazon seems to have solved the problem of transferring numbers from physical, fixed-sized pages to the virtual page, where changing font-sizes alter the number of “pages” a book has. The fix is clever: The Kindle only displays the page-number when you press the “menu” button, working out the equivalent paper-book position on-demand. And because the Kindle pages don’t correspond exactly to the printed page, it tells you the page number for the text at the top right of the screen i.e.. the first few words.
Kindle Software Update, which is available for download now and will soon download automatically to Kindles with Internet connections, contains a few additional upgrades, including public notes, better magazine and newspaper layout, and something called “Before You Go …” (“When you reach the end of the book, you can immediately rate the book, share a message about the book with your social network, get personalized recommendations for what to read next, and see more books by the same author”).
(via Wired)
