Amazon Kindle DX Now Available In Canada

Amazon announced this morning that the Kindle DX is now available for pre-order in Canada.

The Kindle DX which sports a large 9.7” screen compared to the regular Kindle with only a 6” screen, is available for pre-orders, and will ship on January 19.

The classic, smaller Amazon Kindle was only available in Canada as of November 17th, so time will tell if early buyers will regret their purchases and for not holding out two months longer to get their hands on the larger device that sells for $489 USD.

Amazon says the Kindle Store now boasts more than 400,000 books, and that more than 50,000 books have been added to the Kindle Store in only the last three months.

From the Amazon news release:

"In addition to the convenient features such as 60 second downloads, easy-to-use page-turn buttons, and instant dictionary lookup that have made the 6-inch Kindle the bestselling product across all of Amazon, the new Kindle DX with Global Wireless has a large 9.7-inch electronic paper display, auto-rotate capability and storage for up to 3,500 books. Kindle DX with Global Wireless is available for pre-order starting today for $489 at www.amazon.com/kindledx and ships Jan. 19."

According to the Amazon website, blogs and the experimental web browser are still currently not available in Canada, but users can access Wikipedia.

This announcement means that the Kindle DX will be available and that you’ll receive it about a week before Apple is expected to make a new major project announcement on January 27th at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco. The rumoured Apple tablet is expected to ship in March.

Simplenote Update for iPhone Includes New Premium Features

The default notes application for the iphone is great at what it does, but not syncing with the cloud is becoming more and more often a deal-breaking decision for me when installing new applications. Of all the possible notes applications available for the iPhone one of my favourites of late has been a little application called Simplenote.

The goal of Simplenote is just that, to be the best solution for note taking on the iPhone. It accomplishes this by filling gaps that the default iPhone Notes application falls short on: Cloud syncing, note search, and screen rotation support. Over the air syncing is done through the use of a free account available through www.simplenoteapp.com. On top of having your notes available online through the web app, the API makes your notes available to other applications such as JustNotes, a Simplenote client for OS X.

Built by Vancouver based Cloud Factory in late 2008, Simplenote’s popularity grew over the summer of 2009 after receiving a glowing review by John Gruber on his blog Daring Fireball. This review was not made out of the blue though, as a small development shop with only a few applications and users, the developers at Simplenote saw a post Gruber had made complaining about what was lacking in iPhone note applications, and invited him to try Simplenote. The developers took care of the feedback they received from their user community while developing updates to Simplenote.

Just today, the latest version of Simplenote was released for the iphone. The new version includes screen locking, and the addition of new premium features available on a subscription model at $10/year. Simplenote already includes many features that will make most users much happier compared to using the default Notes app, but for users who want just a bit more out of their note taking application without relying on something more heavy like Evernote, Simplenote's premium features will fill that need. You can use Simplenote just through the web app if you don't own an iPhone or iPod Touch.

Simplenote premium features include: Automatic backups, note merging, new note by email functionality, and RSS feed of your notes, unlimited API requests, premium support, and early release access.

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