On Monday, Amazon released a preview version of firmware 3.1 to Kindle owners. The update includes a number of new features: real page numbers, notes that can be publicly shared, a new view for periodicals, more social-networking options, and more. The update isn't being pushed to Kindle owners for over-the-air downloads yet, but it can be easily installed via USB.
We installed the update and took a tour through the new features, so hit the slideshow to see what Kindle firmware 3.1 looks like.
The real page numbers feature is the most exciting, even though it's only a small change. Before this version, page numbers on the Kindle would re-flow based on the size of the text, and the pages often numbered in the thousands thanks to the smaller-than-hardback page size and the frequently larger text. That made it impossible to tell someone else what page you were reading, or where to look for something, unless that person was also using a Kindle and could interpret the location system.
Those Kindle-specific numbers still exist, but for many books it's also possible to see where the page appears on the printed version. Each Kindle book corresponds with a particular ISBN number (matching a single printed edition of the book), and if you get that same edition the page numbers will match. It's not a perfect system, but it's at least a second way to access the material you're looking for.
New social features are everywhere with the 3.1 update. Users can set their bookmarks, notes, reading progress and more to be publicly available, so that friends, colleagues, and other fans of the book can see what you read. This makes the Kindle community itself more like a social network, along the same lines as GoodReads. There's also a new "Before You Go" dialog that appears when you finish a book, prompting you to share that you finished the book, and what you thought about it, on Facebook or Twitter.
For fans of periodicals and newspapers, the Kindle has always been a good way to get read content but not a great way to browse or skim. Version 3.1 changes that, with an entirely new, section-based layout that makes reading even easier. There's a "Sections and articles" list, which shows headlines within a single section—making skimming and browsing fast and easy—and a button at the bottom of every article to jump straight to the next one.
The 3.1 firmware update should be available for download over Wi-Fi soon, but it can be easily downloaded and installed via USB from the Amazon Web site. The new features will also be available soon on Kindle apps for other platforms.