Kindle for iPad, iPhone get multimedia playback

Amazon pushed out the upgraded software for iPad, iPhone and iPod touch last week, but the multimedia ebooks hadn’t arrived until today — 13 titles in all, including stuff from Rick Steves and Terry Golway. And, no, don’t go trying this on an actual physical Kindle, ’cause it ain’t never gonna work.

TechLand reports that Kindle for iOS (iTunes, universal, free) can now display and play multimedia files — think movie and audio clips — embedded within ebooks. Specifically, there are 13 titles that have the stuff and those are now available for purchase from the Kindle Store.

If you’d already purchased these titles, including Rick Steves’ London and Terry Golway’s Together We Cannot Fail, they will be automatically updated with the new content.

“In the new Kindle Edition with audio/video of Rick Steves’ London, the embedded walking tours allow customers to listen to Rick as they explore the sites of London,” said Bill Newlin, publisher, Avalon Travel. “Rick’s narration adds depth to the reader’s experience, while listeners can follow the routes more easily with the text.”

Interestingly, as noted by Ars Technica, this multimedia functionality isn’t available in the A/V capable Mac, PC or Blackberry versions of the Kindle software.

Thereupon, these first 13 ebooks are the first of what is expected to be a flood of enhanced titles.

Exciting stuff or just so much meh? I’m thinking they should have given away a few titles to prime the well…

What’s your take?

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