Today, Amazon announced “Kindle for PC” – a free application that let’s readers enjoy reading books purchased from the Kindle Store right on their Windows PC. Today the Kindle Store has over 360,000 books to purchase, download and read. That’s a lot of books. We showed off Kindle for PC today for the first time at our New York City Launch Party for Windows 7.

 

The beta for Kindle for PC will be available as a free download in November. You can sign-up here to receive an email when Kindle for PC Beta is available.

Kindle for PC takes advantage of key Windows 7 features such as Windows Touch for zooming in and out with a pinch of the fingers and turning pages with the swipe of a finger. It also includes integration with the Windows Taskbar through a Jump List. I’ve been playing with it for the last few days on my HP TouchSmart tx2 and it’s wonderful.

 

Kindle for PC will also run on PCs running Windows XP and Windows Vista as well.

The Kindle for PC application also uses Amazon’s Whispersync technology. This allows the application to sync bookmarks and the last read page across PCs (and other devices such as the Kindle and Kindle DX).

Here is a demo of Kindle for PC in action!

Thousands of Microsoft employees have begun hosting Windows 7 Launch Parties this week. I had the pleasure of attending one last night. Microsoft employees have been given the opportunity to do “preview” Launch Parties before October 22nd to show off Windows 7 to their friends and family (public Windows 7 Launch Parties officially kick off on October 22nd).

The Launch Party I attended last night was hosted by Dana Manciagli, a General Manager on Microsoft’s US OEM Team. Her Launch Party took place at The Parlor in Bellevue and she had her friend and fellow Microsoft employee (Cedric Dahl) demonstrate 7 key Windows 7 features such as many of the Windows Taskbar enhancements, Aero Shake and Aero Snap.

The audience seemed to really like what they saw. One conversation I overheard was about how much better Windows 7’s window management is for applications. Another related to using Aero Snap to compare Excel spreadsheets.

After the demonstration, there was a trivia contest with questions relating to the Windows 7 demos. Guests who answered the questions right received some cool prizes.

Everyone who attended Dana’s Windows 7 Launch Party was asked to donate to the kids of Junior Achievement for Washington State. Dana creatively combined her Launch Party with Microsoft’s annual Giving Campaign. Matter a fact, Ina Fried from CNET posted about another effort to raise money for Microsoft’s Giving Campaign earlier today.

At the Launch Party, I got to finally meet Laura Foy from Channel 9. She has posted an awesome video from the event including several interviews. Watch the video here.

Overall, it was a fantastic event! I look forward to hearing more about people’s Windows 7 Launch Parties come October 22nd.

Back in June, I blogged the first of 6 blog posts dedicated to tips and/or tricks for Windows Media Player in Windows 7. I had originally intended to post the remaining 5 blog posts over the course of 3 weeks. However, that didn’t quite happen. I intend to post the remaining posts, starting today with the 2^nd blog post, but won’t commit to any specific timeline.

Windows 7 introduces Jump Lists as one of the many enhancements to the Windows Taskbar. And Windows Media Player takes advantage of this feature for quick access to your digital media.

Here are a few tips for working with the Jump List for Windows Media Player:

• You can drag most items off of the Windows Media Player Jump List and onto the desktop to create a shortcut that can be used on any computer to do that query and return local items.
• Doing a search on a view and double clicking one of the result items will log the search query to the Jump List. For example, can go to all songs and search for ‘NOT genre:Christmas’ and you’ll get a Jump List item of all your music with no Christmas music (see above screenshot).
• You can pin any file Windows Media Player will play in the Jump List by directly dragging and dropping the file onto the Windows Media Player icon on the Windows Taskbar.
• Clicking “Play All” or playing a stack view from File Explorer will log to the Jump List.
• If you go to Organize, then Options, and then Player - the last option in Player settings “Save recently used to the Jump List instead of frequently used” toggles what shows on your Jump List.

Hope you enjoyed these Jump List tips for Windows Media Player!

RELATED:
Keyboard Shortcuts for Windows Media Player in Windows 7

Microsoft Hardware has a great set of products that work very well with Windows Vista and Windows 7. When Windows 7 hits stores this fall, Microsoft Hardware will release new software that will allow the current line-up of Microsoft Hardware products (mice, keyboards, LifeCams, gaming devices and notebook accessories) to take advantage of new capabilities being introduced with Windows 7 such as the new Windows Taskbar and Device Stage.

Microsoft Hardware will be releasing new software with a feature called Taskbar Favorites, specifically designed for Microsoft keyboards from Microsoft. This feature will give users a quick way to access the applications represented on the new Windows Taskbar in Windows 7. Taskbar Favorites will automatically map the order of applications on the Windows Taskbar to the “My Favorites” hot keys on a Microsoft Hardware keyboard such as the Digital Media Keyboard 3000. “My Favorites” hot keys are a series of buttons on the top of Microsoft keyboards (circled below).

And using Windows Flip, with the press of a button people will be able to see a live preview of all their open windows. This allows people to more quickly navigate between open windows and choose a desired application.

Also, all Microsoft Hardware products will be recognized and shown as actual images of the product when you open the Devices and Printers folder.

In the above screenshot, you will see that my Digital Media Keyboard 3000, Notebook Optical Mouse 3000 and LifeCam Show all show up with actual product images making it much easier to work with the hardware.

The final versions of the software for Microsoft Hardware mice and keyboard products, which will include Taskbar Favorites and Device Stage and Windows Flip support will be available June 26th at the Microsoft Hardware Windows 7 Web site. The final versions of the Microsoft Hardware software for LifeCam products will be available July 31st.

For more information, see this press release on Microsoft PressPass.

As of today, I am running the Windows 7 Beta on several different PCs including my laptop, my work PC, and my PC at home, which I upgraded recently to Windows 7 from Windows Vista SP1. (I’ll be outlining the PCs I’m using to test Windows 7 shortly.) I’m all connected with HomeGroup, I’ve got several different Libraries set up, and I’m loving the new Windows Taskbar. I’ve got Windows Media Center recording my favorite TV shows and my Zune 80 syncing up with the Zune software. And things are even better with Windows Live Essentials installed. I find the Windows 7 Beta to be an amazing beta release and I am extremely excited for you to get your hands on it later this week! I’d like to take a moment to share some specifics regarding the Windows 7 Beta that I think are very important for people looking to give Windows 7 a spin.

On January 9th, the Windows 7 Beta will be available for Windows enthusiasts to download via the Windows 7 page on Windows.com. The Windows 7 Beta is going to be available download-only (we’re not sending out physical media) and available for a limited time to the first 2.5 million people who download the beta.

The Windows 7 Beta will be available in English, German, Japanese, Arabic, and Hindi, and each language will be available in 32-bit and 64-bit versions (except Hindi which will only be available in 32-bit). Because the Windows 7 Beta will be offered download-only, it will be provided to you as an ISO image (an .iso file) that you download. After downloading either the 32-bit or 64-bit ISO image of the Windows 7 Beta, you will be required to burn the ISO image to a DVD to install Windows 7. So you want to be sure you have a DVD burner before spending the time downloading the ISO image.

To burn the ISO image of the Windows 7 Beta to DVD, if your PC comes with Nero or Roxio products – you should be able to burn the ISO image to DVD. If you don’t already have DVD burning software on your PC, you can also check out ImgBurn which is free and can be downloaded here.

The Windows 7 Beta only supports Windows Vista SP1 to Windows 7 upgrades. So if you intend to do an upgrade – be sure it is on a PC running Windows Vista with Service Pack 1. We are not yet announcing anything regarding finalized upgrade paths for Windows 7.

The Windows 7 Beta will be only available in one edition, which is roughly equivalent the Ultimate edition of Windows Vista.

Also, another important thing to keep in mind is that the Windows 7 Beta will expire on August 1st, 2009.

I also need to emphasize that this is a beta of an unreleased operating system. Be sure to backup all your important data. As much as the Windows 7 Beta completely rocks, part of the beta process is discovering bugs and reporting those bugs. Some of those bugs could possibly lead to data loss. I tend to be a risk-taker myself and have gone all-out with the Windows 7 Beta by putting it on almost all my PCs both at work and at home, but not everyone should do this. I recommend using Windows Vista’s Backup and Restore features to ensure your information is backed up before trying out the Windows 7 Beta. Click here for several methods of backing up your data in Windows Vista.

The Windows 7 Beta is targeted toward the enthusiast crowd – people excited and knowledgeable with technology. If you don’t quite understand much of what I’ve written above, it is probably best you don’t try to install the Windows 7 Beta.

If you are an IT Professional, you can visit the Springboard Series for Windows 7 on TechNet (see the Windows 7 tab) on January 9th to sign up for the Windows 7 Beta but also can also get access to dynamic resources including video walkthroughs and the new Windows 7 forums.

The Engineering Windows 7 blog is finally starting to integrate the operating system into their articles. Most of the previous articles that have been posted at the website were about theoretical aspects and things Microsoft learned from past operating systems.

It contains
Refreshed Look
Pinning
Unification
Interactive, Grouped Thumbnails
Aero Peek
Jump Lists
Custom Window Switchers
Thumbnail Toolbars
Notification Area
Overlay Icons and Progress Bars
Color Hot-track
Start Menu

The first thing that might catch the attention is the Color Hot-track feature. This is a visual aid that becomes active when the user moves the mouse over a Taskbar icon.
When a person moves her mouse over a running program on the taskbar, she will be pleasantly surprised to find that a light source tracks her mouse and the color of the light is actually based on the icon itself. We calculate the most dominant RGB of the icon and dynamically paint the button with this color.

Overlay Icons and Progress Bars have not been mentioned before as well:
Cleaning the Notification Area warrants us to consider other ways that programs can surface important information. We’ll always had overlay icons throughout Windows (e.g. to show shortcuts in Explorer) so we decided to bring this functionality to the taskbar. An icon can now be shown over a program’s taskbar button. Furthermore, programs can also give feedback about progress by having their taskbar button turn into a progress bar.