Finally received that brand new Kindle Fire or Fire HD for Christmas this year? If Santa brought you one of Amazon’s popular tablet devices this holiday season, you might now be wondering “What’s next?”

At around 50,000 apps, the Amazon AppStore doesn’t have nearly as many apps as what you’ll find with Apple or with Google’s Play Store. That said, 50,000 is nothing to sneeze at.

Whether you are looking for general entertainment, productivity or gaming– you’ll find there are many decent apps out there for your new tablet. While it is never a bad idea to just jump and explore for yourself, we’ll do our best to at least recommend a few reasonably popular Kindle apps.

Office Software

Documents To Go 3.0 Main App:

Probably considered the “de facto” standard for Android Office Suites. Not everyone loves Documents to Go, but it works well enough at what it claims to do. For free, it provides a reasonably decent way to view your documents, excel files and more.

With the purchase of the “full version” you also get the ability to edit. Again, this is a no frills solution. If you don’t plan on doing much ‘hardcore’ writing or office productivity, this will probably be good enough.

Considering the Fire and Fire HD are more consumption devices than anything, this will probably be the case.

OfficeSuite Professional 6:

I personally use this software for my Acer Iconia Tab. This is an excellent suite with a decent amount of features. On the downside? It is also very expensive at $14.99 through the Amazon AppStore. Besides content creation for word docs and excel files, you’ll also find easy PDF and PowerPoint viewing.

There is also a feature with OfficeSuite that allows you to convert text documents over to PDF files. Interestingly enough, OfficeSuite also offers Google Docs integration for accessing your Docs files and editing them in OfficeSuite.

If you think you will ever need to do true productivity work on your tablet, this is probably a better solution than Documents to Go for most users.

Image Editor

If you are looking for a flexible yet full-featured photo editor, PicShop is probably one of the best you’ll find for the Kindle Fire and Fire HD. The software supports HD images and allows editing of brightness, blur, color saturation, and gives you control over things like RedEye and the ability to crop, rotate and flip images.

Beyond that, you can add speech bubbles, enter into a Sketch Mode with different brushes and much more. There are also social integration options with Facebook, email and Twitter.

To get the most out of PicShop, you’ll want the full version for $2.50. If you are looking for a more basic photo editing experience, there is also a Lite variant that is completely free through the Amazon AppStore.

Expanded Storage

Let’s face it, with no microSD expansion, there might come a time when you want more file space. This is especially important if you want an easy way to transfer those files to your tablet without syncing it to your computer.
There are pretty much two major choices to consider here: DropBox or Box. Honestly, both are quite similar. I’m not going to go into a ton of detail here, but I will say that I use DropBox for my own needs.

Both services have a wide support for different devices, though only DropBox has Linux support. Both cloud services work with most mobile platforms. To my knowledge, Box is the only one that also supports Windows Phone devices if you happen to have one, though.

News

In today’s age, few of us are actively subscribing to print magazines and newspapers, instead opting to get our news the digital way. Listing a bunch of major news publications is pointless here because it will likely come down to taste.

That said, if you want good socially-driven news that is constantly updated with new information and presented with a convenient and friendly layout, you should check out FlipBoard. The magazine-style app looks great on your tablet and has easy social sharing tools that work with Facebook and Twitter.

Looking for an RSS reader for your news and information needs instead? The free EasyRSS app is probably one of your best bets. The UI is simple and works great, and the app itself is highly rated as one of the best you’ll find for Kindle Fire devices.

Messaging

While there are several different messenger programs for Kindle Fire users, I’ve found that imo Messenger is one of the best and works great with the Kindle Fire. There is a wide range of support for services here as well: Facebook Chat, Skype, ICQ/AIM, Google Talk, Yahoo Messenger, Steam, Jabber and more.

Another highly recommended messaging app would be the official Skype app, which is highly polished and great for your voice/vid calling needs for Android devices including the Kindle Fire line.

Weather

Weather apps are probably one of the most commonly downloaded apps for any type of mobile device. For the Kindle Fire line, one of the best out there is AccuWeather for Android. With radar overlays on Google Maps, severe weather notices, and hour-by-hour forecasts– you are covered with this app. There is also a platinium version on sale right now for $.99. 

Games

Games are pretty much one of the top reasons families buy tablets. Pointing out the ‘best’ games for the Kindle Fire tablet line is pretty difficult for a number of reasons, the biggest being that everyone has different tastes when it comes to games.

That said, here are a few from different genres that we highly recommend:

Where’s My Water: This physics-based game is all about trying to direct streams of water into an alligator’s shower. Sounds odd, but it is very fun, and equally addictive. Whether you have young ones around or not, this Disney game is quite worth the play.

Minecraft Pocket Edition: Minecraft has become a cult classic in the gaming world, and the Pocket Edition is no different. The Fire version of the game is just like the regular, allowing you to build a functioning world out of nothing but blocks. The game is on the expensive side for a Kindle Fire game at $6.99 but is worth it if you are into the series at all.

Diner Dash: This is a time-management game, which basically puts you in charge of a restaurant. You control the owner/server as she fetches order tickets, delivers food, clears tables and more. Essentially this game is simulating work, which might not sound fun but somehow is nonetheless.

Angry Birds Star Wars: There are many great Angry Birds games out there, and this is the latest one. Combining the best of Angry Birds with concepts from Star Wars, this game looks beautiful and is very addictive and fun to play as well.

Music

There are tons of Android music players out there. Some are simple and let you just play songs you’ve uploaded to your tablets, others are about streaming. This list is getting massive enough so we’ll recommend just two if you’ve just picked up that Kindle Fire for the first time and aren’t sure what to download.

Spotify: While this requires a subscription to make the most of it, it is probably worth it if you really love listening to music. This streaming service has a massive library of songs available for play on demand.

Pandora: Pandora is all about adding songs and genre types you like, and letting it generate a list of similar sounding tunes. This is a great app if you are looking to discover new songs you’ve never heard of before.

Video

Amazon has some very good services of its own here, especially if you are a Prime owner. That said, you will also want to pick up the standard video apps like Hulu Plus and Netflix, though both do require monthly fees.

Conclusion

There are many, many more great apps out there but you should at least have a rough idea now of a few good apps to help you get started. After checking some of these out, it never hurts to keep exploring and finding others that suite your needs.

Did we miss an app that you feel is one of the best that the Kindle has to offer? Let us know about the app in the comments!

The post A Look at Some of the Best Apps for your New Kindle Fire Tablet appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

Amazon has officially released an In-App Purchasing API for Amazon Appstore. This means, for example, that you can sell subscriptions to an online magazine, additional levels for a mobile game, or virtual currency to spend in a virtual environment. This is in addition to other monetization methods, like the sale price of the app itself, plus in-app advertising.

Naturally, the API is compatible with apps that’ll run on the Kindle Fire, as well as other Android devices. The revenue split on the in-app purchases is 70/30 in favor of the developer, which sounds pretty fair to me. The API can be found through the Amazon Appstore Developer Portal, along with the rest of the supporting documentation.

[Source]

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You’d think that getting that kind of front page billing would be very beneficial for developers. They get their name out there and they get in front of the eyeballs of thousands of people that may not have otherwise found their app. Unfortunately, things aren’t always quite as peachy-keen as these devs had hoped.

You see, the way that you can get your Android app featured on the front page of the Amazon Appstore is to agree to be the “Free App of the Day.” The idea is you get the promotion, build up the user base, and gain more sales down the line as a result. However, there is a stipulation in there that goes contrary to earlier assumptions.

Amazon sets the price of the apps sold in the Appstore, giving a 70% cut back to the developer. However, the developer can set a “list price” and be guaranteed to receive at least 20% of that. If you get promoted as the “Free App of the Day,” though, you waive that right. You earn nothing. And that’s what happened to Shifty Jelly, developer of Pocket Casts.

It got promoted as the Free App of the Day one day and got over 100,000 downloads. That resulted in zero dollars, of course. The day after the free promotion saw only 20 sales, then 14, then just one or two. In effect, Shifty Jelly lost money, because it then had to deal with up to 300 e-mails a day from the new 100,000+ users asking for support, plus all the additional server hardware to handle the new load. Free apps are a tough business, and many developers for iPhone experience the same thing with iOS related “free app sites.”

It has also decided to sever its relationship with the Amazon store, and recently tweeted that it had now been told the app can’t be removed unless it was also taken down from the Google Marketplace, though we’ve not been able to confirm that with Amazon.

The take home lesson is similar to that of trying to promote your business, company, or app through Amazon: know what you’re getting into and recognize that it could backfire.

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I thought that the whole point of having an app store was that you were able to find all of your apps in one convenient location. Well, the Android world just got a little more fragmented with the launch of the Amazon Appstore for Android.

This alternative to Android Market certainly has a stronger web-based interface than its official counterpart, but it does mean that you might end up going to two different places to find your Android apps. It is nice how it’s all integrated with your Amazon account, though, as well as the built in recommendation algorithm like the rest of Amazon.

In order to install apps via the Amazon Appstore, you’ll need to install the Appstore first. After that, you can browse through the apps just like how you would in Android Market. The kicker, at least for now, is that the Amazon Appstore has the exclusive on Angry Birds Rio.

The other kicker? The legal team in Cupertino has reportedly come forward to sue Amazon over the use of the name “Appstore.” They can’t patent the idea of an app store, but they can certainly try to control that precise wording.

For my part, while I appreciate the increase in consumer choice, the fragmentation of the Android app marketplaces can cause for even more confusion. There are only 3,800 apps in the Amazon take for now, but as each side gets more exclusives, this could lead to even more fragmentation… because that’s exactly what Android users and their various OS versions need, right?

[Amazon App Store via Video]

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