Amazon’s ‘Whispercast for Kindle’ Program Facilitates Large-Scale eBook Deployment
SEATTLE—Oct. 17, 2012—Amazon.com is launching “Whispercast for Kindle,” which gives schools and business customers a simple, scalable online tool for deploying Kindle devices and Kindle content. Whispercast provides a single access point to easily purchase and distribute Kindle books and documents for educational, marketing and employee incentive programs across Kindle devices and free Kindle reading applications for iPad, iPhone, Android phones and tablets, PCs and Macs. In the coming months, it will alsol support distribution of Kindle Fire applications.
“Hundreds of thousands of students around the world are already reading on Kindles,” said Dave Limp, vice president, Amazon Kindle. “Today, we are announcing Whispercast, a free, scalable solution for school and business administrators to centrally manage thousands of Kindles and wirelessly distribute Kindle books as well as their own documents to their users. Organizations can also design bring-your-own-device programs at school or work using personally-owned Kindles, Kindle Fires, and other tablets using the free Kindle reading applications for receiving content.”
Whispercast for Schools
Whispercast gives teachers and educators access to millions of Kindle books, including best sellers and free classics, they can easily purchase and distribute to develop educational programs for every age group and level. Schools can also register and seamlessly manage the settings on all their Kindles, including adding password protection, centrally configuring wireless connectivity to their organizations’ private networks and restricting individual purchases.
“We have been using Kindles in our schools for two and half years, and our students are more enthusiastic than ever about reading and studying,” said Keith Mastroides, principal at Clearwater High School. “We started with 2,000 Kindle eReaders at our school and the program has been so successful that we have expanded it beyond our school and now more than 122 schools in the district are using Kindles. Whispercast gives us the ability to better streamline the process to manage our Kindles and content, so we can continue to grow the program.”
Whispercast for Business
Whispercast makes it easy for business owners to manage and deploy fleets of Kindle eReaders and tablets as a way to support employee productivity or customer marketing initiatives. Additionally, Whispercast makes it easy to centrally distribute PDFs and other business documents such as a conference agenda or training materials to employees or customers.
With “bring your own device” support, businesses will be able to distribute documents and Kindle books to personally-owned Kindles and other devices with access to free Kindle reading applications. Businesses will also be able to use Whispercast to purchase and distribute applications from the Amazon Appstore for Kindle Fires in the coming months.
“With Whispercast, our professional sales representatives can focus on helping our clients choose the medical information they want on their Kindle devices,” said Jim Donohue, managing director, Global Clinical Reference, Elsevier. “Rather than dealing with the logistics of shipping, managing and replacing physical books, hospitals and life sciences companies can now use Whispercast to immediately procure and distribute select Elsevier eBooks to their clinicians, researchers and staff.”
Whispercast for Non-Profit Organizations
Even nonprofit organizations with remote locations around the world have experienced the benefits of Whispercast. “Over the past year, Worldreader has trialed Whispercast to wirelessly deliver over 200,000 e-books to children in sub-Saharan Africa,” said David Risher, president of the literacy charity Worldreader. “With Whispercast, we are helping kids read more than ever. Kids no longer have to wait for a new book to be shipped. It is simply delivered electronically and waiting for them to start reading.”
About Amazon
Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN), a Fortune 500 company based in Seattle, opened on the World Wide Web in July 1995 and today offers Earth’s Biggest Selection. Amazon.com, Inc. seeks to be Earth’s most customer-centric company, where customers can find and discover anything they might want to buy online, and endeavors to offer its customers the lowest possible prices.
http://www.amazon.com
Source: Amazon.
