Whispercast for Kindle makes mass ebook/app management easy

Amazon has launched Whispercast for Kindle, a new mass-deployment and management system for ebooks – and soon apps – on Kindles and Kindle apps for schools and businesses. Intended to allow Kindle titles to be bought and shared out among students and employees, as well as remotely control device passwords, wireless settings, and what titles can be purchased. Meanwhile, Amazon says Whispercast for Kindle will soon be able to handle distributing and managing Kindle Fire applications.

For businesses, Amazon is keen to highlight Kindle's compatibility with digital documents, even if they're not ebooks purchased from its own store. PDFs and other content can be pushed out, to employees and to customers, and the system will work with company-owned Kindles or Kindles/Kindle apps running on users' own hardware.

"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" Dave Limp, Kindle VP, said of the new system. "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."

The system works with both the dedicated Kindle hardware Amazon offers and the free apps provided for iOS, Android, Mac, and Windows. Individual users can be assigned to groups – whether that's classes or grade levels for schools, or teams within businesses – and content limited to certain groups.

Whispercast for Kindle is a free service; there's more information here