The Kindle app for the iPhone/iPod Touch is easily the worst ebook reader I've ever tried to use. First and most annoying, the text is full justified, and there's nothing you can do to change that, which on the tiny iPod Touch screen makes huge, gaping spaces in between the words. Then, you can't change the font, only a limited number of font sizes, and the only options for coloring are black on white, white on black, or brown on sepia. There's no search feature to speak of. And worst of all, when you look to see how far along into the book you are, it says something like "169-172". Turn to the next page and it says "172-175". Huh? What does that mean. I tried to find some kind of built-in documentation, but the "help" button takes you to a web page (no help if you're not online, which frustrated me in the subway this morning) and on the webpage you have to navigate through a bunch of stuff about the Kindle device before you get to a FAQ page that tells you almost nothing about the app or what the mysterious numbers on the bottom mean.

After some creative Google searching I did find a page on the Amazon site that mentions that the Kindle uses "location numbers", but no explanation of what those numbers are actually supposed to mean.

What a piece of garbage. It wouldn't be so annoying if Sony wasn't dragging its heals about getting me a replacement Sony Reader after I broke mine (which deserves another post all by itself, WTF Sony?? It's been weeks! But I digress). This book I really want to read digitally is only available to me through the Kindle store or the Sony Store, and as Sony formatted books are basically useless without a Sony Reader, the Kindle won out. (Needless to say I would much much much prefer the book in an open, non-DRM'd format (cough ePub cough cough) that I could read on any device and with any program, so I could bring it into a real ebook reader like Stanza. But instead I'm stuck with this crappy software as the only way to read something I ostensibly own and should be able to to what I like with. Gah.)