This blog is my attempt to share information with faculty, introducing new apps, websites, or other snippets of information that may be of use to faculty. I am also using it to keep track of projects I'm working on that might be good to reference in the future.

Friday, April 5, 2013

Kindle Fire Upate: How to sideload apps

Kindle Fire Update:  
I decided that while I liked the calendar feature on the Kindle, I didn't like the default mail program.  So I thought I'd load the Google Mail app.  The problem is it is not available on the Kindle App Store - only on Google's store. 

However there are steps to bypass this and they were fairly simple.  It is called side-loading and I found this article and it was even easier than it sounded:
http://androidcowboy.com/2012/01/how-to-sideload-apps-on-kindle-fire/

In the steps to get the apps installed, they talk about using a file explorer and copying the apk files over, but the files I needed were linked at the bottom of the article, and all I had to do was click, download and install.  Very simple.

I side-loaded the Gmail and Google+ apps for now.  Both seem to work with no problems.  I may try others in the future.  I did keep the default calendar program and I like the way it works for now.

AndroidCowboy.com is a great website to get started on to find out how to use Android tablets and apps, in general, as well as some Kindle specific info.

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