The folks at Amazon are opening up development of new applications for their Kindle, which is scheduled to start offering new content. There will be three categories of development applications including free applications, one time fee applications and applications that require a monthly fee be paid.

This is what Amazon does not want from developers:

Voice over IP functionality, advertising, offensive materials, collection of customer information without express customer knowledge and consent, or usage of the Amazon or Kindle brand in any way are not allowed. In addition, active content must meet all Amazon technical requirements, not be a generic reader, and not contain malicious code.

We will work to refine the above guidelines throughout the beta.

This should add value to the Kindle by allowing users to expand what their Kindle will be able to do. Some also believe that Amazon is doing this so as to compete against Apple. Only time will tell how this plays out.

Comments welcome.

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