Amazon is giving their Kindle a makeover with a little something old and lot of somethings new. First, the throwback. The most buzz-worthy change coming in the latest update is the addition of “real” page numbers, a quiet homage to the e-reader’s predecessor. By popular demand, the 3.1 version software will display the page number that corresponds to the same the location in a print edition when a reader presses the “Menu” button. These old-fashioned markers will show up alongside those new-fangled location numbers that correspond to each line of text and are displayed at the bottom of the screen. Of course, this doesn’t make for a perfect symbiosis between the e-reader and any old paperback. Only some Kindle books will have corresponding page data, and then that will be data for one edition of a book. This means that if your goal is to know exactly where you are when switching mediums, you could still be left doing some page-thumbing. A quick search on Amazon shows, for example, various editions of Moby Dick that have 656 pages, 570 pages, 464 pages, and 767 pages — just on the first page of results. That said, for book-lovers uncomfortable with making the switch or book-clubbers hungry for cross-referencing, this is certainly a start. And it will at least give students a way to prove that they’re not just making up their citations (e.g., “The pathos Melville evokes at location 5132 …”). (More on Time.com: Where to Find the Best Free E-Books) The rest of the updates being highlighted are less about the “book” portion of the Kindle and more about the “electronic.” There is a “Public Notes” function that allows Kindlers to share their insights and highlights via social media. And there’s a “Before You Go” function that will be available at the end of the book, prompting readers to give the work an out-of-five star rating and/or tell people how they’re feeling at the precise moment of their successful book completion. And finally, there will be snazzier navigation tools for … Continue reading Kindle Update: Page Numbers, More Ways to (Over-)Share