Kindle Dummy

You Know You're in the Mainstream When...

2009-04-29T07:00:00.000-07:00

A cell phone ad--I can't for the life of me remember which company it is for, do you know?--mentions the Kindle in passing. Women on the beach are shown downloading romance novels to their Kindles so they can read them in a matter of seconds. It's not just great publicity for the Kindle, it shows that it's entering the mainstream of American life.

Hooked

2009-04-16T05:35:00.000-07:00

Josh Marshall is hooked on his Kindle. Read his post today on the front page of Talking Points Memo. The post is entitled "Another Disconcerting Moment." The moment came when he realized a book he wanted to read was not available on the Kindle. I am having more and more of these moments myself. I had to buy two books from Amazon.com and was peeved that they weren't available for the Kindle. And one book I wanted to download cost almost as much as the price for the printed book: $13.99, as I recall. Shouldn't all Kindle books be $9.99 or less because the publisher doesn't have to print them?

Great Business Use for Twitter

2009-03-25T06:18:00.000-07:00

I just heard a story on NPR about a great use for Twitter. A food truck in L.A. uses Twitter tweets to tell everyone where it is. Look here:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=101881984

I can see this working with the Bookmobile, the UPS and FedEx delivery guys, the Good Humor truck, Peapod, etc., etc.

Kindle 2

2009-03-25T06:09:00.000-07:00

My Reactions: Kindle 2

It has taken me a while to get to this as I have been finishing Kindle for Dummies. The Kindle 2 is definitely an improvement. Things I love:

The thin profile
The five-way controller
The keyboard (mostly)
The repositioned buttons
Very long battery life
Just start typing, and the search box pops up immediately at the bottom of the Kindle window.

I mean, you can leave the Kindle on for three or four days and it still works fine. It's amazing.

Things I don't love:

No ability to create folders or organize anything
No text editor
No protective case; you have to buy one separately
No SD card. Yes, I know there is a lot of internal memory. But the only way I have to transfer anything to a computer is through the USB cable. If I don't have the cable with me, I'm stuck.
The @ key has been removed from the keyboard--I wish it was still there.
When you press the SYM key, the @ key is not automatically highlighted.
All the keys are in one single block; I want them spaced out more.
The spacebar is oddly positioned.

Most of my objections are with the keyboard, I guess. My cell phone keyboard on my Treo is better organized than this one. But the Kindle 2 is a lot better, no doubt.

Webmail with your Kindle

2009-03-01T12:45:00.000-08:00

I had trouble accessing my Webmail from my Kindle until I did two things:

I made sure I was in Advanced Mode rather than Default Mode.
I called my ISP (Speakeasy) and asked if they had a simple interface for Webmail. They pointed me to web2mail.com.

It turns out that my usual Webmail interface uses Java, which just doesn't show up on the Kindle. The web2mail interface isn't going to win awards for beauty or for orderliness--all the messages look like they are centered on the page rather than lined up in a neat row--but it works, and that's the main thing.

Reading the New York Times

2009-02-21T06:16:00.000-08:00

It's convenient. It's readable. You can change the type size at will. But it's not perfect. I'm noticing two things about my New York Times subscription:

If you don't download the paper a particular day, you just don't get it. Suppose someone mentions a story that occurred on Friday, and you never turned on your Kindle that day. You're out of luck. This doesn't seem right to me.
There are very few photos. One article contained the words Chris Brown, right. But there was no photo of Chris Brown. The words didn't make any sense.

It seems to me that if you pay a monthly fee for a paper, you should be able to at least look at it a day or two after the fact, even if you didn't download it that day. In the real world, printed papers pile up on your doorstep if you're out of town. Why can't they pile up on your Kindle?Am I missing something?

Audible.com: Why so hard?

2009-02-19T09:04:00.000-08:00

I loved being read to as a kid, and as an adult, I still love it. Audiobooks are great on the Kindle. So why is it so darn difficult to get them from Audible.com? And why are they so incredibly expensive? Since Amazon owns Audible, you would think they would have an interest in encouraging people to download to the Kindle. Instead, you have to:

1. Sign up for an Audible.com account, if necessary.
2. Click Device Center near the top of the Audible.com home page.
3. Near the top of the Device Center page, after MP3, PDA, and Mobile Phones, click Other.
4. Next to Amazon Kindle, click the link Click here to download your software.
5. On the next page, click Download Software under the operating system you are using on your computer (Windows or Mac).
6. On the next page, you are asked to click Select under the method you’ll use to listen to files. Don’t choose any of these. Click Other Software Options instead.
7. Click the download link under Audible Manager.
8. A dialog box appears prompting you to save the file.

Are you still with me?

9. When the AudibleManager Setup screen appears, choose Amazon Kindle from the drop-down list.

When AudibleManager window opens, connect your Kindle to your USB port on your computer.

Your Kindle shows up in the bottom of the AudibleManager window. Your Audible.com library appears in the top. Move files from the top to the bottom to get them on your Kindle.

One nice thing about the AudibleManager window is that it lets you see how much room you have left on your Kindle, and gives you the chance to move files to an external SD card if you prefer. This is advisable because audio books are huge in terms of file size and will quickly eat up your Kindle's internal memory. You get a nice pie chart that tells you how much memory is being used and what's left:

My Daughters Hate This Thing

2009-02-18T10:11:00.000-08:00

I am working on a book called Kindle for Dummies. I love this thing. My daughters hate it. Why? You would think it would be the other way around: the 14 and 16-year-old girls typing madly on every electronic device they can get their hands on, while I, the 50-something luddite, surrounded by musty old books. Instead, I spend ten or more hours a day typing, and they lug around backpacks weighing 30 or 40 lbs. They adore printed books. They love turning and folding printed newspapers. Maybe they have too much common sense for all these gadgets. They are afraid a whole culture of reading is fading away. I think there's room for both of us. The Kindle is re-kindling (sorry) my enthusiasm for reading. I am reading the newspaper more these days than I have in the past ten years. I hope this thing will replace their bulky textbooks one day. They can still read their tattered copies of The Fellowship of the Ring. The Kindle will give them quick and easy access to more perishable content. Like this blog.