TNW on "10 different ways to use your Kindle"

COUNT THE WAYS

TNW's Quinton O'Reilly points out that the Kindle can do quite a bit more than read ebooks and articles.

Games
  He mentions the old built-in games of Minesweeper and GoMoku, and that for those in the U.S. especially, there are now plenty of game apps in the Kindle Store.

Reading [b&w] Comics and Manga
There are good illustrations there, so you should just go on over to his article to see them in connection with such things as Reading comics and Manga, with his find of a free app called Mangle by FooSoft.

Personal Note Taker
He also recommends the "Personal Note Taker" Notepad by 7 Dragons (the group makes excellent tools), but go there to read why.   Kindle-Edition subscribers: you can click on the link (on the Kindle) for his article (then zoom it or use Menu/Article Mode)... OR instead use your computer to type "bit.ly/kindle10ways" ("http://" doesn't have to be typed on any web browser these days nor even on the Kindle.)
 And you can type the URL (link) "bit.ly/notepad4kindle" to get the 99c Notepad.

Image Viewer
He describes how to add and view images on the Kindle, reminding people that the images used shouldn't be bigger than 600x800 pixels, to save loading time.

Presentations and Flash Cards
O'Reilly mentions converting PDFs and Word files.  Word documents can be sent to your private Kindle-device address, and Amazon servers convert these to Kindle format.

  See my blog article on How to send WORD doc files to your Kindle. ( bit.ly/kwdoc2kindle ) .   However, PDFs can be read as-is on the Kindle, although sending them for conversion gets you a 2nd often more readable copy while it ignores original layout.

  He points out you can keep your notes together this way and then mentions saving flash cards onto the Kindle and viewing them sideways and tells us about  FlashCardExchange ( flashcardexchange.com ).

Navigation (Step-by-step directions from here to there)
In connection with the Kindle's Navigation help (a favorite of mine),  in getting step-to-step driving/biking/bus/walking directions.   The link he shows for typing on the Kindle (and then bookmarking) is good --
( maps.google.com/m/directions ) -- but the article's link for that doesn't work.

  Here's my tutorial/guide on how this is done though.  (Link:  bit.ly/kdriving )  My guide uses that directions-link.  That was actually probably found on my blog.

MP3 player & Text to Speech
He also mentions the mp3 player and Text to Speech Reader and shows you how to start those.

Language Translator
AND, I'd forgotten about Kindlefish, which is a form of Google Translation that's optimized for the Kindle.  O'Reilly recommends the Kindlefish, and if you'd like to read more about it, see my blog article on Kindlefish ( Link: bit.ly/kwkfish ) as well as the follow-up fix for it Kindlefish-fix ( bit.ly/kfishfix ).

Dictaphone
ALSO, he's found a way to use the Kindle as a Dictaphone and gives a link to the instructions given at mobileread forums ( bit.ly/kmicrophone )


I see 9 different headings to use the Kindle, but I imagine READING was counted first :-).  Nice selection of tips in one article.


Kindle 3's   (UK: Kindle 3's)   K3 Special ($114)   K3-3G Special ($139)   DX Graphite

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Check often: Temporarily-free late-listed non-classics or recently published ones
  Guide to finding Free Kindle books and Sources.  Top 100 free bestsellers.  Liked-books under $1
UK-Only: recently published non-classics, bestsellers, or £5 Max ones
    Also, UK customers should see the UK store's Top 100 free bestsellers.

Read More >

Kindle News: With corrections of some inaccuracies. Kindle for PC updated with Collections. Less-known Kindle features.

KINDLE NEWS, AUGUST 2

FoxNews: Features Amazon should emphasize
FoxNews's Clayton Morris writes, "Things Amazon Should Tell Us About the Kindle," a well-intentioned article with some good points but which has a couple of errors that need correcting.

While pointing out that most people don't know about the 'Collections' feature (folder equivalents that are implemented with 'tags' or labels) or the text-to-speech ('TTS') function by which the Kindle voices (male or female) can read aloud to you from books, subscriptions, or personal documents if you're too busy doing something else, he laments that "Amazon doesn't do a very good job marketing the Kindle as a service as well as a consumer device" and he's found that people are more inclined toward the device once they're made aware of what it can do besides presenting e-books for reading.

  It's true that the computerized voice (taken from the recordings of words by humans -- see the Tom voice for more info on the 'Tom' voice -- cannot replace actor renditions.  The TTS is serviceable though, for short sessions, and not as robotic as most computer voices.

  However, he complains that when he creates Collections on his Kindle, these won't be available to a replacement- or new Kindle.  Actually, they are -- as long as you don't delete the contents of the first Kindle before you replicate the Collection.  The User Guides explain how this is done.

  I wrote the following in Comments to Morris' article, as I couldn't find an email address for him. (Bracketed words are added for the blog.]

' Clayton,
1. Update your Kindle for PC, as it now has Collections.
      [This is included in the latest update, though it is somewhat buggy for a few people but fine for most, per what I see on the forums.]

2. Also, when you get a new Kindle, go to Archived Items folder, which will hold titles of Kindle books you've bought AND you'll see "Add other device collections" - and it'll download your Collection choices.  But first get the books [by clicking on the titles] and then add the Collection from another device and the books will automatically go into the Collections. '

As he points out, the text-to-speech feature is, for him, "a wonderful feature I use regularly during car rides or sleepy train jaunts."  I know people who use it while cooking or exercising.  No competing dedicated e-reader has this.  In fact, no new competing e-Ink reader has a correctly-working web browser and the other e-Ink reader vendors are dropping free 3G even for bookstore downloads, not to mention never offering free 3G access to the rest of the net, albeit slow-access.  To keep things simple, web browsers have not been customized for touchscreen e-Ink eReaders from the basic, optionally embedded Android web browser and they don't work correctly, so they are hidden.

  He focuses on the two features he has found very valuable and doesn't mention that the Kindle can play mp3s (whether audio books or music) as background and that is now a unique feature too because other ebook vendors are simplifying, removing speakers and headphone access.  For more on this see the "Features Comparison" here between the new Nook e-Ink and the current Kindle 3.

  Re Collections: See more on this in the Kindleworld Guide to Making Collections.  It's also good to read Collections: Cautions.

  Re Kindle for PC update v1.6 -- as with the Kindle device version, you have to add or import a Collection from another Kindle device to see the Collections you've made.


Daily Mail (UK)
Daily Mail headlines "New rules for Apple's App store mean Amazon must hand over 30% of profits made through its Kindle app."

  As most readers of this blog know, what Apple would have wanted with 30% of the sale of an e-book was *100%* of Amazon's profits, since Amazon (thanks to the Apple Agency model set up with large publishers) gets 30% of a sale from the Big6 publishers).

  That Apple would actually stake a claim to 100% of the profit is seldom reported.  Now, we don't know if Apple quietly offered Amazon and Barnes & Noble a lower percentage.  At any rate, 30% is all that's ever reported and is the figure from their guidelines for app developers, but that is usually based on subscriptions, for which the publishers would get to keep 70% of a sale rather than the situation with bookstore vendors, who must give 70% to the Big6 publishers, leaving the rival bookstore vendors $0.00.

  There are now many news stories about anger from iPad Kindle-book app users, focused mostly on Apple at this point.  I don't understand why Apple would think this is a good thing for them, the company that began its life with a now-famous Super Bowl ad showing the non-robotic among us hurling a hammer into the screen image of an authoritarian figure-head, "smashing it to bits and releasing a strong breeze and a bright light, while the citizens gape in awe.  A voice-over announces, 'On January 24, Apple Computer will introduce the Macintosh.  And you'll see why 1984 won't be like "1984"'." You can see this at the uriah.com site.


Photo credit: eHow's "How to Edit Kindle Collections with Calibre"


Kindle 3's   (UK: Kindle 3's)   K3 Special ($114)   K3-3G Special ($139)   DX Graphite

---

Check often: Temporarily-free late-listed non-classics or recently published ones
  Guide to finding Free Kindle books and Sources.  Top 100 free bestsellers.  Liked-books under $1
UK-Only: recently published non-classics, bestsellers, or £5 Max ones
    Also, UK customers should see the UK store's Top 100 free bestsellers.

Read More >