Kindle Tips

XKCD creator Randall Munroe was bothered by having to exercise two or three muscles to hold his kindle up while reading in bed, lying on his side, so he created this lovely Kindle-holder:

(via Boing Boing Gadgets)

The smart bloggers over at Blog Kindle have made up a download&edit process to add your own screensavers to your shiny new Kindle 2:

Before you continue with the instructions below, please understand that you are doing it at your own risk and this can potentially void your warranty. On the bright side, the update seems small, straightforward and reversable and several people (myself included – see pictures below) have successfully applied it to their devices.

To enable custom screensavers:

1. Download kindle_screensaver_hack-0.3.zip. This seems to the latest version now and I’ll try to keep this post updated with more versions as they become available.
2. Unpack it.
3. Connect your Kindle to your PC via USB. Go to the Kindle drive (usually K:\)
4. If you don’t see system folder, you need to configure Windows to show hidden files and folders. Otherwise go the next step.
5. Go to the \system folder and create sceen_saver subfolder in it.
6. Copy all of the images you want your screensaver to randomly cycle tough. Both PNG and JPEG formats are OK. While Kindle will resize images it’s best to resize them to 600×800 beforehand. Definitely don’t try putting 10 megapixel photos from your camera there as screensaver would then take long time to load and image will not display right. Good freeware tool to edit images is Paint.NET
7. Copy Update_kindle2_user_screen_savers.bin that you’ve unpacked in step 2 to the root directory of your Kindle 2.
8. Unplug the USB cable.
9. Press “Menu”, select “Settings”, press “Menu”, select “Update Your Kindle”.
10. It normally should take under a minute to update and reboot your Kindle. And you’re done!

If you did everything right you should see the following in at the bottom of your settings screen.

via blog kindle

Amazon has updated the software on the original Kindle.    These updates include:

• Image zoom: Zoom in on any image in Kindle books or periodicals using the scroll wheel.
• Enhanced content management: Delete items directly from the Home screen with a new short-cut key–scroll to the item and push the “backspace” key.
• Improved character and font support: New support includes Greek characters and monospace fonts.

To update your Kindle software, simply turn the wireless on and leave your Kindle alone for about ten minutes.

Kindle is designed to automatically check for and download updates when one is available. If an update is available, Kindle will download and install the update the next time the wireless connection is activated and Kindle goes into sleep mode.

During the update, you’ll see screens that show the update progress. The update should take less than 10 minutes and is complete when Kindle displays the Home screen. Do not power off or reset the Kindle until the update is complete.

Alas, they haven’t enabled any sorting of documents by folders — or even viewing only the files stored on the SD card or in the Kindle Memory, both of which Content manager can do without a problem.

Nor have they done anything to make sorting and exporting your notes any more functional.  But hey – baby steps!  Thanks, Amazon!

Today’s tip:

On your Home menu, if you hold down the Next Page button for about a second before releasing it, the Kindle will jump to the end of the list. Similarly, holding the Previous Page button will jump to the beginning.

from thekindle, via a thorough list of kindle tips and tutorials at hack your kindle on college degrees

Welcome, new Kindletips readers!    If you’re a new Kindle user, here’s some helpful posts that you may want to see:

Kindle Shortcuts

Importing My Clippings (obtaining your own notes is a rather unwieldy task)

Putting your own pictures on the Kindle :

Adding pdfs to your Kindle:

And my personal wishlist of tips and tweaks:

1. Notes organization:
   1. All notes, bookmarks, and clippings are mixed together in the text file called “My Clippings” by the date entered;  I’d like to see them sorted by book and book page (or even chapter heading!).
   2. All notes are cited only by location in the text.
   3. I’d like to email my notes on one document to myself – or otherwise retrieve them without jumping through the hoops of importing my clippings
2. Book organization:  I have 14 pages of books right now.  I’d like to put them in folders:  new submissions, client books, pleasure reading.
3. Page numbers:  My colleague would very much like to be able to tell how long a book or proposal is – while within the document as well as looking at the Home screen.    Book page numbering is not yet obsolete, when we as readers go from kindle to book to computer screen every day!
4. Chapter headings on our own documents would also be useful. Particularly if page numbering isn’t possible.
5. Faster text entry.  The keyboard has a pronounced delay, which makes making notes difficult.
6. Gifts: I’d like to be able to send a gift to another Kindle user
7. I’d like it to be easier to switch credit cards for Kindle purchases – even to be able to on the device itself.
8. Add Conde Nast magazines - including the New Yorker.  Newspapers are well represented in their availability on the Kindle, but magazines are not, yet.

Please feel free to add your own wishlist items or shortcuts to this list — and if you have any questions, our “research team” is happy to pursue new problems!

I read a great Kindle tip today at Kindleville, which I’d like to share with you:

The other day I found myself on a 4-hour flight at 30,000 feet or so with a locked-up Kindle. This is at least the 5th time I’ve had to reset my Kindle but this one was a bit trickier. It’s amazing how hard it is to find a paperclip when you’re up in the friendly skies. I checked my bag. No go. Even my handy folder full of various business papers came up empty. Fortunately I was sitting next to a guy who had one and he let me borrow it for the job.

As I removed the back cover to resurrect my lifeless e-reader I had an idea: Why not just tape a small paperclip in the recess of the back of the device, under the removable cover? It looks like there’s enough clearance for this and it would save me the headache of looking for yet another paperclip the next time my Kindle freezes. I’m going to give it a shot as soon as I get home tonight.

I’m answering more questions from our fabulous readers today!

I’ve now had my Kindle long enough to wish that I could put my own images onto the page that is displayed when the machine goes to sleep.  As much as I admire Virginia Woolf and John Steinbeck, it would be nice to be able to put different pictures in their place.  Is there any chance for this to happen at some point?

Absolutely!    I’ve found these instructions from MobileRead’s Kindle forum;  I’ve tested them myself, and they seem to be working just fine.

First:

The maximum size for bookplate screensavers for the Kindle can be 800 pixels high by 600 pixels wide. The maximum size for Kindle images INSIDE books is 550 pixels high by 450 pixels wide.   The image files can’t be larger than 64kb, so aim for below 60kb.

Make the images greyscale and save them as GIF/JPG files (though I’m told .png works too.) color images don’t look so well, again due to low contrast.

High-contrast images look best, due to the Kindle display’s limited dynamic range. Boost the contrast on your images.

Resize, crop, and convert your image to black-and-white on your computer.

Now that you’ve got your files, you have to put them onto the Kindle using your USB cable.

Read the rest of this entry »

Here are the Amazon-authorized Kindle shortcuts**, posted today on Amazon’s Kindle Blog:

As you’re reading your content:
Alt + B = bookmark
Alt + T = spell out time
Alt + Next Page = Jump ahead by 5% go forward to next annotation or “chunk” of text
Alt + Prev Page = Jump back by 5% go back to previous annotation or “chunk” of text

In “Home”:
Alt + T = show time
Number keys = jump to corresponding page in the Home Menu
Alphabet keys = jump to corresponding page from alpha-sorted Home Menu

Search (push the Search bar):
@store = store search shortcut
@web = Web search shortcut (Google)
@wiki = Wikipedia search shortcut
@time = show current date and time

Font (aA options)
J = show/hide justification options

Audio Player:
Alt + F = next song

At any time, you’re able to put your Kindle to sleep and wake it up with Alt + aA.

More shortcuts to come in a little while.
** however — Amazon is wrong! they said “Alt + Next Page = go forward to next annotation or “chunk” of text”, which does NOT WORK: it jumps you forward 5% of the length of the book, but it does NOT jump you to the next annotation!

We’ve gotten another question: how does the Kindle handle .pdf files?

Amazon says that

PDF conversion is experimental. The experimental category represents the features we are working on to enhance the Kindle experience even further. You can email your PDFs wirelessly to your Kindle. Due to PDF’s fixed layout format, some complex PDF files might not format correctly on your Kindle.

We here at KindleTips headquarters did some testing to see what this would look like. (the photos are fuzzy, but I hope you can get the idea! iphone camera + kindle is far from perfect.)

here’s a pdf of a book sent to Amazon’s Kindle converters:

as you see, the table of contents didn’t come out quite right — but the text came out just fine. Read the rest of this entry »