Using Kindle: Your Guide to All Things Kindle and Kindle DX

Using KindleTM: Your Guide to All Things Kindle and Kindle DX Jim Cheshire Copyright © 2011 by Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book shall be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher. No patent liability is assumed with respect to the use of the information contained herein. Although every precaution has been taken in the preparation of this book, the publisher and author assume no responsibility for errors or omissions. Nor is any liability assumed for damages resulting from the use of the information contained herein. ISBN-13: 978-0-7897-4110-3 ISBN-10: 0-7897-4110-5 Trademarks All terms mentioned in this book that are known to be trademarks or service marks have been appropriately capitalized. Que Publishing cannot attest to the accuracy of this information. Use of a term in this book should not be regarded as affecting the validity of any trademark or service mark. Warning and Disclaimer Every effort has been made to make this book as complete and as accurate as possible, but no warranty or fitness is implied. The information provided is on an "as is" basis. The author and the publisher shall have neither liability nor responsibility to any person or entity with respect to any loss or damages arising from the information contained in this book. Associate Publisher

Copy Editor

Greg Wiegand

Apostrophe Editing Services

Acquisitions Editor

Technical Editor

Loretta Yates

Becky Cheshire

Managing Editor

Publishing Coordinator

Kristy Hart

Cindy Teeters

Project Editor Jovana San Nicolas-Shirley

Cover Designer Anne Jones

Table of Contents Acknowledgments Dedication About the Author Welcome to the Kindle Chapter 1: Getting Started with the Kindle The Amazing Kindle The Kindle's Unique Features The Kindle Home Screen Sorting and Filtering the Home Screen Items Available on the Home Screen Menu Configuring Your Settings Registration Device Name Wi-Fi Settings Device Info Voice Guide Device Email Device Password Device Time Annotations Backup Popular Highlights Social Networks Personal Info Kindle Version Chapter 2: Reading Content Reading on the Kindle Keyboard Shortcuts While Reading Using the Progress Indicator Using Whispersync Using the Reader Menu

Using the Dictionary Using Bookmarks, Notes, Clippings, and Highlights Kindle Bookmarks Using Notes Clippings Highlights Using Text-to-Speech Reading Books on Kindle for PC The Kindle for PC Home Screen Downloading Books to Kindle for PC Chapter 3: Finding Content Using Amazon's Kindle Store Accessing the Kindle Store The Kindle and Digital Rights Management (DRM) Finding Books from Other Sources Project Gutenberg manybooks.net MobileRead Planet eBook Baen Free Library Feedbooks Fictionwise FreeTechBooks Other Sources Creating Your Own Kindle Content Address Book Shopping Lists Your Medications Your Travel Itinerary Study Notes Meeting Notes Inventory List

Using Search on the Kindle Chapter 4: Managing Your Kindle Content Using Archived Items Using Amazon's Your Media Library Using Amazon's Manage Your Kindle Your Kindle(s) Your Computer and Other Mobile Device(s) Your Kindle-Approved Email List Your Personal Document Charge Limit Your Default 1-Click Payment Method Your Country Your Active Kindle Subscriptions Open Orders Your Orders Your Individual Charges Transferring Files To and From Your Kindle Organizing Kindle Content Using Collections Using Calibre Editing Metadata Converting eBooks with Calibre Transferring Books with Calibre Chapter 5: Internet and Email on the Kindle Web Browser Basics Navigating the Web on Your Kindle Web Browser Settings Using the Kindle on the Web Reading Blogs on the Kindle Reading News on the Kindle Checking Movies and Show Times Checking Flight Status and Airport Information Accessing Traffic Information

Find Recipes Browse and Bid on eBay Auctions Manage Your Netflix Movie Queue Social Networking on the Kindle Email on the Kindle Google Gmail Windows Live Mail (Hotmail) Yahoo! Mail Chapter 6: Games and Multimedia on the Kindle Games on the Kindle Playing Music Listening to Audio Books Listening to Podcasts Taking Screenshots Chapter 7: Kindle Resources and Accessories Amazon's Kindle Page: www.kindle.com Kindle Nation Daily: kindlenationblog.blogspot.com Blog Kindle: www.blogkindle.com The Kindle Chronicles: www.thekindlechronicles.com Booksprung: booksprung.com Kindle Accessories Kindle Lighted Leather Cover DecalGirl Kindle Skins Kindle FAQs Chapter 8: Kindle FAQs Frequently Asked Questions About the Kindle Are Kindle books the same as the hardcover or paperback versions? Why doesn't the Kindle have a backlight? Why does the screen flash when I turn pages? How long should the battery last between charges? Can someone else buy a Kindle book for me as a gift? I received a Kindle as a gift, but it's registered in that person's name. Can I fix that?

Can I create folders to organize my content? Can I take screenshots on my Kindle screen to post on a blog, a web page, or to send to someone? What happens if I delete a book from my Kindle? Is it true I need a credit card issued in the United States to buy content from Amazon's Kindle store? Do I need a computer to use a Kindle? Do I have to pay for wireless service to use Whispernet on the Kindle? Can I read a Kindle book I bought from Amazon on my computer? What about a book I downloaded from somewhere else on the Internet? If a book is not currently available in Kindle format, is there a way I can request that it be made available? Can I be notified when a book is made available in Kindle format? Is there any way I can create my own Kindle books from a paper book that I've purchased? Should I turn off wireless when I'm not using it? How should I clean the Kindle screen? How should I clean the Kindle? Should I charge my Kindle after each use? What if my family has more than one Kindle? Can I use my Kindle outside the United States while traveling? Is there a way to see page numbers on a Kindle? What if I need to provide a page number reference for a Kindle book citation? Can I share a book I bought with another Kindle user? Is it possible for a Kindle screen to get burn-in so that artifacts of a previous screen are permanently left on the screen? If I have purchased a traditional book from Amazon, can I get a Kindle version free? Is it possible to zoom in on images if they appear too small? Does Amazon ever add new features to the Kindle? Is it true that I must have wireless access to Whispernet to read Kindle content? I've heard that the Kindle cannot read PDF files. Is that true?

Acknowledgments This book would not have been possible were it not for the excellent folks at Que Publishing. I'd especially like to thank Loretta Yates (who got me hooked on the Kindle in the first place and

provided guidance and incredible support throughout this project), Seth Kerney, Kevin Howard, and Jovana San Nicolas-Shirley, all of whom helped me to make this book the best and most comprehensive Kindle resource available.

Dedication This book is dedicated to my Mom and Dad. Thanks for teaching me about the wonder of reading and for kindling my passion for wonderful stories.

About the Author Jim Cheshire is a computer professional and author and has published numerous bestselling books on Web design and application development. Jim has been featured in technical publications, such as PC Magazine and MSDN Magazine, and currently works at Microsoft on the ASP.NET and IIS teams. Jim was an early adopter of the Kindle and currently owns three Kindles. He is an avid reader and spends at least a few hours every day with his Kindle. Jim lives in Texas with his wife and two children.

Welcome to the Kindle In November 2007, Amazon unveiled the Kindle to the world. Within a short amount of time, it became clear that Amazon had a huge hit on its hands. The Kindle sold out within a short amount of time, and for many months thereafter, Amazon had a tough time fulfilling orders for the new device. The huge demand for Kindles caught Amazon (and just about everyone else) completely by surprise. Not everyone was pleased with Amazon's first version of the Kindle, though. Some reviewers made fun of its angular appearance, and more still complained about the page turning buttons that were easily pressed accidentally. The Kindle community was wildly defensive of the original Kindle’s button placement, but if you handed one to someone unfamiliar with the device, moments later you'd discover your place in your book would be lost due to unintended page turns. There were a few other complaints Amazon wanted to address in its first Kindle, and it did just that in February 2009 when it released the second generation Kindle. In October 2009, Amazon began shipping the Kindle internationally and added the capability to use Whispernet (the Kindle’s wireless service) in countries other than the United States. In May 2009, Amazon announced the Kindle DX. In addition to all the Kindle's features, the Kindle DX sports a larger screen (9.7" versus the Kindle's 6" screen), and an accelerometer that makes it possible to view larger images in landscape mode by simply rotating the Kindle 90 degrees. (The Kindle can also rotate its screen, but you have to do so manually.) The original Kindle DX was followed by the second-generation DX in early 2010.

NOTE The Kindle DX does not have international wireless capability. Only the Kindle with a 6inch display is available for international use. In middle of 2010, Amazon released the third-generation Kindles, the third-generation Kindle DX (commonly called the Kindle DX Graphite) and the third-generation 6-inch Kindle. The third generation offered a few tweaks to the hardware. The page turn buttons were made smaller and are now the only buttons on the side of the Kindle's bezel. The 5-way controller (now referred to as simply the 5-way) was changed from a joystick style to a more familiar d-pad style. Other minor changes were made to the buttons on the Kindle. The third generations also sport a highercontrast electronic ink screen using the new Pearl screen from E Ink Corporation, a display that gives the third-generation Kindles a 50% higher contrast than previous Kindles. Following are several other improvements in the third-generation Kindles: •

A faster processor for a snappier user interface.

•

Upgraded power management and a bigger battery, thereby increasing battery life between charges.

•

A Wi-Fi adapter for connectivity via wireless access points.

•

Internal memory was doubled to 4GB.

•

A smaller and lighter frame.

Perhaps the most popular change in the third-generation Kindle is the price tag. Amazon offers two versions of the 6-inch Kindle, one that is Wi-Fi only and is priced at $139 and one that includes Wi-Fi and a 3G modem (called Free 3G by Amazon) that connects via AT&T's cellular network, priced at $189.

NOTE After Barnes and Noble released the nook e-book reader, Amazon dropped the price of the second-generation Kindle to $189. However, it was previously priced from $259 to $359 dollars and enjoyed the lower price for only a short period before the third generation released. This book consists entirely of information that is useful to all Kindle users. (However, if you’re an owner of the first Kindle version, you should read my book Decoding the Kindle instead of this book.) In this book, you learn how to make the most of the Internet features in the Kindle. Not only do you learn how to use your Kindle for email with all the major email service providers, but you also learn how to use the Kindle's Internet access to do many other useful things. Following are just a few of the things you can learn how to do with your Kindle: •

Check movies, show times, and even order tickets!

•

Check flight status, airport delays, and gate information.

•

Access traffic information and locate traffic hot spots.

•

Find food and drink recipes complete with shopping lists.

•

Bid on eBay auctions.

•

Participate in social networks such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Bebo, and MySpace.

•

View and manage your Netflix movie queue.

My publisher and I worked hard to ensure this book is the most comprehensive and useful guide available for the Kindle. After you read this book, you will feel more comfortable using every aspect of your Kindle. You can also discover the amazing versatility of the Kindle as you uncover a wide assortment of uses other than just reading content. It's my sincere hope that reading this book kindles your love for this amazing device just as writing it did for me!

Chapter 1 Getting Started with the Kindle Electronic book (e-book) readers are nothing new; e-book readers have been around for nearly a decade. The first e-book reader (the Rocket eBook) used a black-and-white LCD screen and could hold a whopping 10 books. (You could get the Pro version and increase storage to an incredible 40 books.) A third-generation Kindle can hold 3,500 books, newspapers, magazines, and blogs!

The Amazing Kindle When most people first hear about the Kindle, they picture a device that is attractive only to people who love tech gadgets. However, as it turns out, the Kindle is much more attractive to readers than it is to people who love tech toys. The E Ink screen makes reading on the Kindle similar to reading a paper book and enables reading without eye fatigue, even in bright sunlight. Kindle can display 16 shades of gray so that images look crisp and detailed. However, color is not an option with current E Ink technology. Now look at some of Kindle’s unique features.

The Kindle's Unique Features The Kindle has several unique features that set it apart from other e-book readers. •

Because the Kindle is made by Amazon, you automatically have access to the largest e– book catalog in the world. At the time of this writing, Amazon has approximately 751,000 books in the Kindle Store, and more are added all the time. You also have access to magazines, newspapers, and blogs.

•

The Kindle enables you to listen to audio books purchased from Audible, and the Kindle actually has a speaker, so you can listen to audio without plugging in headphones. (A headphone jack is provided for private listening.)

•

The Kindle has a Text-to-Speech feature that reads a book to you using a computergenerated voice, provided the publisher of the book allows it.

•

The Kindle carries no reliance on any particular computer architecture. The Sony Reader requires a Windows computer to transfer files because the software that the Sony Reader uses can run only on a Windows computer. (There are workarounds for Mac users, but the most common one is to install Windows on the Mac.)

•

Wireless access via Amazon's Whispernet enables you to access the Kindle Store directly from the Kindle device and permits you to access Wikipedia (an online encyclopedia) and other websites. You can even check your email on the Kindle and do many other powerful and wonderful things on the Internet.

•

The Whispersync feature automatically synchronizes your reading content across multiple Kindles, or even between your Kindle and an iPhone, an iPod touch, Kindle for PC or Kindle for Mac, and Kindle for Blackberry.

•

The Kindle has native PDF support so that you can read your Adobe Reader documents without conversion.

Amazon's Whispernet service uses either Wi-Fi or high-speed cellular networks. If using 3G, you get broadband speeds on the Kindle, but the exact speed of your connection can vary dramatically depending on signal quality.

TIP Only Free 3G Kindles can access Whispernet via 3G cellular networks. To find out if your Kindle has 3G capability, go to the Home screen and press Menu. Select Settings and check the Network Capability field in the Device Info section. When connecting via 3G, depending on the cell service in your area, you might not always get broadband speed on your Kindle. When browsing the Kindle Store and downloading books and other Kindle content, you aren't affected too much by slower Whispernet speeds simply because the amount of data you download is limited. However, when you begin browsing websites and using Kindle's Internet connectivity to check email, you notice a fairly dramatic difference between a good Whispernet connection and one that's less than optimal. To get the best speeds from Whispernet, you need to be in an area with good 3G reception or in an area with access to a Wi-Fi access point. → For more information on accessing the Internet and email with the Kindle, see Chapter 5, “Internet and Email on the Kindle.”

TIP You don't have to sign a contract, perform any setup, or pay access fees to AT&T to use Amazon's Whispernet service over the 3G network. When you get your Kindle, it works automatically.

You can check for access to the 3G network in your area using the Kindle Coverage Tool available from client0.cellmaps.com/tabs.html#cellmaps_na_tab. Although most of Kindle's unique features are easy to discover, getting the most from them isn't always intuitive. Sometimes it helps to have someone show you the details that can help you get the most from your Kindle. With that in mind, now examine the basic Kindle experience and how you can make the most of it.

The Kindle Home Screen The Kindle Home screen is at the heart of the Kindle reading experience. All the content on your Kindle is available here. You can access the Home screen at any time by pressing the Home key on the Kindle keyboard. Figure 1.1 shows the Home screen for my Kindle.

Figure 1.1 The Kindle Home screen.

NOTE Kindle content can be books, magazines, newspapers, blogs, audio books, podcasts, and clippings. The Kindle uses the term subscriptions to refer to newspapers, magazines, and blogs. The title of each item appears in the left column. The right column contains the author's name for book and audio book listings and the date of issue for newspapers, blogs, and magazines. If a

title is too long to e display, the Kindle displays ellipses at the end of the title name. If you want to see more information about an item on your Home screen, use the 5-way in the lower-right corner of your Kindle to underline the item you are interested in, and then press the 5-way to the right. You see an expanded view of the item along with common tasks, as shown in Figure 1.2.

Figure 1.2 Book description screen.

TIP If the title or author of a book is incorrect or if you'd like to change them for any reason, you easily can, as discussed in Chapter 4, "Using Calibre." The Home screen may also contain one or more collections. A collection categorizes books. In Figure 1.1, four collections are shown: Reference, Novels, Nonfiction, and Study Books. Collections display in bold and italic text, and the number of books in each collection displays to the right of the collection name. →

For more information on using collections, see “Using Collections,” in Chapter 4.

While on the Home screen, you can delete an item from your Kindle by moving the cursor to the item and pressing the 5-way to the left. Books you've purchased from the Kindle Store display a Remove from Device option, and subscription items and books you transferred to the Kindle display a Delete option. Deleting an item provides you with a confirmation dialog, but selecting Remove from Device immediately removes the item from the device. You need to use Archived Items to move the item back to your Kindle.

CAUTION If you delete an item that was not obtained from the Kindle Store, it will be permanently removed. You must have a copy of the item saved elsewhere if you want to add it back to your Kindle. The label New appears next to an item that hasn't been opened and is less than 24-hours old, and Sample displays next to book samples downloaded from Amazon's Kindle Store. Your Kindle also supports audio books from www.Audible.com, and audio books display an Audible label to the right of the title. (In Figure 1.1, the first title on my Home screen, A Short History of Nearly Everything, is an Audible book, and Audible appears to the left of the book's name.) Games can display an Active label, and finally, any subscription content you’ve chosen to keep using the Keep This Issue feature shows a Keep label to the left of the item.

TIP You can also use audio books from sites such as audiobooks.org or any other site that provides audio books in MP3 format or in a format that can be converted to MP3. Audio books downloaded from these sources will not be labeled as Audible books on your Kindle. Under the title is a progress bar for the item. This progress bar uses dots to indicate the relative length of the item, and your current position is indicated by bold dots.

TIP The Kindle also displays a progress bar (called the location bar) while you read an item. The location bar that's visible while you're reading has a percentage indicator that shows your reading progress and an indicator of how much you've read during your current reading session.

Sorting and Filtering the Home Screen By default, the Home screen shows the newest items or recently opened items first, assuming you haven't defined any collections. To change the sort order of the Home screen, press up on the 5-way until the Sort Options are highlighted (the top line of the Home screen), and then press the 5-way to the right. You can sort by Most Recent First (the default), Title, Author, or Collections. To change the sort option, move the 5-way to the desired sort option, and then press the 5-way to select it.

TIP The Collections sort option appears grayed out if you haven't created any collections. → For more information on using collections, see “Using Collections,” in Chapter 4. If you choose to sort by Title, you can press any letter to easily jump to titles that start with that letter. If you sort by Author, you can use the same method to jump to titles by a particular author. Simply enter the first letter of the title or author, and press the 5-way to go to items beginning with that letter.

TIP Jumping to a title or author whose name begins with a particular letter isn't a filtering function. In other words, it doesn't limit the items that display on the Home screen. It's simply a convenient way to quickly jump to a particular title. The last item listed on the Kindle Home screen is Archived Items, which provides access to all the books you’ve purchased from Amazon’s Kindle Store but have removed from your Kindle. (Subscription content is not included.) → Chapter 4.

For more information on using Archived Items, see “Using Archived Items,” in

TIP You can easily go to any page of your Home screen by entering the desired page number and then pressing the 5-way. Holding the Alt key enables you to use the top row on the keyboard as a number row. For example, to jump to page 3 of the Home screen, press Alt-E on the Kindle keyboard and then press the 5-way.

Items Available on the Home Screen Menu The Home screen menu, shown in Figure 1.3, is accessible by pressing the Menu button while on your Kindle's Home screen. Think of the Home screen menu as the main menu for the Kindle.

Figure 1.3 Home screen menu.

The following items are available on the Home screen menu: •

Turn Wireless Off: Selecting this turns Wireless (3G and Wi-Fi) off. When Wireless is off, this menu item changes to Turn Wireless On. • Shop in Kindle Store: Selecting this takes you to the Kindle Store, provided you have access to Amazon's Whispernet. The Kindle notifies you if wireless is turned off and asks if you would like to turn it on. → For more information on using the Kindle Store, see “Using Amazon's Kindle Store,” in Chapter 3. •

View Archived Items: This item shows books purchased from the Kindle Store that are not currently on your Kindle. Selecting this item performs the same function as selecting Archived Items from the Home screen. • Search: Selecting this takes you to the Search screen where you can search items on your Kindle, the Kindle Store, the dictionary, Google, Wikipedia, or the Web. → For more information on using the Kindle’s Search feature, see “Using Search on the Kindle,” in Chapter 3. • •

Create New Collection: Enables you to create a new collection to organize the content on your Kindle. Sync and Check for Items: Selecting this synchronizes your Kindle with Amazon's servers. Subscription content and converted documents that haven't been transferred to your Kindle are downloaded. The Kindle also synchronizes your current location within your books so that you can resume reading on another Kindle, on your iPhone or iPod touch, on the Kindle for PC or Kindle for Mac, or on Kindle for Blackberry.

TIP As you are reading, the Kindle periodically syncs to the furthest page read. •

View Downloading Items: This item displays a list of items currently downloading to your device. If no items are downloading, this menu item appears grayed out. • Settings: This item displays the Kindle Settings and Device Information screen. → For more information on the Kindle Settings and Device Information screen, see "Configuring Your Settings," later in this chapter. • Experimental: The Experimental menu contains items the Kindle's developers are working on. These are extra features that might or might not remain on the Kindle. At the time of this writing, the items on this menu are Web Browser, Play MP3, and Text-toSpeech. → For more information on using the Web Browser on the Kindle, see “Browsing the Web on the Kindle,” in Chapter 5. → For more information on playing MP3s on the Kindle, see “Playing Music,” in Chapter 6. → For more information on Text-to-Speech, see “Using Text-to-Speech,” in Chapter 2.

Configuring Your Settings As mentioned earlier, you can access settings for your Kindle by selecting Settings from the Home screen menu. The Kindle displays page 1 of the Settings screen, as shown in Figure 1.4.

Figure 1.4 Page 1 of the Settings screen.

NOTE Depending on how your Kindle is currently configured, your Device Settings screen may not match exactly with what is shown in Figure 1.4 and you may have fewer pages of Settings screens.

There are three pages of Settings screens on the Kindle. The sections available on the Settings screens are described next.

Registration The Registration section displays the name on the Amazon account to which the Kindle is registered. Your registration connects the Kindle to your Amazon account so that you can purchase books on the Kindle using the credit card on file with Amazon. You can register as many Kindles as you want to one Amazon account, and up to six of those Kindles can share content with the exception of subscription content. In other words, if you and your spouse both have a Kindle registered to the same Amazon account, and you purchase a great book you want your spouse to read, you can send that book to your spouse's Kindle using Your Media Library on Amazon's website without paying for it a second time.

TIP If you'd like to change the account your Kindle is registered to, select Deregister in the Registration section. You can then register the Kindle to a different Amazon account. You can also deregister a Kindle on Amazon's Manage Your Kindle page. →

For more information on using the Manage Your Kindle page, see “Using

Amazon's 'Manage Your Kindle,” in Chapter 4. If your Kindle is ever stolen or lost, make sure you deregister it immediately using the Amazon website to prevent unauthorized purchases on the device.

Device Name By default, your Kindle's device name is derived from the account name to which it is registered. If you prefer, you can personalize your Kindle by changing the device name. If you have multiple Kindles registered to your account, you need to give each a descriptive name so that you can easily identify them when using Amazon's website. Select Edit Name in the Device Name section, and enter a name for your Kindle. The name you choose displays on the top-left corner of the Home screen. Amazon also uses this name when

you browse the Kindle Store on your computer or when you use other Kindle pages on Amazon's website.

Wi-Fi Settings The Wi-Fi Settings section enables you to join a Wi-Fi network or forget a Wi-Fi network that you've joined previously. It also displays the number of available Wi-Fi networks if any are in range, and if you have joined a Wi-Fi network, it displays the name of that network.

Device Info The Device Info section shows your Kindle's Wi-Fi card's MAC address (a unique number associated with the network card in your Kindle), the serial number of your device, and the network capability (either Wi-Fi or Wi-Fi and 3G) of your Kindle. Press Next Page to go to the second page of the Settings screen. The following sections are available on the second page.

Voice Guide When turned on, Voice Guide provides audible prompts as you navigate the menus and screens on your Kindle. Voice Guide is off by default. To enable Voice Guide, select Turn On.

Device Email The Device Email section shows you the Kindle email address associated with your Kindle. This is the email address you can use when you want to email documents for conversion directly to your Kindle. You can change your Kindle email address by using the Manage Your Kindle page on Amazon's website.

Device Password The Device Password option enables you to set a password for your Kindle. If you turn on this feature, you are required to enter a password when turning on your Kindle or when waking your Kindle from sleep mode.

Device Time The Device Time section enables you to set the clock on your Kindle. If your Kindle has 3G connectivity, the time is set automatically using AT&T's cellular network. However, you can choose to set it manually.

Annotations Backup This section enables you to control whether your Kindle synchronizes annotations, collections, and your reading location of your Kindle content. By default, Annotations Backup is turned on.

Popular Highlights By default, your Kindle content contains an indicator showing sections highlighted often by others in the Kindle community. If you prefer not to see these indicators, you can turn off Popular Highlights. The following two sections are available on page 3 of the Settings screens.

Social Networks Your Kindle enables you to share your notes and highlights with your friends and family using Twitter and Facebook. To share notes and highlights, you must first link your Kindle to the desired social network. The Social Networks section enables you to link and unlink your Kindle to a social network.

Personal Info The Personal Info section displays any personal information you've entered. You might choose to enter your contact information or a personal message. The information that you enter here is displayed on the Settings screen.

Kindle Version A version number for your Kindle's software is located at the bottom of each Settings screen. Amazon updates the Kindle's internal software from time to time, and when it does, your version number changes to reflect the new software version. Your Kindle automatically downloads any Kindle updates that Amazon makes available. You can then update your Kindle by navigating to any of the Settings screens, pressing Menu, and then selecting Update Your Kindle from the menu. If there isn’t an update available, the Update Your Kindle menu item is disabled.

NOTE The Kindle displays free memory, the current time, network status, and the current battery level at the top of the screen when any of Kindle’s menus are active, as shown in Figure 1.5. This is a convenient way to check the time while reading, the quality of your Whispernet or Wi-Fi signal, or your battery's level.

Figure 1.5 Free memory, time, and network and battery status.

Now that you've had a chance to peruse the basic operation of the Home screen and see some of the settings available to you on your Kindle, it's a great time to look at the details of the Kindle reading experience. In the next chapter, you learn not only the basics of reading on the Kindle, but also how to take advantage of bookmarks, notes, clippings, and much more.

Chapter 2 Reading Content Although the Kindle offers a wealth of features other than the capability to read books, magazines, newspapers, and blogs, its primary use is as an electronic reading device. Reading content seems like such a simple concept, but the Kindle has plenty of hard-to-find features that can make reading more enjoyable. This chapter covers these features.

Reading on the Kindle When you select an item from the Home screen, the Kindle switches to the Reader screen. When an item is first opened on the Kindle, you might or might not be taken to the first page. (For example, many books open on the first page of Chapter 1 instead of the cover page.) The Kindle saves your last location for each item, so if you open an item that you've opened in the past, you are automatically taken to the place where you were when you last finished reading the item. Using the Whispersync feature, the Kindle can open a book on the same page that you were reading on another Kindle, on your computer, or other device using the Kindle application.

NOTE As of this writing, Amazon has a Kindle application for the PC, Mac, Windows Phone, Blackberry, iPhone, iPod touch, iPad, and Android. → For more information on using Whispersync, see “Using Whispersync,” later in this chapter. While reading, you navigate from page to page using the Next Page and Prev Page buttons on the side of the Kindle. When you change pages, you notice a slight delay and the screen flashes. This is perfectly normal and a byproduct of the use of E Ink for the Kindle display. The screen flashing is actually not a requirement for E Ink, but the Kindle flashes to make sure there aren't any remnants of the previous page that might make the screen look "dirty."

NOTE The Kindle sometimes updates only parts of the screen instead of updating the entire display. (For example, when you turn the page in a book, the bar at the top of the screen is not refreshed.) Because of this, parts of the screen might display artifacts that look smudged or dirty. It’s normal for the Kindle display to do this, and it usually clears up when you turn the page. However, if you find that a particular part of the display remains dirty even after turning the page, you can press Alt+G on the keyboard to refresh the entire display.

NOTE You can zoom in on images while reading by moving the cursor to the image and pressing on the 5-way. To restore your view to normal, press the 5-way again.

Keyboard Shortcuts While Reading While reading, you can use several keyboard shortcuts. • •

•

Alt+Home: This undocumented keyboard shortcut takes you to the Amazon Kindle Store. If wireless is turned off, the Kindle prompts you to turn it on. This is actually available from any screen, not just while reading. Alt+B: Adds a bookmark at the current location. If a bookmark already exists at the current location, pressing Alt+B removes it. A bookmarked page has a dog-eared corner in the top right of the screen. For more information on bookmarks, see “Using Bookmarks, Notes, Clippings, and Highlights,” later in this chapter. AA: Enables you to change the type size while reading content. You can choose from eight sizes. When you select a type size, the text of your content changes in real-time so that you can more easily determine which size of type works best for you. You can

also change the typeface, line spacing, number of words per line, screen rotation, and text-to-speech settings by clicking the AA button.

NOTE Changing the type size affects only Kindle content and content in the Web browser. The size of the type in menus, the Home screen, and so on is not affected. • •

Letter Key or Space: Opens a search box, enabling you to search your Kindle content or search for items on the Internet. For more information on using the Search feature, see “Using Search on the Kindle,” in Chapter 3. Shift+Sym: Toggles the Text-to-Speech function of the Kindle. While Text-to-Speech is activated, you can toggle it on and off, control the reading speed, and change the speaking voice by pressing the AA button and choosing the appropriate item from the menu dialog that appears. For more information on using Text-to-Speech, see “Using Text-to-Speech,” later in this chapter.

Using the Progress Indicator Unlike traditional reading content, the Kindle doesn't use page numbers. Instead, it uses location numbers. While reading a book, the progress indicator displays at the bottom of the screen. Using a progress bar, it shows your current location within the book.

TIP When reading PDF files, your Kindle uses actual page numbers instead of location numbers. The Kindle shows the total number of locations in the current book on the right edge of the progress indicator. On the left edge of the progress indicator, it displays a percentage indicator showing how much of the book you've read. Notes, highlights, and bookmarks appear as dots on the progress indicator. A downward-facing triangle on the progress indicator marks the start position of your current reading session. You can use this indicator to determine how much you've read during your current session.

TIP While reading a book, if you want to move quickly to a note, highlight, or bookmark, select the My Notes and Marks item from the Reader menu. See the next section for more details on using the Reader menu.

Using Whispersync Whispersync enables you to stop reading on one device and pick up reading on the same page on another device. You can use Whispersync to sync reading on one or more Kindle devices with

your reading location on the Kindle application on another device. You can find the Kindle application for your device by going to www.kindle.com.

NOTE Whispersync is only available for books purchased from the Kindle Store. As long as you have wireless turned on and are connected to Whispernet, the Kindle automatically keeps track of the farthest page you've read. If you stop reading on one Kindle and pick up reading the same book on another Kindle, you can select Sync to Furthest Page Read from the Reader menu. If you have read to a later location in the book on another device, the Kindle notifies you and gives you the option of going to the furthest read location. Whispersync also synchronizes bookmarks, notes, and highlights. Whispersync is not without problems. If you read a book that doesn't lend itself well to linear reading (such as a cookbook), Whispersync isn't helpful because it always syncs to the furthest page read, not the page you are currently reading on any one device. Whispersync is also not configurable. Amazon gives you the option to disable it for your Amazon account on the Manage Your Kindle web page, but you can't choose to disable it only for particular books or only specific devices.

TIP To turn Whispersync on or off for your Amazon account, visit the Manage Your Kindle page at www.amazon.com/manageyourkindle. Scroll to the bottom of the page, and click the Manage Synchronization Between Devices link.

Using the Reader Menu The Reader menu makes it easy to jump to specific parts of a book or other Kindle content. It also contains menu items for adding bookmarks, accessing your notes, and so on.

TIP While you are reading, you can press up on the 5-way to move the cursor from the last line of text to the first line of text or press down on the 5-way to move the cursor from the last line of text to the first line of text. However, menus don't provide this convenience. If you want to move the cursor from the first item on a menu to the last item, you have to repeatedly press down on the 5-way. To access the Reader menu, click Menu while reading. The first item on the Reader menu is the Turn Wireless On if wireless is currently off or Turn Wireless Off if wireless is currently on. You find this menu item available on most of the Kindle's menus, so you can easily turn wireless on and off.

Second on the Reader menu is Shop in Kindle Store. This takes you to the Kindle Store at Amazon. If wireless is off, the Kindle asks if you'd like to turn it on. For more information on the Kindle Store, see “Using Amazon's Kindle Store,” in Chapter 3. The rest of the Reader menu is divided into sections. The first section contains items for navigating books. (This section is not visible when reading newspapers, magazines, or blogs.) The following menu items are available: •

Go To: Opens the Go To dialog. You can then easily navigate to a location number, the cover of the book, the beginning of the book as chosen by the publisher, or the table of contents. • Sync to Furthest Page Read: Manually synchronizes the furthest page read with Amazon's servers. You can then pick up on that same page using another Kindle or the Kindle application running on a computer or other device using Amazon's Whispersync technology. This item is enabled only for books purchased from the Kindle Store and is not available for sample books. → For more information on Whispersync, see “Using Whispersync,” earlier in this chapter. • Book Description: Takes you to the Kindle Store page for the book. This item is enabled only if the book you are reading was downloaded (either as a purchase or as a sample) from the Kindle Store. The last section of the Reader menu contains the following items: •

•

• •

•

•

Search This Book: Opens a search box at the bottom of the page enabling you to easily search for one or more words or phrases in the book. This menu item also applies to samples and subscriptions, and the label for the item changes according to the item you are reading. (For example, if you are reading a magazine, the item is labeled Search This Issue.) For more information on using the Kindle's Search feature, see “Using Search on the Kindle,” in Chapter 3. Add a Bookmark: Adds a bookmark on the current page. After you select this, the menu item changes to Delete Bookmark so that the bookmark can be deleted. This item is only available if you are reading a book. For more information on using bookmarks, see “Kindle Bookmarks,” later in this chapter. Add a Note or Highlight: Displays a message at the bottom of the screen with instructions on how to create a note or a highlight. You can also create a note or highlight by simply typing on the keyboard without selecting this menu item. View My Notes and Marks: Displays a screen showing all your bookmarks, notes, and highlights for the item you are currently reading. For more information on bookmarks, notes, and clippings, see “Using Bookmarks, Notes, Clippings, and Highlights,” later in this chapter. View Popular Highlights: Displays a list of highlights that are popular with other Kindle users. The location of the highlight displays along with the number of Kindle users who have highlighted the passage. If a book has no passages that are popular highlights, this menu item will be grayed out. Keep This Issue: Available only when reading magazines or newspapers content, this menu item causes the current item to remain on your Kindle until you explicitly delete it. Otherwise, subscription content is deleted after 2 weeks. This menu item changes to Do Not Keep This Issue after selected.

Using the Dictionary One of the great features in the Kindle is the inclusion of the New Oxford American Dictionary and the Oxford Dictionary of English. If you are reading and encounter a word you don't know, you can quickly look up a definition for the word without losing your place.

NOTE The dictionaries are always listed on the Home screen. Some Kindle users have asked how they can be removed from the Home screen, but they cannot be removed. To look up a definition, move the 5-way to a word, and the definition of the word pops up at the bottom of the screen. The Kindle dictionary works great for single words, but if you want to look up a phrase such as "dree one's weird," you need search the dictionary. If you move the cursor to a word that is not contained in the Kindle dictionary, a definition does not appear. There's no indicator that a definition wasn't found. → For information on searching the dictionary, see “Using Search on the Kindle,” in Chapter 3. If you'd like a more thorough definition of a word, press the Return key while the definition is displayed. You can then return to the item you were reading by pressing the Back button. By default, the Kindle displays definitions using The New Oxford American Dictionary. If you'd like your Kindle to use a different dictionary, go to the Settings screen and press Menu. Select Change Primary Dictionary from the menu and select the desired dictionary.

Using Bookmarks, Notes, Clippings, and Highlights My father is a book connoisseur. He has an extensive library of books that fill several walls in his house. When I was growing up, he insisted that my siblings and I take great care with our books. Because of that, I never write in my books, and I don't dog-ear pages to keep my place. However, with the Kindle, I can now benefit from both of those practices.

NOTE Bookmarks, notes, and highlights cannot be added to sample books downloaded from the Kindle Store.

Kindle Bookmarks Bookmarks are a convenient way to mark a particular location within Kindle content. You can add as many bookmarks as you'd like so you can easily find your way back to a particular place. Following are three ways to add a bookmark on the Kindle: • •

Press Alt+B. Select Add a Bookmark from the Reader menu.

•

Move the 5-way up or down to display the cursor, and then quickly press the 5-way twice. You cannot use this method to remove a bookmark.

When you add a bookmark, the top-right corner of the page changes to a dog-eared corner, as shown in Figure 2.1.

Figure 2.1 A Kindle bookmark.

To navigate to a specific bookmark, use the View My Notes and Marks item on the Reader menu. When you use the View My Notes and Marks menu item, you are presented with a list of bookmarks, notes, and highlights in the current content. Selecting a bookmark takes you to that bookmark's location. You can remove bookmarks by pressing Alt+B while at the bookmarked location or by selecting Delete Bookmark from the Reader menu.

TIP Bookmarks, notes, and highlights can be deleted from the View My Notes and Marks screen as well. Move the cursor to a bookmark, note, or highlight, and press DEL to delete it.

Using Notes More than once I've heard someone say, "I've scribbled notes in all the margins," as evidence that a particular book is a good read. Although you can't scribble in the margins of Kindle books, you can add notes to any part of a book using the Notes feature. To add a note, move the cursor to a point in the text, and start typing your note. You can also use

the Add a Note or Highlight item on the Reader menu. After you finish entering the text for your note, press down on the 5-way to select Save Note, as shown in Figure 2.2.

Figure 2.2 Saving a note.

TIP If you need to enter an uppercase letter, you don't have to hold Shift while you type the letter. Just press and release Shift, and then type the letter. After you type one letter, the keyboard automatically switches back to typing lowercase letters. If you connect your Kindle to one or more social networks, you can share a note with others by selecting Save & Share after entering your note. You can also share a previously entered note from the View My Notes and Marks screen. Simply select the note you want to share and press Alt+Return to share the note.

NOTE Deleting a note that has been shared does not remove the note from your social network. Notes are numbered sequentially, and a small superscripted numeral appears at the point where you entered your note. To review a note, simply move the cursor to the number representing the note. The note displays at the bottom of the screen, as shown in Figure 2.3. Press Return to edit the note, DEL to remove the note, or Alt+Return to share the note.

Figure 2.3 Viewing a note.

You can also access notes from the View My Notes and Marks menu item or by opening the My Clippings item on the Home screen.

Clippings Clippings enable you to save articles from subscription content in a common location. After you save a clipping, you can access it from the My Clippings item on the Home screen. To save a clipping, select Clip This Article from the Reader menu while reading subscription content. The article is saved to My Clippings with a notation containing the title of the content and the time and date the clipping was taken. The My Clippings item is just like any other Kindle content. You can look up words in the clipping, add notes to the clipping, add bookmarks to the clipping, and so on.

NOTE The Kindle does not show any kind of notification on an article after it has been saved as a clipping. Individual clippings cannot be removed from My Clippings. However, you can connect the Kindle to your computer using the USB cable and copy the My Clippings.txt file from the Documents folder on the Kindle to your computer where you can then edit the file.

TIP Bookmarks, notes, and highlights are also shown in My Clippings. Even after a bookmark, note, or highlight has been deleted, it still appears in My Clippings.

Highlights The Kindle's highlight function provides a way to highlight one or more lines of text so you that notice them easily when scanning content. To add a highlight to text, follow these steps: 1. Use the 5-way to move the cursor to the point where you want your highlight to begin. 2. Press the 5-way. The cursor changes to a slanted line. 3. Move the 5-way to the right or down to select the text you want your highlight to encompass. 4. Press the 5-way to confirm your highlight. If you want your highlight to span multiple pages, simply use the Next Page and Prev Page buttons to change pages while creating your highlight. If you'd like to share your highlight on Facebook or Twitter, press Alt+Return after you highlighted the desired passage. When you do, you see a dialog prompting you to enter a message. The message you enter will be shared on your social network along with the highlighted text. A link to your highlighted passage on Amazon's site will also be included. While you are creating a highlight, the Kindle shows the highlighted text as white text on a black background. After you click to finish creating the highlight, the Kindle underlines the highlighted section with a dim underline.

TIP If you decide to cancel your highlight, you can press the Back button prior to clicking to complete the highlight. To remove a highlight, move the cursor into the highlighted area. The dim underline showing the highlight turns dark, and the Kindle displays a message at the bottom of the screen indicating you can press DEL to delete the highlight. Highlights can also be deleted from the View My Notes and Marks screen.

Using Text-to-Speech The Kindle's Text-to-Speech feature endows the Kindle with a computerized voice using a technology developed by a company called Nuance. Some people describe the Kindle's voice as being akin to the voice of Stephen Hawking, but the Kindle's computerized voice mimics inflection and other natural speaking tendencies and is far superior to the famous physicist's voice. While I wouldn't want to listen to an entire book using the Kindle's Text-to-Speech feature, it's a wonderful addition for those with visual impairments. To activate Text-to-Speech on the Kindle, press AA and select Turn On in the Text-to-Speech

area of the dialog. Alternatively, you can press Shift+SYM while reading any content, and the Kindle begins reading. The default voice is a male voice, but you can change to a female voice by pressing AA while the Kindle is reading and selecting Female from the dialog. You can also slow down, speed up, pause, or stop Text-to-Speech from the same dialog.

NOTE Many Kindle users agree the male voice is more realistic than the female voice. In my experience, the Kindle's Text-to-Speech feature isn't adept at recognizing heading text and other formatting that commonly appears in books. Because of that, the Text-toSpeech feature is best used for novels or other books where text doesn't often contain special formatting.

TIP Amazon gives publishers the right to not enable Text-to-Speech for selected content. Amazon displays whether Text-to-Speech is enabled for a Kindle book in the book's description in the Kindle store.

Reading Books on Kindle for PC The Kindle for PC application (available from www.amazon.com/gp/kindle/pc) is a convenient way to read Kindle books even if you don't own a Kindle device. Using Kindle for PC, you can access your Kindle content from any Windows computer, and Amazon’s Whispersync service keeps your reading position synchronized between Kindle for PC and your other devices. The Kindle for PC Home Screen When you first launch it, you’ll be asked for your Amazon account email address and password. When you enter this, Amazon registers Kindle for PC as one of your devices, and you then have access to Kindle books that you ordered from Amazon.

NOTE As of this writing, you cannot access newspapers, blogs, or magazines from Kindle for PC. However, Amazon has confirmed that it plans to add that functionality. After Kindle for PC is registered to your Amazon account, books that you transferred to your computer are available on the Home screen. Each book also displays a progress bar that indicates how much of the book has been read. You can sort downloaded books by how recently they were downloaded (the default setting), the author name, or the title by using the buttons at the top of the Home screen.

The Menu provides easy access to relevant pages on Amazon’s website, including a link to the Manage Your Kindle page. You can also access the settings for Kindle for PC using the Menu.

TIP If you decide to remove Kindle for PC from your Amazon account, select Tools, Options, and click the Deregister button in the Registration section of the Options dialog. Downloading Books to Kindle for PC To transfer books to Kindle for PC, click the Archived Items button at the top of the main application window. When you do this, you see all the Kindle books that you purchased from the Kindle Store. If you double-click on a book, that book downloads to Kindle for PC and opens to the last page you read on any of your devices. You can also right-click on a book to access a menu where you’ll find the following options: • • • •

Go to Last Page Read: Copies the book to Kindle for PC, and opens the last page read on any of your devices. Go to Beginning: Copies the book to Kindle for PC, and opens the book at the beginning. Add to Home: Copies the book to Kindle for PC without opening the book for reading. Reading on Kindle for PC

While reading in Kindle for PC, you can turn pages using the scroll wheel on your mouse, the arrow keys on your keyboard, or by clicking the left or right edge of the application window. For the greatest control, I find it convenient to use the arrow keys on my keyboard. You can add a bookmark by either clicking the Add Bookmark button (the plus sign) at the top of Kindle for PC or by clicking in the upper-right corner of a page. Bookmarks added in Kindle for PC are synchronized with your other devices as long as Whispersync is enabled. Kindle for PC can also display any notes, bookmarks, or highlights you've added from another device by clicking the Show Notes & Marks button.

TIP Kindle for PC y shows only notes and highlights from your Kindle if you have Whispersync enabled for your devices. The GoTo button on Kindle for PC enables you to easily navigate a book by going to the cover, the table of contents, the beginning of the book, or to a specific location number. You can also choose Sync to Furthest Page Read if you need to manually synchronize your reading location from another device. However, clicking Sync to Furthest Page Read will not synchronize notes or highlights. To change the type size in Kindle for PC, click the Aa button, and adjust the Font Size slider. You can also use the Words Per Line slider to adjust the width of the page in Kindle for PC, adjust the Brightness slider to adjust the brightness of the page, and click a Color Mode button to adjust the background color of the page.

Amazon also has a version of the Kindle application for the Mac, iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, and many smartphone devices. The most feature-rich experience on a mobile device is Kindle for Windows Phone which enables you to not only read your Kindle books on your smartphone but also enables you to shop for Kindle books right on your device. Now that you know all the tips and tricks to reading on the Kindle, it's a great time to explore all the ways you can find content for your Kindle. As you learn in the next chapter, the Kindle content that Amazon makes available in the Kindle Store represents only a small fraction of the content you can access on the Internet and on the Kindle.

Chapter 3 Finding Content The books available in the Kindle Store are only a small fraction of the great books available for your Kindle, many of which are free to download. One of the greatest things about a Kindle is how easy it is to rediscover (or discover for the first time!) classic novels. Kindle books use a kind of file called Mobipocket. Amazon customized the file type a little bit so that it could add copy protection. However, you can also read unprotected PDF files, HTML files, Microsoft Word documents, and text files on your Kindle.

NOTE Microsoft Word documents can be read on a Kindle after converting them. Conversion of these files is covered in Chapter 4, "Managing Your Kindle Content." The most convenient source of content for your Kindle is the Kindle Store, especially if you are in an area with Whispernet service. You can browse the store and purchase books on the Kindle. As you soon see, you can download books from other sources directly to the Kindle as well, but the presentation in the Kindle Store is second to none. One more advantage to the Kindle Store is that any book you buy from the Kindle Store is easily available via Archived Items on your Kindle. If you delete a book you purchased from the Kindle Store, you can copy it back to your Kindle easily. The Whispersync feature is also available only on books purchased from the Kindle Store.

NOTE I say "buy" books from the Kindle Store, but there are always free books available in the Kindle Store, and many of them are newly released novels. Now look at different sources of Kindle content available to you, beginning with Amazon's own Kindle Store.

Using Amazon's Kindle Store One of the best features of the Kindle is it offers immediate access to the largest e-book store in the world: the Kindle Store. The Kindle Store offers many features other than the capability to simply buy books. You can • • • • • •

Get free samples of content to read. Subscribe to a free trial of a magazine, newspaper, or blog. Download free books. Add books to a Save for Later list. Read reviews of Kindle content. Write reviews of Kindle content.

Accessing the Kindle Store You can access the Kindle Store a couple of ways. From the Home screen menu, selecting Shop in Kindle Store takes you to the Kindle Storefront. However, my favorite way to access the Kindle Store easily from any screen on the Kindle is to press Alt+Home.

NOTE You can also search the Kindle Store from any search screen. Searching on the Kindle is covered in more detail later in this chapter in the "Using Search on the Kindle" section. The Kindle Storefront features links for browsing Kindle content, Kindle Top Sellers, New and Noteworthy Books, National Best Seller List, Kindle Daily Post, and other recommendations for you.

TIP The Kindle Daily Post features Kindle-specific news and information. This is often the place where you first find out about special Kindle content such as free books and other promotions. Check it often. When you select a book, several links are available to you. • • • • •

Book Description: A description of the book displays next to the cover. If the entire description doesn't fit on the screen, a More link appears next to the description. Buy: Purchases the current book using Amazon's 1-click ordering. Try a Sample: Downloads a free sample of the selected book to your Kindle. The amount of content included in the free sample is determined by the book's publisher and can vary from a portion of a chapter to several chapters. Add to Wish List: Saves the selected book to your Save for Later list, which you can access by selecting Your Wish List Items from the menu while in the Kindle Store. Customer Reviews: You can read reviews written for a book by selecting the Customer Reviews link. While reading reviews, a Write a Review link appears at the top of the

screen so that you can review the book. However, it is more convenient to write a review from your computer than from the Kindle. You also get a list of other books that were purchased by Amazon customers who purchased the selected book. When you select a newspaper or magazine, instead of the option to try a sample, you have the option to subscribe with a 14-day free trial. However, you can have a free trial to a particular subscription item only once. If you cancel your subscription, you are not eligible for a free trial of that particular item at a later date. In addition, you can subscribe to Internet blogs on the Kindle. You also have the option of a 14-day free trial for blogs available in the Kindle Store, and considering that you can access blogs free on the Kindle, it's a good idea to carefully sample a blog before paying for it.

NOTE Magazines, newspapers, and blogs that you purchase from the Kindle Store are only available on a Kindle device. They are not available on the Kindle application for other devices. → For more information on reading blogs free on the Kindle, see “Reading Blogs on the Kindle,” in Chapter 5.

NOTE If you don't want to subscribe to a newspaper or magazine, you can buy a single issue by clicking Buy Current Issue. This option is not available for blogs. You can obtain a refund for content you purchase in the Kindle Store as long as you ask for the refund within 7 days of the original purchase. Simply click the Contact Us link on the right side of any Amazon page, or browse to https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/contact-us/kindlehelp.html. (Note this is an HTTPS address.) After Amazon issues a refund for Kindle content, the item is removed from Your Media Library and from your Kindle.

The Kindle and Digital Rights Management (DRM) Quite a bit of misinformation has spread through the Internet regarding the Kindle's use of Digital Rights Management (DRM) for Kindle Store content. According to many people, the Kindle requires wireless to be turned on periodically so that it can check the license on content purchased from the Kindle Store. I spoke to Amazon about DRM and the Kindle, and it confirmed that after you purchase an item from the Kindle Store, you can read that item on your Kindle as often as you want without ever turning on Kindle's wireless service.

Finding Books from Other Sources In addition to purchasing books from Amazon, you also can get books from many other sources.

Most of the books you can get from other sources are free and work perfectly on the Kindle. However, the formatting in some of these books might not be quite as polished as what you get from the Kindle Store. The following sites provide books that you can use on your Kindle. Although there are illegal sources of free content for your Kindle, all the sites detailed here are 100% legal.

NOTE A great way to organize and manage eBooks from third-party sources is to use Calibre, a free application you can install on your PC, Mac, or Linux computer. Chapter 4 covers Calibre in detail.

Project Gutenberg Project Gutenberg (www.gutenberg.org/catalog/) has a catalog of free books available that you can read on your Kindle. Books in the Project Gutenberg catalog are in the public domain, meaning they are free of charge. To use Project Gutenberg books on your Kindle, you need to download the book to a computer and then transfer it to your Kindle via a USB cable or by emailing it to your Kindle account. You can use the Kindle's web browser to access the Project Gutenberg site, but it's incredibly painful to try to browse and download books on the Kindle. → For more information on transferring files to your Kindle via USB, see “Transferring Files To and From Your Kindle,” in Chapter 4. Project Gutenberg offers e-books in text format and some in HTML format. Either of these formats works on the Kindle. You can use the convenient Magic Catalog of Project Gutenberg to easily access Project Gutenberg titles, and because the Magic Catalog is in MOBI format, it opens in Kindle for PC or Kindle for Mac for easy reading on your computer. You can access the Project Gutenberg Magic Catalog at www.freekindlebooks.org/MagicCatalog/MagicCatalog.mobi.

manybooks.net manybooks.net (www.manybooks.net) is a website that provides a large catalog of free books. Many of the books available on manybooks.net are from Project Gutenberg, but the site also offers other texts distributed by the authors or publishers as free books in the public domain. The manybooks.net site has a couple of major advantages for Kindle users. First, it offers the iPhone View (www.manybooks.net/m/), and this view is perfect for the Kindle. Second, it provides books in the Kindle's native file format. These two benefits together mean you can browse and search the manybooks.net website from your Kindle and download books directly to your Kindle. Simply browse to www.manybooks.net/m/ and select the Kindle format when you are downloading a book.

MobileRead MobileRead (www.mobileread.com) has a wide assortment of e-books in MobiPocket format as PRC files. You can download these files directly to your Kindle either by browsing the MobileRead website on your Kindle or by downloading the files and transferring them to your Kindle later. MobileRead also makes a guide available that lists all Kindle-compatible books available from its site. You can download this guide at www.mobileread.com/mobiguide. Just as with the Project Gutenberg Magic Catalog, the MobileRead guide is a MOBI file and can open in Kindle for PC or Kindle for Mac for easy reading and downloading of books.

Planet eBook Planet eBook (www.planetebook.com) provides access to a small selection of classic literature in unprotected PDF format.

Baen Free Library If you're a science fiction fan, you'll love the Baen Free Library located at www.baen.com/library/. This site has a large selection of free science fiction books in Kindle format. The website doesn't work well when you're browsing directly on the Kindle, so you probably want to download the files and then transfer them to your Kindle.

Feedbooks Feedbooks (www.feedbooks.com) offers a wide variety of free books, many of which are classics no longer under copyright. The easiest way to download books from Feedbooks is to download the Feedbooks Kindle Guide from www.feedbooks.com/kindleguide. Download this file directly to your Kindle, and you can then browse the Feedbooks library from the web browser on the Kindle and download books directly to the Kindle.

TIP You can also download the Kindle Guide on your computer and it automatically opens in Kindle for PC or Kindle for Mac. Feedbooks offers another unique feature for Kindle users. Feedbooks can turn any RSS feed into a .mobi file that you can read on your Kindle. Most of these files automatically include a link at the beginning of the file that updates the file with the latest content from the RSS feed.

NOTE RSS feeds are offered by many websites and enable you to easily subscribe to content on the Internet. For more information on RSS, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/rss.

If you need assistance with using your Kindle with Feedbooks, visit www.feedbooks.com/help/kindle for walkthroughs.

Fictionwise Fictionwise (www.fictionwise.com) offers a large assortment of books. Contrary to the name, Fictionwise offers both fiction and nonfiction. Some of the books from Fictionwise are free, and it does offer books in Kindle format. The Fictionwise site is not suitable for browsing directly on the Kindle.

FreeTechBooks FreeTechBooks (www.freetechbooks.com) is a repository of free textbooks related to computer science and programming. The selection isn't large, but the site does offer books you often can't find at other sites. Most of the books hosted by FreeTechBooks are in PDF format and require conversion before reading on the Kindle, unless you own a Kindle DX.

Other Sources You can often find other sources of e-books by searching using Google's book search (books.google.com) or by searching the Internet for e-book sites. You should make sure that books you download are in the proper format for the Kindle. If a site doesn't offer a book explicitly for the Kindle, you can use Mobipocket or Mobi format as long as the book isn't encoded with DRM.

TIP Sometimes books are offered for free by publishers. When this happens, Amazon often provides the same books for free on its Kindle Store. In such cases, I think you're better off downloading the free book from Amazon because it is stored in Amazon's Your Media Library feature, so you can always retrieve it even after you delete it from your Kindle. If you would like more information on finding free books for the Kindle, including a discussion of the various file formats available on the Internet, check out Bufo Calvin's book Free Books for Your Kindle. You can get Bufo's book in the Kindle Store.

Creating Your Own Kindle Content One of the most useful ways to take advantage of your Kindle is to create your own content. I'm not talking about writing your own books but using the Kindle's support for basic text files to store all kinds of information that you'd like to keep at your fingertips. Create a text file on your computer that contains important information, and then transfer the file to your Kindle.

TIP If you're going to store sensitive information on your Kindle, it's a good idea to set a device password so that unauthorized people can't gain access to your information.

Address Book Save a text file with your addresses, phone numbers, and email addresses. Name the file Address Book, and it is listed close to the top of your Home screen when sorting by title. If you want to take this tip to the next level, export your contact list in your email or contact list program as a text file (most applications enable this), and transfer it to your Kindle so that you have all your contact information available with a minimum amount of work. Use the Kindle's search features to easily locate someone in your address book.

Shopping Lists Save your shopping list to a text file and store it on your Kindle. It helps you to avoid forgetting items while you're at the store.

Your Medications One of the questions doctors always ask is whether you are on any medications. If you take a lot of medications, it can be hard to remember all of them. If you save a text file on your Kindle with your medications and your medical history, you can just pull up that file and hand your Kindle to the doctor or nurse instead of having to recite all your information. This helps to communicate accurate information and prevents other patients in adjoining exam rooms from overhearing your medical history. This tip is also helpful when you need to relay medical information for children or pets.

Your Travel Itinerary When you travel, you often have to keep track of a lot of information such as hotel reservation numbers, rental car confirmation number, flight information, phone numbers, frequent customer numbers, and so on. By saving all this information in a text file, you have that information right at your fingertips when you need it. If you're traveling by car or truck, you can keep a file that includes all the interesting things you want to see along the way.

Study Notes If you're a student, save your study notes to a text file on your Kindle so that you can study for that upcoming exam any time you have a few free minutes.

Meeting Notes If you belong to an organization that generates meeting minutes, you can store those meeting minutes on your Kindle, so you can quickly access what happened in past meetings by searching the previous meeting minutes right on your Kindle.

Inventory List Keep an inventory list of items on your Kindle. The following are just a few examples: • • • •

Keep an inventory of items and box numbers when you move. If you are a collector, keep a list of all your items on your Kindle. It's not only helpful for reference, but also helpful for insurance purposes. Keep a list of your CDs and DVDs on your Kindle, so you don't unintentionally buy a duplicate while shopping at your favorite music or video store. Keep a list of your Kindle books. That way, you don't unintentionally buy a book you already own. Because the Kindle has no way to let you know which books were purchased from Amazon and are backed up in Your Media Library, note those books in your file as well.

If you'd like to share your own ideas with other Kindle users, feel free to email me at [email protected]. Your idea might even be used in the next edition of this book. (Naturally, I'll be glad to give you credit if I use your idea.)

Using Search on the Kindle After you download a library of books to your Kindle, you soon discover that finding content also involves searching content that's already on your Kindle. Fortunately, the Kindle has an excellent search feature to help with that task. When you add content to your Kindle, it immediately starts indexing that content. That means the Kindle starts to build an internal database of all the information in that content. You can quickly perform searches against all the content in your Kindle, and search results are returned almost instantaneously. To search on the Kindle, type the text you want to search for from the Home screen; then press right on the 5-way, and select Search My Items. If you want to search the Internet, press right on the 5-way again to reveal other search options. Figure 3.1 shows the search options available after pressing right on the 5-way. • •

Store: Searches Amazon's Kindle store for the word or phrase entered. Google: Opens the Basic Web browser and conducts a Google search for the word or phrase entered. → For more information on using the Basic Web browser, see “Browsing the Web on the Kindle,” in Chapter 5. • Wikipedia: Opens the Web browser and conducts a search on www.wikipedia.org for the word or phrase entered. • Dictionary: Searches the Kindle's dictionary for the word or phrase entered.

•

Go To: Launches the Web browser and enters the word or phrase entered into the address bar. For example, enter www.amazon.com to browse to the Amazon website.

Figure 3.1 Searching the Kindle.

TIP If you prefer, you can limit your search to a particular book or subscription item by opening the item before initiating your search. Even when searching within a specific item, you can still increase the scope of your search by pressing the 5-way to the right and selecting My Items, Store, Google, Wikipedia, or Dictionary. When you search using My Items, search results display each individual item in which the search term is found. To the left of each item is a number indicating how many times the search term is found in that item. To see each occurrence of the search term in any particular item, move the cursor to that item, and press the 5-way. By moving the cursor to the top of the screen and pressing the 5-way to the right, you can select how search results are sorted. By default, they are sorted by relevance. (In other words, the item with the most occurrences of the search term is listed first.) However, you can choose to sort by Most Recent First, Title, or Author, as shown in Figure 3.2.

Figure 3.2 Sorting search results.

You can also search on your Kindle by selecting Search from the Home screen menu. After entering your search term, select where you want to search, as shown in Figure 3.3.

Figure 3.3 The Search screen.

As you've seen, Kindle owners have a wide array of content available from many different

sources. Much of this content is offered in a format natively supported by the Kindle, but some require conversion before you can read it on your Kindle. As the amount of content on your Kindle grows, learning how to manage that content becomes important. In the next chapter, you learn how to manage your Kindle content and how to convert content for use on your Kindle.

Chapter 4 Managing Your Kindle Content As your Kindle content grows, you quickly discover that you need a way to manage that content. You can manage content on your Kindle using collections, and the easiest way to manage content obtained from sources other than the Kindle store is to use Calibre, a free program for your computer. You learn how to use both collections and Calibre in this chapter.

Using Archived Items One of the most common questions I hear from Kindle users is, "What do I do with a book after I finish reading it?" Although that question might sound a little strange, it's actually a good question. Why have content listed on your Kindle Home screen if you've already read it or listened to it? If you're like most Kindle users, you quickly collect a large amount of content for your Kindle, and that content can quickly become cumbersome to manage. Cleaning up items you are no longer interested in, content you've already read or listened to, and clippings you no longer need becomes a necessity. Fortunately, Amazon provided a tool called Archived Items that enables you to easily manage all your Kindle content from your Home screen.

NOTE There is a catch to Archived Items. You can only manage books purchased at the Kindle Store. When you select Archived Items from your Home screen, the Kindle lists all the Kindle books purchased from your Amazon account not currently on your Kindle. These books are stored at Amazon, so you can easily transfer them to your Kindle when you're ready to read them. You can simply click an item to download it to your Kindle. When you do, the item is opened for reading at the furthest page read using Amazon's Whispersync service. If a furthest page isn't synchronized, the item is opened at the beginning. You can also copy an item from Archived Items to your Kindle by moving the cursor to an item, pressing the 5-way to the right, and selecting Add to Home. When you use this method, the item is copied to your Home screen, but you remain on the Archived Items screen so you can copy additional items to your Kindle. You don't have to turn on wireless to access Archived Items, but wireless is necessary to copy an item to your Kindle.

TIP To move an item from your Kindle's Home screen to Archived Items, move the cursor to the item on your Home screen, and press the 5-way to the left. Choose Remove from Device, and the item is removed from the Kindle. It is then visible in Archived Items. Remember, this capability is only available for books purchased from the Kindle Store. It isn't available for books you copied to your Kindle or for subscription items. One feature that is missing from Archived Items is the ability to easily access a description of an item. I like to keep only a few books on my Kindle, so when I am looking for something new to read, I like to browse through my Archived Items. It would be nice to have easy access to the Kindle Store page for books in Archived Items without first copying the book to my Kindle. Such a feature isn't currently available, but I hope that Amazon adds it in a future Kindle update.

Using Amazon's Your Media Library Your Media Library is a special section of Amazon's website that contains entries for all your digital content purchased from Amazon. You can find your Kindle content, MP3s, Amazon Amazon Video on Demand, Amazon Upgrade books, and other items you've purchased from Amazon. Using Your Media Library, you can send purchased books, magazines, newspapers, and blogs to your Kindle (assuming you have a Whispernet connection) or to the Kindle application running on another device. You can also download content to your computer, where it can be transferred to the Kindle using a USB connection.

NOTE This book covers using Your Media Library with Kindle content only. For information on using Your Media Library to manage other Amazon content, such as hardcover books, see Amazon's help page at www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html/ref=yml_topnav_help?ie=UTF 8&nodeId=200128600. To access Your Media Library, browse to https://www.amazon.com/gp/library and log in with your

Amazon username and password. The main page of Your Media Library displays all your digital content. If you check the box next to one or more items, you see a pop-up dialog offering several options for the selected items, as shown in Figure 4.1.

Figure 4.1 Several options are available for selected items.

You can share an item by clicking the Share Selected Items button. Shared items can be visible to other Amazon users who view your profile. If you want to stop sharing an item, select it and click the Make Selected Items Private button.

NOTE The Move to Gift List button is not applicable to digital content such as Kindle books. If you click the Move to Trash button, selected items are moved to the trash. You can access items in the trash by clicking the View drop-down in the upper-left corner and selecting Trash. You can return an item in the trash to your collection by selecting it and clicking the Return to Your Collection button. Kindle content cannot be permanently removed from Your Media Library because doing so would prevent you from transferring that content back to your Kindle. If you try to permanently delete your Kindle content, a message notifies you that the item cannot be deleted.

Using Amazon's Manage Your Kindle The Your Media Library page provides tools to manage your Kindle content. Amazon also enables you to manage the Kindle by using the Manage Your Kindle page. To access the Manage Your Kindle page, click the Manage Your Kindle link on the Kindle home page located at www.kindle.com or browse to www.amazon.com/manageyourkindle. The Manage Your Kindle page is divided into several sections.

Your Kindle(s) The Your Kindle(s) section lists all the Kindles registered to your Amazon account. Although there is no limit to the number of Kindles you can register to a single Amazon account, you can share books with only up to six Kindles registered to the account. Sharing content between multiple Kindles does not extend to subscription content. In other words, if you subscribe to a newspaper, magazine, or blog for one Kindle, that subscription cannot be shared with other Kindles on your account.

TIP If you have more than one Kindle or if you have the Kindle application on another device, you can select which device you want to send files to when you use Your Media Library or when you purchase content in the Kindle Store.

Your Computer and Other Mobile Device(s) If you have registered the Kindle application on a computer or a mobile device, it is listed on the Manage Your Kindle page.

Your Kindle-Approved Email List When you register a Kindle, you are given a Kindle email address. You can email files to your Kindle email address, and they are automatically converted for you and transferred to your Kindle over Whispernet. There's a charge (currently 15 cents per megabyte in the United States and 99 cents per megabyte outside of the United States) for sending converted documents directly to your Kindle, so to prevent unauthorized people from sending mail to your Kindle email account, only those people you have approved can send mail to your Kindle email address. You can add new approved emails in this section. (You can convert documents for free using your [email protected] email address, but those items are made available via a download link sent to you in email rather than being sent directly to your Kindle.)

TIP If you send a PDF document to your Kindle, Amazon can transfer it to your Kindle in PDF format. If you’d like for Amazon to convert the PDF to the Kindle’s native format, enter Convert as the subject of the mail. You might want to convert a PDF to the Kindle’s native format if the native PDF format isn’t formatted well for reading on the Kindle.

Your Personal Document Charge Limit Amazon charges 15 cents per megabyte within the United States and 99 cents per megabyte outside of the United States when you send personal documents to your Kindle email address for conversion. By setting a personal document charge limit, you can ensure that charges for this service don't exceed the specified amount. The limit that you specify here is a per document limit.

Your Default 1-Click Payment Method Purchases in the Amazon Kindle Store are completed using Amazon's 1-Click. Before you can buy content from the Kindle store using your Kindle, you have to enter a credit card to be used with 1-Click. You can edit the payment method by clicking Edit. The credit card you enter here must be issued by an institution located in the United States.

TIP If you have current subscriptions on your Kindle, the payment method on those subscriptions is not automatically updated when you change your 1-Click payment method. To change subscription payment methods, you need to edit the individual subscription.

Your Country Your Kindle is associated with the country in which you live. If you move to another country, you can change the country associated with your Kindle by clicking the Edit link in the Your Country section.

Your Active Kindle Subscriptions Subscriptions to magazines, newspapers, and blogs are managed in Your Active Kindle Subscriptions section. If you want to cancel a current subscription, click the Cancel Subscription link. This is currently the only way to cancel a Kindle subscription. You can also edit a subscription's payment method in this section.

Open Orders Your orders that have not yet been completed display here. In my experience, no orders ever appear in this section.

Your Orders Amazon maintains a full list of all the Kindle content you've purchased. You can view an order summary page for any of these items in the section Your Orders and Individual Charges section by clicking the plus sign next to an item and then clicking View Order Details on Amazon.com. You can see when the item was purchased, and you can print an invoice for the item from the order summary page. Amazon also provides a direct link to Your Media Library on the order summary page. You can send an item to your Kindle or to the Kindle application installed on another device by selecting your device from the Deliver To drop-down.

Your Individual Charges This section lists any charges incurred for document conversion and sending documents directly to your Kindle via Whispernet. Amazon also charges for access to Whispernet if you access content overseas, and those charges appear in this section.

TIP For full information on what fee-based services Amazon provides, see http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=200505540.

Manage Synchronization Between Devices To manage Whispersync between your devices, click the Manage Synchronization Between Devices link. Amazon provides guidance on when you might want to turn synchronization off. In my experience, it's often easier to manually control Whispersync using the Sync to Furthest Page Read menu item on the Kindle or other device, but if you want Whispersync to keep your devices synchronized automatically, you need to leave synchronization turned on.

Transferring Files To and From Your Kindle The easiest method of transferring files to your Kindle is to send them to your Kindle email address. This technique not only transfers them to the Kindle, but also converts them if necessary. However, you might not always have access to Whispernet. In those cases, you need to transfer the files using the USB cable that came with your Kindle.

TIP The Kindle uses a micro-USB cable instead of the typical mini-USB cable that most USB devices use. To transfer files to your Kindle using the USB, simply insert the small plug of the USB cable into the Kindle and the larger plug into the USB port on your computer. You don't need to turn off the Kindle first. After you plug in the USB cable, the Kindle switches into USB mode, and a new drive appears on your computer. Depending on your computer settings, you might see a pop-up dialog asking you what you want to do with the new drive. If not, you can open My Computer or Windows Explorer and browse the drive. You can transfer files to and from your Kindle by simply dragging and dropping them. For example, if you want to copy a book you've converted to your Kindle, drop it into the Documents folder on the Kindle. After you finish transferring your files, simply unplug the USB cable from your computer and the Kindle. You might see a faint remnant of the screen that was shown on the Kindle when it was in USB mode. This is normal and disappears when you begin using the Kindle and the screen refreshes.

TIP You can manually refresh the Kindle screen by pressing Alt+G on the Kindle's keyboard.

NOTE You can also transfer eBooks to and from your Kindle using Calibre. For information on doing that, see "Using Calibre" later in this chapter.

Organizing Kindle Content Your eBook library can quickly become cumbersome without some means of organizing your content. Books on your Kindle are easily organized using collections. Books you've obtained from third-party sources (and are, therefore, not available in Archived Items) are best organized using Calibre. In this section, you learn how to use both of these powerful organization tools.

Using Collections Collections provide a means of categorizing the books on your Kindle. You can think of collections as folders into which you can place nonsubscription Kindle content so that you can easily locate what you want to read. However, unlike what you would expect with folders, an item can be placed into more than one collection. For example, you might place a book into a collection called Novels and in another collection called Fiction. By enabling you to add an item to multiple collections, Amazon has provided a flexible and powerful organization tool for the Kindle. To create a new collection, select Create New Collection from the Home screen menu. Enter the name you'd like to use for your collection and then click Save. Your new collection now appears on the Home screen.

TIP When you create your first collection, your Kindle switches to sorting the Home screen by collections. This causes all collections to appear first on the Home screen. To add an item to a collection, use the 5-way to underline the item; then press the 5-way to the right. Select Add to Collection, highlight the desired collection, and select Add to This Collection. (You also have the option to create a new collection from this screen.) To remove an item from a collection, use the 5-way to underline the collection; then press the 5way to open the collection. Underline the item you want to remove, and press the 5-way to the left. Choose Remove from Collection to remove the item from the collection. You can also add multiple items to a collection and remove multiple items from a collection following these steps.

1.

Using the 5-way, move the underline to the collection you want to edit, and press the 5way to the right to display the Collection Details Page.

2.

Select Add/Remove Items.

3.

Move the 5-way to underline the item that you want to add or remove.

4.

Select Add to This Collection to add an item and Remove from This Collection to remove an item, as shown in Figure 4.2.

5.

Select Done at the bottom of the screen to finish editing the collection.

When in the Add/Remove screen, a check mark appears to the right of items that have been added to the collection.

Figure 4.2 The Add/Remove screen.

TIP You can rename or delete a collection from the Collection Details Page by selecting Rename Collection or Delete Collection. Deleting a collection does not delete the books within that collection. It simply returns them to the Home screen.

Using Calibre As you've seen, Amazon provides some great tools for managing eBooks that are in your Amazon library, but you'll likely have plenty of eBooks that were downloaded from places other

than Amazon. Several tools are available for managing these eBooks, but the best by far is a free application called Calibre.

TIP You can download Calibre for your PC, Mac, or Linux computer by browsing to www.calibre-ebook.com. Calibre enables you to do all the following. •

Catalog your eBook library.

•

Edit the title of your eBooks or author name.

•

Easily download cover graphics for your eBooks.

•

Convert eBooks into a format suitable for your Kindle.

•

Transfer eBooks to and from your Kindle using USB.

NOTE Books that you buy from the Kindle store are protected and cannot be managed using Calibre. When you first launch Calibre, it creates an eBook catalog in a folder on your computer. When you add books to your Calibre library, it adds them to your catalog and displays them in the Calibre interface.

TIP Calibre also asks you to specify your eBook device when you first launch it. Be sure to select the Kindle so that Calibre will be configured for use with your Kindle. Calibre uses metadata to display information about the books in your library. The metadata for a book contains the title, author name, publisher, where to find the cover image, and so on.

Editing Metadata Some eBooks may contain incorrect metadata. For example, the author name may not be correct or may be missing entirely. It's helpful to edit the metadata in such cases so that the eBook displays properly on your Kindle's Home screen. To edit the metadata for an eBook, select the eBook in Calibre, and click the Edit Metadata button on the Calibre toolbar to display the Edit Meta Information dialog, as shown in Figure 4.3.

Figure 4.3 Calibre's Edit Meta Information Dialog.

In some cases, you can automatically populate the metadata by clicking the Fetch Metadata from Server button in Calibre's Edit Meta Information dialog. If Calibre cannot locate information on your eBook automatically, you can manually enter the information into the Edit Meta Information dialog.

TIP Removing an eBook's ISBN number from the metadata often give you better results when attempting to automatically populate metadata because the same book may have been published by a different publisher under a different ISBN number. You can also download a cover graphic for your eBook by clicking the Download Cover button. If a cover cannot be found, you can manually add one by clicking the Browse button and selecting a cover image. You can also have Calibre automatically generate a generic cover by clicking the Generate Cover button.

Converting eBooks with Calibre Calibre can convert eBooks to and from most popular eBook formats, including the MOBI format, the format most suitable for use on your Kindle. Calibre can automatically convert eBooks if necessary when you transfer them to your Kindle, but you can also manually convert eBooks.

To manually convert books using Calibre, select one or more books in your library, and click the Convert Books button on the toolbar. Select the output format using the drop-down in the upperright corner of the Convert dialog (select MOBI for books you want to transfer to your Kindle) and click OK to start the conversion. While Calibre is converting your books, it displays a rotating cursor in the lower-right corner of the main dialog. It also displays the number of jobs currently in the queue. If you want to see a status of all the Calibre's jobs, click the rotating cursor.

NOTE If you selected the Kindle as your device when you first launched Calibre, it automatically selects MOBI for you. Calibre has many options available when converting books. You can leave all the options set to the default value, and everything will work fine for your Kindle. However, if you want to learn more about all the available options, read the Calibre Quick Start Guide automatically included in your Calibre library, or click the Help button on the toolbar to display the Calibre documentation.

Transferring Books with Calibre You can use Calibre to transfer eBooks to and from your Kindle. If you transfer a book that isn't already converted to a format suitable for the Kindle, Calibre automatically converts it prior to transferring it to your Kindle. To transfer eBooks to your Kindle, launch Calibre and plug your Kindle into your computer using the USB cable. Select the eBooks that you want to transfer to your Kindle, and click the Send to Device button. Calibre adds the transfers to the jobs queue and begins the process of converting (if necessary) and transferring your eBooks. You can see a status of the transfer process by clicking the rotating cursor in the lower-right of the Calibre interface. Calibre can also transfer eBooks from your Kindle to your computer. If you click the Device button on the Calibre toolbar, you can see a listing of all the eBooks on your Kindle. If you select an eBook and click the Save to Disk button, Calibre copies the eBook to your computer.

TIP Calibre doesn’t enable you to save an eBook directly from your Kindle into your Calibre library. If you want to add an eBook on your Kindle to your Calibre library, first save the eBook to another folder on your computer, and then use the Add Books button in Calibre to add it to your library. You can add eBooks that you purchase from the Kindle Store to your Calibre library. You might want to do this to keep a local backup copy of the eBook. You can also use Calibre to edit the metadata of an eBook you purchased from the Kindle Store. You can then transfer the eBook from your Calibre library back to your Kindle. However, if you later remove the eBook from

your device and then restore it from Archived Items, you'll be restoring the original eBook and not the copy that was edited using Calibre. Calibre has a lot more functionality than what is covered here, so you should to review the Quick Start Guide and view the online documentation. If you find Calibre to be useful, you can donate to Calibre's developer by clicking the Heart button on the toolbar.

Chapter 5 Internet and Email on the Kindle With the Kindle's Whispernet feature you can use the Kindle for much more than just a reading device. You can browse the Internet on your Kindle and even check your email and send messages to friends and family.

Browsing the Web on the Kindle When I show my Kindle to people, the one feature usually most surprising (and impressive) is that the Kindle is Internet-enabled. The capability of the Kindle to automatically transfer content from the Kindle Store directly to your Kindle is a great feature, but the Kindle's connectivity also provides many other unique capabilities that significantly enhance its value. Following are just a few of the many things you can do on the Web with your Kindle: • Read your favorite blogs free instead of paying for a subscription from Amazon. • Catch up on the latest news from MSNBC, BBC, Yahoo!, and more. • Check for movies and show times in your area. • Quench your thirst for knowledge on Wikipedia. • Send and receive emails from friends and family. • Check flight status, airport delays, and so on. • Get the latest sports scores. • Look up locations and phone numbers for businesses in your area. • Check the latest weather. • Access traffic information. • Find recipes. • Browse and bid on eBay auctions. • Participate in social networks such as Facebook and Twitter. • Get stock quotes. • Manage your Netflix movie queue. Many of these tasks can be performed using the preloaded bookmarks available on the Kindle. Before looking at links and information on the remaining tasks, first examine the basics of using the Web browser included with your Kindle.

Web Browser Basics Like Internet Explorer, Firefox, or Safari, you can use the Kindle's web browser to browse websites on the Internet, but it does have some limitations. For example, you can't install plugins such as Adobe's Flash Player on the Kindle's web browser. Because of these limitations, you might encounter some problems with some websites, such as menus not appearing, formatting problems, and so on. You need to experiment to determine whether your favorite sites are suitable for browsing with the Kindle.

NOTE As of this writing, there is no charge for browsing the Web using the Kindle's web browser. However, if you read the Kindle policies on Amazon's website, there is some indication that Amazon might begin charging for web browser access in the future. If that happens, the Kindle should ask you to confirm any charges prior to charging your credit card. You can read Amazon's official documentation on Internet access on the Kindle at www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?ie=UTF8&nodeId=200322720. To access the web browser, from the Home screen menu, select Experimental. When you see the Experimental screen, select Web Browser. When you first launch the web browser, you see a list of bookmarks that come preloaded in the Kindle. These links take you to websites that work well for Kindle's screen. Each subsequent time you launch the web browser, you are taken to the last web page that you visited.

Navigating the Web on Your Kindle If you've ever browsed a website on a mobile phone, you are familiar with the layout of most websites when browsing them on the Kindle. Images are kept to a minimum, and links sometimes display in a list for easy selection, as shown in Figure 5.1.

Figure 5.1 Viewing Amazon.com on a Kindle.

You can zoom in on pages while using the web browser by pressing the AA button and selecting a zoom level or by pressing Menu and selecting Zoom In. Some pages enable you to zoom in on a section of the page by moving the 5-way to select the portion of the page and pressing the 5way to zoom in. If the page you view does not fit on your Kindle's screen, you can use the 5-way to navigate down or to the right to view additional content. You can also use the Next Page and Previous Page buttons to move quickly to more content on the page. The 5-way is also used to move the pointer on the page so that you can select links and other content on the page. Some pages may not display well on your Kindle. If you find that text is too small or the page is too cluttered to use effectively on the Kindle, you may find that switching to Article Mode provides for a better experience. Article Mode automatically reformats a page so that it is optimized for viewing on the Kindle's screen. To access Article Mode, while in the web browser, press Menu and select Article Mode. Article Mode remains enabled while you are on the current page, but when you navigate to another page, the web browser reverts to Web Mode.

NOTE Article Mode availability depends on the layout of a particular page, and it may not always be available.

Web Browser Settings To access Web Browser settings, while in the Web browser, click the Menu button and click Browser Settings. The Settings screen contains several settings enabling you to configure the Web browser. •

Clear History: lears the browser history. You can view the history by selecting History

• • •

from the menu while in the web browser. Clear Cookies: Clears any cookies that have been stored for your browser. Disable JavaScript: Enables or disables JavaScript support in the web browser. Disable Images: If you'd prefer to browse websites without waiting for images to download, you can disable images.

TIP If you visit a website and it doesn't seem to work right, make sure JavaScript is enabled and try again. Many websites require JavaScript for full functionality, but they don't tell you when it's disabled.

Using the Kindle on the Web As mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, you can use the Kindle to access incredibly useful information on the Internet. A computer with Internet access is a much better choice for using the Web, but Internet access on a computer isn't always available. In such instances, the Kindle can be an amazingly convenient Internet device. As you investigate some of the many things you can do with Kindle's built-in Internet access, you soon see why Whispernet access truly makes the Kindle a revolutionary device.

TIP If you want to find out whether your favorite website has a mobile version that you can use with the Kindle, you can visit the website on a cell phone or a PDA. Many websites detect whether you are using a browser on a cell phone or a PDA and redirect you to a mobile version of the site automatically. You can often use the URL you are redirected to for a better experience when browsing on the Kindle.

Reading Blogs on the Kindle You already know you can use the Kindle to subscribe to blogs. Having blog content delivered automatically to your Kindle is a powerful feature. If you read a blog that frequently updates content during the day, having a Kindle subscription to that blog is probably well worth the small monthly fee. If you prefer to read your blogs for free, you also can do that on the Kindle by using

a service such as Google Reader that is designed to aggregate blogs into a single, user-friendly web interface designed for small screens.

TIP You can access Google Reader by browsing to m.google.com/reader. Make sure you first visit www.google.com/reader on your computer and not your Kindle. You have to add blog subscriptions from a computer before you can read blogs on the Kindle. Before you can use Google Reader, you need a Google account. You can create a Google account for free by clicking the Sign-In link at the top of any Google page. After you log in with your account information, you can add blogs and other websites to your subscriptions by clicking the Add Subscription link on the menu on the left side of the page. If you don't already have a blog in mind, you can click the Discover link to browse blogs and find something that interests you. If you need help using Google Reader, click the Help link in the upper right. After you add some blogs in Google Reader, open the Web browser on the Kindle and browse to m.google.com/reader.

Reading News on the Kindle Catching up with the latest news on the Kindle is easy. Many news sites offer sites optimized for smaller screens, and these sites work very well on the Kindle. When you first launch the Kindle's Web browser, you see a list of the bookmarks that come preloaded in the Kindle. You see links to The New York Times, BBC news, and more. All these sites are optimized for smaller screens and use limited graphics, so they're perfect for reading on a Kindle. Keep in mind, however, that these sites often link to other sites that aren't Kindlefriendly. In addition to the sites listed in preloaded bookmarks, you can also access other news sites. Following are a few useful sites: • Google News (m.google.com/news) • CNN (m.cnn.com) • ABC News (m.abcnews.com) • CBS News (wap.cbsnews.com) • USA Today (m.usatoday.com) • The Washington Post (mobile.washingtonpost.com) • The Wall Street Journal (mobile2.wsj.com) • Engadget Mobile (m.engadgetmobile.com) If you have a favorite news site that's not on this list, you might still view the site on your Kindle. Look on the site for links to a mobile version, a version formatted for cell phones, or a version formatted for PDAs. Any of these should work well on the Kindle's screen. One thing you might notice about the list of news sites is that it includes The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal, both of which are available as subscriptions on the Kindle Store.

Even though you can access this content at no charge via the web browser, you might find Amazon's subscription model to be more convenient.

Checking Movies and Show Times By browsing to the Fandango website at mobile.fandango.com, you can view currently playing movies in your area and even buy tickets.

Checking Flight Status and Airport Information Most Kindle owners agree the Kindle is a great device to take on an airplane trip, but what many don't know is the Kindle can be tremendously useful on the way to the airport. The FlightStats Mobile page (mobile.flightstats.com) provides up-to-the-minute gate information and flight status information. It also provides information about airport delays and security wait times, and can help you locate phone numbers for booking hotels and shuttles.

Accessing Traffic Information If you live in a major metropolitan area, you're likely no stranger to traffic jams. You can actually use your Kindle to keep abreast of traffic snarls in your area. The Traffic.com website offers a mobile version at mobi.traffic.com/traffic. When there, simply enter your ZIP code or select your city, and you can view traffic hotspots quickly and easily. You can even register for an account on your computer and enter information about the roads you drive. Then, when you visit the mobile site on your Kindle, you get more personalized traffic information with just a few clicks.

Find Recipes Your Kindle can provide you with a detailed shopping list and recipe for just about any dish. Not only that, but it can be incredibly convenient. For example, you're in the grocery store, and you see a special on chicken breasts that you just can't pass up. By browsing to the All Recipes mobile site on your Kindle (mobile.allrecipes.com), you can simply enter "chicken" and get a comprehensive list of chicken recipes. All recipes are rated by All Recipes users, so you can be sure it’s a tasty dish. All Recipes is one of the bookmarks that comes preloaded on your Kindle.

Browse and Bid on eBay Auctions eBay has a mobile website (m.ebay.com) that makes it possible to browse eBay auctions and place bids directly from your Kindle. In my experience, the formatting on the eBay mobile site isn't as good as it could be, but none of the problems I encountered affected the use of the site. They were all purely cosmetic problems.

Manage Your Netflix Movie Queue If you're a Netflix subscriber, you can easily browse for movies, view your queue, and manage your queue directly from your Kindle. Simply browse to the Netflix mobile site (www.netflix.com/mobile) and log in with your Netflix user ID and password.

Social Networking on the Kindle The biggest trend on the Internet today is social networking. Sites such as Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, and others are becoming the most common way to keep in touch with friends and family. Many social networking websites have mobile versions that can be used with the Kindle. Following are some that work well on the Kindle: • Facebook (m.facebook.com) • Twitter (m.twitter.com) • MySpace (m.myspace.com) • Bebo (m.bebo.com) • LinkedIn (m.linkedin.com) All these sites work in a similar way. You create a profile that describes certain things about you, and then you can connect with other people with similar interests, geographic locations, and so on.

Email on the Kindle Most web-based email services offer an interface that works well on mobile browsers. You can use these services to send and receive email from your Kindle, but don't expect that you get the same ease of use that you enjoy from your computer. After all, the Kindle's keyboard is not ideal for typing large amounts of text, and the Kindle web browser isn't user-friendly when trying to navigate complex websites. However, having the capability to access your email in a pinch without having to spend the big bucks that cell phone companies charge for a data plan is a tremendous benefit. If you don't have an email account with one of the web-based services that offer email, you can create one for free and then configure your regular email so that it gets forwarded to your new web-based email. If you're not sure how to forward your email, check with your email provider. Most email providers offer a forwarding service free of charge.

TIP Accessing email on the Kindle often requires you to enable JavaScript in the Web browser.

Google Gmail To access Google Gmail on the Kindle, browse to m.gmail.com. After you enter your login information, you are taken to your Gmail inbox where you can read mail, reply to mail, create mail messages, and so on. In Kindle circles, Gmail is often proclaimed as the only web-based email service compatible with the Kindle. Although that's not actually true, many people prefer Gmail simply because Google often improves the service with new features.

Windows Live Mail (Hotmail) If you have a Windows Live ID and would like to check your Hotmail email on the Kindle, you can access the Hotmail mobile website at mobile.live.com. After logging in, click Go to Inbox to view your Hotmail inbox.

Yahoo! Mail To access your Yahoo! Mail on the Kindle, browse to mobile.yahoo.com/mail. Select the Login link, and then enter your Yahoo! ID and your password to access your mailbox. As you've seen in this chapter, the Whispernet access on the Kindle opens up a practically infinite number of possibilities. These examples only scratch the surface. Due to the increase in smart phones and other Internet-enabled cell phone devices, mobile websites are becoming more popular in the mainstream. Kindle users can benefit from all these sites, and in some cases, the larger Kindle screen means a better overall experience.

Chapter 6 Games and Multimedia on the Kindle In addition to reading content, you can also play games and put music and audio books on your Kindle. In this chapter, you learn how to use games and multimedia content on your Kindle.

Games on the Kindle When Amazon first began supporting games on the Kindle, it seemed like a silly idea to me. After all, what kind of gaming experience can an electronic ink display provide? It's black and white, and the update speed on it is too slow to enable for a quality game experience. As it turns out, I was completely wrong. Amazon used game support on the Kindle to release games that are perfect not only for the Kindle device, but also for Kindle users. Amazon focused on cerebral and fun games, and playing them on the Kindle is a great experience. Amazon is not the only provider of Kindle games. Many other companies, including the wellrecognized game producer Electronic Arts, have gotten into the game as well, and the Kindle Store now offers many games for your Kindle.

NOTE Amazon refers to games as Kindle Active Content. Unfortunately, there isn't an easy way to view only games that are available in the Kindle Store. However, by searching for "games" in the Kindle store, you can find a listing that is limited almost exclusively to games, many of which are free.

Games are purchased and added to your Kindle exactly like eBooks and other content. When you purchase a game, it appears on your Home screen just like a eBook. Games can be organized using collections as well.

Playing Music By adding your favorite MP3 files to your Kindle, you can listen to music or other audio content (such as podcasts) while you read or your browse the Internet. You can listen over the Kindle's built-in speakers, or you can use the 1/8'' headphone jack on the bottom of the Kindle for private listening.

NOTE The Kindle supports only the MP3 format. To listen to music on your Kindle, copy the music files to the music folder on your Kindle.

TIP You can use any directory structure you choose inside the Music folder, but the Kindle does not

allow for navigation of that structure. To start playing music, select Experimental from the Home screen menu, and then click Play MP3. You can also press Alt-Space to start playing music. To skip to the next music track, press Alt-F. No other control of audio playback is provided when listening to music.

Listening to Audio Books The Kindle also is an excellent platform for listening to audio books. You can play audio books from Audible (www.audible.com/kindle) or from any source that provides audio books in MP3 format.

NOTE Audible audio books are not in MP3 format. They are in a proprietary format encrypted so you can play them only on a device that supports Audible's format. The Kindle supports Audible formats 2, 3, and 4. Audible format 1 is not supported. For more information, see the Audible website at www.audible.com/kindle. Audio books are listed on the Kindle's Home screen. When listening to an audio book, you have the option to start from the beginning, navigate through sections (if the audio book includes sections), and move forward and back in 30-second intervals. Audible is a fee-based subscription service. After you subscribe to Audible, download the AudibleManager software available from www.audible.com/kindle. After you install the software, connect your Kindle to your computer using the USB cable, and select Activate from

the Devices menu in AudibleManager. By doing this, you authorize your Kindle to play audio books you purchase from Audible. To listen to audio books on your Kindle, download the audio book file to your computer. Then, connect the Kindle to your computer with the USB cable, and copy the audio book file to the Audible folder on the Kindle. The audio book then appears on the Kindle Home screen. Audio books are bookmarked like regular books. Therefore, if you stop listening to an audio book, the Kindle remembers your place in the book and picks up where you left off the next time you start listening to the book. This makes the audio book feature a great choice for listening to podcasts and other nonmusic audio that you might want to listen to on your Kindle. Simply copy any MP3 file into the Audible folder, and the Kindle treats that file like an audio book.

TIP You can download podcasts from www.mediafly.com. They offer a huge assortment of podcasts on all kinds of topics. If you'd like a podcast on the Kindle, you can download one from www.thekindlechronicles.com.

Listening to Podcasts As mentioned earlier, you can listen to podcasts on your Kindle. The most convenient way to listen to podcasts is by copying them to a folder called Audible at the root of your Kindle. If you do that, the Kindle remembers where you left off if you stop listening and decide to pick up listening again later. It also adds the benefit of listing your podcast in the Kindle Home screen, so you can listen to whatever podcast you choose instead of having them randomly selected along with your music. You can find podcasts using many popular music services such as the iTunes music store, but you can also download podcasts from a podcast directory such as http://www.podcastalley.com.

Taking Screenshots Sometimes you might want to save an image of what you see on the Kindle screen. For example, if you're a blogger, you might want to post screenshots of the Kindle on your blog. If you're an author and you're writing a book about the Kindle, you might want to include screenshots of Kindle's display. You can easily take a screenshot of Kindle's screen by pressing Shift+Alt+G. When you do, an image is saved to the documents folder of the Kindle. Kindle screenshots are GIF images and are 600x800 pixels in size. The image you see on the Kindle is often clearer than a screenshot taken using this feature. It's still convenient to take screenshots so that you can post them on blog posts, send them in emails, or even include them in a book about the Kindle!

Chapter 7 Kindle Resources and Accessories The Kindle's popularity has spawned a large number of Kindle resources on the Internet and Kindle accessories.

Kindle Resources The following resources offer reliable and interesting information on the Kindle.

Amazon's Kindle Page: www.kindle.com Amazon's Kindle page is the premier resource for Kindle information. You can manage your Kindle from the Kindle page at Amazon, read the Kindle forums (an excellent resource for the Kindle), and subscribe to the Amazon Daily blog to get additional information relevant to Kindle users.

Kindle Nation Daily: kindlehomepage.blogspot.com Kindle Nation Daily is a Kindle blog written by Steven Windwalker. The most interesting posts are ones that mention free content for the Kindle. This blog is also available for subscription on the Kindle.

Blog Kindle: www.blogkindle.com At Blog Kindle, you can find information not only on the Kindle, but also on free books and many more topics of interest to Kindle users.

The Kindle Chronicles: www.thekindlechronicles.com The Kindle Chronicles is a podcast dedicated to the Kindle. You can listen to it on your computer, your favorite MP3 player, or on the Kindle itself! → For more information on listening to podcasts on the Kindle, see “Listening to Audio Books,” in Chapter 6.

Booksprung: booksprung.com Booksprung is another blog dedicated to the Kindle. However, this site also offers news specifically about eBooks and more.

Kindle Accessories As of this writing, plenty of accessories are available for the Kindle, and the list grows all the time. You can find a complete list of accessories at Amazon.com, but here are a couple of my favorites.

Kindle Lighted Leather Cover One of the most common questions you get from people looking at your Kindle is "Does it have a light?" The Kindle doesn't have a backlight (and neither does your favorite paperback), but if you purchase Amazon's Kindle Lighted Leather Cover, you'll get a convenient LED light built in that not only provides excellent lighting while reading, but also tucks away out of sight when you don't need it. The cover is a bit pricey at $59.99, but it's well worth it. You can find the cover at http://www.amazon.com/Kindle-LightedLeather-Display-Generation/dp/B003DZ165W and there are plenty of colors from which to choose.

DecalGirl Kindle Skins If you want protection for your Kindle that also enhances the beauty of the device, you can hardly beat DecalGirl's skins. Many unique designs are available for about $20 at http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=bl_sr_electronics?_encoding=UTF8&node=172282&fieldbrandtextbin=DecalGirl.

Chapter 8 Kindle FAQs Frequently Asked Questions About the Kindle In the preceding chapters, I've made every attempt to answer as many questions as possible related to using the Kindle. However, there are still many questions that don't fit nicely into a chapter. Therefore, I've collected a long list of frequently asked questions from numerous sources and dedicated the final chapter of the book to answering those questions. Some of these questions are answered elsewhere in the book are included here as a quick reference.

Are Kindle books the same as the hardcover or paperback versions? Ultimately, it's up to the publisher whether or not a Kindle book is different. However, because reworking a book for the Kindle is much more work for a publisher, current Kindle books appear to be exactly the same as their paper counterparts. One question Kindle owners often ask is whether Kindle books are abridged. Unless the listing on Amazon's store explicitly indicates a book is abridged, it isn't. Keep in mind that Kindle books don't always open at the first page in the book. Instead, they sometimes open on the first page of Chapter 1. In those cases, you need to use Previous Page or open the Table of Contents via the menu to get to a previous section.

Why doesn't the Kindle have a backlight? One of the huge advantages of the Kindle is the E Ink screen. E Ink is a reflective technology that relies solely on reflected light. Put simply, backlight technology doesn't work with E Ink, and even if it did, it would add considerably to eye fatigue while reading.

I often read in bed without much light, and I find the Kindle Lighted Leather Cover from Amazon to be an excellent way to read in low light.

Why does the screen flash when I turn pages? The screen flash you see when you turn pages on the Kindle is perfectly normal. Essentially, the Kindle is "wiping" the screen clean and then displaying the new page. If the Kindle didn't flash the page in this manner, you would see subtle artifacts from previous pages that would make the screen look dirty. When you turn off the Kindle, these artifacts are often visible on the screen. That's why the Kindle also flashes when you turn it on.

How long should the battery last between charges? Two things take power on the Kindle: turning pages and using the wireless connection. Therefore, battery life between charges can vary by a large factor. If you have wireless turned on, you might have to charge your Kindle after a week or so. However, if you have wireless turned off, it's not uncommon to get close to a month of battery use before you need a recharge. One more thing that can cause a decrease in battery life between charges is using a large text size. Large text means more page turns, and page turns require battery power.

Can someone else buy a Kindle book for me as a gift? Yes. Each Kindle eBook on the Kindle Store is accompanied by a Give as a Gift button. By clicking that button, you can purchase an eBook and give it as a gift to anyone with an email address.

I received a Kindle as a gift, but it's registered in that person's name. Can I fix that? You need to ask the gift-giver to deregister the Kindle from his or her account. A Kindle can be registered only to a single Amazon account. When a Kindle is purchased as a gift, it is automatically registered to the Amazon account of the person purchasing it. However, if you select the option to make the purchase a gift, Amazon does not register the Kindle, thereby allowing the recipient to register the Kindle after he or she receives it. → For more information on registering a Kindle, see “Using Amazon's Manage Your Kindle,” in Chapter 4.

Can I create folders to organize my content? You can't create folders, but you can create collections. Collections are actually better than folders because you can add a book to more than one collection, thereby making your categorization of eBooks more flexible. → For more information on managing and organizing your Kindle content, see “Managing Your Kindle Content,” in Chapter 4.

Can I take screenshots on my Kindle screen to post on a blog, a web page, or to send to someone? Yes. When you press Alt+Shift+G, the Kindle saves a screenshot to the documents folder of the Kindle. Screenshots are saved as GIF images, so they are small in file size and can be easily emailed or added to a website. To email a screenshot to someone, you will first have to transfer the image to a computer.

What happens if I delete a book from my Kindle? If you delete a book purchased from Amazon, you can move it back to your Kindle using Archived Items, the Manage Your Kindle page on Amazon, or the Your Media Library page on Amazon. If you delete a book you downloaded from a source other than Amazon, you cannot undo a delete from the Kindle. Therefore, make sure you back up any books not purchased from Amazon. → For more information on using the Content Manager and using Your Media Library, see “Managing Your Kindle Content,” in Chapter 4.

Is it true I need a credit card issued in the United States to buy content from Amazon's Kindle store? It used to be true, but it's not anymore. In October 2009, Amazon began offering the Kindle internationally.

Do I need a computer to use a Kindle? The Kindle does not require a computer as long as you have access to Whispernet. If you don't have access to Whispernet, you need a computer so that you can copy content to your Kindle. You can check your Whispernet coverage at http://client0.cellmaps.com/tabs.html#cellmaps_na_tab. → For more information on copying content to your Kindle with a computer, see “Transferring Files To and From Your Kindle,” in Chapter 4.

Do I have to pay for wireless service to use Whispernet on the Kindle? No. After you register your Kindle, Whispernet just works. There are no contracts and no fees to use Whispernet.

Can I read a Kindle book I bought from Amazon on my computer? What about a book I downloaded from somewhere else on the Internet? Yes. You need to use Kindle for PC or Kindle for Mac to read a Kindle book on your computer. You can also use Calibre to read eBooks on your computer, but you cannot use Calibre to read protected eBooks purchased from the Kindle Store. → For more information on using Calibre, see “Using Calibre,” in Chapter 4.

If a book is not currently available in Kindle format, is there a way I can request that it be made available? The publisher of a book decides whether to make it available in Kindle format. If you see a book on Amazon that's not currently available on the Kindle, you can click the Tell the Publisher link that appears on the book's page on Amazon. Amazon will then notify the publisher for you.

Can I be notified when a book is made available in Kindle format? Amazon currently has no such capability, but if you read the discussion forums at the bottom of the Kindle home page (www.kindle.com), you often find that kind of information posted.

Is there any way I can create my own Kindle books from a paper book that I've purchased? Technically, you could scan each page of a book and create a Mobi file from it. However, doing so is a breach of copyright. Books cannot be duplicated without express written consent from the publisher. Certain books are in the public domain and can be copied, but almost all these books are already available on the Internet at no charge.

Should I turn off wireless when I'm not using it? In most cases, yes. Wireless uses a lot of battery power. However, keep in mind if you subscribe to Kindle content, the Kindle cannot update your content automatically unless wireless is turned on.

How should I clean the Kindle screen? I'm very picky about my electronic devices. I don't want a mark on any of them. Therefore, I clean my Kindle's screen with a dry microfiber cloth. If a dry cloth doesn't get the job done, I use a cleaning gel designed for cleaning high-quality screens on HD televisions. You can get these supplies at any electronics store.

How should I clean the Kindle? The Kindle itself might get smudges on it. The best way to clean the Kindle is to use the same kind of microfiber cloth you use to clean the screen.

Should I charge my Kindle after each use? No. The Kindle uses a lithium-ion battery, and keeping a lithium-ion battery at full charge for prolonged periods decreases the life of the battery. You're much better off charging the battery only after it's down to about 30% or so of a full charge. However, there's no need to fret over it. Just charge it when you notice the charge gauge below 50%. If you want to learn more than you ever thought you'd want to know about lithium-ion batteries, see www.batteryuniversity.com/partone-5.htm.

What if my family has more than one Kindle? Amazon makes it easy to take advantage of this kind of situation as long as all the Kindles are registered to the same Kindle account. All Kindles registered to the same Amazon account can share Kindle content freely. You can register as many Kindles as you want to one Amazon account, but only six of those Kindles can share books. Subscription content can be downloaded only to one Kindle and cannot be shared.

Can I use my Kindle outside the United States while traveling? Yes, but to use international Whispernet service, you need a Kindle that was manufactured after Amazon released the international version. Prior to the international release, Amazon used Sprint’s EVDO network for Whispernet. Because Sprint's network isn't compatible with international cellular networks, Amazon switched to AT&T's cellular network when it began shipping the international version. AT&T's network is technologically different from Sprint's network. Therefore, Kindles that use Sprint's network cannot be upgraded to use AT&T's network. By the way, Kindle users report they are sometimes allowed to read a Kindle during takeoffs and landings in an airplane as long as wireless is turned off. However, other users report that flight crews have asked that Kindles be turned off completely during takeoffs and landings. Make sure to check with your flight crew when you are flying.

Is there a way to see page numbers on a Kindle? What if I need to provide a page number reference for a Kindle book citation? Page numbers have no meaning on the Kindle. Because you can change the size of text on the Kindle, page numbers are not provided. Instead, the Kindle uses location numbers. Unfortunately, if you need to cite a Kindle book, your only choice is to locate the passage you are citing in a printed book so you have a page number reference.

Can I share a book I bought with another Kindle user? If the other Kindle user's Kindle is registered to your Amazon account and you haven't exceeded the six Kindle limit mentioned previously, yes. Amazon has announced that it will be adding the ability to lend books in a future Kindle update, but as of this writing, the capability doesn't exist.

Is it possible for a Kindle screen to get burn-in so that artifacts of a previous screen are permanently left on the screen? No. Some Kindle users have expressed concern about the "dirty" screen that is sometimes visible after turning off the Kindle. These artifacts are a normal side effect of E Ink technology and go away when you turn on your Kindle.

If I have purchased a traditional book from Amazon, can I get a Kindle version free? Unfortunately, no. If you want a Kindle version of a book you have purchased, you need to purchase the Kindle version separately.

Is it possible to zoom in on images if they appear too small? Yes. Move the cursor to the image, and press the 5-way controller to zoom in. Press the 5-way controller again to restore your view. The Kindle can also be rotated sideways to view images in landscape mode. Doing so often eliminates the need to zoom on an image. The Kindle DX automatically rotates the screen when you rotate the device. Users of other Kindle devices can press the AA button and choose the desired screen rotation.

Does Amazon ever add new features to the Kindle? Amazon does provide firmware updates for the Kindle, and those updates do often provide new functionality to the Kindle. Kindle updates are downloaded automatically to your Kindle when available.

Is it true that I must have wireless access to Whispernet to read Kindle content? No. The Kindle does not require Whispernet access to read content. Even content purchased from the Kindle Store can be read as many times and as often as you want without ever connecting to the Internet.

I've heard that the Kindle cannot read PDF files. Is that true? It was true prior to version 2.3 of the Kindle. Amazon released version 2.3 of the Kindle’s firmware in late November 2009. One of the features version 2.3 added was the capability to read PDFs in native format on the Kindle.

quepublishing.com

QUEPUBLISHING.COM Your Publisher for Home & Office Computing Quepublishing.com includes all your favorite— and some new—Que series and authors to help you learn about computers and technology for the home, office, and business. Looking for tips and tricks, video tutorials, articles and interviews, podcasts, and resources to make your life easier? Visit quepublishing.com. • Read the latest articles and sample chapters by Que’s expert authors • Free podcasts provide information on the hottest tech topics • Register your Que products and receive updates, supplemental content, and a coupon to be used on your next purchase • Check  out promotions and special offers available from Que and our retail partners • Join  the site and receive members-only offers and benefits

QUE NEWSLETTER quepublishing.com/newsletter twitter.com/ quepublishing facebook.com/ quepublishing youtube.com/ quepublishing quepublishing.com/ rss

Que Publishing is a publishing imprint of Pearson

Try Safari Books Online FREE Get online access to 5,000+ Books and Videos

FREE TRIAL—GET STARTED TODAY! www.informit.com/safaritrial Find trusted answers, fast Only Safari lets you search across thousands of best-selling books from the top technology publishers, including Addison-Wesley Professional, Cisco Press, O’Reilly, Prentice Hall, Que, and Sams.

Master the latest tools and techniques In addition to gaining access to an incredible inventory of technical books, Safari’s extensive collection of video tutorials lets you learn from the leading video training experts.

WAIT, THERE’S MORE! Keep your competitive edge With Rough Cuts, get access to the developing manuscript and be among the first to learn the newest technologies.

Stay current with emerging technologies Short Cuts and Quick Reference Sheets are short, concise, focused content created to get you up-to-speed quickly on new and cutting-edge technologies.