Amazon Kindle (ebook thingy)

I believe if you sort your homepage by collection, the individual titles will not appear, only the name of the collections.

Here's 10 ebooks I downloaded (4 in .mobi format and 6 in .pdf format). I was planning on getting my dad a Kindle for xmas but that fell through. Anyways these books are paperbacks from guys like Dean Koontz, Lee Child, Jeffrey Deaver...

Amazon does a Kindle case with a built-in light that's powered by the Kindle itself. Worth a look imo.

So I've yet to meet anybody who owns one of these yet.... am I begging the obvious when I ask if the appeal of buying one is so that you can illegally download books?

So I've yet to meet anybody who owns one of these yet.... am I begging the obvious when I ask if the appeal of buying one is so that you can illegally download books?

Not for me. Everything on mine is either in the public domain or paid for.

NI - For number 4, if you don't have 3G, you won't get charged for anything.

i got one of these for xmas, and have been v pleasantly surprised by how readable it is. like i was worried that it might somehow deaden the reading experience or make me feel like a goon sitting there looking at a screen but....it doesn't.

:)

Lending finally announced

There are very few books I can read in 14 days.

Then those are exactly the ones you should lend out.

Yeah, 14 days is tight. Maybe while on vacation.

http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/gizmodo/2009/07/kindlefinger.jpg

got a permanent ink smudge on the screen so had to send it back. backed up the files onto my pc but to my huuuuge annoyance it doesn't backup the bookmarks, collections, settings or any of that. only takes 20 mins to sort but grrr all the same

update on my qus above: the next page button is quiet enough, thankfully. still anxiously awaiting kindle msn messenger (they're working on it apparently), collections thing works great (few minor problems with how long it takes to put each book in a certain collection but no biggie), and like schwantz said my kindle doesn't have 3g so no charges. bears repeating: i fucking love this thing. so easy on the eye. £100 for something i can see myself using for years, amazing.

just started using calibre to send the papers over each morning, again so great.

more questions:

1) is there a site i can use to check my email (two gmail accounts)? normal gmail uses java and is a processor-heavy refreshing mess. i've not tried html version but i imagine that would work, but how to check two at the same time?

2) wondering about renting an e-book from my local library and ripping it, if i do this (if indeed it's possible?) and i sync it with my kindle account will amazon clock on to it and shut me down for this or anything else dodgy? how big brothery are they about it all?

3) anyone use kindlepad? it's only a few pence, is it worth it? does the kindle have something similar built in?

Don't know about 1 or 3, but anything you put on your Kindle that isn't purchased from Amazon isn't synced to Amazon servers. For this reason, I don't think they care.

Amazon was literally Big Brothery last year, when someone "self-published" an started selling 1984 by George Orwell, with having any copyright to it. Amazon then remotely wiped the books off of peoples Kindles (and refunded them) without asking. Jeff Bezos then quickly published a mea culpa, and promised not to do that again in the future.

having problems with calibre mailing my newsfeed/ebooks to me. tried both a gmail and hotmail account but nothing doing. gr.

also does anyone know if instapaper articles die when the original wbesite removes them?

It's frustrating that some books from the same author and publisher are available and some aren't. I can get recent Pevear/Volokhonsky translations published by Vintage, but not some older ones.

I love the Kindle for large books and things that are only available in crappy mass market editions - it's inconvenient to carry The Brothers Karamazov or a Stephen King novel around.

Generally pretty pleased with this, but:

• why no hyphenation/justification control? Even with the text at the smallest size, the full justification frequently fails on hyphenated phrases, resulting in odd ragged lines. Which wouldn't be a problem if you could just choose to force left justify.
• ebook formatting from major publishers still seems to be incredibly shoddy - footnotes awry, no chapter breaks etc etc.
• what the hell is a "location"? How does it relate to word/line counts or w/e?
• Why is the New Yorker available from the Amazon.com kindle store but not the .co.uk?

Location complaint OTM. Why not just make it pages?

Formatting can be incredibly bad with some titles. Amazon make it really hard to complain about too, trying to palm it off on the publishers. When pressed they'll go to the publishers, but surely this is something they should be vetting, or at least making it easy to flag problems with? Apple don't allow publishers to upload shit MP3s to iTunes.

Now hang on, I'm sure I've seen Pearl Jam on iTunes

Just got a Sony Reader and it's lovely. I need to sort to some kind of case + light tho.

Annoyed that I can't lend from Amazon tho, that's be sweet.

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51Ilher3TRL._SL500_AA266_PIkin3,BottomRight,-16,34_AA300_SH20_OU01_.jpg

ugh

For what its worth, a cheap, light, angle-adjustable LED headlamp has worked better for me than any clipon light. This model (while not great for either work or running) is well suited and has been sold at most department/hardware stores for around $14 for 4+ years now:

http://bike.com/mmbike/images/2/large/LT6000.jpg

For what its worth, a cheap, light, angle-adjustable LED headlamp has worked better for me than any clipon light. This model (while not great for either work or running) is well suited and has been sold at most department/hardware stores for around $14 for 4+ years now:

I assume you only use that thing in the privacy of your home.

Yeah, wearing that thing and reading off a little screen. I can see why people are choosing these things over the terrible, outmoded paper books.

gotta admit i see people using these on the metro and i get v v jealous

Someday you'll be able to buy your own headlamp and sit proudly as their peer.

My god. You need a headlamp? Seriously?

This is cool, if you use Chrome:

http://kindleworld.blogspot.com/2011/01/using-googles-chrome-browser-extension.html

I'm starting to want an ereader, which I never ever thought I would.

My god. You need a headlamp? Seriously?

― Solid Gold Danzas (Autumn Almanac), Monday, January 17, 2011 7:50 PM (3 days ago) Bookmark

when its dark, yeah? i also turn the lights on at home when it's night time

The only time I've actually used the headlamp with the Kindle is for camping, and overnight flights when the overhead light has too great a spread. You only need about a 6 inch circle of evenly distributed light at reading distance, and that's about what this particular model provides. At home, the dogs don't seem to care about the 40w fluorescent reading lamp angled at their perch.

One of the appeals of ebook readers to me is the elimination of shadows caused by light sources. I find that they distract my attention making it difficult for me to read. Having to use a light with a kindle doesn't eliminate this problem. I prefer the iPad because of this.

Camping fair enough, but people who rate down e-ink readers because you need a lamp to read them might also want to avoid books.

I do avoid books!

Since I'm in a complaining mood, I hate the iBooks app because it try's to recreate that real book look with the binding/shadow etc. Too distracting! I just want white screen, black text.

I don't mind that, but the naff pine bookcase is too much.

is there any way of accessing my instapaper links from the kindle browswer? like a way i could go to the instapaper site and with one click get it emailed over or download from that page. i guess i could view them using the browser but it takes sooo long to go anywhere on that, can't wait for them to give it an overhaul and hopefully speed it up (as well as sticking an msn messenger type tool on there).

also weird frustrating problem when i take text from an excel sheet (i use various excel pages to store notes and ideas) and paste it into a doc/rtf/txt/html file and mail it to my kindle. it lops off half a line, as in the text will flow off the screen to the right, if i use landscape screen view it'll show more text but not all of it. v odd and frustrating, i had to convert to pdf but that's so much slower than mobi or text files. pretty sure it's something to do with excel cells but not sure what exactly.

I will submit a bug for that issue.

ah ta! do you work on the kindle or just a fellow user? i'll submit it myself when i get chance too

I work on it.

http://www.teleread.com/paul-biba/digital-book-world-will-territorial-sales-become-obsolete-an-update-on-rights-issues/

Look at this crap:

Jean Arache, Belfond & Presses de la Cite (Paris): Don’t know how can block consumer from looking at prices from all around the world. Consumer is always the winner in the end, must show to the consumer that what you are selling is a different product. Have to protect author’s value from piracy and this is a big issue. The best way to do this is through a local publisher as a foreign vendor can never know all the rules. Territorial rights give you a better position to do this.

Geographical restriction is THE REASON so many people turn to piracy. Belfond & Presses de la Shite morelike.

Andrew Franklin, Profile Books (London): In open market forced to compete on price and this isn’t fair. In closed market can compete on other things. Open market is a legacy of the past and markets must be protected to protect the publisher and the author. Territorial rights are necessary to protect the local publishers who are the repository and promoter of local culture, which might disappear if the local publisher disappears. Look at the crisis in Canada and Australia.

'In closed market can compete on other things' = in closed market can artificially inflate prices and prevent 90% of the world buying your product.

Fuck these wankers piss me off.

Just upgraded my Kobo to find it bricked. Looked on the internet, discovered (a) it happens to like every second person and (b) Kobo has a long and solid history of releasing firmware upgrades that break the device.

I bought a used DX last year but ended up selling it off after I got my iPad; it's just too bulky and the lack of wifi or any other way to wirelessly add documents without incurring a fee kept me from using it for web content delivery services. I still wanted something to read at restaurants/on the bus/etc., though, so I picked myself up a wifi Kindle 3 (JB'd my iPhone so thanks to MyWi I never need to worry about not having a readily-available internet connection) and a lighted case and I am in LOVE. it's light, the improved contrast ratio is way more impressive than I was expecting, and now that I set up Instapaper and Kindlefeeder it is basically the dopest shit ever (even though Kindlefeeder for some reason won't accept the feed for Mitch Krpata's blog). most importantly it has page back/forth buttons on both sides of the device now, a feature I still can't understand why they took out in the first place.

tl;dr K3 owns