Amazon Kindle (ebook thingy)

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

also battery life with wifi is retarded long - allegedly like 3 weeks before running out. I'm still on my first charge though. apparently it can charge with any micro USB cord, though, which means I can recharge it with the same cable I keep at my desk for my ecig.

My mother "won" a 3rd ed. Kindle from some business supplier raffle (ie, bribery), and as she's not too keen on the printed word I suspect it will remain in my possession for some time.

The screen contrast on the 3rd edn is much, much better than that on my 2 year old 2nd gen (the claimed 50% improvement may be an understatement), but I find the dimensions (less easy to hold without inadvertently paging) and control setup (no dedicated # keys) somewhat inferior. All in all, I wouldn't have paid for the upgrade, as I prefer recycled dead-tree books when not traveling, but thought I'd offer the hands-on comparison for those still on the fence.

E-Ink Pearl is the display manufacturer's name, and seems to incorporate some phosphorescent pigment that absolutely glows under my bedside full-spectrum fluorescent reading lamp. I'd recommend waiting for the upgrade for those looking at non-Amazon, non-Sony devices.

^^ display manufacturer's name for this iteration of the screen technology,

kindle internet is like being online in 1983, a combination of etcha-sketch and atari 2600.

not a grumble, mind. to be able to check my facebook/email in a wifi cafe is a brilliant added bonus

recently went through all the freebie articles on rocksbackpages, instapapered them, about 100 in total only to find they aren't listed with the article title or interviewee. just gives the generic 'rocksbackpages articles' title for each and everyone one. frustrating so mailed them about it and fingers crossed they'll be fixing it soon.

related qu: is there a way of logging into instapaper on the kindle internet and downloading a mobi file of the top 20 articles there and then? also a way of using 'read later' on it - i imagine putting the java 'read later' stuff in a bookmark would work for this, anyone tried it?

If you have a kindle 3, you can send stuff wirelessly to your kindle and not have to pay a surcharge (use your "free.kindle.com" email address). Works great for Instapaper, I hear.
― schwantz, Tuesday, December 14, 2010 2:35 PM (2 months ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

I take it the only reason you'd ever not do this would be because you have a kindle 1 or 2?

what a wieldy sentence

only thing putting me off getting one of these right now is the fact that the book prices are more expensive than their paperback editions.

send to kindle <3

Really about to buy one of these but there's noise about a price drop.

guy in work just brought his in. i'm impressed by the screen res, was expected more pixelated for some reason.

smaller screen than i thought too, but don't think it's an issue

he's managed to get a load of books, and most of them unpaid for, which i'm beginning to see is perhaps not a great thing. so if there's already rife piracy in this, will it have a future?

might still get one though

Small screen is offset by portability, and the fact that most paperbacks are about that big anyway. E-ink pixellation in general is reduced because there's no backlight.

It's definitely got a future because you can buy books on the device, which is loads easier than (a) trying to find the book you want on the darknet, (b) actually locating a copy that's not full of scanning errors and (c) editing the bloody thing until the chapter marks work. If the price of the book is right there's no need to bother with alternatives.

btw I've been reading my Kobo a lot recently. It's so easy to forget you're reading an electronic device, especially if your book is engrossing. Obviously I'll read paper books again but it's the easiest thing in the world to chuck a light slab of plastic in your bag that's thinner than most books.

this is the type of thing you hate

?

it's not proper is it

Always presumed that the publishing industry was toast, but this kind of article kind of confirms it: http://www.mediabistro.com/galleycat/top-10-pirated-ebooks-at-the-pirate-bay_b24142