1. Use the elastic band from the cover and stretch it to the lower right corner of the device to hold it in place while you are reading
2. Do a search for a word that is not in the dictionary and follow the link to index your books that are not indexed yet so that you can search for words within them
3. Drag and drop files from your Kindle to your SD card on the computer. It is a lot faster.
4. If you want your pdfs all together, you can
*convert them via MobiPocket Creator (free download)
*Go to where they were created
*Create a folder, make it a name you can remember
*Open up each folder and select all then drag them to the Folder you created
*repeat until all of the folders have been moved
*delete the empty folders
*With the folder you have created open, select the option of Details, and then click on arrange by type, this will put all of the HTML files together
*In mobipocket creator on the Home page select Blank Publication
*Make the publication name exactly the same as the folder you just created
*Click Create
*Drag and drop the HTML files onto the blank space
*Click Build
Note: If you want you can import a cover image from any of the jpeg or gif files that you have.
Note: There is a way to separate these into chapters but it was too time consuming for me to want to try.
Note: You can create an author, this should let you make a name for the author that will let you find it if you sort by author.
5. I'll be adding to this list but this is all for now.
Monday, March 3, 2008
Kindle Pros
Pros:
1. Downloading samples on the fly, a lot easier to browse titles while lounging in the comfort of my home, drinking my own homemade latte (much better than the cafe stuff)
Today I downloaded a ton of samples for my Ipod, MobiPocket and Kindle both have free downloadable samples. I also purchased a 33 cent comic book haha (after trying the sample of course).
2. It feels nice to hold
3. I love the buttons, they have hidden secrets
Alt T will show you the time
4. It can become a GPS
5. You can bookmark favorite web pages and go to them to check things on the fly
6. It stores a lot of stuff and you can look at it without having to boot up your computer
7. It is a lot nicer to wade through the pdfs that have to be read for research on this than having to print out hundreds of pages and sift through them to find out what you want to do.
8. The elastic band can be used on the lower right corner to keep the device in place
9. You can increase the font size (not image size though)
10. It's fun to play with, functional, and has a lot of potential that keeps me hoping for auto updates that will give me a feature to increase image to the full screen.
11. You can change justification once you are in the fonts size screen: Alt J
12. Minesweeper is Alt M
13. I like to pet the suede inside cover while I am reading.
14. If you click the next button the amount of times you want it will go to the page you want (22 clicks is to page 22) but that is a con too as would just assume have an arrange contents to left side (where it says sample--would like it to say 8282 class, 8383 class, Bibresearch, whatever I name my folders for the pdfs I need for classes.
15. There are a lot of free books out there!
All in all I love this device, would be great if it had a few more things like I know that the sony ereader lets you rotate, and the battery lasts longer, it also will increase the size of the image.
1. Downloading samples on the fly, a lot easier to browse titles while lounging in the comfort of my home, drinking my own homemade latte (much better than the cafe stuff)
Today I downloaded a ton of samples for my Ipod, MobiPocket and Kindle both have free downloadable samples. I also purchased a 33 cent comic book haha (after trying the sample of course).
2. It feels nice to hold
3. I love the buttons, they have hidden secrets
Alt T will show you the time
4. It can become a GPS
5. You can bookmark favorite web pages and go to them to check things on the fly
6. It stores a lot of stuff and you can look at it without having to boot up your computer
7. It is a lot nicer to wade through the pdfs that have to be read for research on this than having to print out hundreds of pages and sift through them to find out what you want to do.
8. The elastic band can be used on the lower right corner to keep the device in place
9. You can increase the font size (not image size though)
10. It's fun to play with, functional, and has a lot of potential that keeps me hoping for auto updates that will give me a feature to increase image to the full screen.
11. You can change justification once you are in the fonts size screen: Alt J
12. Minesweeper is Alt M
13. I like to pet the suede inside cover while I am reading.
14. If you click the next button the amount of times you want it will go to the page you want (22 clicks is to page 22) but that is a con too as would just assume have an arrange contents to left side (where it says sample--would like it to say 8282 class, 8383 class, Bibresearch, whatever I name my folders for the pdfs I need for classes.
15. There are a lot of free books out there!
All in all I love this device, would be great if it had a few more things like I know that the sony ereader lets you rotate, and the battery lasts longer, it also will increase the size of the image.
Publishing for your Kindle
Ok
I am beginning an odd foray into kindle publishing mainly for my own personal use. So far have run across MobiPocket Creator for publishing (free), the obligatory QuarkXpress and Adobe InDesign (not free), a Sony Ereader designed libprs500, and eBooksWriter lite (free)--full version is about 100.
Goal is to scan and extract b/w photos to use on kindle. Possibly to create book covers with for fun.
I am beginning an odd foray into kindle publishing mainly for my own personal use. So far have run across MobiPocket Creator for publishing (free), the obligatory QuarkXpress and Adobe InDesign (not free), a Sony Ereader designed libprs500, and eBooksWriter lite (free)--full version is about 100.
Goal is to scan and extract b/w photos to use on kindle. Possibly to create book covers with for fun.
Saturday, March 1, 2008
Kindle and Pdfs
Ah the lovely Kindle and Pdfs issue.
Yes you can email it to your kindle address (found on your kindle account page for those of you wondering where the heck it is)
But in the case of those old pdfs that do not have OCR searchable (OCRS) then um...welllllll
so yep we are talking pdf to pdf conversion (try a search on that and good luck)
So I have used various pdf conversion utilities,
PDF Creator (kind of kewl as it adds a pdf creator toolbar to your browser if you request and you can convert web pages. I use Firefox btw)
Primo PDF--this one has an ebook optimizor in it also creates a pdf printer
PDF to Word Doc Convertor creates a pdf printer if you go with this you might want to get a text editor called PFE32
Desktop PDF
Create Adobe PDF online ( 10 per month subscription fee after the 5 trials).
All of these converters are adequate for converting to pdfs or to converting pdfs to text as long as the pdfs are the newer versions.
The issue is when it is the older version. Adobe PDF online lets me optimize for books, rotates the pages so that they all face forward. It is not the most perfect but in converting old pdfs to new pdfs. It worked the best for me. I have not decided what to do yet. I will probably update my Creative Suite when I purchase a new laptop, but all of this is money and I'm in school and not really working lucratively yet.
If you are using new pdfs, then once you convert them you will be able to change the font size on the Kindle display screen.
I use MobiPocket creator to convert. To convert a pdf.
Click on the Adobe pdf icon on the right side of the screen. I create my publications in folder D:\mobi. You could create it directly in the Kindle directory Documents, but it does add extra files needed for the conversion to html.
Click the upper browse button and locate the pdf file you want to convert.
Click Import
Once you see the file converted
Click on the Build Icon at the top of the MobiCreator Screen.
Click OK
The error message is usually you did not put a cover in. You can use any image you want for the cover, I usually just leave it alone.
Once you click ok, it should open up the folder the file is in. Click on the file and open it in MobiReader.
Because of my older pdf issues, I also have the MobiReader installed and I click on the .prc file and look at it in the reader. This saves me from having to unplug the Kindle look to see what the file looks like etc.
f you like how it looks great. If not then you can always convert the pdf to text. And edit it. (this is where the PFE32 comes in handy. It has more capabilities than Notepad without the issues that wordpad or word creates.
There is a great tutorial called HarryT's Mobipocket Tutorial.
I probably will spend the 10 bucks to convert the pdfs I have now via Adobe as for pdf to pdf conversion it is the best, although not perfect, as rows and columns do get confused.
Eventually I will post the mobi files using Python and another blogger's downloadable kindle py files.
Yes you can email it to your kindle address (found on your kindle account page for those of you wondering where the heck it is)
But in the case of those old pdfs that do not have OCR searchable (OCRS) then um...welllllll
so yep we are talking pdf to pdf conversion (try a search on that and good luck)
So I have used various pdf conversion utilities,
PDF Creator (kind of kewl as it adds a pdf creator toolbar to your browser if you request and you can convert web pages. I use Firefox btw)
Primo PDF--this one has an ebook optimizor in it also creates a pdf printer
PDF to Word Doc Convertor creates a pdf printer if you go with this you might want to get a text editor called PFE32
Desktop PDF
Create Adobe PDF online ( 10 per month subscription fee after the 5 trials).
All of these converters are adequate for converting to pdfs or to converting pdfs to text as long as the pdfs are the newer versions.
The issue is when it is the older version. Adobe PDF online lets me optimize for books, rotates the pages so that they all face forward. It is not the most perfect but in converting old pdfs to new pdfs. It worked the best for me. I have not decided what to do yet. I will probably update my Creative Suite when I purchase a new laptop, but all of this is money and I'm in school and not really working lucratively yet.
If you are using new pdfs, then once you convert them you will be able to change the font size on the Kindle display screen.
I use MobiPocket creator to convert. To convert a pdf.
Click on the Adobe pdf icon on the right side of the screen. I create my publications in folder D:\mobi. You could create it directly in the Kindle directory Documents, but it does add extra files needed for the conversion to html.
Click the upper browse button and locate the pdf file you want to convert.
Click Import
Once you see the file converted
Click on the Build Icon at the top of the MobiCreator Screen.
Click OK
The error message is usually you did not put a cover in. You can use any image you want for the cover, I usually just leave it alone.
Once you click ok, it should open up the folder the file is in. Click on the file and open it in MobiReader.
Because of my older pdf issues, I also have the MobiReader installed and I click on the .prc file and look at it in the reader. This saves me from having to unplug the Kindle look to see what the file looks like etc.
f you like how it looks great. If not then you can always convert the pdf to text. And edit it. (this is where the PFE32 comes in handy. It has more capabilities than Notepad without the issues that wordpad or word creates.
There is a great tutorial called HarryT's Mobipocket Tutorial.
I probably will spend the 10 bucks to convert the pdfs I have now via Adobe as for pdf to pdf conversion it is the best, although not perfect, as rows and columns do get confused.
Eventually I will post the mobi files using Python and another blogger's downloadable kindle py files.
Using Kindle for Grad School
Ok. I have had my kindle for a few weeks now.
I have never owned an e reader before but am an Ipod fanatic.
My goal in purchasing the Kindle was to save trees and lots of them.
I had looked at Iliad, Hanlin, Sony, and some others ereaders. (Including Palm because I used to love my palm V).
I chose Kindle because of EVDO, and the hope that one day I could purchase my textbooks via Kindle.
It was snowing when I came home after a late night on campus and saw the box on my doorstep. I didn't sleep that night for good reason, I fell asleep next to my Kindle, the batteries drained.
I had navigated WSU's databases, and successfully opened up searches to find articles.
I had successfully downloaded the samples from Kindle and read the User's manual both Paper copy and Ebook copy.
I had successfully downloaded mobipocket creator, and converted all of my pdfs to html.
I experimented with the experimental, sent out three questions, navigated the web page, and realized I could not play the background file without mp3 file loaded, so I purchased an 8 GB SDHD Sandisk which had a micromate included (89.00 from BestBuy, I think I used a 10% off coupon, and this is the faster SD card btw)
I discovered manybooks.com and began downloading free books.
I downloaded Free books from various vendors, signing up for accounts, some of them mobipocket sites.
I was ready to read!
This is when the doe eyed wonder of Kindle does become a list of cons.
List of Cons
1. Battery life is one day for a user like me, Even turning off the internet feature (remember why I went with Kindle to begin with). The battery does not last, Overnight I usually have a half battery drain. I will try turning it off to see if it helps, and will contact kindle about this. Today while reading after charging it. The battery drained after reading three pdf articles I had converted into the Kindle. This did include playing with looking up stuff in the dictionary, but still....my Ipod's batteries last forever so this is a big disappointment to me.
The Kindle batteries drain even when I have it PLUGGED into my laptop!
2. New pdfs work great, the older pdfs (the ones that you can't copy and paste the words) do not. They become an image that is really tiny on the screen.
(this is when I became an expert on free pdf programs -- I own Adobe Acrobat 6 but this did not help-- more on this later). As those of us in college know, professors love to keep on their reading list the pdfs that were scanned by the library (I want to say in the horse and buggy days, but scanners were not around then) and will remain on their reserves until they retire.
3. I never received an answer from the three questions that I so meticulously keyed in with the Kindle keyboard. So this bit in the Experimental is not really that great.
4. How do I scroll through these mp3s that I loaded in? Luckily I have my Ipod so that is not an issue but still...and since the Kindle batteries now nicknamed Kindle ephemera do not last long then....
5. Why can't I have an option to arrange by the folders I create, instead of just by author or title? I have more than 18 pages of titles now and it is annoying! And more titles once I figure out the pdf conversion thing.
6. Once you get the Kindle support email put it in a safe place or else good luck finding somewhere else that gives it to you.
7. Why when I try a lookup of a word (like this morning it was chaffinch, and ever word in the sentence is listed except for the one I want, when I do a typed search of the word...yes, Virginia it is in my dictionary grrrr)
8. The cover is confusing, I have to push it back up as it begins to slip out, and when I do the pages go crazy, so I put it in sleep mode, push it up into the jacket and invariably the plastic back cover that protects the battery will fall off, so the process continues until either I put the cover in a drawer so that I can read, or else stop worrying about it hanging off of the edge and not clipped into the case.
9. I am really fastidious about not dropping my gadgets, and the Kindle has been dropped more than any other device I have ever owned, due to the clumsiness of the cover. I think if I stopped using the cover it would be better for the Kindle but I worry about the glass screen cracking more than anything so I keep using the cover.
There are more but these come to the top of my head, in the next blog post will talk about Kindle, Python 2.5, Mobicreator, Pdf conversion programs
I have never owned an e reader before but am an Ipod fanatic.
My goal in purchasing the Kindle was to save trees and lots of them.
I had looked at Iliad, Hanlin, Sony, and some others ereaders. (Including Palm because I used to love my palm V).
I chose Kindle because of EVDO, and the hope that one day I could purchase my textbooks via Kindle.
It was snowing when I came home after a late night on campus and saw the box on my doorstep. I didn't sleep that night for good reason, I fell asleep next to my Kindle, the batteries drained.
I had navigated WSU's databases, and successfully opened up searches to find articles.
I had successfully downloaded the samples from Kindle and read the User's manual both Paper copy and Ebook copy.
I had successfully downloaded mobipocket creator, and converted all of my pdfs to html.
I experimented with the experimental, sent out three questions, navigated the web page, and realized I could not play the background file without mp3 file loaded, so I purchased an 8 GB SDHD Sandisk which had a micromate included (89.00 from BestBuy, I think I used a 10% off coupon, and this is the faster SD card btw)
I discovered manybooks.com and began downloading free books.
I downloaded Free books from various vendors, signing up for accounts, some of them mobipocket sites.
I was ready to read!
This is when the doe eyed wonder of Kindle does become a list of cons.
List of Cons
1. Battery life is one day for a user like me, Even turning off the internet feature (remember why I went with Kindle to begin with). The battery does not last, Overnight I usually have a half battery drain. I will try turning it off to see if it helps, and will contact kindle about this. Today while reading after charging it. The battery drained after reading three pdf articles I had converted into the Kindle. This did include playing with looking up stuff in the dictionary, but still....my Ipod's batteries last forever so this is a big disappointment to me.
The Kindle batteries drain even when I have it PLUGGED into my laptop!
2. New pdfs work great, the older pdfs (the ones that you can't copy and paste the words) do not. They become an image that is really tiny on the screen.
(this is when I became an expert on free pdf programs -- I own Adobe Acrobat 6 but this did not help-- more on this later). As those of us in college know, professors love to keep on their reading list the pdfs that were scanned by the library (I want to say in the horse and buggy days, but scanners were not around then) and will remain on their reserves until they retire.
3. I never received an answer from the three questions that I so meticulously keyed in with the Kindle keyboard. So this bit in the Experimental is not really that great.
4. How do I scroll through these mp3s that I loaded in? Luckily I have my Ipod so that is not an issue but still...and since the Kindle batteries now nicknamed Kindle ephemera do not last long then....
5. Why can't I have an option to arrange by the folders I create, instead of just by author or title? I have more than 18 pages of titles now and it is annoying! And more titles once I figure out the pdf conversion thing.
6. Once you get the Kindle support email put it in a safe place or else good luck finding somewhere else that gives it to you.
7. Why when I try a lookup of a word (like this morning it was chaffinch, and ever word in the sentence is listed except for the one I want, when I do a typed search of the word...yes, Virginia it is in my dictionary grrrr)
8. The cover is confusing, I have to push it back up as it begins to slip out, and when I do the pages go crazy, so I put it in sleep mode, push it up into the jacket and invariably the plastic back cover that protects the battery will fall off, so the process continues until either I put the cover in a drawer so that I can read, or else stop worrying about it hanging off of the edge and not clipped into the case.
9. I am really fastidious about not dropping my gadgets, and the Kindle has been dropped more than any other device I have ever owned, due to the clumsiness of the cover. I think if I stopped using the cover it would be better for the Kindle but I worry about the glass screen cracking more than anything so I keep using the cover.
There are more but these come to the top of my head, in the next blog post will talk about Kindle, Python 2.5, Mobicreator, Pdf conversion programs
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