Kindle's Answer to the Nook

Amazon released a firmware update for the Kindle 2 and DX. It will be loaded on your Kindle within the next few weeks if you leave the wireless on. You may also do this manually if you follow their instructions.

It has a few cool new features:

1. Native PDf support. You don't have to convert your PDFs anymore!
2. Manual Screen rotation. By pressing the Aa button you can rotate your screen.
3. Longer Battery life. I haven't tested this yet but according to Amazon you can use your Kindle WITH the wireless on for up to a week - as opposed to the few days prior to the update.
4. New Screensaver Pictures. It's not so exciting but you get a couple of new pictures.

While this firmware update is exciting I am still waiting on a couple of new features:

1. Folders! Please give us some way to organize the hundreds of books we have on the Kindle.
2. Lending. How wonderful it would be if I could loan out my books like I could do it with my paper books?
   

Unusual Uses of the Kindle

Obviously most of the time people use the Kindle for reading. However, the Kindle can be useful in other ways as well. For ideas I am going to list a few in this post but with a little creativity and imagination, you may come up with your own interesting means of taking advantage of this nifty little device.

• MP3 player. You may load your mp3 tracks via a USP cord to the device and you can use either the built-in speaker or plug in earphones to listen to the music.
  
  
• Cookbook. Put your Kindle in a ziploc bag and use it as a cookbook. You can load your own recipes on it, use its browser to navigate to allrecipes.com or purchase a cookbook in Kindle version.
  
  
• Craft Patterns. A friend of mine loads her knitting patterns on her Kindle to use as a resource while knitting.
  
  
• External Storage Device. You can load any files on the Kindle. Even if they will not show up on the screen, you can still use it as a temporary holding device while transferring files from one location to another. Use it like a flash or thumb drive.
  
  
• Shopping List. You can either create a text file on your computer with your shopping list and transfer it on your device. Or you may use an empty text file to which add notes as your shopping list.
  
  
• Editor. Load your articles or homework on the Kindle and use the text to speech feature to listen to it and to discover mistakes and typos that otherwise you may have missed.
  
  
• Check e-mail. It may not work with all e-mail accounts but with the built-in browser and Whispernet you can even check your e-mails.
  
  
• Phonebook. Create a text file with important phone numbers and load it on your Kindle via USP.
  
  
• Dictionary. The Kindle comes with a built-in dictionary. In fact, that's one of the features I love the most about this e-Reader. I frequently come across unfamiliar words while reading and this way I can easily look them up.
  
  
• Play Games. Kindle has Minesweeper loaded on it. Just press Alt+Shift+M.
  
  
• Picture Viewer. Create a folder called "Pictures" on the Kindle then organize your images there in subfolders. Subfolders will show up on the Kindle as books. When you click your "books" you will see your pictures. It's only black and white of course but they still look great.
  
  
  

Please comment with your own ideas! I'd love to hear them.

Convert to Kindle Format from PDF

There are a number of the sites where there are free eBooks in PDF format. Unfortunately the Kindle 2 does not natively supports PDFs. It would be a shame to give up on all those free books - and you don't have to. There are at least three ways to easily convert PDF documents to formats that the Kindle will be able to read.

1. Amazon will convert PDFs for you for a slight fee of 15 cents/megabytes (rounded up.) All you have to do is e-mail the document to your Kindle's e-mail address. You set this e-mail address up on the "Manage My Kindle" page. The advatages of this method is that it also puts the book on your device in one step. The disadvatage is that you obviously have to pay for this. However, 15 cents is not a huge price for this convenience as most books are under 1 MB. Unfortunately this service for the International Kindle costs $.99/MB.
   
   
2. Amazon can also convert PDF for you for free. All you have to do is e-mail the document to "name"@free.kindle.com and they will e-mail it back to the address associated with your Amazon account. So for example your Kindle's e-mail address is MySweetKindle@kindle.com then the free conversion e-mail address is going to be MySweeKindle@free.kindle.com. The advantage of this method is that it's free. Disadvantage is that you still have to transfer the book to your Kindle via the USP cable.
   
   
3. Another way to do it is to do it youself. No need to panic, there are free applications that can do this for you. The two most popular ones are the Calibre and Mobipocket Creator. This method is obviously the most time consuming although once you figure out the applications, the actual conversion does not take long. It is free and you also have some control over how the eBook will look like at the end. Mobipocket Creator, for example, will first convert the PDF into HTMl which then can be tweaked before the final eBook output. If you use this self-service method, make sure you convert the PDF into a format without DRM. Currently the Kindle does not support books with DRM (Digital Rights Management) unless they were purchased via Amazon's website.

Keep in mind though that some converted PDFs may not look great on your Kindle. If the original book had a lot of graphics or had a particular formatting, it may look odd or even unreadable. However, plain old stories should convert just fine.

If you find yourself keep converting PDFs to be read on the Kindle, you may want to consider purchasing the Kindle DX. This version of the Kindle natively supports PDFs and since it also has a larger screen, PDFs will look better on it. It is especially true for using the Kindle for technical documents.

The method of conversions described here are not only true for PDFs. Amazon and the applications will convert other formats as well such as Microsft Word or HTML.

I hope this post helped some with convertion problems. Happy Reading!