I know Google's corporate motto used to be "Don't Be Evil," but somehow, during the course of what was otherwise a wonderful week, the company's Blogger App inexplicably stopped providing service to Kindle Nation Daily a little after midnight on Christmas morning. Although I was away from home and office and about the very important business of celebrating the holiday and my sweetie's birthday, I took short-term steps to restore a service that I know is valued by thousands of citizens of Kindle Nation, at another website address.
We are currently working to strengthen the website's infrastructure through a new hosting service, but for the present you can find Kindle Nation Daily posts at this website, and I encourage you to share this link or the shortened URL with your friends and colleagues in the Kindle community -- it's bit.ly/KNDBlog, with or without thehttp:// prefix. You can also find complete archives of past issues of the weekly email newsletter at http://bit.ly/
We'll also be working over the next few days to restore the website's archival posts and other features, but meanwhile you can expect a fresh new edition of the free Kindle Nation weekly email newsletter in your inbox tomorrow, and subscribers to the Kindle edition of Kindle Nation Daily can expect an uninterrupted flow of daily posts as well.
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
You Can Still Find Kindle Nation Daily on the Web: An Update Concerning Web Access to Kindle Nation Daily
Posted by Steve at 5:41 AM 0 comments
Labels: Kindle Nation Daily
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
Index to Kindle 2 Links - Organized by Chapter of The Complete User's Guide to the Amazing Amazon Kindle 2
Here's an index to the links found in The Complete User's Guide to the Amazing Amazon Kindle 2, organized by chapter. You can purchase the newly revised September 2009 edition of the complete guide either in a Kindle edition or a paperback edition. Feel free to share these links with other Kindle owners.
The links on this website, along with the original sentences in which they are provided, are from the referenced chapters of The Complete User's Guide to the Amazing Amazon Kindle 2, which is available in both Kindle and paperback editions from Amazon.com. This reference material is not intended in any way to replace the text of this book, but instead is meant to make it more convenient for readers who have purchased either the Kindle or paperback edition to follow along and access the linked pages from a conventional computer. All material here is protected by copyright held by Stephen Windwalker and Kindle Nation Daily, but we as sole rightsholders grant permission to share this material for noncommercial purposes.
To view lists of Kindle-compatible web links organized by category, click here.
To find a specific link within one of the sections indexed below, the most efficient process may be to open the section indexed, and use the CTRL+F "Find" command to type in and search for a short phrase that you see in the Kindle or paperback copy.
Frontmatter and Introduction
Chapters 1 through 5
Chapters 6, 7, and 8 - Calibre - Read Blogs, Periodicals, and Other Web Content for Free on the Kindle - Fetch the News, Newspapers and Magazines
Use Kindle Nation Daily's Free Book Alerts
Unlock the World Of Free Audio on the Kindle
Use Free Email, Facebook, Twitter And Other Services on the Kindle
Use Kindlepedia for Free Wikipedia Research on Your Kindle
The Myth of the Kindle's "Standard" $9.99 Price and the ABCs of Kindle Store Pricing
The Politics of "Free" Books in the Age of the Kindle
Why Your Kindle's Free Wireless Web Browser is a Revolutionary Feature, and Why Amazon Should Keep it Free
Tips and Tricks for Making the Most of Your Kindle's Free Features
LINK DIRECTORY: Amazon Store Bestseller Links - Blogs - Blog Lists
LINK DIRECTORY: Kindle Store, App, and Kindle Essential Links - Freebies for Your Kindle - eBook Discussions - Kindle Blogs - Kindle Gear
LINK DIRECTORY: News - Newspapers, National, Technology, and Sports
LINK DIRECTORY: Reference - Magazines - Mail & Message - Mobile RSS Readers - Mobile Transcoders - Mobile Site Lists
LINK DIRECTORY: Shipping Carriers - Shopping - Travel - Weather - Glossary
What's New with the Kindle 2: Sleek New Hardware Package
An Enhanced, More User-Friendly Kindle Reading Environment
The Best Features From the Original Kindle, Improved
Up and Running: Getting Started with Your Amazon Kindle 2
Getting and Reading Books With Your Kindle
Traveling with Your Kindle
Posted by Steve at 7:23 AM 0 comments
Frontmatter and Introduction
Kindle 2 Links and Shortcuts: Frontmatter and Introduction
The following links, along with the original sentences in which they are provided, are from the above-referenced chapter of The Complete User's Guide to the Amazing Amazon Kindle 2, which is available in both Kindle and paperback editions from Amazon.com. This reference material is not intended in any way to replace the text of this book, but instead is meant to make it more convenient for readers who have purchased either the Kindle or paperback edition to follow along and access the linked pages from a conventional computer. All material here is protected by copyright held by Stephen Windwalker and Kindle Nation Daily.
Also by Stephen Windwalker
The Complete User's Guide to the Amazing Amazon Kindle (First Generation) (2008)
No Kindle Required - The Complete "Kindle for iPhone" User's Guide (2009)
The Worried Citizen's Little Survival Guide to the Worst Financial Crisis of the Century (2009)
The Complete Step-by-Step Guide To Publishing Books, Articles & Other Content for the Amazon Kindle (2008)
Beyond the Literary-Industrial Complex: How Authors and Publishers Are Using the Amazon Kindle and Other New Technologies (2008)
Selling Used Books Online: The Complete Guide to Bookselling at Amazon's Marketplace and Other Online Sites (2002)
Fiction
A Day at the Ballpark, and Other Stories (2000)
Say My Name (2004)
Literary Criticism
Lady Chatterley's Lover: The Complete, Unexpurgated Text, presented for the first time with the Stephen Windwalker Introduction (1973)
- I've written several books and articles including a very successful book about B.K. Amazon (yes, there was an Amazon before the Kindle) and how it conducts its business, but my first passion as a reader and an author has always been fiction and narrative nonfiction.
- If you are reading this on your Kindle, you can get an inexpensive companion paperback edition of this book easily in Amazon's main store by clicking on this link, typing in http://bit.ly/PaperbackKindleGuide, or clicking on the link at A Kindle Home Page.
- On that same Kindle Home Page website, you will find a complete set of the links contained in this book so that you may access them from your computer or even re-organize and customize sub-lists of them to send to your Kindle.
- (And, as we'll describe below, you will probably also want to visit the Kindle Nation Daily blogsign up in the Kindle Store to have each post pushed to your Kindle in real time for a total expenditure of just 99 cents a month, to keep up with the daily tips, tricks, and offers of free Kindle content that we share there.)
- You can also add value to your purchase in other ways: if you sign up for the free weekly Kindle Nation email newsletter or subscribe to have the same posts delivered daily in real-time to your Kindle, you will receive useful updates, notifications of free Kindle books or other free content in the Kindle Store or elsewhere, and other tips and tactics for getting the most out of your Kindle.
- If you are looking for a similarly comprehensive guide for the first-generation Kindle, here is a link to The Complete User's Guide to the Amazing Amazon Kindle 1, which is also available both as a Kindle edition and in a popular paperback version that was published by Harvard Perspectives Press in August 2008.
- As you are probably aware, Amazon also provides several useful documents to support the Kindle, including a basic Kindle User's Guide that you will find on your Kindle Home screen when you power up the Kindle for the first time, and a License Agreement with terms and conditions that can also be viewed on Amazon's website.
- Please be sure to read these documents from Amazon and make appropriate use of Amazon's Kindle Support program.
- There will also be Kindle edition readers who will want to access these links on their computer rather than on a Kindle. In order to provide a useful work-around for you, if you are one of these readers, I decided to make a free listing of all of these links available at the A Kindle Home Page website.
- It's the nature of the beast when one writes guidance material for new services and sites, of course, but to the extent possible I will try to provide updated material at A Kindle Home Page.
- Amazon no longer sells the Kindle 1 as a new device, but used and refurbished Kindles are available for about $200 in Amazon's Warehouse Deals store and the Amazon Marketplace.
- However, if two people on the same account are reading the same book on synchronized Kindles, you will want to turn WhisperSync off on the Manage Your Kindle page of your Amazon account, so that the two of you don't drive each other nuts losing each other's place!
- Finally, if you do wish to sell your first-generation Kindle, you will find a fairly brisk "Kindle 1" aftermarket on eBay and in the Amazon Marketplace.
- Otherwise, it makes more sense to sell your old Kindle via Amazon Marketplace, where there is a little less of a Wild West atmosphere and a more consistent price range than you will probably find at eBay.
- Deregister your Kindle (on your Amazon account's "Manage Your Kindle" page) before you ship it, and use your USB connection with your computer's "Finder" or "My Computer" feature to remove your files and personal documents from your Kindle.
- If you really want to school yourself on Amazon Marketplace selling before you list your Kindle for sale, well, I would be remiss not to recommend that you read my 2002 book Selling Used Books Online which, of course, is available for just 99 cents in a Kindle edition.
Posted by Steve at 7:10 AM 0 comments
Chapters 1 through 5
Kindle 2 Links and Shortcuts: Chapters 1 through 5
The following links, along with the original sentences in which they are provided, are from the above-referenced chapter of The Complete User's Guide to the Amazing Amazon Kindle 2, which is available in both Kindle and paperback editions from Amazon.com. This reference material is not intended in any way to replace the text of this book, but instead is meant to make it more convenient for readers who have purchased either the Kindle or paperback edition to follow along and access the linked pages from a conventional computer. All material here is protected by copyright held by Stephen Windwalker and Kindle Nation Daily.
- Go to http://bit.ly/FreeKindleStoreBooks for a listing of "over 7,400" free Kindle books of all kinds. W
- Go to http://bit.ly/FreeKindlePromotionalTitles for a listing that excludes all the public domain titles so that you only see those Kindle books whose authors or publishers have set the price at zero, generally as a promotion to stir up interest in a new title or the same author's more recent book.
- While we are at it, you can also get a heads up on Kindle titles -- of all prices -- that are so new that they have yet to be released just by going to http://bit.ly/ForthcomingKindleTitlesNow, just for fun.
- And yes, you can access any of free these titles regardless of which Kindle you may be using, whether you paid $299 for the Kindle 2, $489 for the super-sized Kindle DX, or $199.99 for a just-like-new "refurbished" Kindle 1 shipped straight from Amazon.
- As a matter of fact, you can even get them without a Kindle if you are equipped with an iPhone or iPod Touch, the free Kindle for iPhone app, and a copy of my 99-cent ebook No Kindle Required - The Complete "Kindle for iPhone" User's Guide.
- Late in the Summer of 2009 Amazon took a step in the right direction for Kindle readers as well as serious Kindle authors and publishers, in the form of a forum post by Amazon's Kindle Team in the Digital Text Platform (DTP) support area for Kindle publishing:
- My take is that Amazon has a strong interest in continuing to provide a healthy catalog of free and cheap titles in the Kindle Store, beginning with its own creation of over 7,300 free offerings last February, for several reasons
- Free Kindle editions are a strong selling point for Kindle owners, as is evident from the fact that Kindle owners jump all over any link provided here for free books and are, lately, consistently vaulting 15 to 18 free titles at any given time into the top 25 Kindle bestsellers.
- Then there are the Kindle Store's zero-priced promotional titles, which used to provide a way for indie authors and indie publishers to get some readership attention but in recent months have mainly been restricted to sweetheart deals with big publishers or for Amazon's own publications.
- Project Gutenberg was founded nearly 40 years ago by Michael Hart, and I urge you to check out its main website at http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page and its Wikipedia entry at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Gutenberg to get an appreciation for an inspiring story of a real movement of people committed to a communitarian ideal that has gathered around the work and steadfast commitment of the founding individual.
- The hardest part of the entire process may be to type the following URL into your Kindle's web browser: http://freekindlebooks.org/MagicCatalog/MagicCatalog.mobi
- To use Mobileread: In your Kindle web browser, type in this URL (or click on the live link if you are reading this on your Kindle): http://www.mobileread.com/mobiguide
- Feedbooks – at http://www.feedbooks.com/kindleguide -- provides a similar service that features thousands of books in Kindle compatible MOBI format.
- These MOBI-formatted books look great on the Kindle, and there is even a Kindle help page for Feedbooks visitors at http://www.feedbooks.com/help/kindle.
- Download the amazing ebook conversion program Calibre, set it up and synch it with your Kindle, and keep it on your computer.
- Go to Google Book Search and select the "Advanced Book Search" link.
- You can also broaden your searching process by clicking here to enter the Google Books "Browse" mode, which will return a set of browsing categories such as you might find in the Kindle or Amazon bookstore.
- By way of explanation, here's a snippet from the announcement piece that ran on the Publishers Weekly website:
- CellStories: A Daily Dose of Awesome.
- One that is well worth checking out is the ManyBooks website, where you can explore a remarkable selection of free content that you will be able to download to your Kindle.
- For a comprehensive list of other websites that feature free content that you may transfer to your Kindle, see the Kindle Nation Daily or A Kindle Home Page blog and scroll down to the "Websites for Free Books" listings in the right sidebar, or use this list directly from your Kindle or other device:
http://bit.ly/FreeKindleStoreBooks
http://bit.ly/FreeKindlePromotionalTitles
http://freekindlebooks.org/MagicCatalog/MagicCatalog.mobi
http://www.mobileread.com/Mobiguide
http://www.feedbooks.com/kindleguide
http://bit.ly/ForthcomingKindleTitlesNow
http://www.fictionwise.com/ebooks/freebooks.htm
http://diesel-ebooks.com/cgi-bin/category/free_download
Dartmouth College - E-Books in the Public Domain
- Instead, go to your Manage Your Kindle page on Amazon.com from your computer.
- (If you have a lot of Kindle subscriptions and you want to see them all at once without going through intermediate steps and extra clicks, use this link to see Manage Your Kindle Subscriptions in "View All" mode.
Posted by Steve at 6:46 AM 0 comments
Chapters 6, 7, and 8 - Calibre - Read Blogs, Periodicals, and Other Web Content for Free on the Kindle - Fetch the News, Newspapers and Magazines
Kindle 2 Links and Shortcuts: Chapters 6, 7, and 8 - Calibre - Read Blogs, Periodicals, and Other Web Content for Free on the Kindle - Fetch the News, Newspapers and Magazines
The following links, along with the original sentences in which they are provided, are from the above-referenced chapter of The Complete User's Guide to the Amazing Amazon Kindle 2, which is available in both Kindle and paperback editions from Amazon.com. This reference material is not intended in any way to replace the text of this book, but instead is meant to make it more convenient for readers who have purchased either the Kindle or paperback edition to follow along and access the linked pages from a conventional computer. All material here is protected by copyright held by Stephen Windwalker and Kindle Nation Daily.
Chapters 6, 7, and 8 - Calibre - Read Blogs, Periodicals, and Other Web Content for Free on the Kindle -
- You can download the Calibre software in formats that are compatible, respectively, with Windows, OS X for the Mac, or Linux at http://calibre.kovidgoyal.net/download.
- I recommend that, even before you download Calibre, you begin by watching Kovid's YouTube presentation on Calibre at http://bit.ly/CalibreVideo.
- In the future, you may also want to check out YouTube's eReader channel at http://bit.ly/eReaders-on-YouTube to check for more recent presentations.
- For that purpose, I recommend some of the user-friendly documentation that Kovid has provided right on the Calibre website, including a thorough and easy-to-follow Calibre User Manual, online; and a FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) section.
- I'll provide an index here to the list of hundreds of Kindle-ready web links that appears later in this book:
LINK DIRECTORY: Amazon Store Bestseller Links - Blogs - Blog Lists
LINK DIRECTORY: Kindle Store, App, and Kindle Essential Links - Freebies for Your Kindle - eBook Discussions - Kindle Blogs - Kindle Gear
LINK DIRECTORY: News - Newspapers, National, Technology, and Sports
LINK DIRECTORY: Reference - Magazines - Mail & Message - Mobile RSS Readers - Mobile Transcoders - Mobile Site Lists
LINK DIRECTORY: Shipping Carriers - Shopping - Travel - Weather - Glossary
- For a delightfully simple, elegant, and useful 3-minute video about Google Reader in plain English, see the CommonCraft video at http://www.commoncraft.com/rss_plain_english.
- Open the main Google Reader page. The shortest URL that I have found for this is reader.google.com.
- Just go to Instapaper.com, sign up for a free account, and link your account to your Kindle via your You@kindle.com email address.
- I recommend some of the user-friendly documentation that Kovid has provided right on the Calibre website, including a thorough and easy-to-follow Calibre User Manual, online; and a FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) section.
Posted by Steve at 6:37 AM 0 comments
Use Kindle Nation Daily's Free Book Alerts
Kindle 2 Links and Shortcuts: Use Kindle Nation Daily's Free Book Alerts
The following links, along with the original sentences in which they are provided, are from the above-referenced chapter of The Complete User's Guide to the Amazing Amazon Kindle 2, which is available in both Kindle and paperback editions from Amazon.com. This reference material is not intended in any way to replace the text of this book, but instead is meant to make it more convenient for readers who have purchased either the Kindle or paperback edition to follow along and access the linked pages from a conventional computer. All material here is protected by copyright held by Stephen Windwalker and Kindle Nation Daily.
Use Kindle Nation Daily's Free Book Alerts
- Okay, you can call this a commercial if you want, because I'm touting my own Kindle Nation Daily blog, but at least it's a commercial that will lead you to even more free books and content for your Kindle.
- Several times a week you will find new listings of free content at Kindle Nation Daily, so if you are interested in keeping up with what's free and what's worth reading in the Kindlesphere, as well as hundreds of other useful tips and tricks for getting the most out of your Kindle, you should definitely sign up for my free weekly email newsletter, Kindle Nation, at the Kindle Nation Archive site at http://bit.ly/KindleNationArchive.
- Or, if you want a little more Kindle-compatible convenience for just 99 cents a month, you can have each and every Kindle Nation Daily post pushed directly to your own Kindle in real time by subscribing to http://bit.ly/KindleNationDaily in the Kindle Store. Kindle Nation regularly provides information on late-breaking freebies in the Kindle Store, and for 99 cents a month your Kindle edition subscription will ensure that you receive this information before it is too late to act on it.
Posted by Steve at 6:14 AM 0 comments
Unlock the World Of Free Audio on the Kindle
Kindle 2 Links and Shortcuts: Unlock the World Of Free Audio on the Kindle
The following links, along with the original sentences in which they are provided, are from the above-referenced chapter of The Complete User's Guide to the Amazing Amazon Kindle 2, which is available in both Kindle and paperback editions from Amazon.com. This reference material is not intended in any way to replace the text of this book, but instead is meant to make it more convenient for readers who have purchased either the Kindle or paperback edition to follow along and access the linked pages from a conventional computer. All material here is protected by copyright held by Stephen Windwalker and Kindle Nation Daily.
Unlock the World Of Free Audio on the Kindle
- So I was happy to stumble upon a website called BooksShouldBeFree.com, where real human beings do a great job of reading great books.
- For a good explanation of wat is involved with DRM and music, see http://bit.ly/MusicDRM-Explainer.)
- This "audible" listening mode can be especially useful for a handful of favorite songs or for listening to a podcast such as Len Edgerly's weekly The Kindle Chronicles on your Kindle.
- I can do the same with any other DRM-free MP3 audio file that resides on my computer's hard drive, including, for instance, tracks that I have downloaded to my iTunes folders from CDs that I have purchased and music files -- like the Mozart tracks mentioned in the next section -- that I have purchased from Amazon's MP3 Downloads Store.
- If you like Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, start by going to the Amazon page for The 99 Most Essential Mozart Masterpieces, a collection that features hours of wonderful Mozart compositions performed by the world's greatest orchestras and soloists.
- While it is possible to purchase the individual tracks for 89 cents each, you can spend a total of $7.99 and get all 99 tracks, ranging in length from under two minutes to longer than 15 minutes, just by clicking on the orange "Buy MP3 album with 1-click" button near the upper-right corner of your computer screen.
- When you enter Audible.com for the first time as a Kindle user at http://www.audible.com/kindle you will be invited to get a free Audible.com book as a Gold plan customer with a free month of Audible.com service.
- To browse the possibilities, just go to Audible.com, click on the Advanced Search link in the upper left corner, and select "Free" from the pull-down menu in the Price field.
- Navigate to http://www.audible.com/kindle and sign up if you have not done so already. Download the Audible Manager software to your computer and re-start your web browser.
Posted by Steve at 6:09 AM 0 comments
