The Complete 2012 User's Guide to the Amazing Amazon Kindle: Covers All Current Kindles Including the Kindle Fire, Kindle Touch, Kindle Keyboard, and Kindle (21 page)

Just go to Instapaper.com, sign up for a free account, and link your account to your Kindle via your [Kindle username]@kindle.com or e-mail address. Grab the "Read Here" button, drag it and stick it on your browser's toolbar and you are ready to go. Wherever you surf on the web all day long, you can click that "Read Here" link and content that you select will be sent to your Kindle, in a reader-friendly digest file that will be easy to identify on your Home screen, whenever you want: on demand, once a day, or once a week.

Please note: Amazon will charge you 15 cents per Instapaper transmission and conversion to your Kindle via your [Kindle username]@kindle.com e-mail address, as well as an additional 15 cents for each megabyte of the file's size beyond the first megabyte of any file. But if you have a Kindle with Wi-Fi, just make sure the Wi-Fi is connected and there will be no charges.

In the Calibre chapter you learned how to use Calibre to manage your ebook library. Here we'll focus on how you can send Calibre out onto the Internet to fetch entire periodicals on a regular basis online and, and then, to deliver them in elegantly formatted files directly to your E Ink Kindle.

Once you have Calibre open on your computer, it's a snap to fetch free content from a growing list of great online sources.

To get started, just click on the "Fetch news" icon near the top of the Calibre display and select "Schedule news download" from its pull-down menu.

The next display to appear on your screen will allow you to select the language in which you wish to find online content. If you click on "English," you will see a list of content choices such as the one above. Just click on the periodical of your choice and Calibre will display dialog boxes to prompt you through the process of setting your preferences for regular scheduling of downloads of its content. Choices allow you to complete your downloads at a specific time each day, or on a certain day or days each week. The choice of the download time can be important for several reasons:

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You may want to make sure that a daily newspaper downloads at an optimal time to catch its most recent edition, such as 5 a.m.

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Calibre will complete your scheduled "Fetch news" downloads only if it is open on your computer

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Calibre will push your scheduled "Fetch news" downloads automatically to your Kindle only if the Kindle is connected to your computer via USB cable

Try it. We think you will like it; you’ll be amazed at how nicely and fully Calibre renders your "Fetch News" content on your Kindle. For instance, the weekly fetch of the New Yorker comes complete with the new issue's cartoons, “Goings on About Town” listings, and helpful article summaries.

Working on a research or other information-gathering project and want to collect it in easy-to-read customized Kindle books of your own?

There's a great free tool waiting for Kindle owners at eReadUps.com:

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Just choose the topic you want to read, type it into the box on the eReadUps website and click "Find Articles."

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eReadUps will search for related articles on the web and give you a list to select from.

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Choose the articles you want to include and build your own eReadUp "ebook" that you can read on your Kindle or another device.

Should research really be this easy?

In addition to reading books and other documents from the Kindle Store and free sources, you can also read your own personal and professional documents on the Kindle. On the Fire, you can buy apps that let you edit personal documents. At present, personal documents can't be sent to any of the Free Kindle Reading Apps.

One great use for this feature is to copy manuals for using cameras, GPS receivers, and other electronic gear that now come as PDF files. Even when a printed manual is available, it can be handy to have the PDF manuals available when needed in the field.

You can also read personal documents such as manuscripts, scripts, memoranda, directions, recipes, legal briefs, and any other personal document on your Kindle device. While you can't edit personal documents on the E Ink Kindles, you can annotate them and use this information to revise the document on your computer. Annotations are backed and synchronized by Amazon and appear on other Kindles, if you own more than one.

Apps such as Documents to Go and Office Suite Pro can be used to edit personal documents on the Fire.

Another way to edit a personal document is to connect your Kindle to your computer with a USB cable. Then you can edit and save personal documents in the Kindle’s Documents folder directly on the Kindle.

On the Fire, you can buy apps such as Documents to Go, OfficeSuite Pro, QuickOffice Pro, Smart Office, and AlwaysOnPC that allow you to edit documents in Microsoft Word, Excel, and Powerpoint formats.

The Kindle supports files in the following formats:

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Kindle (AZW, AZW1, AZW2)

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Text (TXT)

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PDF (PDF)

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Mobipocket (MOBI, PRC)

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Audible (Aa, AAX)

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Audio, podcast, and music (MP3)

In addition, the Kindle Fire supports the following formats:

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Audio files in
 
AAC LC/LTP, HE-AACv1 (AAC+), HE-AACv2 (enhanced AAC+), AMR-NB (.3gp), AMR-WB (.3gp), MP3, MIDI, Ogg Vorbis (OGG), and PCM/WAVE (.wav)

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Video files in H.263 (.3gp, .mp4), H264 AVC (.3gp, .mp4), MPEG 4 SP/ASP (.3gp), and VP8 (.webm)

Files must be unprotected- that is without Digital Rights Management (DRM).

Files in the above formats can be transferred directly to your Kindle (known as “sideloading”) using the USB cable supplied with most Kindles. If your Kindle didn't come with one or you want a spare, the cable is a standard USB to micro-USB cable and you can find them at a computer or electronics store.

To transfer files, connect your Kindle to a USB port on the computer with the Kindle cable. The Kindle appears as an external hard drive that you can browse as you would any other drive. Use any file manager to drag files to your Kindle:

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Document files (AZW, AZW1, AZW2, TXT, PDF, MOBI, and PRC) are placed in the "documents" folder on the Kindle

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Audible Book files (AA and AZX) are placed in the to the "audible” folder

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Music and podcast files (MP3) go in the "music" folder

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Video files go in the Video folder

When finished, eject the Kindle from your computer as you would any other external drive-- if you fail to do this, transferred files may be damaged or not show up at all. Then disconnect the Kindle cable. Transferred documents and Audible files show up on your Kindle's Home page.

Amazon will convert unprotected files in several other formats for you and deliver them directly to your Kindle, or send them to you as e-mail attachments so that you can transfer them from your computer to your Kindle. The formats supported include:

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Microsoft Word (DOC, DOCX)

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Text (TXT)

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Rich Text Format (RTF)

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web (HTM, HTML)

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Images (JPG, JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP)

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Zip files (ZIP)

DOCX files conversion is an experimental feature and not all DOCX files will convert accurately.

You can include multiple documents and images in a compressed ZIP file. The conversion service will open the ZIP file and convert each document.

Each Kindle has a unique e-mail address associated with it. To convert documents and have them sent to your Kindle, e-mail the files as attachments. The documents will be sent to your Kindle next time it has a Wi-Fi connection.

On your computer, go to Amazon and then "Your Account”, and then click on "Manage Your Kindle” under "Digital Content." On the left, under "Your Kindle Account," click on "Register a Kindle." A pop-up appears, "Register a New Kindle." Close the pop-up. Each of your registered Kindles (if you have more than one) appears under "Registered Kindles." Click "edit" next to your Kindle's name. Enter the e-mail address you'd like to use on the second line. This address must be unique--- if is not, you'll be prompted to enter a different address.

The next step is to add the e-mail address you will send from to the approved list. Amazon only accepts e-mails with files to be converted from the approved list, which prevents spam from being sent to your Kindle.

To set approved e-mail addresses, go to Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Kindle Page at Amazon. Under Approved Personal Document E-mail List, click "Add a new approved e-mail address," and type the address in the pop-up. You can add as many addresses as you like.

To send a document to Amazon for conversion, e-mail it as an attachment to [email protected]. Amazon will convert the document and send it directly to your Kindle when it has a Wi-Fi connection.

Once the document is on your Kindle, it shows up on the Home page as any of your other documents.

Personal documents are archived at Amazon in the same way as books and other items. If you remove a personal document from your Kindle, it appears at the end of the home screens under “Archived Items”. You can restore personal documents to your Kindle at any time.

Whispersync also synchronizes your last page read, bookmarks, and annotations for personal documents just as it does for books and other items purchased from Amazon.

Due to the fact that many PDF files are highly formatted, reading them on your Kindle is a little different from reading other documents.

If you want to convert a PDF file to a normally formatted Kindle text document – in those instances in which you do not need to preserve embedded graphic files and tables – Amazon will handle the conversion if you send the file to your @free.kindle.com address with the word convert – and nothing else – in the subject line. Otherwise, here are some tips for handling PDF documents on your Kindle.