Major changes to the Personal Documents Service

Major changes to the Personal Documents Service

“Honey, why is your shopping list on my Kindle?”

There has been a major change in how “Personal Documents” are handled by the Kindle service.

While I can see how this has tremendous applications for businesses and for the classroom, it also has the potential to be embarrassing…really, really embarrassing….in family situations.

This has actually been a long and complicated journey to get to my current state of understanding. It has included: contradictory information from Amazon; a lengthy, impassioned Amazon Kindle community thread; multiple contacts with Kindle Customer service; and my own experiences.

Before I go any farther, I want to give a big shout-out to Dianne Gorman of the

From down the hill

blog.

Dianne was involved in the Amazon Kindle community thread, and took the time to experiment and more importantly, document and publish the process. The latter is particularly helpful, and something many programmers and investigators don’t do.

Here’s

Dianne Gorman’s Changes to Kindle Personal Document Settings blog post

I recommend you look at it, and explore more of the blog.

I wouldn’t have gotten as far as I have without it…thanks, Dianne!

The Old Situation

One of the great things for me with my Kindle has been the ability to send personal documents to it. For example, I’ve found it really helpful to take a pdf I’ve been given from work, have Amazon convert it for me for free, send it to my Kindle…and use text-to-speech with it in the car.

That’s been one of the best ways for me to review something I haven’t done in a while. I wouldn’t learn something first that way, but it’s good as a second modality.

I also go a lot of different places at work…I’ve driven a thousand miles in a week, getting home to sleep every night. I have to say, I had mixed feelings when my gas station told me that I was their best customer. I’m not driving as much as that now, but I was often in places I didn’t know seeing people I hadn’t met. The easiest thing for me was to send a text document to my Kindle with that day’s information. That way, I could review the office number of my appointment while standing in an unfamiliar hallway.

I’ve also used it for travel information (confirmation numbers for flight, car, and hotel).

Importantly, I’ve used it to send non-Amazon books to my Kindle. That might be a public domain book from somewhere like Gutenberg.org or Feedbooks.com, or a book which has been sent to me for review by the author/publisher.

All of this got so much easier when the Kindle 3s (now called “Kindle Keyboards”) were released in August of 2010!  Those models brought wi-fi…and with it, free wireless delivery of personal documents to our Kindles.

That improvement made things much easier for me. My work laptop has a security feature on it that makes me enter a password for any storage media I attach to it…and that includes the Kindle. I haven’t ever done that, because I’m not quite sure how that would work with entering the password again later for a Kindle. It’s a good policy for work: we could have people’s personal information that should be protected if a laptop is stolen with, let’s say, an SD card in it. It just made putting those work documents on my Kindle much more awkward. The free wireless delivery was the solution.

Amazon clearly considers the personal document element an important part of its strategy going forward. The Kindle Fire has “Docs” on its primary menu bar, Jeff Bezos made a point about them in the recent kick-off press event, and the Fire has a new to Kindle PDF reader that should be PC level.

The way it worked before the recent radical change is that each device had its own e-mail address…in fact, it had two. You could e-mail a personal document to your Kindle’s e-mail address as an attachment. It would then appear in your Kindle’s homescreen, just like an e-book.

With a wi-fi only device, it was very easy. Just send that e-mail from an authorized address, and there was no charge for it. That’s because we (or a business where we are, like a restaurant) pay for wi-fi.

With a 3G device, you got charged (fifteen cents a meg rounded up for a US customer in the US) if it was delivered by 3G.

If you had a dual-delivery (wi-fi and 3G) device, it was free if it was delivered by wi-fi, charged if it was delivered by 3G. What I would normally do is send it to my dual-delivery device when I knew it was connected to wi-fi (at home, for example). Kindles “prefer” to use wi-fi when both are available…that’s better for Amazon (they pay for our 3G use), and for the customer (typically, wi-fi is faster than 3G, but that’s not absolute).

You also had a second e-mail address. Instead of something like Joe@kindle.com, you added “free” after the @ sign…Joe@free.kindle.com.

If you had a dual-delivery device (I’ve just started calling them that, by the way…I considered “hybrid”, but this explains it better), that would guarantee it was delivered by wi-fi.

If you a 3G only device (like the Kindle DX or the Kindle 2 or Kindle 1), you got the document sent to you in your regular e-mail (not your Kindle’s e-mail), and you used your included USB cable to put it into your Kindle’s Documents folder yourself.

Here’s the key point about what is different: you picked a specific Kindle, and sent the document to that one only. You could actually send it to more than one Kindle at a time…up to fifty Kindles in one e-mail. Once you sent it, though, there wasn’t a way to retrieve it from your archives.

Also, our personal documents weren’t backed up for us by Amazon, couldn’t use Whispersync (start reading on one device, continue from the same point on another), and didn’t back up our notes, highlights, and bookmarks.

I thought it was quite useful, but had some limitations.

The New Situation

Starting September 28, 2011, Amazon’s strategy changed massively.

For Kindles you had registered on your account before that date, this gets trickier (I’ll deal with that below), but let’s pretend for moment that you are registering your first Kindles September 28th or later.

Your Kindle account will have one “send to” e-mail address. By default, when you send a personal document to that account, it will go to all of the Kindle’s on your account.

So, if I send my information for that day’s work, by default everybody’s Kindle on my account would get it….and there are three other people on my account who don’t want it.

That’s a really big change.

Now, I can go to my Manage My Kindle change and turn off auto-deliver for whatever Kindles I want. Whew, right?

Sort of…

Let’s say I turn it off for my Significant Other’s Kindle.

That doesn’t just turn it off for ones I want to send to my Kindle…it turns off for ones’ that my SO wants to send to my SO’s Kindle!

To send something wirelessly to my SO’s Kindle, we would first have to go back into

http://www.amazon.com/manageyourkindle

and turn that back on first.

That makes it harder for me to send a photograph to my SO’s Kindle as a surprise…that was fun. I could still do it, but I’d have to go to MYK first.

Again, the new strategy is to send all personal documents to all Kindles on that account. You can opt a Kindle out of getting any personal documents.

I’m really not sure why they’ve done this.

In one of the various communications I saw, I believe they said that a lot had asked for it.

I see two main possibilities there:

1. They misunderstood people who wanted to ability to send Kindle store books to all of their devices at the same time. I’ve seen that request. If the new Stephen King comes out, it’s possible that everybody on the account wants to read it as soon as it does. Yes, each person could get it pretty easily from the Archived Items on the account, but if it was preorder, having everybody get it (without being reminded) would be cool.

2. The request is coming from businesses or teachers. In a case like that, you might want to send the newsletter to a twenty-five Kindles on the account all at once.

You’ve always been able to send a personal document to multiple Kindles just by putting more than one e-mail address when you sent it…but I don’t think most people knew that.

I just don’t see it being the typically desired result in a family. Sometimes, I could see it…if you are traveling together, for example, and all want that travel information. Most of the time, though, I think personal documents are…well…personal.

Now, before I go through how this works exactly, let’s talk about what happens with Kindles on your account before September 28th, 2011.

There are two possible situations.

If you had one Kindle registered to your account before September 28th, that Kindle’s e-mail address becomes the “send to” address.

If you had one Kindle that was RobertNeville@kindle.com (fifteen trivia points* for that one), all of your future Kindles will have that same address.

On the other hand, let’s say you had two Kindles: DickGrayson@kindle.com and BruceWayne@kindle.com (five trivia points for knowing both).  If you don’t do anything, they will each continue to have separate e-mail addresses…and won’t be part of the “send to” program. When you register a new Kindle, that one will establish the “send to” address. It won’t affect the old ones at all…they get grandparented into keeping their old addresses.

New Kindles will all have the same address.

With me so far?

Do nothing, and this does not affect your Kindles registered before September 28th…unless…

Here’s the next part.

If you deregister one of the old Kindles, and then reregister it…it will lose its old e-mail address and will use the new “send to” address.

That’s where I think this could really surprise somebody.

People do register and deregister their Kindles at times. One reason people do it is their Kindle has forgotten their Collections for some reason…Amazon may tell you in that case to deregister it and reregister it to recover them.

People deregister and reregister their Kindles if they are lost and then recovered.

Parents and other legal guardians may keep their kids’ Kindles deregistered so that the kids can’t buy books. They reregister them to download the books they want the kids to have, then deregister them again.

Let’s look at that one for a minute.

Ward and June are the parents of Wally and Theodore. (7 trivia points). Ward and June don’t let Theodore buy books on the account (he got a pet alligator once…long story).  So, they register Theodore’s Kindle, download books, then deregister it again.

Well, that happens after September 28th…and Theodore’s Kindle now becomes one of the ones that get all personal documents.

Ward and June also got new Kindles for each other (awww!). June sends their shopping list for Theodore’s birthday to her Kindle (she thinks)…and it shows up on Theodore’s and Ward’s! Theodore knows what he is getting.

Worse, Ward sends a copy of H. Rider Haggard’s She he gets at Project Gutenberg to his Kindle. That’s not really appropriate for Theodore (but it shows up on his Kindle)…and June doesn’t approve of that sort of literature, but it shows up on hers, too….so she is going to figure out Ward got it.

Not a good scenario, huh? That would be a tough one to solve in thirty minutes.

People also register their Kindles to someone else’s account, download a book, deregister, and reregister it back to their account. The local copy stays on their Kindle. I’ve never gotten an answer from Amazon as whether that is really okay or not…but many people do it.

Okay, let’s get to the…

How to

First, this is all covered in this

Amazon Personal Documents help page

If you go to

http://www.amazon.com/manageyourkindle

before you have registered or registered any Kindles since September 28th, and click

Personal Document Settings

you’ll see an e-mail address for each Kindle on the account. I’d show you a screenshot, but I would want to black out too much. Dianne (see above) has one.

You may also see a column about Auto-Deliver not being set up, and a link for “Why not?” Clicking on it shows you this:

“Send-to-Kindle e-mail address is not set up for this Kindle device. To set up, first deregister this Kindle device from Manage Your Devices Page, and then re-register it. Learn more about Associating Kindles to your Send-to-Kindle E-mail address.

You can then use your single Send-to-Kindle e-mail address to send your personal document(s) to your Kindle device(s).”

You’ll also see a choice for Personal Document Archiving. You can choose to edit that.

That’s another important piece of this.

You can store up to 5GB of personal documents in Amazon’s Cloud Storage…for free. That’s an additional 5GB over what you have in your regular cloud drive, from what I can tell.

That’s a lot! It’s more than the storage on a Kindle DX.

Here’s an interesting thing.

I turned that on.

I sent a personal document to my Kindle Keyboard (formerly called a Kindle 3…calling it a KK seems weird, though).

Great! It showed up as usual.

I checked my MYK page. It showed up there in the top section (Your Kindlev Library). So far, so good. I went to send it to my SO’s Kindle. My SO’s Kindle Keyboard wasn’t available as a choice (this is before I’d gotten this all straightened out in my head).

My K3 also wasn’t available. I thought that was odd…I thought it might be because it knew the document was already on my Kindle.

In fact, the only Kindle available to which to send it (although all our Kindles showed) was my pre-ordered Kindle Touch, Wi-Fi only. That one doesn’t even show an e-mail address yet.

It does tell me it is registered, by the way.

With what I know now, this all makes sense. I do think it is interesting that my Kindle Fire doesn’t show yet. This Personal Document Service doesn’t work with Kindle Apps…just Kindles. The Kindle Fire does not show up on the Personal Documents Service help page at all, but all of the other models do…even the Kindle 1.

This suggests that the Kindle Fire may be treated more like the Kindle for Android app.

Of course, it might just be that they haven’t put the Fire there yet. Hmm…I hope that’s the case…I wouldn’t want people to be unable to subscribe to this blog through the Kindle store for the Kindle Fire!

I was going to deregister and reregister my current Kindle to get this process started…but then I realized I could do an older one that is sort of a backup and of sentimental value at this point.

The first thing I did was copy and paste the Kindle’s serial number (it’s on that Manage Your Devices part of the MYK page) into a text document…that way I’d be able to reregister it easily.

It warned me not to do it unless someone else was going to take ownership to it…which is in contradiction to the Personal Documents Service help page.

I did it.

When the page refreshed, that Kindle was gone.

Scrolling up to the top, I clicked

Register a Kindle

I pasted in the old serial number, and it was back. Interestingly, it got i’s old name and e-mail back.

If I hadn’t preserved the serial number first, I could have found it on the device in

Home-Menu-Settings, Device Info

Interestingly, it got i’s old name back.

Now, when I clicked on

Personal Document Settings

on that MYK page, I had a

Send-To-Kindle E-mail Address

which I could edit, but which started out as the same as the e-mail address for the Kindle I deregistered and reregistered.

That Kindle also shows that Auto Deliver is now enabled…and there’s an Edit button so I can turn it off.

Again, the default is that the device will be on the “send all” list.

At that point, I figured that it would appear on the choices of devices to which I could send those archived Personal Documents in my Kindle Library.

Nope!

You see, that device was a Kindle 2…and the Personal Documents Service help page says:

“You can download archived personal documents from your Kindle library on Kindle Keyboard, Kindle and Kindle Touch.”

The Kindle they are referencing there is what I call the Mindle, the $79 (at time of writing) Kindle.

What do they have that the Kindle 2 doesn’t have?

Wi-fi.

I’m not sure if personal documents in your archives can only be downloaded via wi-fi or not, but only a device with wi-fi can be part of the service.

Here is another change.

On the MYK page, under Personal Document Settings, you can now choose whether or not 3G can be used to deliver personal documents (I think this applies to all the 3G Kindles on your account).

The default is supposed to be that it is turned off, but mine was turned on. I assume that’s because I have previously set a maximum value (which many of you have probably done). You can go there, click the Edit link, and turn it off, if you want.

I’m not going to do that.

I want the option for something to be delivered by 3G. I’m going to normally have all of my devices have auto deliver turned off…except for the one I’m using currently. That way, I’ll know if I’m on wi-fi or 3G.

Got all that?

Okay, summing up:

• There are two different things: autodeliver and personal archive service
• Autodeliver has no impact on you unless you have registered or reregistered a Kindle September 28th, 2011 or later
• All Kindles registered or reregistered on your account starting September 28th will have the same e-mail address: all of them will receive any document you send unless you change the default (see the next point)
• You can opt a Kindle out of getting personal documents at the Manage Your Kindle page
• Personal Document Archiving can be turned on now
• Only Kindles with wi-fi can download archived Personal Documents

I have not been able to test yet how it backs up notes made on an archived personal document, and how it keeps track for Whispersync. Hypothetically, a personal document in the archives should work somewhat like a Kindle store book in those areas.

This, by the way, opens up huge possibilities. You can send a personal document to fifteen “send to” documents in the same e-mail…and there’s no limit to the number of devices that might be in the “send to” on each one of those accounts. You could hypothetically use this to distribute a document to thousands of people via wi-fi.

I can certainly see this working for organizations, be they businesses, classes, or political campaigns.

Remember that a personal document can only be sent from an approved e-mail address…you can not be spammed by somebody unless you have previously approved their e-mail address.

I’m also guessing that they are going to get this to work on the apps…and on the Fire, however Kindle reading is implemented on it.

This means that you could get a book from Project Gutenberg, start reading it on one device, and continue it on another device. When they have the apps up and running (and I’m only guessing about that), it will be like a Kindle store book. If they are preserving your personal document notes at

http://kindle.amazon.com

the way they do with your Kindle store book annotations, that will be even more valuable.

What do you think about this? Should Amazon have sent a note to Kindles to warn people about the change? Should they have sent an e-mail? Will you miss individual e-mail accounts for your Kindles (did that make them seem more human?)? Do you see an enterprise use for this for yourself? Do you have other questions or comments? Feel free to let me know.

* Trivia points are just something I do for fun. It’s just for bragging rights and geek cred. All trivia points are null and void if you look them up…you have to just know it offhand.

This post by Bufo Calvin first appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog.