Round up #138: Xfinity, James Bond bargains

Round up #138: Xfinity, James Bond bargains

Big Kindle Daily Deal: 50 “acclaimed” mysteries for $1.99 each

It certainly looks like Amazon wants to drive up the numbers at the end of the year! I wrote yesterday about a Kindle Daily Deal with over 200 books, and today we have fifty mysteries for $1.99 each.

That includes several original James Bond books (which Amazon now publishes). I would start with the first book, Casino Royale, if you haven’t read them yet. There are quite a few other options, though.

As always, check the price before you click the Buy button…it may have expired before you get to it, and it may not apply if you are outside the USA.

The holiday Amazonathon

Amazon has released their always amusing look at holiday sales:

press release

They like to come up with some odd stats. This might have been my favorite this year:

“The cumulative weight of the “Bond 50” Blu-ray sets purchased by Amazon customers this holiday season would be 800 times the weight of Daniel Craig.”

When I think about it, that doesn’t actually sound like that many, but it’s still cool.

Of more interest to us:

• Amazon was ranked #1 in Customer Service by ForeSee for the holidays for the eighth year running. This is actually a significant feat. There’s a lot of fascinating information in this ForeSee report. Barnes & Noble was way down the list, about #25…that’s one of the reasons I recommend the Kindle over the NOOK
• The KFHD was more popular than the Paperwhite…even though it was priced much higher
• The Paperwhite was still one of the top four items…the other two were the Kindle Fire 2nd generation standard definition, and the Mindle (the entry level Kindle)
• I actually gave a sibling the most gifted Kindle book of the season: The Signal and the Noise…I honestly don’t expect my family to be doing the most popular anything most of the time, which says something about the breadth of appeal of this book
• Check out this amazing statement: “23 Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) authors each sold over 250,000 copies of their books in 2012.”  Even though those authors may be selling those books elsewhere, I presume Amazon wouldn’t count those sales. Were there 23 hardbacks this year that sold that many copies? Yes, probably…but this is still a huge achievement for a single channel item
• The three bestselling books during the holiday season at Amazon.com were all in the Fifty Shades of Grey series…how’s that for a self-discovered author? I assume a lot of those were given as gifts, and that seems like an odd choice to me. It seems more like something you would get for yourself. My Significant Other suggested that a lot of people don’t know the content, just that it’s popular. Of course, there’s always been a market for “bind and gag gifts”

To Xfinity…and beyond!

I”ve recently written about an app that lets you watch live TV on your Kindle Fire. One tip on that, by the way…if you are having trouble getting it to open, put your Kindle Fire in portrait mode (taller than it is wide). After you pick a channel, you can switch back to landscape.  Well, quite a while back, I had commented on how Xfinity said they were still working on an app for the Kindle Fire. They have (a free) one now, and I can make this simple. If you are already a Comcast subscriber and you have a Kindle Fire, get it.

XFINITY TV Player

I’m pleasantly surprised with how well it works.

It’s like the On Demand that you already have through your cable box, although that is really slow and clunky when I use it with my TV. You can search by TV Series, by Movies, and by Network. You can download some of them, and you can filter for which ones are downloadable. That means you could throw a few movies on your Kindle Fire before a plane trip and be good to go. It’s got a history feature, and you can bookmark favorites. The image quality was good, and it didn’t take me ten minutes to download an over 500 MB movie (although that will depend on your network, of course).

I tried it in a Starbucks (with the sound off)…no problem.

There was a lot of content! I counted 200 TV series…and that just got me into the beginning of the Gs. Of the TV series, 23 were unlocked and downloadable, 42 were downloadable if you included locked. What does locked mean in this case? It means you would have to be paying for a premium channel.

I definitely think this will be part of the mix for me.

I should mention that the stations did identify themselves at the start of a program, but there weren’t commercials from what I’ve seen.

Oh, and it looks great!

Redeeming a Kindle gift

I thought I’d show you a bit about what happens when you send someone a Kindle gift as a present via e-mail.

They get an e-mail that looks like this:

When they click that “Get your gift now” button, they are taken to Amazon:

They see the book’s regular Amazon product page, but instead of having that Buy now button, they see something like this:

As you can see, they can apply it to whatever Amazon account they want.

If they click that “Learn how this works or exchange for gift credit” link, they see this:

As you can see, quite simple to do.

ILMK in 2012

WordPress did a nice, infographic type report of activity on ILMK in 2012. I made it public, and you can see it here:

http://ilmk.wordpress.com/2012/annual-report/

Thanks to Edward Boynton, Lady Galaxy, Zebras, Roger Knights, and Pam, who are all cited as commenting the most in 2012! Oh, and I like the map where you can see how many visitors came from each country (hover over a country to see).  From A to Z (literally…Australia and Zambia are both represented), I had visitors from 189 countries! That’s almost as many as the UN has (193).

Thanks to everybody for making 2012 a great year, and I look forward to a fun and informative time with you in 2013!

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

Fun things to do with your new Kindle Fire HD

Fun things to do with your new Kindle HD

If you just got a Kindle, congratulations!

Once you’ve taken care of the most important thing (choosing which account you’ll use), and maybe set the parental controls so you don’t have any surprise charges, it’s time to have some fun!

While all Kindles are fun, they can’t all do the same things. Before you plunge into these quick suggestions, make sure you know which Kindle you have:

Which Kindle Do I Have?

While just to keep things simple, I’m just listing items for a Kindle Fire HD, some of these will also work with other models.

Note: while most of these are free, some do require purchase of an app. Please check the price before clicking or tapping the Buy button. In many cases, they do require download of an app, even if it is free. Also, these are available to US customers, and may not be available elsewhere.

This is mostly just a listing. If you have questions about them, please free to ask by commenting on this post.

One last thing: I have used all of the apps listed here. There are certainly many other options, and I won’t guarantee that each is the best possible solution for you.

Fun things to do with your new Kindle Fire HD

1. Take a picture (tap Photos: there is a camera icon)
2. Send a text
3. Make a phone call
4. Make a videocall using Skype (Skype is installed; you may need to set up an account)
5. Play Magic Piano
6. Play Angry Birds Star Wars
7. Get a free trial for a magazine
8. Send an e-mail (E-mail is installed; you’ll need to configure your accounts, which is generally easy)
9. Check the weather
10. Watch webcams around the world
11. Go retro and play Atari games
12. Get a free e-book
13. Get a free song
14. Get the free app of the day
15. Check out the Kindle Daily Deal
16. Set up a free Flipboard account and get news and your Twitter feed
17. Make plasma sounds
18. Watch Netflix
19. Listen to Songza
20. Listen to local radio stations
21. Turn the world into art with Paper Camera
22. Enhance your TV experience with Zeebox
23. Level a table
24. Measure something
25. Put a pricewatch on a Kindle book, so you know when it goes down in price
26. Have your Kindle read a book out loud to you (tap towards the top middle of the page, tap Aa, tap More options, turn Text-to-Speech On)
27. Chat with other people inside a book (long-press ((hold your finger or stylus on something for about a second)) something, choose Share)
28. Find local movie showtimes with Fandango
29. Make notes (including pictures) about who gave what with Evernote
30. Play my favorite game on the Kindle Fire, the word game Dabble
31. Light up the room (including flashing police lights)
32. “X-Ray” a movie (Videos- Prime Videos…you can see if a movie has X-Ray or not before you start it running. Tap the screen while the movie is running, and you’ll see a choice for X-Ray: tap that, and get info about actors in that scene, including links to other movies in which they appear)
33. X-Ray a book (open a book and tap towards the top middle of the screen…you’ll see the option)
34. Have a Roku? “Throw” your pictures or personal videos on the screen with Juice for Roku
35. Make a voice recording (perhaps have the group in the room say something appropriate for the event)
36. Make a video recording

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

Parental controls and your Kindle

Parental controls and your Kindle

This year, many children may start using a new Kindle. While that can be a really wonderful, life-expanding experience, adults may want to guide what that child does. For example, parents/legal guardians might not want a child spending a thousand dollars on apps, or having access to certain content that the adult considers to be inappropriate.

When this issue comes up within the Amazon Kindle community, there are always posters who chide the adult for even asking about it, saying that it should be the parent/legal guardian who watches over what the child does, not some “parental control” tool.

Well, that seems a bit to me like saying you shouldn’t put a lock on the cabinet that has your household deadly chemicals, because you should simply be there to prevent your kid from getting into them. “Parental controls” (and I’m going to use that term for simplicity’s sake, even though it may not be a parent-child situation) are a tool you can use (just like that lock). While we can certainly debate how much free access to content a child should have, I think it’s worth knowing what your options are to help you actualize that decision.

Parental controls can actually give a child more freedom. Let’s say that an adult does not want a child to get to websites that have content not intended for children. I have run into situations where parents will not allow kids to click on websites at all…the parent has to do it, if they are going to go there. With a parental control system, it can be possible to limit which websites the child can access. The parent approves the sites ahead of time, and then the child has the freedom to go to sites within that group without constant supervision.

Is that kind of specific content guidance (called “whitelisting”) possible with a Kindle? Yes, but not with all Kindles at this time.

I’m going to run through the possibilities here. I would set up the Kindle with the guidance you want before the first unsupervised use.  With one click, a child could buy a $600 Amazon Instant Video (you won’t be buying it if you click here, but I thought you might be interested in what it was), and unlike Kindle store books, Amazon Instant Videos are not refundable.

Before we get started, you need to know which Kindle your child is going to be using, since the parental control options and procedures are different on different models.

You can tell by looking at this Amazon help page:

Which Kindle Do I Have?

Next, let’s go through some of the concepts.

Content Purchase Control

This allows you to turn off the ability to purchase content (e-books, videos, apps) directly from Amazon. While you have seven days from purchase to “return” a Kindle store book for a refund, that is not the case with other digital content. Generally, I would turn this off for children who are not responsible for their own finances.

That also goes for a special subset, what are called “in-app purchases”. When you are using an app on a Kindle Fire, you may be offered the opportunity to buy real things with real money. For example, you might be able to purchase a “power up” for a character for ten dollars.

Content Access Control

There are two broad types of this, if we consider a website to be the equivalent of an e-book…the website is treated as one item, just as an individual book would be.

You can turn off access to everything in that category: not allow any videos to be accessed by the device, or not allow any books to be read on the device.

You could also selectively access items. In other words, you can have a “blacklist” of items you don’t allow, or a “whitelist” of items you do. You might let  your child use some apps you have purchased, but not others.

Curated Access Control

In this method, available on some Kindle Fire models, you don’t make the specific decisions for child, but allow your child access to a set of content chosen by someone else. It is sort of the equivalent of letting your child look in the children’s books section of a brick and mortar bookstore (I’m a former manager) and look at anything they want there, but not leave that part of the store.

On all of these, there are three main sources of content, and you may be able to block one or more of them:

• Items you have already purchased from Amazon (your archives of “Cloud”)
• Items you have not yet purchased from Amazon
• Items from outside Amazon

Now, let’s go through the currently available devices:

2nd Generation Kindle Fire, Kindle Fire HDs

One approach:

Swipe down from the top of the device – More – Parental Controls

You’ll be asked to enter and confirm a password. Make sure you can remember that password: if necessary write it down.

From here, you’ll have several choices:

• Block the Silk Web Browser (it just says “Web Browser”). This does not block the device’s access to the internet…it just can no longer use Silk. If you’ve installed another browser (like Maxthon or Dolphin), that one will work just fine. The device will also still be able to download items from your archives/Cloud, and do Wikipedia look-ups
• Block E-Mail, Contacts, and Calendars (but I believe that will only be the Amazon apps)
• Password Protect Purchases (this will stop purchasing from Amazon)
• Password Protect Video Playback (no video playback, regardless of where it was obtained…I have not tested this within apps that play video, and I suspect it might work there)
• Block and Unblock Content Types (you can block all of a many of these as you want: the Newsstand, Books & Audiobooks, Music, Video, Docs, Apps & Games, Photos).
• Password Protect Wi-Fi
• Password Protect LBS (Location Based Services)
• Password Protect Mobile Network (Kindle Fire 4G only)

If you’d like to block In-App Purchasing, you do that here:

Swipe down – More – Applications – Apps (under Amazon Applications) – In-App Purchasing

You can do that even without using Parental Controls.

The Kindle Fire HDs also have Kindle FreeTime, which is an app that allows you to “whitelist” books, videos, and apps. You can create a profile for each child, and then manage content. Under content, you can add Books, Videos, and/or apps you want them to access. While they are in Kindle FreeTime, they will not have access to anything else (including purchasing from Amazon, web browsing, and in-app purchasing).

Note: they can use the wireless (unless you’ve blocked that in parental controls) to download books from your archives/Cloud. They will not have the ability to share notes and highlights, or to look things up in Wikipedia (but they can look them up in the dictionary).

Even though I have other browsers besides Silk on my device, they did not appear to be available to put into Kindle FreeTime. I tried an app which I knew required the web, and it was able to connect…but browsing appears to be out. I also don’t think you can add the e-mail app.

Additionally, for each profile, you can control time limits. You can set a limit for the total screen time per day, and separate limits each for reading books (which defaults to unlimited), watching videos, and using apps.

Even if they shut the Kindle all the way off, it will restart in Kindle FreeTime. (unless you have previously exited it with your password). You have to enter a password to switch the kids’ profiles: if Raggedy Ann is using it, and Raggedy Andy wants a turn, they have to come to you first.

Still, Kindle FreeTime does give you quite a few options…even if whitelisted web browsing isn’t one of them.

You can actually get whitelisted web browsing for the Kindle Fire HDs…but not for access through Kindle FreeTime (I think…I haven’t tested this one), and not for free.

It’s by using a third-party browser…and a sophisticated one at that:

Funamo

One last thing for the Fires: you can subscribe to a service called Kindle FreeTime Unlimited. For a monthly fee (as low as $2.99, if you are already an Amazon Prime member), your child can have “all you can eat” access to a curated set of  books, videos, and apps. This can be a great deal! You don’t own these items, and you’ll lose access if you stop subscribing, but there are a lot of well-known characters here, from Curious George to Shrek to Thomas the Tank Engine.

Kindle Paperwhite

The Kindle Paperwhite can’t play all the content that a Kindle Fire can, and subsequently, the parental controls are much simpler.

Home – Menu – Device Options – Parental Controls

You can turn each of these on and off:

• Web Browser (Silk)
• Kindle Store
• Cloud (archives)

While you can have “active content” on a Kindle Paperwhite, no apps (which means you can’t install extra browsers), no videos.

One nice thing: even if you turn off the Kindle Store, you can buy books for your child on your computer and have them sent to the Kindle Paperwhite.

Mindle (“basic Kindle”, “baby Kindle”)

The Mindle (my name for it) is similar to the Paperwhite in this.

Home – Menu – Settings – Next Page – Parental Controls

You can turn each of these on and off:

• Web Browser (Silk)
• Kindle Store
• Archived Items (same as the Cloud above)

Kindle Keyboard

This is similar to the Mindle

Home – Menu – Settings – Next Page – Parental Controls

and I believe it has the same options.

Free Kindle Reader Apps

I don’t believe these have Parental Controls at this time.

One other choice with all Kindles: you could set up a separate account for your child. That one could have a different payment method, and it would have different archives/Cloud. If you did not have a credit card/debit card listed as a payment method for 1-click, the child would only be able to buy things from Amazon with whatever gift card balance there might be on that account. I personally think it is easier to manage one account, but I wanted to make you aware of this as a possibility.

If you have any additional questions on Kindle parental controls, or have something else you want to tell me and my readers about it, feel free to comment on this post.

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

Flavors of free

Flavors of free

I’ve written a lot about getting free stuff for your Kindles (both tablets and RSKs…Reflective Screen Kindles). The link I just gave you there only scratches the surface. I’ve written specifically about why some e-books are free.

If you are one of the people getting your first EBR (E-Book Reader) or tablet (like the Kindle Fire) this year, it’s good to know…you don’t actually need to spend money on content again. There are plenty of legal sources out there for free content (books, apps, video, music)…even things that other people have paid to have in the past.

I thought in this post I’d look a bit more at what “free” can mean.

Robert Heinlein popularized the acronym TANSTAAFL in The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress. It stands for “There Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free Lunch”.

The suggestion is that, even if something is given to you for free, it may come with implied obligations that do end up costing you something, even if it isn’t money. If the boss takes you to lunch for having good performance in the month, there is an implicit idea that if you had a bad performance, you wouldn’t have gotten it. The cost of that free lunch could be many things: it isn’t just that you have the option to be good or not. The boss’ time is worth a lot more than the food, and that was included…so now, you may feel a social obligation to take care of the boss who took care of you.

In the case of free content, there are several ways it can work.

One big choice first: get it from Amazon, or get it somewhere else.

Getting free stuff from Amazon is easy, and it becomes part of your Amazon library.

You want free apps for your Fire?

Amazon has a Free App of the Day (an app for which they charge on other days):

Amazon Appstore

Do they have apps that are free besides that? Oh, yes…over 25,000 are here:

Free Apps in the Amazon Appstore

Not all Amazon Appstore apps are available for all devices, but that’s still a lot of apps. You could get one new free app a day for over 68 years, and not have them all (and that even presumes they haven’t added more in between).

Amazon has a lot more free books than free apps:

Free Kindle store books

It’s about twice as many (more than 50,000 free e-books) at the time of writing.

I do tend to prefer to get things from Amazon…Amazon stores them (and my notes) for me.

However, I do get some from other sources, typically because Amazon doesn’t have it.

I’ll just mention one of those (you can click the link at the beginning of this article for me):

http://www.archive.org

I use that often for free video (but it also has free audio, e-books, and so on). I’m not making notes on video, after all, and I don’t tend to share video (like old movies or TV shows) with the other people on my account.

Amazon, not Amazon, or a mix (my choice)…up to you.

Now, let’s talk about the “flavors of free”.

“Out of the goodness of their hearts”

There are places that make content free because they think it is for the good of society. One that can not be praised enough is

Project Gutenberg

They’ve tirelessly made free e-books available for a long time.

You may feel a social obligation to support the site, and may certainly want to do so, but it isn’t required. Arguably, a public library is like this as well, although you pay taxes to support it typically, and you don’t get to keep the item.

This is largely possible because of the limitations on copyright terms, which causes items to fall out of copyright protection into what is called the “public domain” after a certain amount of time (or for other reasons).

“Advertising supported”

Sometimes, free content is paid for by advertisers. You get it for free, but the advertiser pays the distributor for the loan of your eyeballs and brain. Very often, a popular app will come both in an ad-supported (“free”) version and a paid version. Pay ninety-nine cents (or some other amount), don’t see ads. Get it for free, see ads. You “pay for it” by watching the ads. One irritation for some people: your app may need to connect to the internet from time to time to download new ads. Once you do that, you can play it again without being connected.

“No Additional Cost”

Amazon has been big on this with Prime. You pay a service fee (typically $79 a year for Amazon Prime). Included in that is content you can use at no additional cost. It feels free, because you don’t pay for each transaction (when you watch a movie or read a book), but you’ve paid for the privilege.

This can be a great deal. If you already had Prime because you used the included two-day shipping, you can now watch many streaming movies and TV shows, and borrow up to a book a month, at no additional cost. If you get Prime specifically to borrow the books, it won’t feel free to you.

Getting you to be a Prime member is worth a lot to Amazon: Prime members tend to buy a lot more from Amazon, from what we’ve heard, including of those physical goods (what I call “diapers and windshield wipers”) where the real profit may be.

On an RSK (Reflective Screen Kindle), Amazon may give you “free” 3G. You do pay a higher additional cost for the device, but you don’t pay a monthly service fee. You get the 3G (which may be limited in use) for no additional cost after you buy the device.

It doesn’t work that way for the Kindle Fire HD 8.9″ 4G LTE Wireless 32GB…you do pay for a dataplan there, since the data you use on a tablet is so much more than the data you use to download a book.

“Inspiring Sales”

A company may give you free content to get you to buy something else which isn’t free. For example, you might buy a book, and it has a free chapter in it from the next book. Samples of books are a great demonstration of this. You can get a free sample of a book at Amazon. The potential cost here is that you like the book, and end up buying it when you wouldn’t have otherwise.

Similarly, a company may make the first book in a series free (sometimes for a limited time, even one day). After you read that book, you might then buy the other books in the series, or other books by the same author from the same publisher.

There you go…a few of the flavors of free.

Does it make a difference to you when you get it? After all, free is free, right? Do you feel obligated to support Project Gutenberg (maybe by volunteer proof-reading for them) if you use their books? Has a free sample ever gotten you to buy the book? How about a free book getting you to pay for other related books? Does the Prime streaming video and Kindle Owners’ Lending Library feel free to you, or are you acutely aware of that annual fee? Feel free to let me and my readers know by commenting on this post.

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

You can manage Kindle FreeTime centrally at MYK

You can manage Kindle FreeTime centrally at MYK

This is interesting!

In a recent update to the Kindle Fire HD and Kindle Fire 7″ SD (2nd generation Kindle Fire), we got an app called FreeTime.

It allows you to set up profiles for your children (or anybody, really), and control which specific books, apps, and videos are available to that profile.

Well, at the

http://www.amazon.com/manageyourkindle

page, I noticed there is a new category for

Kindle FreeTime Settings

From there, you can create profiles, give them names, enter genders, pick their avatars, and change the birthdates. You can also delete them.

More interestingly, though, is what happens when you go to a book, or video, or app.

You can add it right from there to one of the profiles!

This suggests that, if the profile holder moved from device to device, you wouldn’t have to recreate the “whitelists”.

It also means you can manage the content without having to hold on to the device for a while (which might be annoying, if your child was anxious to use it).

It is, however, perhaps easier to add content from the Kindle Fire, since you can just check boxes. Here, you have the advantage of search, but it takes a few steps to add each individual item. On the plus side, though, you don’t have to keep entering your password as much.

It would take just a little bit of tweaking to have this mean online management of our libraries.

First, we’d have to be able to create profiles without passwords required on the devices to make this more convenient.

Second, they have to drop that demographic information in the profile! I don’t like putting in a gender and birthdate now.

Third, they could give us a “select and act” option in MYK (Manage Your Kindle). We could have that now, for some things. For example, for people who delete things from their archives (I don’t), I think that could be handled in that fashion. It would be trickier to mass send books, because it would tend to overwhelm a Kindle (in part, because of the indexing it has to do).

You could create different profiles for different devices, if you wanted. You could log into a profile on a given device…although that might cause it to download a lot of things if they aren’t on the Kindle. They could do it so that the items are just available for download if they aren’t already on the device.

This might not work as well with apps, though, which are device type specific.

I think this suggests some really powerful tools coming our way! I wouldn’t be surprised if this was connected (at least in terms of development) with Whispercast.

If you have two Kindle Fires with FreeTime on them and can test out whether or not it asks you which Kindle should have a given book, I’d really appreciate it. I’m thinking it doesn’t, but it would be nice to test.

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

If you have an “extra” Kindle after tomorrow…

If you have an “extra” Kindle after tomorrow…

Tomorrow morning, at 10:30 AM Pacific, Amazon is holding a presser (press conference).

It’s possible (okay, likely) that Amazon introduces new hardware tomorrow. I think we’ll see both RSKs (Reflective Screen Kindles) and tablets (like the now sold-out Kindle Fire).

If so, I’ll be buying them…using Prime and paying for the one-day shipping, so I can write about them for you sooner.

If you also do that, and you already have a Kindle, what can you do with it (after the new one arrives…that might be some time off)?

I’m going to run through some possibilities here, and what you might want to do to prepare for it.

Keep it for yourself

If you add a tablet when you have an RSK, or vice versa, it can certainly make sense to have both. The RSK is for long form reading (especially outside, or when you won’t be able to charge your device every day), the tablet is for web/animation/apps. People also keep one as a back up, or one to lend to friends. You can certainly loan your e-books to your friends…if you are willing to lend them your Kindle. Having an extra Kindle means you can still read your books while they are borrowing. You might also want to have a Kindle to register to a second account…that’s a wonderful way to share. You don’t really need to do anything for prepare for this, although you might want to consider what the devices will be named. Two devices on the same account can’ t have the same name, and if yours is currently “Jane’s Kindle”, you might want to retain that for the new one, and change the name of the old one. You do that at

http://www.amazon.com/manageyourkindle

and then go to

Manage Your Devices

You might also want to look at your

Subscription Settings

but the new device will probably help you switch your subscriptions over, if you want to do that.

If the old Kindle isn’t going to be used much, consider it turning it off (rather than just sleeping it). With an RSK, hold the power button if for about five seconds until the screen goes blank.

Give it to someone else on your account

This can be a really great thing! It has to be someone you trust (they’ll be able to buy books using your payment method, although you can return them if you want). However, they get instant access to all of the books you’ve already purchased. If you have a relative/friend/other who isn’t as fortunate as you are, that’s terrific! You can also benefit, if the person to whom you give it also buys books. If they gift the books to you, they can even use their own payment method.

Again, go to MYK and look at the name of the device and subscription settings. If you have personal documents you don’t want the other person to have, and if they won’t be on the same wi-fi network or need your internet bookmarks, you might consider resetting it to factory defaults and then reregistering it. Resetting will wipe everything personal off the device, letting the person start over. On most Kindles, that’s Home – Menu – Settings – Menu – Reset to Factory Defaults. I’m not making that easy to see, because that’s a big move, and I don’t want people to do it lightly. On a Kindle Fire, it’s Settings Gear – More – Device – Reset to Factory Defaults.

Sell it/Donate it/Give it away to someone not on your account

Reset it to factory defaults. That’s important if you are giving it to someone else not on your account. It is part of your Terms of Service with Amazon that you not give away Kindle store content.

This can also be a very good thing to do. I donated a (new) Kindle recently…I looked around in my area, and found that the “Juvenile Hall” as they used to be called could use it. They actually do a poetry contest for the kids there, and give away a Kindle to the winner! How cool is that? They also do holiday gifts, and this could work for that. I really think it could change a child’s life to have a Kindle, even without an Amazon account. I’m careful to say you should check with your tax preparer, but you should be able to write off the current value (not the purchase price) of your Kindle if you donate to an appropriate non-profit.

One way to find non-profits?

http://www.guidestar.org/

I’ve used that to find non-profits before.

In my case, I particularly wanted to give it to a child, but there are lots of possibilities. For example, you might want to give it to

E-Books for Troops

Would your local library want it?

Maybe…check with them first.

One big thing: you might want to back up your Kindle first…not for books from the Kindle store, which will generally be keyed for that specific device, but for personal documents you have on it (and which you have not sent using Amazon’s Personal Document Service), for music, and so on.

Backing up is becoming less important, as things move more to the Cloud, but it’s something to consider.

Do you have other suggestions, or specific charities? Feel free to let me and my readers know by commenting on this post.

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

Menu map: Touch 5.1.0

Menu map: Touch 5.1.0

I’ve done this kind of thing for the Kindle Fire in my book, Love Your Kindle Fire: The ILMK Guide to Amazon’s Entertablet, and I’ve done it in this blog before for other models. I think this may become a regular feature, but do let me know if you find it helpful (or not).

I’m going to run through the menus on a Kindle Touch (specifically, a wi-fi only Kindle Touch with Special Offers in the USA). This is based on firmware version 5.1.0.

I’ll add comments where I think that’s appropriate. Do feel free to comment on this post if you have more questions.

What is a menu?

It gives you options, just like a menu in a restaurant. You select a menu (you might be tapping, clicking, arrowing and hitting enter…depends on the device), and see a series of choices. You pick one (if you want), and that “launches” (starts) something on your device.

With the Touch, you would first wake it up or turn it on with the power button on the bottom (press and release).

Those four horizontal lines below the screen are the “Home” button. I’ve heard people asking if that was a speaker or a vent. I personally would have made it look like a little house, because four horizontal lines typically means a menu, rather than Home.

The Menu button is in your top right corner of the screen. Tap that.

• Menu (with an X…if you tapped this by mistake, the X will close it with no changes)
• Turn on Wireless
• Shop in Kindle Store
• View Archived Items (these items available to be downloaded to this Kindle from the account…and there is a place here to import Collections from another device. This will only be up to date if your Kindle has done a sync with Amazon since the last change)
• View Special Offers
• Create New Collections
• Sync and Check for Items (this will communicate with Amazon’s servers. Not only will this download new items, it may set the time, get you an update, and so on. If your wireless is not on, it will ask you to do that…your Kindle can’t communicate with the server with the wireless off)
• Sort By…> (tapping this gives you four sort options…Recent ((which is the default)), Title, Author, or Collections ((if you have created any)))
• Settings (a very important menu)
• Experimental (Web Browser, MP3 Player, Text-to-Speech…but TTS doesn’t do anything here. This is a list of experimental features, and TTS only works in something you’ve opened that you can use that feature, like a book)

Let’s take a look at the Settings menu:

There are four sections here:

• Registration
• Wi-Fi Networks
• Device Options
• Reading Options

Here’s the key thing, and something that might surprise you.

You got here by doing

Home-Menu-Settings

You can hit Menu again to see another menu.

You got here through a menu, but that doesn’t mean you can’t use Menu to get even deeper.

Home-Menu-Settings-Menu

• Turn on Wireless
• Shop in Kindle Store
• Update Your Kindle (if you have an update package on your Kindle which hasn’t been executed yet…this option is generally “grayed out”, or what geeks may call “disabled”. You see the option, but can only select it in certain circumstances)
• Restart (this will restart the Kindle, which is often a fix for problems. You may need to sync with Amazon after doing a restart. This is a way to restart the Kindle using the software (going through the menus and the “user interface”), so you may see it called a “soft restart”. You can also restart a Kindle Touch by holding in the power button for at least twenty seconds. That uses the hardware (the button), so you may see the term “hard restart”. Amazon has indicated that it is better to use the software restart when possible. If your Kindle is non-responsive, that’s when you use the hard restart
• Reset Device (this used to be called Reset to Factory Defaults. This is a really radical thing to do, and should be used with caution and when other options have been tried. It will wipe out everything you’ve done to your Kindle, except firmware updates. You’ll lose personal documents on the device, it will forget your wi-fi networks ((so you may need to enter a password again)), it will lose your internet bookmarks…pretty much everything. It’s appropriate to do this when giving or selling your Kindle to someone not on your device, or if you have a problem you just can’t fix any other way)
• Device Info (this is sometimes crucial information for someone helping you, and I do wish it was a bit less buried. It gives you your firmware version, the memory you have left on your device, the wi-fi capability, the serial number, the Wi-fi MAC ((Media Access Control)) address)
• Legal (254 pages of small print that you can’t enlarge)
• Sync and Check for Items

You may notice that this sub-menu inside Settings has some of the same options as the main Home menu. Yes, that can happen…not every menu is unique. Gee, for some reason, Amazon likes to make the “Shop in Kindle Store” option available in several places.

Within a book

To access the Menu from within a book, you first tap towards the top of the screen, in the middle horizontally, then tap Menu.

• Menu
• Turn on Wireless
• Shop in Kindle Store
• Landscape Mode (switch it so the image is wider than it is tall)
• Sync to Furthest Page Read (this has to connect to wireless, because it is to coordinate between different devices. Device A has told Amazon’s servers how far you have read on that book. Device B wants to get that information from the server, to set the book to the same point. That works well when the same person is reading the same book on more than one device. It’s not something you are going to use if two different people are reading the same book on different devices)
• Book description (requires wireless…it gets that information from the Amazon website. An X-Ray enabled book downloads information about the book to store locally, although I don’t believe that affects this menu choice)
• Add Bookmark
• View Notes & Marks
• Share (this lets you write a note about the book and share it with others)
• Turn on Text-to-Speech (this may be grayed out, if the publisher has blocked text-to-speech access)

Those aren’t the only menus: you’ll have a different menu in different types of content. For example, a magazine will have a menu option to “Keep This Issue”, which keeps a copy of that specific issue locally on that device. If you don’t do that, you’ll eventually lose that issue as new ones come it. That kept issue is not saved for you on Amazon’s servers…just that local copy which is keyed to work only on that specific device.

Let me know if you think this was useful. I think it will help people find what they need more quickly. It also lets me document what is in the menus, so I can compare them after an update.

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

Return with us now to those thrilling days of yesteryear…

Return with us now to those thrilling days of yesteryear…

“You don’t own a TV? What’s all your furniture pointed at?”
–Joey Tribiani (played by Matt LeBlanc)
The One in Barbados: Part 1 episode of
Friends
screenplay by Shana Goldberg-Meehan, Scott Silveri

Decades before the TV became the centerpiece of the American home, families still gathered around a mass media device and everybody was talking about it the next day.

Radio.

Early television, in fact, wouldn’t have been what it was without those radio shows establishing that weekly entertainment habit.

Some famous TV shows and stars started out on radio: Jack Benny, Ozzie & Harriett, The Lone Ranger, and many more. Dragnet originally said, “The story you are about to hear is true,” not that you “are about to see”…although the names were still changed to protect the innocent.

Even the sight-gag oriented Candid Camera started out as Candid Microphone.

Sure, they came out of the entertainment “industry”…made to make money, with sponsorship as obvious as any major league ballpark is today. Still, there can be something magical about OTR (Old Time Radio).

The make-up, the special effects, the wild locations…those were all in your head. The only real limitation was the writer’s imagination…oh, and what the sponsors approved, of course.

That, by the way, may be a lot more than you’d expect. Murder, horror…even to the point of people being turned inside out in one famous Lights Out episode  (that’s an image that will stay with you).

I don’t listen to OTR every day, but it is part of my Kindle mix. I particularly like it on a plane trip, but it’s also good from time to time in the car (although I tend to prefer text-to-speech).

If you’d like to give it a try, there are a few ways to get Old Time Radio on your Kindle:

Download an MP3

You can do this with any Kindle (except the Mindle, the $79/$109 model, which doesn’t have speakers)…even a Kindle 1.

You can get the MP3 from a number of sources. For free ones, I recommend

• http://www.radiolovers.com/
• http://archive.org/details/oldtimeradio

The trick to listening to these on an RSK (Reflective Screen Kindle) is to put them into the Audible folder on the Kindle, not into the music folder.

Each file you’ve downloaded will then appear like an e-book in the homescreen. That will let you select the one you to which you want to listen at the time, stop in the middle and resume later, and so on.

If you have a Kindle that does Collections, you can put them into a Collection to make them easier to find…that’s what I do.

With the Kindle Fire, you can go to one of the sites, find the file you want, long press it (hold your finger or stylus on it for about a second), and choose “Save Link” (in the Silk browser…other browsers may use a different technique). You’ll find it again in

Web – Menu – Downloads

One nice thing: once you’ve started listening to it once, you’ll also find it in your Music tab. It might be in an album called “download”, but you should find them as individual songs. How it classifies it can be interesting…this is a place where the free app ES File Explorer comes in handy…not only in finding them, but in renaming them.

If you want to buy the MP3s from Amazon (which can be an easier way to get a bunch of them at once…and gives you more flexibility listening to them on multiple devices), here’s a search for them:

Old Time Radio MP3s at Amazon

As an alternative, you can get them from Audible.com (also owned by Amazon). I like the way that works on my Kindle Fire with the Audible app…

OTR at Audible.com

Streaming

As far as Kindles go, this is only an option on the Kindle Fire. You can stream from Archive. org (the downloadable files are at the bottom of this page, the streamable ones are at the top). You can also stream at RadioLovers.com.

Apps

Again, this is only on the Kindle Fire.

I’ve used

Old Time Radio Player

which is free, but streaming only. I wouldn’t say they have a huge selection, but it’s an easy way to listen when connected.

Just for the sake of this post (really, dear, that’s why I spent $1.99) I got

Tales of Horror – OTR

It did seem to have a lot of shows, and the playback was fine. The negatives: there didn’t seem to be an easy way to find a particular episode (or even a show), there wasn’t an explanation of the show that I could see (even as to what the series was called), and there was an ad/intro at the beginning of the show. However, you could quickly and seamlessly download an episode, and you could star your favorites. This appears to be a podcast, and they have other “flavors” besides horror as well.

Before we get into some specific recommendations for shows from me, I do want to mention

On the Air : The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio

That’s the updated version of the classic reference work, Tune in Yesterday (I have it in paper) by John Dunning, and now published by Oxford University Press.

Okay, let’s tune in that dial…

One warning: the golden era  of Old Time Radio was decades ago (really in the twenties, thirties, and forties, although there is some fuzziness in the dates). The “politically correct” standards were different. Just diving into it at random, you could run into something that you might consider offensive. Also, as I’ve mentioned already, it could be really scary. I’d very careful about letting, oh, a six-year old listen to the horror shows like Lights Out in the dark by themselves…

You’ll also probably be amused when characters describe what’s happening in the scene: “John, why are you putting that box on the table by the door?”

Oh, and don’t be surprised if you hear what sounds like the old hiss and pop of vinyl. That’s why we have a lot of these shows…they were actually distributed to radio stations as records like the vinyl records we used to have (although they were more commonly on aluminum, I think).

The Lone Ranger

Start at the beginning with this one…there’s a real origin and development. In fact, the details are all explained: we know how the Lone Ranger became the Lone Ranger, how the masked man got Silver…even the origin of the mask itself. You might want to listen to it before the Johnny Depp movie next year.  Incidentally, they are making a point in that version of making Tonto a more important figure…but Tonto in the radio series is already a strong character. Yes, other people treat Tonto poorly, and there is that “broken English”, but Tonto is shown as a very capable person.

The Avenger

No connection to the Marvel superheroes. This can be quite a strange superhero show. It plays somewhat like a detective show, but the hero has two special abilities (both through secret inventions of the character). One is the “telepathic indicator”, which picks up sort of random thoughts…the Avenger can’t use it to read a specific person’s thoughts in a specific circumstance. The other one is the “diffusion capsule”, which renders the Avenger invisible. The plots can be out there, though…try The Mystery of the Giant Brain for an example.

If you are interested in what were the most popular shows, this site has done a nice job of organizing them:

http://www.old-time.com/ratings/by%20season/index.html

This, by the way, is particularly fascinating. Station WSJV recorded their entire broadcasting day on September 21, 1939. You can listen to it in “real-time”, if you want…but you’d have to start at 6:30 AM and go past 12:30 AM the next day.

http://archive.org/details/CompleteBroadcastDay

It’s twelve MP3s…

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

Random Tips #2

Random Tips #2

I like to cover a subject in-depth, like I do in the Frequently Asked Kindle Questions category.  However, that can be a lot to swallow at one time.  I like giving you the big picture, the whys and wherefores.  Sometimes, though, you just want to hear something cool and self-contained.     So, this time, I’m just going to give you little random tips.  After all, you can search the blog to find things…even if they are in a patchwork quilt post.  This is the second in a series…thanks for letting me know you liked the first one!

===

Want to search your e-mail on your Kindle Fire? Swipe down when you get to the message list.

Want to report misspellings or other errors on a Kindle Touch? Highlight it, then tap More, Report Content Error.

Want to see which books have recently delivered to which Kindles/apps on your account? http://www.amazon.com/manageyourkindle – Pending Deliveries – scroll down and click to View Recent Successful Deliveries.

Want to return a Kindle store book for a refund within seven days of purchasing it? Go to that http://www.amazon.com/manageyourkindle page, click or tap Actions…and you’ll see the choice.

Want to quickly add books to a Collection? Open the Collection (not an individual book), and choose to Add/Remove Items. Once you’ve selected the ones you want, you can go to Home..you don’t need to click or tap the Done button first.

Want to find out when an e-book drops in price, or when it first appears as a Kindle edition? Use http://www.ereaderiq.com/.

Want to play a particular sound recording when you choose on a Reflective Screen Kindle? Put it in the Audible folder, rather than the Music folder. It will appear like an e-book in your homescreen.

Want to change which Kindle is the default when you buy something from the Kindle store? First, if you shop from your Kindle, that should be the default. Second, it’s done when you shop on your computer alphabetically (except that hardware Kindles come before Kindle apps…and Kindle Fires are treated like Kindle apps). You can go to http://www.amazon.com/manageyourkindle, Manage Your Devices. Under the column that says “Kindle Name”, you’ll see a link that says “Edit” in the record for each of your devices.

Want to send Amazon feedback about anything Kindle? kindle-feedback@amazon.com.

Want to get more information about where you are in a book? On RSKs, try hitting the Menu…that will likely show you your location, and page numbers if available.

Want to contact a traditional publisher? Try http://www.publishers.org/.  Then, click or tap Join AAP, then click or tap AAP Members.  If you want to skip the home page (which can have some very interesting things), you can go directly here: http://publishers.org/members/.

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

Free e-books for disabled US students (and low cost availability for others with disabilities)

Free e-books for disabled US students (and low cost availability for others with disabilities)

In the USA, there are provisions under the law that enables “authorized entities” to make books available to people with qualifying disabilities.

One of the most important element of that is the Chafee Amendment, which created Section 121 of Title 17 (US copyright law).

http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.pdf

That enables these “authorized entities” to produce these specialized editions, which include “…digital text which is exclusively for use by blind or other persons with disabilities…” without first obtaining permission from the rightsholder.

That’s important. While publishers do cooperate with these sorts of programs, it didn’t always used to be the fastest system. If an authorized entity needed to file a request and wait for a response giving them permission, that was sometimes unwieldy. The Chafee Amendment eliminated that potential bottleneck.

So, the key points are:

• This only applies under US law (but there may be similar laws other places…I’m just familiar with the US)
• It has to be done by an “authorized entity”, not just anybody. According to Section 121:  “authorized entity” means “…a nonprofit organization or a governmental agency that has a primary mission to provide specialized services relating to training, education, or adaptive reading or information access needs of blind or other persons with disabilities”
• It has to be done for people with certified disabilities…you can’t produce the e-book under the Chafee Amendment and then just make it available to anybody who wants it

None of this says that the e-book has to be made available for free to people with disabilities. Yes, it has to be a non-profit, so that part would be scrutinized, but if they don’t have donations or grants or the equivalent that pay for the production costs, they could charge for them.

Now we are about to get into the specifics of one such source.

I’ve written about

https://www.bookshare.org/?

before, in conjunction with the text-to-speech issue.

This organization has recently celebrated ten years of public service.

If you can certify a disability (making you a legitimate person to receive their services under the law), you can get e-books from them.

They are currently funded (I think it may end later this year, but could get renewed) by a grant from OSEP (the Office of Special Education Programs) of the US Department of Education to give books to students for free.  Specifically, this covers:

• K-12 (public and private)
• Home-schooled students
• Post-secondary (public and private)
• Adult education

Obviously, you would need to prove you were a qualifying student (as well as proving your qualifying disability) to get the books for free.

If you do have a qualifying disability but are not a qualifying student, you can get a membership for a $25 one time set-up fee, and then a $50 annual fee (those can also be gifted to someone).

For $50 a year, then, you have access to something like 140,000 e-books for no additional cost, if can certify a qualifying disability.

What sorts of books?

The Hunger Games trilogy, Harry Potter, Fifty Shades of Grey, Calico Joe by John Grisham…lots of popular books, and more.

You can search at the Bookshare.org website.

You can also do organizational memberships.

One interesting thing I noticed in writing this post. They do have international options. For more information, see

https://www.bookshare.org/_/membership/international

What prompted this post is that the use of Kindles by the disabled had come up in an Amazon Kindle community thread, and I mentioned Bookshare. I got some good response from people who had been unaware of it…so I wanted to share it with you.

If this does help you or someone you know, I’d appreciate hearing about it. If you have personal experience with Bookshare, feel free to let me and my readers know by commenting on this post.

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