Can’t get to a bookstore or library? Try e-books (many are free, no special device needed)

Can’t get to a bookstore or library? Try e-books (many are free, no special device needed)

Do you read every day?

Lots of people do, including me.

Some of us, who may find ourselves home for an extended period unexpectedly, are lucky enough to already have books in our homes. When I ran a poll last week, more than half of my readers reported having more than 100 unread books:

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No internet, no delivery, no leaving: how many UNREAD books do you have in your house?

• More than 100 |  56.52%
• 51-100 | 17.39%
• Other | 13.04%
• 21-50 | 8.7%
• 6-10 | 4.35%
• 0 | 0%
• 1-5 | 0%
• 11-20 | 0%
• I don’t know | 0%

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Not everybody’s going to have that, though.

I used to manage a brick-and-mortar bookstore, and I’ve always loved going to bookstores and public libraries. I had regular customers who would come in just about every day…not even necessarily buying something each time, but just enjoying the experience.

If that’s the case, you may not have a large TBR (To Be Read) “pile”.

How do you get things to read if you aren’t leaving your home?

One answer is e-books.

I should start out with saying that I’ve always loved books. I literally have a floor to ceiling library in my home. I’ve had over 10,000 p-books (paperbooks) in my house (although I’ve been donating a lot of them recently, primarily to Loren Coleman’s

International Cryptozoology Museum

I managed a brick-and-mortar bookstore. Even in high school, I was the “librarian” for our science fiction and fantasy club.

The reason why I’m even mentioning that is to let you know that I love paper books. I honestly didn’t think I’d like e-books…but I got a Kindle as a gift, and after I tried it, I ended up really enjoying it. I say, “The more you love books, the more you love e-books.” I’m not going to rehash all that in this piece, which I mainly want to help people keep reading during these atypical times. My point now is just that it doesn’t have to be one or the other…it can be both, and you aren’t “cheating” on p-books to read e-books.

Let’s do this as a Q&A:

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What’s an e-book?

It’s an electronic book. Basically, it’s a digital file, like a digital video or an MP3 music file…except that it’s of a book. You read the text, just like you would with a paperbook…a p-book.

Do I need some special kind of device to read it, like a Kindle?

Nope! You can read e-books on your SmartPhone, a tablet, or a computer.

Why do people buy Kindles, then?

It’s for the reading experience…it’s more like reading a p-book.

I don’t like staring at a screen, though, it hurts my eyes.

The main reason for that is that most screens, including those phones, tablets, and computers, shine a light in your eyes. What you are reading on those is lit from behind…it’s called backlighting. Kindles (and other EBRs…E-Book Readers) aren’t like that. It used to be that they didn’t have any lighting at all, so you read them the same way you read a p-book, from the light reflecting off it. Now, they are generally “frontlit”: subtle lights are in front of the words, and point at the screen, not at you. They make the book easier to read just like a booklight does with a p-book. My favorite way to read, including paper, is on a Kindle Paperwhite (at AmazonSmile*).

How much does that cost?

Right now, from the USA Kindle store, it’s $129.99…but I want to repeat that you could just use something you already have like a phone or tablet.

What do the books cost?

It depends on the book. Lots of books are available legally for free. That’s true for books which are in the public domain, not under copyright protection, usually because of their age. Copyright protection only lasts so long. Some authors and publishers also choose to give away some of their titles for promotional reasons.

What do other books cost?

Again, it depends on the book. Many books cost ninety-nine cents, but a new book by a well-known author from a major publisher is more likely to be between $10 and $20.

When I get the book, do I own it?

You own the right to read it.

Huh?

It’s not like when you buy a paperbook and you own one copy of the book. You buy the right to read it. Let’s say your download the book to your phone and you lose your phone. If you lost your backpack with a paper book in it, you’d just be out of luck. If you lose your phone, you can just download the book again from Amazon (I’m talking about Kindle books here…other places could possibly have different rules).

Okay, let me make sure I have this straight. I don’t need to buy a Kindle, but I can if I want a better reading experience. I don’t have to pay for e-books, if I’m okay with reading older ones, but I can buy them if I want…right?

Right. Oh, and there’s also something called Kindle Unlimited, where you can pay about $10 a month and borrow all the books you want to read. It’s like Netflix, sort of, but for books and magazines.

Any book?

No, not any book, but tens of thousands of them, including well-known books from popular authors. Here’s a link for more information: Kindle Unlimited (at AmazonSmile*). If you have Amazon Prime, there are about 3,000 e-books available as part of your membership. Here’s that link: Prime Reading (at AmazonSmile*)

What if I just don’t want to get them through Amazon at all?

That’s fine. Amazon has a lot of features, like sharing books among people on your account and saving your notes and bookmarks, but there are other sources, both for those public domain books and current ones. If you buy a current book from someone other than Amazon, you might not be able to read it on your Kindle (if you decide to get one). Here are a few sites you can use to get the books. I haven’t mentioned this much, but you can read books online, in additional to downloading them…think of those as being like streaming video. You don’t have your own copy, you just read it at the host site:

• Project Gutenberg
• ManyBooks
• Wikisource
• Read.gov from The Library of Congress

Your public library probably also has a way for you to borrow e-books, and that’s another way to read contemporary books for free. Check their site: there are different systems in use.

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I have been working on my own The Measured Circle’s Geek Time Trip for years (The Measured Circle’s Geek Time Trip ), and I have some links there, but it will slowly build up and the others one are probably better in this situation.

Hope that helps! If you have additional questions or want to say something about your experience with e-books, feel free to let me and my readers know by commenting on this post.

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Join thousands of readers and try the free ILMK magazine at Flipboard!

All aboard The Measured Circle’s Geek Time Trip at The History Project!

Bufo’s Alexa Skills

* I am linking to the same thing at the regular Amazon site, and at AmazonSmile. When you shop at AmazonSmile, half a percent of your purchase price on eligible items goes to a non-profit you choose. It will feel just like shopping at Amazon: you’ll be using your same account. The one thing for you that is different is that you pick a non-profit the first time you go (which you can change whenever you want)…and the good feeling you’ll get. 

Shop ’til you help! 

This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog. To support this or other organizations, begin your Amazon shopping from a link on their sites: Amazon.com (Smile.Amazon.com)

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How to use an American Express (or other credit card brand) gift card on Amazon

How to use an American Express (or other credit card brand) gift card on Amazon

I have a relative who likes to give us gift cards at holidays and such, and I always appreciate that.

They usually give American Express gift cards or Visa gift cards.

You might also get them at work or as prizes.

While they can be used at many physical stores, using them at Amazon is a bit tricky…especially if you have several with small leftover amounts.

Well, my Significant Other had several (and I had a few), so I’ve now really worked out the system!

Here’s the trick: use the credit card gift card to buy yourself an Amazon gift card. Then, apply the gift card to your account, and Amazon will automatically use it for your purchases.

It does take a minute or two per card, but it’s not particularly hard.

Here are the steps:

1. Find out what the remaining balance is on the card. There will be a URL (Universal or Uniform Resource Locator…web address) on the back of the card for checking balances. Use that: don’t search on the web, or you may end up at scam site. You’ll be entering the card number, the expiration date, and a 3 number code (usually) on the other side of the card, the side where you sign it. Remember or record the amount
2. Next, you are going to go to Amazon’s site, and to the Gift Cards page (at AmazonSmile: benefit a non-profit of your choice by shopping*)
3. Click on eGift
4. It doesn’t matter what design it is, but make sure you enter the amount of your gift card. If you can click on it, great. If it’s an odd amount ($4.61, for example), enter it in the Enter Amount field at the end
5. Put your e-mail address in the “To” field
6. You don’t need to change anything else. If you wanted to put in the message who sent it to you, that’s fine, but you don’t need it
7. Click “Add to cart” (don’t just click Buy Now…you need the options from the cart)
8. Click “Proceed to checkout”
9. This is the most important step! Under “Payment Method”, CLICK CHANGE
10. Scroll down to the bottom of your existing cards. You’ll see a choice to “Add a credit or debit card”…click that
11. Enter your credit card gift card number. There may be a name on it, like GIFT RECIPIENT or I used PREPAID GIFT CARD when it said that. Enter the expiration date. Click Add Your Card
12. Your card should be selected as the payment method, but double-check. Check the last numbers on the physical credit card gift card. If it’s correct, click “Use this payment method”
13. You can use your own address as the billing address…it doesn’t matter who bought the card for you
14. Place your order

You should get an e-mail pretty quickly with your gift. In your e-mail, you’ll see a choice to apply it to your Amazon account. Do that, as with any other Amazon gift card you may have received in the past.

One tip: after you’ve applied it, you may want to go to

Amazon – Account & Lists – Your account – Payment options

and delete it. You can do that by clicking the down chevron (like an arrow without a stick) and choosing to “Remove”.

That’s it! You’re gift card balance will show that you’ve added it. As you make purchases on Amazon, it will go to that gift card balance first (following the same rules it usually does).

Hope that helps! Enjoy!

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Join thousands of readers and try the free ILMK magazine at Flipboard!

All aboard The Measured Circle’s Geek Time Trip at The History Project!

Bufo’s Alexa Skills

* I am linking to the same thing at the regular Amazon site, and at AmazonSmile. When you shop at AmazonSmile, half a percent of your purchase price on eligible items goes to a non-profit you choose. It will feel just like shopping at Amazon: you’ll be using your same account. The one thing for you that is different is that you pick a non-profit the first time you go (which you can change whenever you want)…and the good feeling you’ll get.  Shop ’til you help!  

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

The role of the beta reader: react, don’t revise

The role of the beta reader: react, don’t revise

I’m always honored when someone asks me (as an individual) to “beta read” the book or article they are writing.

What does that mean?

It means that I’m sent the manuscript (electronically, nowadays), read it, and offer my reactions.

The intent is for that to help the writer sculpt what will eventually be published.

I’ve been involved a bit in a discussion of this process on Twitter (in this case, I’m at https://twitter.com/bufocalvin).

The question started with how to take the comments beta readers make, and I think there was also one asking about how to best be a beta reader.

I thought I’d take this post to explain my philosophy of it.

Up above, I said I “offer my reactions”.

As a beta reader, that’s important. It’s not my job as a beta reader to tell the author how to change something. That’s the job of an editor, and that’s a very different relationship.

It’s my job to act like a test audience for a TV pilot: let the author know what I liked, what I didn’t like, and (this is key) where I was confused or bored.

I am an instrument, a meter.

Beta readers’ comments should, in my opinion, always be anonymous. The author should not know who said what. The interest will be more in the aggregate, where independent readers get the same impression.

That’s not writing by democracy: it’s a data point. The author may choose to keep things exactly the same, but they may also find a different approach or cut  or add something.

It’s a bit like when a doctor writes a “duty modification” note for a patient. The patient may tell the doctor, “Could you write a note saying that my Significant Other has to come to work with me to help me when I have to use the restroom?”

The answer should be, “No.” The doctor can write a note saying that the patient needs assistance when going to the restroom, but they can’t dictate to the employer how they should spend their money. The employer might (and probably not incorrectly) think it would be disruptive to have a Significant Other in the office all day. The company might choose to spend money on a professional caregiver…or say, “Stay home. We’ll pay you your full salary at home until you are able to come back and work unassisted.”

As a beta reader, I should indicate that I liked a character, didn’t like a character, loved a scene, didn’t understand a plot point, like a particular line….I shouldn’t tell the author specifically how to fix those issues. The author has creative energy to “spend”…it’s up to them how they do it.

It’s very, very hard not to make those specific suggestions. It’s very tempting to say, “Hey, you should write a scene where these two go to a restaurant so people can understand their relationship better! Ooh, maybe give them a kid from a fling ten years ago!” You are writing at that point, telling the author how to change it. Instead, saying that, “I didn’t really get why Character A and Character B didn’t trust each other,” is the information the author (and perhaps the editor, if they are working together by then) needs.

Do I do that perfectly?

Nope. 🙂

I suggested to an author that they move a scene to the beginning of the book…it was a great scene, like a James Bond pre-title sequence, and initially, the book started with a lot of exposition.

When I say this is hard, it reminds me of the government’s remote viewing program. Project Stargate was made public: the idea was that personnel could be trained to “psychically” see distant situations.

Ingo Swann (at AmazonSmile: benefit a non-profit of your choice by shopping*)

who was known to the public, supposedly worked on the training program.

The hardest thing for people to learn, as I recall, was to not come to a conclusion about what they were “seeing”. A remote viewer could describe something fairly generic, like a “building” (although a cube might be better), but once they decide it is a hospital, their imagination could start filling in details which are incorrect.

The public conclusion was that Project Stargate wasn’t effective, or at least, not cost effective.

The higher functions of your brain earn their share of the blood supply by interpreting data and coming to conclusions (and making plans based on them), so it’s very unnatural to not come to conclusions about something, and to then look for a course of action.

That, though, is what you should do as a beta reader.

Why am I making such a big deal about this?

Did you ever have a book as assigned reading in school, knowing you would have to write a paper on it? Did you hate the book at the time, but when you read it later just for fun, you enjoyed it?

Approaching the book knowing that you have to write the paper means that you look at it differently. If you are beta reading thinking that you are an editor (or even more complicating, a proofreader), your perspective shifts significantly. What you say to the author will be skewed.

Also, if you make those suggestions for changes, it can really throw off the author’s mental/emotional balance. Writing is hard. Imagine that you are going to walk a tightrope. When you get up there, someone starts giving you all these specific things to change: “Turn your left foot out more. Tilt your right hand up ten degrees. Be careful about wobbling. Keep your chin up, but your eyes down. Lean left…no, back right, straight up and down!” Remember that this happens as you are walking the tightrope. Even worse, picture five people giving you advice at the same time…and they often contradict each other!

It reminds me of this EDS ad, which I was first actually shown in my day job:

YouTube video

This may get easier in the future as artificial empathy continues to improve. Artificial empathy is the ability of software to tell how you are feeling (it combines sensory data with artificial intelligence, and a background knowledge of how human emotions manifest physically). Eventually, as you read that manuscript, something (perhaps your “auggies”, augmented/virtual reality hardware) will track your eyes, pupil size, respiration, and so on, to give real time feedback on how each paragraph is affecting you emotionally.

We aren’t there yet, though. 🙂

None of this is meant to discourage authors from seeking suggestions….it can be quite fun and useful to get ideas, especially from other authors. The main point is that’s different. Editorial suggestions should not be anonymous. There should be a back and forth, a discussion of why that proposal is being made.

So, that’s my take on beta reading. I know not everybody will see it that way, and I’m interested to know what you think. Feel free to let me and my readers know by commenting on this post.

Join thousands of readers and try the free ILMK magazine at Flipboard!

All aboard The Measured Circle’s Geek Time Trip at The History Project!

* I am linking to the same thing at the regular Amazon site, and at AmazonSmile. When you shop at AmazonSmile, half a percent of your purchase price on eligible items goes to a non-profit you choose. It will feel just like shopping at Amazon: you’ll be using your same account. The one thing for you that is different is that you pick a non-profit the first time you go (which you can change whenever you want)…and the good feeling you’ll get.  Shop ’til you help!  

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

How an e-book is like a treadmill at the gym

How an e-book is like a treadmill at the gym

Note: this is a re-post of an article which originally appeared in this blog on 2013/04/29. I am scheduled for major surgery on January 17th, and I don’t know how quickly I’ll be able to write after that. So, to keep the content going, I am pre-scheduling posts. It’s possible conditions have changed since I wrote it, but I’ll try to lightly edit these when that’s necessary for clarity. 

I see a lot of confusion about what it means when you “buy an e-book” in the Kindle store (or from many other online e-tailers).

Some people think it should be the same as when you buy a physical copy of a p-book (paperbook).

Others say, “You are only renting it.”

Neither one really describes the situation very well.

What you buy (which you own, in the same way you own that p-book copy) is a license to read the book, under certain specific conditions to which you agree when you buy that license.

Let’s try a different analogy.

Suppose you get a gym membership.

You then have the right to go in and use a treadmill.

It’s not a specific treadmill…you may even be able to use your “license” at any one of a number of gyms in the same chain.

You pay…the gym’s responsibility is to have a treadmill you can use.

If the treadmills are all down on one day, you can probably get a pro-rated discount on your gym membership that month.

Now, in that situation, would you expect to be able to sell the treadmill to your neighbor?

No, because you don’t own the treadmill…you own the right to use it.

Are you renting the treadmill?

No, that would suggest you take home a specific individual treadmill for a set amount of time. If it has a scratch on it, you are stuck with that scratched one (although you might be able to exchange it).

You are buying the right to use a treadmill at the gym.

To make this analogy work, we need to make the model a bit different from what you most commonly see at a gym.

Most people pay an annual membership, or a monthly membership, and then they don’t pay per machine.

The annual membership is the equivalent of Amazon Prime. Just on the e-book part of it, you don’t pay for each e-book you use from the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library. [2019 update: Prime Reading instead of the KOLL] You pay an annual fee (which has significant other benefits…shipping, and Prime videos), and then you get to “use” up to one book a month. [2019 update: the terms are much more generous under Prime Reading]

People chafe at that one book limit: the gym doesn’t say you can only use the treadmill once a month (although it might not be available to you at, say, two in the morning).

Prime streaming video works more like your typical gym…unlimited use of the resources (machines/videos) that are in the gym for an annual fee.

However, the e-book system outside of Prime is different.

You pay a licensing fee for an individual book, and then you have access to that one as much as you want. You can think of it as a lifetime gym membership for that one type of machine…you don’t pay $100 a month for the gym, you pay $10 for a lifetime membership for treadmills.

In this analogy, a specific book (say, The Hunger Games) is like the whole class of treadmills…each type of machine (elliptical, stair stepper) is a different “title”.

Do you own the right to read The Hunger Games when you “buy it” in the Kindle store?

Yes.

Not just to one copy of The Hunger Games…that’s one of the big advantages of e-book licensing. If you bought a treadmill, brought it home, and then through your own negligence, broke it, you are out of luck on it. That copy is yours, and your responsibility.

If you are at the gym and break the treadmill, you can just move to another treadmill.

There are, of course, also disadvantages of e-books compared to p-books.

As I mentioned above, you can’t sell the treadmill you use at the gym to somebody else.

The gym can also determine what rights you have to share your use. They might allow you to bring a guest to the gym on a “day pass”, but might only allow you to do that with that specific individual one time (if you brought Steve Rogers in once as a guest, you can’t use your guest privilege with Steve Rogers again).

They might also say you can only use your guest privileges once…that’s similar to the lending systems we have with e-books with some e-tailers (Amazon, Barnes & Noble) where you can only lend an e-book once ever.

We also get the equivalent of a family membership at the gym. Typically, up to six devices can license the same e-book at the same time for one download price. You can think of that as your “family membership” letting you bring up to six people to the gym on the same day for your monthly fee. The licensing is actually better than the gym, since the gym typically makes you specify people who are the family members, and the Kindle store licensing doesn’t care who has devices on your account, or if those people are constantly changing.

Not only can’t you sell the treadmill you use, you can’t sell your rights to use the treadmill to somebody else. The gym controls access to the treadmill. You can’t pay $100 a month to use the gym, and then turn around and have somebody pay you $50 for your rights to the gym that month. Your gym card probably has your picture on it, and identifies you as the person who bought the rights.

That’s like DRM (Digital Rights Management).

This analogy also holds up with the question of what happens to your e-books if Amazon goes out of business at some point (knock virtual wood). 😉

It would be like what would happen if you had that lifetime membership to your gym, and it went out of business.

You wouldn’t have access to your books/the treadmills.

It’s possible another gym would honor your card, and then get you to renew with them in some way…somebody could buy the assets of an Amazon that went under, although it would be a big undertaking.

I’m pretty confident that Amazon is going to be around for some time, although of course, I can’t guarantee that.

When you buy an e-book in the Kindle store, you buy the right to read the book, not a copy of the book. You aren’t renting the right to read it (which would suggest there was a limited timeframe). You own the right, not a copy.

You agree to the Terms of Use, just as you would agree to the gym’s rules (no gum, and wipe down the machine after you use it).

I hope that helps clarify it a bit. If you have any questions or comments, 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.

Fire TV Cube: 1st impressions and menu map

Fire TV Cube: 1st impressions and menu map

I’ve been using the

Fire TV Cube (at AmazonSmile: benefit a non-profit of your choice by shopping*)

for about a day now.

It’s Amazon’s new streaming device/home assistant…for most people, the shorthand is that it combines an Echo and a Fire TV.

However, I have multiple Echo devices and two Fire TVs in this room (I was only currently using one), and it does things that none of them do (but also doesn’t do some things that the Echo does do).

Let’s hit the high level first.

It is a quantum leap forward in TV control. It doesn’t completely eliminate our remotes (we have a fancy Logitech Harmony Home Control – 8 Devices (White) (at AmazonSmile*)), for one thing), but for most simple operations, it is a new, simpler way to do things.

However, it’s certainly imperfect, and I expect to see big improvements in the future. Nowadays, that doesn’t necessarily mean waiting for a second generation of hardware…a lot of it could be done with software updates.

If you get one, you are an early adopter…but it’s a more mature technology than, say, the first Kindle.

My first actual impression on opening the box was that it was a lot smaller than I expected. Maybe the size of two Echo Dots stacked on top of each other, or your two fists side-by-side.

Second, set up was easy. One of the biggest things it does is use infrared to control your devices, and your remote probably does. I didn’t have to tell it what brand and model my TV was (as I do with my Harmony)…it just detected it. I did need to know my wi-fi password, but even though it’s long and random, I have that memorized (I’m cool like that). 😉

You plug it into the HDMI port on your TV, plug it into power, and then just run through the prompts.

Oh, that brings up the biggest headscratcher!

They give you two cables you may not need: one for a cabled connection (as opposed to wi-fi) to the internet, and one to improve the infrared connection if you keep a device inside a cabinet. That’s nice of them, although I didn’t need either.

Weirdly, though, they didn’t include a cable you absolutely need: an HDMI cable to connect it to your TV. I used the one from the Fire TV it is replacing, but I can see a lot of people making the plunge into streaming/SmartHome with this, especially as a gift, and not having one.

Amazon sells their own branded, six-foot cable for $6.99: even if they ended up charging a few dollars more for the device, it seems like it only makes sense to have it usable out of the box for just about everyone. I would guess there are people who would return it when they realized that wasn’t included, again receiving it as a gift. Here’s that Amazon cable, but there are a lot of options: AmazonBasics High-Speed HDMI Cable, 6 Feet, 1-Pack | 4.6 stars out of 5 | 15,490 customer reviews at time of writing.

One interesting thing: during the guided set-up, it did suggest Hulu for my homescreen…but not Netflix (we use both, in addition to Prime video and Tubi). You could still download Netflix, it just wasn’t one of the first options.

It appeared that apps that were compatible with our 2nd gen Fire TV were compatible with this, so I just had to download them again…and sign into them, in some cases.

The one big issue we’ve had with apps is that Hulu has failed to launch…repeatedly. It eventually does, but that’s not a problem we had before. I’m guessing an update will come that will resolve that.

As to the voice control: I was generally impressed! When I asked to watch a program, it took me to where I was watching it before…and started with the right episode. We have more than one Netflix profile, as one example, and it appeared to know to go to the one where we had last watched that show (rather than picking a different profile and starting at the first episode).

One thing I thought it was going to do was turn on the TV if needed to watch something…it hasn’t been doing that, so I do ask it to both turn on the TV and then to find the show.

The search is a bit…kludgy. Not bad, but for example, when I asked for “science fiction movies”, it showed me a lot of science fiction TV shows, too. Minor thing, but it should know the difference.

I do end up using the remote some (and I set up the Harmony to work with it…it’s important for my Significant Other that the option be there for everything to work just the way it did before. I’m eager to learn new ways with tech, and my SO is less so). The remote that came with it, the Harmony, and voice control are all working with the new device, and I don’t have to tell it which one to use each time. Also worth noting: my Bluetooth headset (I use a currently unavailable inexpensive SoundBot pair) also paired with no problem. That means that I can do all the Alexa stuff it does hearing it in the headset. Since you can whisper to an Alexa, that means I can keep things pretty quiet if I’m awake and my SO isn’t.

Similar to our Echo Show, it will display some things on the TV screen, which is really nice! When I use the Jeopardy skill, I like to be able to read the questions, not just hear them…and they looked great on our TV! Similarly, asking for the weather gave us some visual information in addition to an audio response.

I would really love for it to be able to do videocalls on our TV, but it doesn’t do calling at all (and doesn’t have a camera…that might be solved by having it link to another camera. That’s a big limitation compared to other Echo devices…it can do home automation, the weather, Prime music (sounds good on our TV), and so on.

Important to note: it actually sounds pretty good when you aren’t using the TV. Much better than an Echo Dot.

It hears pretty well, but I think I’ll follow their recommendation and move it further away from the TV. It’s about a foot from it now, and sometimes we have to call its name twice for it to hear us. It may learn our voices better later and get better at discriminating them from the TV…

Let’s do a quick menu map (just looking at the Settings):

• Notifications (these are notifications from Amazon…you may have nothing there, but it told us that a package was coming that day…not when it actually arrived)
• Network: that’s how you join a wi-fi network…you do have options for WPS PIN or Button
• Display & Sounds
  • Screensaver (you have it show your photos)
  • Display
  • Audio (in addition to sound style, you can turn off the navigation sounds here, which I always do)
  • Second Screen Notifications
  • HDMI CEC Device Control
• Applications
  • Collect App Usage DAta
  • Appstore
    • Automatic Updates
    • External Market Links (since you can use browsers now)
    • In-App Purchases (important as a form of “parental controls”)
    • Manage My Subscriptions (for now, this suggests you go to Amazon)
    • Notifications
    • Hide Cloud Apps
  • Prime Photos
    • Allow Guest Connections (hm…this says guests can connect to your TV to cast photos and videos to your screen.  I have to learn more about this! Is this the return of mirroring, or something more limited?)
    • Access Prime Photos (on or off)
  • GameCircle
  • Manage Installed Applications (very useful…I sometimes end up force-stopping an app if it’s “misbehaving”)
• Equipment Control (this is a new menu compared to the old Fire TV)
  • Equipment Control
  • Manage Equipment
    • Add Equipment
    • TV
      • Volume Increments (we definitely wanted to change this one! By default, it jumped up 5 when we said we wanted it louder, which was too loud. We changed the increments to 1)
      • Infrared Options
      • Power Controls
      • Change TV
      • Restore TV Defaults (after I’d changed the increments)
    • Fire TV Cube
    • Advanced Settings
      • Power Timing
  • Set Up Equipment Again (I may do this at some point…I don’t have it controlling our cable box…which we almost never use. It wanted me to use the remote at one point, and it didn’t seem to recognize our Harmony for this…I don’t know where the original remote is right now)
• Controllers and Bluetooth Devices
  • Amazon Fire TV Remotes (a voice remote comes with it…the hardest thing in the whole set up is getting the battery case open) 😉
  • Game Controllers
  • Other Bluetooth Devices (this was for both the headset and the Harmony…when I set up my Harmony, by the way, it didn’t recognize “Fire TV Cube”, but it worked with “Fire TV”)
• Alexa
  • Alexa App (yes, you’ll want to have that…I think you can do what you need to do on a computer, if you don’t have a SmartPhone)
  • Things to Try
  • Favor This Device (that seems new…and it was defaulted to On. I noticed that our Echo Show did light up when the TV talked about Alexa during the demo videos…but did not execute the commands)
• Preferences
  • Parental Controls
  • Data Monitoring (turning it on gives you the below choices)
    • Set Video Quality (who would guess that was here?)
    • Set Data Alert
    • Monthly Top Data Usage
  • Notification Settings
  • Featured Content (this has a marvelous setting that lets you turn off Video/Audio Autoplay when you are searching! I’ve recently been having a discussion at AT&T because the DirecTV Now app now plays something in the background all the time, which means there could be spoilers if they happen to be at a crucial part of the “live” video. I’ve told them I basically can’t use the service unless that changes)
  • Location (you can enter your ZIP code for weather here)
  • Time Zone
  • Metric Units (Yay! That’s what I use, but I’ll leave it on English for my SO)
  • Advertising ID
• Device
  • About
  • Developer options
    • ABD debugging
    • Apps from Unknown Sources
  • Legal & Compliance
  • Sleep (I thought this would let me choose screensaver timing, but it just put the Cube to sleep
  • Restart
  • Reset to Factory Defaults
• Accessiblity
  • Closed Caption
  • VoiceView
  • Screen Magnifier (I have used this…it lets you use button combinations on your remote to magnify part of the screen)
  • High Contrast Text (Experimental)
• Help
  • Help Videos
  • Quick Tips
  • Contact Us
  • Feedback
• My Account
  • Amazon Account (to deregister and reregister)
  • Sync Amazon Content

Overall? I already walked into another room and wanted to use it on a TV there. 🙂 I have a lot more to learn and to try, and it’s going to improve, but it was already worth it. There’s been a leaked Prime Day of July 16th for this year…I don’t know that they’ll just flat put this on sale, but they might bundle it. We Prime members already got a discount in the beginning…I think they could repeat that discount.

It is the voice control we wanted for the Fire TV from the beginning. It can replace a typical Echo for the most part, but not quite. It can replace your remote for the most part, but sometimes it is going to be easier to use.

One last thing: a few recommendations for free apps (you can get them through your computer and download them from your Fire TV, or get them directly from your Fire TV)

• Firefox Browser for Fire TV (at AmazonSmile*) (you can also get Amazon’s Silk browser…this multiplies your device’s capabilities. For example, there is a show we want to watch, and we can see full recent episodes at the website. It’s also a way to watch YouTube through your Fire TV)
• Bookmarker 1 (at AmazonSmile*) (love this one! If you are using the browser, you can use this to launch a saved URL, so you don’t have to go through the awkward “typing” ((using the remote)) every time. This one only saves  one ((and you can specify browser)), but you can also get Bookmarker 2, Bookmarker 3, and so on)
• Tubi TV (at AmazonSmile*) (this is not the equivalent of Prime/Hulu/Netflix, but we do use it. It’s ad-supported…TV with commercials, whodathunk? 😉 They do have great selections, and they seem to respect them with the way they are cut…the original British Avengers, Fireball XL5, also non-geeky options, including at time of writing Mississippi Burning and A Most Wanted Man. It also remembers where we are nicely from device to device)

If you do want geeky video on a schedule (not on demand), you can go to

Comet TV

in your browser app, and then use a Bookmarker. They have great content for free! It isn’t obvious, but the watch live link is in your top left…and note that the sound may be muted by default. You can then say, “Alexa, launch Bookmarker 1,” or whatever number it is.

Whew! That’s a lot of information for a “first impression”! If you have more questions or opinions, feel free to let me and my readers know by commenting on this post.

Join thousands of readers and try the free ILMK magazine at Flipboard!

All aboard The Measured Circle’s Geek Time Trip at The History Project!

* I am linking to the same thing at the regular Amazon site, and at AmazonSmile. When you shop at AmazonSmile, half a percent of your purchase price on eligible items goes to a non-profit you choose. It will feel just like shopping at Amazon: you’ll be using your same account. The one thing for you that is different is that you pick a non-profit the first time you go (which you can change whenever you want)…and the good feeling you’ll get.  Shop ’til you help!  

This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog. To support this or other blogs/organizations, buy  Amazon Gift Cards from a link on the site, then use those to buy your items. There will be no cost to you, and a benefit to them.

“Buy Kindle Books for Others”

“Buy Kindle Books for Others”

I remember back in 2010 (November 19th, to be specific) when Amazon enabled the giving of Kindle books as gifts. It’s something people had wanted from the beginning.

However, it’s never been easy to give Kindle books to a group of people, or to strangers.

That’s because you either e-mailed them one at a time (so you needed an e-mail address), or you sent them to yourself and printed them out. Even if you did the latter, where you didn’t need an e-mail address, you still had to buy them one at a time.

You might think that not that many people want to give books to strangers/groups, but there are many times that might happen.

I’ve been the recipient of books like that. Recently, at work for example, my manager got us all the same book:

Disney U by Doug Lipp (at AmazonSmile: benefit a non-profit of your choice by shopping*)

I read it, and thought it was quite good. It has to do with training employees, but also with how to deliver a great “customer” experience. There were several things that exactly lined up with things I’ve said…even some similar terminology. That’s not what made it good, though. 😉

My manager bought us all hardbacks.

Honestly, I just don’t read hardbacks any more, especially when I want to read something quickly. I use text-to-speech a lot in the car, and that was definitely how I wanted to read this book…so I bought my own Kindle copy.

As a side note, that’s one of my (few) major frustrations with Amazon right now. I’ll get a book (I think just through Kindle Unlimited (at AmazonSmile: benefit a non-profit of your choice by shopping*), but I’d have to look), and even though text-to-speech has not been blocked by the publisher, it only wants me to listen to it with an audiobook (synced in the Kindle book). I know I’m unusual in this, but I really prefer text-to-speech to an audiobook, unless I’ve already read the book (in which case, it’s like watching a movie for me…a new adaptation). I don’t like the actor or even the author interpreting the characters for me: TTS much more emulates the experience of sight-reading a book for me. I’ve talked to them about this before and may try again in case something has changed. I’ve tried deleting the audiobook, deleting the e-book, redownloading it, restarting the device…oh, well.

That’s been particularly difficult because I’m reading a book I am enjoying:

The Extraordinary Life of Sam Hell by Robert Dugoni (at AmazonSmile*)

I would have been finished with it long ago, but since I’m only sight-reading it, it’s going to take some time. Sight-reading competes with things where I can’t use TTS, such as magazines.

I did borrow that one from KU…it has 4.8 stars out of 5 with 540 customer reviews, and that’s quite high.

Anyway, it would have been a lot easier if my manager could have just given us e-books…and that would have been easier without having to know the e-mail addresses associated with our Amazon accounts.

The same would be true for a teacher with a classroom full of students, especially perhaps on the first day of class.

Another example, which may especially affect some readers of this blog, is the case of authors at events. The common thing now is to show up with a stack of books…yes, that’s partially so you can sign them, or sell them, but in some cases it’s giving them away.

I sometimes want to give a copy of one of my books to someone at work (usually, The Mind Boggles: A Unique Book of Quotations (at AmazonSmile: benefit a non-profit of your choice by shopping*))…there hasn’t been a good way to do that.

Now, there is!

You can now buy multiple copies of a Kindle book at the same time. You get an e-mail with a link to your redemption links…those are URLs, so they are a bit lengthy if someone was hand-typing them from a printed card, but it could be done. It would have been better if they’d given us QR codes (those “squiggly boxes” that your camera can use to launch a website) as an option. There are websites which will convert a URL into a QR code, but I don’t know enough about them to recommend a specific one. I assume there are apps that can read the URL and launch it as well.

I’ve tested it out; it was all pretty simple.

All you have to do is go to the book’s Amazon product page, and choose to “Buy for others”. Note that you have to choose a quantity higher for one for this to kick in.

You get that e-mail with the link to the links…and that’s pretty much it. You can copy and paste the e-mail link, or you can print them out. They’ll also give you instructions you can share. Here’s the help page:

Amazon Help Page (at AmazonSmile: benefit a non-profit of your choice by shopping*)

Similar to giving an individual gift, it may not be able to be redeemed outside your country, and if your recipient already has it, they can exchange it for an Amazon gift card.

I think this is a really nice option! I can see a lot of uses…goody bags at a kids’ birthday party, even for Halloween trick-or-treaters, book clubs… I can also see situations where you might not be happy with it…people giving you literature at the airport or during a political campaign. I’d much rather get the code than a hardback in that situation. I suppose they could put a limit on how long you had to redeem it (authors could do that, too), and reissue the same code. You can tell at the Amazon site if it has been redeemed or not.

I did see an author…commenting on how you don’t get a discount, but you do get your royalty, of course. Could authors use this to manipulate a book up the bestseller list temporarily? I’m not sure if the sale is counted when the book is purchased or when it is redeemed. If it’s the former, than yes…someone could buy a 100 copies and in many cases, shoot the book temporarily to the top of the list (in some categories) so they could claim that. If it’s the latter, it would depend on when they were redeemed…and I’m pretty sure that those 100 books would have to be redeemed on 100 accounts.

Those seem like quibbles when this opens up so many possibilities!

Thanks, Amazon!

What do you think? Does this sound like something you would use? How would you feel about getting a redemption URL instead of a hardback? Any suggestions to make it better? Feel free to tell me and my readers what you think by commenting on this post.

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Join thousands of readers and try the free ILMK magazine at Flipboard!

All aboard The Measured Circle’s Geek Time Trip at The History Project!

* I am linking to the same thing at the regular Amazon site, and at AmazonSmile. When you shop at AmazonSmile, half a percent of your purchase price on eligible items goes to a non-profit you choose. It will feel just like shopping at Amazon: you’ll be using your same account. The one thing for you that is different is that you pick a non-profit the first time you go (which you can change whenever you want)…and the good feeling you’ll get.  Shop ’til you help!  

This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog. To support this or other blogs/organizations, buy  Amazon Gift Cards from a link on the site, then use those to buy your items. There will be no cost to you, and a benefit to them.

 

How to surprise someone on your account with a Kindle book

How to surprise someone on your account with a Kindle book

I love to get books as gifts…and I love to give books as gifts!

Back in the pre-digital days 😉 , I used to always buy used copies of the first Doc Savage book, The Man of Bronze, so I could gift them to people (and not worry about getting back my copy). I usually had a few of them around…they were popular in the 1960s, so there were often copies available for under $1.

When we first got the Kindle, more than ten years ago, one of the biggest complaints was that you couldn’t gift Kindle books.

We’ve been able to do that for a long time, since November 19 of 2010, and I’ve done it many times.

My family members do gift lists: several do Amazon ones, others do more of a narrative…but I think they all address books, and we do give them…a lot.

However, there is a challenge if you want to give a Kindle book as a gift to someone who is on your same account (such as me gifting a book to my Significant Other).

When you buy a Kindle store book, it shows up on your device…whether you sent it to that device or not. That’s particularly true on a (Kindle) Fire tablet, where it appears on the “Carousel”. If it hasn’t been sent to that device, when you tap it, it will want to download.

So, if I buy a book for my SO, the way we usually do, my SO would see it before the gift-giving occasion.

I could just wait until that time, of course, but book prices vary wildly. Take a look at today’s

Kindle Daily Deal (at AmazonSmile…benefit a non-profit of your choice by shopping*)

for example. Those “page turning reads” are up to 80% off…today.

Also, today’s

12 Days of Deals (at AmazonSmile: benefit a non-profit of your choice by shopping*)

which is the 8th day, focuses on music lovers, avid readers, and film buffs (and there are particular e-book deals).

The trick is to buy the book as a gift…but have the gift e-mailed to you, rather than e-mailed to the other person.

That’s a specific choice: you don’t just put your e-mail into the top slot as the giftee.

Then, you get an e-mail, which you can print to give. In that situation, while today’s price is preserved, it does not show up in your account (and on your devices) until you enter a code in the e-mail into an Amazon account.

There you go! You can take advantage of sales, and still surprise people on your account!

Happy giving!

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You can be part of my next book, Because of the Kindle!

---

Join thousands of readers and try the free ILMK magazine at Flipboard!

All aboard The Measured Circle’s Geek Time Trip at The History Project!

* I am linking to the same thing at the regular Amazon site, and at AmazonSmile. When you shop at AmazonSmile, half a percent of your purchase price on eligible items goes to a non-profit you choose. It will feel just like shopping at Amazon: you’ll be using your same account. The one thing for you that is different is that you pick a non-profit the first time you go (which you can change whenever you want)…and the good feeling you’ll get.  Shop ’til you help!  

This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog. To support this or other blogs/organizations, buy  Amazon Gift Cards from a link on the site, then use those to buy your items. There will be no cost to you, and a benefit to them.

Groups, Scenes, and Routines now available in Alexa

Groups, Scenes, and Routines now available in Alexa

I love that Amazon keeps giving us new features for free…but I still think they could explain them better. It may be that they are going to do a video for this one (they’ve been doing videos a lot lately), and that I’m just ahead of the curve on exploring it (a reader sent me a private e-mail alerting me to their arrival).

When I typed “Routines” into Amazon Help, it took me to the right place, the Alexa page…but then there was nothing there about it. 🙂

I’ve been playing with it for an hour or so, and I do really like what I’ve gotten it to do…I can turn on lights in a given room just by saying, “Alexa, lights on”, and it only affects that room. I don’t have to remember the names of the lights.

Let’s take a look at it:

First, I was doing this in the Alexa app on my phone (a Galaxy S7 Edge, but that shouldn’t really matter with the Alexa app).

There are two places in the menu (accessible from the Home screen, probably in your top left…three horizontal lines, what some people call a “hamburger”) involved with this. One says “Routines” and the other one says “Smart Home”. Even though Routines comes first in the menu, I’m going to Smart Home first, which I think makes the most sense. That might be different if you already have things set up in another Smart Hub.

There are three sections in Smart Home: Devices, Groups, and Scenes.

Devices

I should mention first that we currently control lights in our home with a Wink hub and we have a Harmony hub and remote (but that’s for the TV and those devices). One of the main reasons I use Alexa devices is to control those Smart Devices. I also have a Samsung Smart Hub, but I’ve never configured it.

My Smart Lights did show up on the Devices tab, and there was an option to add a device. There is a Help button (a question mark in a circle) in my top right corner, which is contextual. It gives me help for the tab I’m on now.

Tapping that, it let me connect Smart Home device via skills (I’m already using the Wink skill). You could also connect those devices (at least, Zigbee compatible ones) directly to an

Echo Plus (at AmazonSmile: benefit a non-profit of your choice by shopping*)

I have one on pre-order…estimated to arrive November 3rd to November 7th. Interestingly, sending it to an Amazon Locker seemed to mean it might be later than if I had sent it to our home (which isn’t safe to do). On the other hand, I just needed to order a cable, and it will arrive at the locker faster since it will be delivered on a Sunday.

I’m looking forward to testing out the Echo Plus in the next week or ten days.

Since Alexa already knows all of our Smart Devices, let’s look at

Groups

Here’s the idea of a group: you take one or more devices (usually more than one) and create one name which refers to all of them…sort of like a distribution list for e-mail. If you have five lights in the Family Room, you can create a Family Room group, and then assign those five lights to it.

You then associate one of your Alexa devices with that group. For example, our

Echo Show (at AmazonSmile: benefit a non-profit of your choice by shopping*)

is in the family room, so I associated the Family Room group with that it.

Note: you can’t have a single device and a Group with the exact same name…I had a light named Family Room, so I couldn’t use the same name for both.

I should also mention that I had previously created groups in the older version of the Alexa app, and those appeared here.

If you tap “Add Group”, you’ll get a choice between “Smart Home Group” and “Amazon Multi-Room Music Group”. The latter is so that you could have the same music (or podcast, or…) playing on several Alexa devices at the same time.

When you tap the “Smart Home Group”, you are given the choice of creating a custom name, or picking some “Common Names” (Backyard, Basement, Bathroom, Den, Dining Room, Downstairs, Hallway, Kitchen, Lounge, Office, or Upstairs). I wonder if the Common Names are actually common, being drawn (perhaps dynamically) from choices Amazon users are entering in Custom Name.

Once you do that, you are then asked to select an Alexa device to associate with that group. Note that you can only associate an Alexa device with a single Group.

Next, you can choose devices to put into that Group and Scenes…I think my Scenes came from my Harmony, but there were some that definitely didn’t (like “IAmBack”).

Once you’ve done that, you save.

Now you can just say, “Alexa, lights on”, and that device will only turn the lights on in its group.

Note that you don’t need to set up an Alexa Device to control the lights (or other devices) physically closest to it.

I do see this as a big improvement. While I like remembering lots of names, my Significant Other doesn’t. It’s easier to just be able to say, “Alexa, lights off”, than “Alexa, turn off the Family Room”.

The Scenes are less clear to me, but in speaking with a relative who uses them in other contexts, the key difference seems to be that a scene can have diverse states: with a Group, you can only turn all of the lights on or off. With a Scene, you could have it turn two lights on and two lights off. I can see the value of that. I haven’t tested it yet, though.

What about Routines (remember, that’s a separate Menu entry)?

This adds a couple of dimensions. One is that you can have it happen either on command or at a certain time.

The other is that it can do some Alexa actions.

The first option shown is

“When this happens”

That is commonly called a “trigger”…it’s what makes an action happen. You can either give it a custom statement you say verbally, or you can pick a time and a recurrence pattern (when it repeats). Your recurrence pattern defaults to Every Day, but you can change it to “Weekdays”, “Weekends”, or select a single specific day.

You could use this for an alarm for work. “At 6:00 AM, turn on my bedroom and family room lights, start the coffee, and give me my Flash Briefing”. You would set that as happening on weekdays (if you work Monday-Friday).

When you choose “Add Action”, your choices are:

• News (your Flash Briefing)
• Smart Home (either “Control device or “Turn on scene”)
• Traffic (Alexa will give you the traffic report)
• Weather (Alexa will report the weather)

Once you’ve added one, you can tap “Add Action” again to add another.

I can really see the value to this one, too…as one example, we could set the lights and such to come on at a certain time every day when we were on vacation…and set another Routine to turn them off. That would make it seem like we were home.

I will say, I think this is a lot of work for the average person. A hobbyist would do it, but it seems like a lot of steps.

Here are my suggestions for two other ways they could do this which would be easier:

“Match Now”: you would set up your devices the way you want (lights on or off, etc.) then tell Alexa to remember that as a scene.

“Copy Me”: Alexa starts a recorder, then you do actions which it subsequently remembers…like a macro recorder.

All in all, this is a great improvement…but I think most people won’t use it because it will be too hard without them seeing the potential advantages. Amazon should set up some more scenarios, maybe through video.

A few more thoughts:

• having durations would be a nice improvement for the future…not just turning a light on at 6:00 AM, but turning it on at 6:00 AM for one hour
• Alexa could suggest saving patterns it detects. If you normally turn on the bedroom light at 6:00 AM, and then turn on the Family Room TV and the Family Room Light twenty minutes later for an hour, and then turn everything off and lock the door, Alexa could suggest saving that as a Routine after you’ve done it a few times in a row
• The Echo Show (and Echo Spot) could do this gesturally…you flip your index finger up and it turns the light on in that room. That could be great fun, especially if you could use custom gestures! Yeah, yeah, I know…not that finger. 😉 I’m thinking more like “magic hand waves” to do things in your house

Hope that helps! I’ll be interested in hearing what you think! Feel free to let me and my readers know by commenting on this post.

---

You can be part of my next book, Because of the Kindle!

---

Join thousands of readers and try the free ILMK magazine at Flipboard!

All aboard The Measured Circle’s Geek Time Trip at The History Project!

* I am linking to the same thing at the regular Amazon site, and at AmazonSmile. When you shop at AmazonSmile, half a percent of your purchase price on eligible items goes to a non-profit you choose. It will feel just like shopping at Amazon: you’ll be using your same account. The one thing for you that is different is that you pick a non-profit the first time you go (which you can change whenever you want)…and the good feeling you’ll get.  Shop ’til you help!  

This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog. To support this or other blogs/organizations, buy  Amazon Gift Cards from a link on the site, then use those to buy your items. There will be no cost to you, and a benefit to them.

 

 

Google’s new move: good for readers, bad for Amazon?

Google’s new move: good for readers, bad for Amazon?

Amazon and Google don’t exactly walk through the consumer wonderland hand-in-hand. 😉

While Amazon has never been the walled garden some suggest (for example, the e-tailer had the Netflix app in the Appstore and available on their tablets from the beginning, when it directly competes with Prime Video), there’s been a clear division for people who use both companies (as I do).

Amazon tablets can’t use Google Play directly. That’s a real limitation, and my sense is that it is Google’s decision, not Amazon’s.

They compete in music, appstores…and books.

On the latter, I don’t think Google has hurt Amazon much…the percentage of e-books that people own which they purchased from Google (not just found free public domain books) has to be tiny compared with Amazon.

However…

Google has a new search result tool which could make some difference.

I (and apparently others) had missed, or missed the significance of, an announcement from Google about a month ago. I’m grateful to this

Lifehacker article by Nick Douglas

for the heads up.

When you search for a book title on Google, it now tells you which public libraries have the book available near you…and you can borrow it right there (if you have a “library card”). On a mobile device, you tap, “Get book” (then “Borrow ebook”, but you might be able to see the latter without tapping), on a laptop/desktop, you should see the options, probably on your right.

I’ve been testing it out, and it’s clearly inconsistent at this point. It doesn’t happen for lots of books, but that may just be because they’d rather not show negative findings. Still, it apparently only searches Overdrive, which is the predominant e-book server for individuals using public libraries for e-books, but it isn’t the only one.

For the sake of argument, let’s just say postulate that when people search for a book title with Google, they’ll be able to borrow the book from the public library if it’s available.

What would that mean?

Before I speculate, here’s a link you can try:

search for “It Stephen King”

 

First, this does have the potential to hurt sales at Amazon…but only for a particular segment of customers/readers. Traditional publishers (at least some of them) were pretty reluctant to have e-books in public libraries, initially…part of the argument was that the e-books didn’t wear out like p-books (paperbooks) do, so libraries wouldn’t have to replace them as often. There were some strong restrictions, if the books were available at all. This would seem to play into those fears.

That said, my guess would be that most people who are using Google to search for a book are looking for a free one. Not all of them are particular about the books being legal, either. It’s not difficult to scan a p-book and make a PDF out of it, then put it up online. There are a lot of reasons people do that…they aren’t all trying to make money, although some do by having advertising on the site hosting the downloads.

If someone wants to buy an e-book, my bet would be that the vast majority of them go to Amazon (or Barnes & Noble, if they have a Nook), or perhaps iTunes.

It is possible that people search for an e-book and don’t find a free copy, then they push further.

I would think this would affect bestsellers, more than smaller market or older titles. Google searching for a book feels to me (and I freely admit, much of this post is speculation) like it is more likely to be used by a “casual reader” than by a “serious reader” (I define the latter as reading fifty books or more a year).

I think the impact will be small.

Second, Amazon could lose all income from selling e-books…and it wouldn’t make much difference to their bottom line. It’s no longer a big part of t

Right now, the Google search includes buying the book…but not at Amazon. 🙂 Barnes & Noble, Google Books, and Kobo all showed for me on the search for “It”. I doubt that pulls that much from Amazon’s sales.

I think it hurts Amazon a small amount, and considerably helps some readers. I usually don’t borrow e-books from the public library. I can afford books to read, including being a happy member of

Kindle Unlimited (at AmazonSmile: benefit a non-profit of your choice by shopping*)

and there is “scarcity” for public library e-books, although a lot of people find that counter-intuitive. A library can’t just copy the file for everybody who wants it; there are legal licensing issues.

That may change for me: I’ve mentioned that we have a life change coming up, and now we have more of a timeline for it. My Significant Other is voluntarily leaving a job, and we aren’t quite sure what will happen after that (we’ve done the math…we’ll be okay). If money got a lot tighter, and there was a book I really wanted to read and the public library was the only way to get it, I don’t have any hesitation or see a negative to it. It’s just not my habit now.

Now, some of you may wonder about how this is different from this

Chrome extension tells you if that Kindle book is in your public library

that I wrote about previously.

When I go to a book’s Amazon product page in Chrome, I automatically see if it’s available at the public library…and yes, that’s similar.

It’s also different, though, because people who are at Amazon are already likely to get books from Amazon. It’s convenient to keep it altogether: if I could have every single payment I ever make for anything go through Amazon, I would. To use the extension, people have to also first install the extension…a much smaller slice than the people who just search with Google.

One more group I want to mention: does this help or hurt authors? Many of my readers are authors, so that’s obviously a concern.

Authors may not get as much for each library borrow as they get for a book sold, but that’s going to depend on contract.

The reason why this helps is that it may replace, to some extent, people getting pirated copies (for which authors get nothing).

I believe that the vast majority of people would rather do something that is legal, and something that would benefit the author, than something that wouldn’t.

If somebody searched for It, and could borrow it easily from the public library or get a PDF from an iffy source, I think they’d go with the library…even though they don’t end up owning the book. Ownership is arguably less important to people than it used to be.

Well, those are my thoughts on this, and there is a lot of speculation and presumption in this piece. What do you think? When would you search for a book with Google as opposed to just going to Amazon? Would you rather own a PDF of uncertain provenance, or borrow an e-book from a library for a couple of weeks? Will this make any real difference to Amazon? Feel free to tell me and my readers what you think by commenting on this post.

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You can be part of my next book, Because of the Kindle!

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My current Amazon giveaway:

Beyond Curie: Four women in physics and their remarkable discoveries 1903 to 1963 (at AmazonSmile: benefit a non-profit of your choice by shopping*)

Giveaway:

https://giveaway.amazon.com/p/b139e577ee333624

• Winner:Randomly selected after Giveaway has ended, up to 1 winners.
  Requirements for participation:
• Resident of the 50 United States or the District of Columbia
• 18+ years of age (or legal age)
• Follow Scott Calvin on Amazon

Start:Sep 25, 2017 5:46 AM PDT

End:Oct 25, 2017 11:59 PM PDT

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Join thousands of readers and try the free ILMK magazine at Flipboard!

All aboard The Measured Circle’s Geek Time Trip at The History Project!

* I am linking to the same thing at the regular Amazon site, and at AmazonSmile. When you shop at AmazonSmile, half a percent of your purchase price on eligible items goes to a non-profit you choose. It will feel just like shopping at Amazon: you’ll be using your same account. The one thing for you that is different is that you pick a non-profit the first time you go (which you can change whenever you want)…and the good feeling you’ll get.  Shop ’til you help!  

This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog. To support this or other blogs/organizations, buy  Amazon Gift Cards from a link on the site, then use those to buy your items. There will be no cost to you, and a benefit to them.

Managing your applications

Managing your applications

There’s an old joke about Bill Gates (Microsoft) and Lee Iacocca (Chrysler) sitting next to each other at a charity event.

Gates: “You know, if the car industry was like the computer industry, cars would cost $1000 and get 100 miles to the gallon.”

Iacocca: “Yeah, but who wants a car that crashes three times a day?” ;

Well, our hardware has gotten a lot more reliable…I haven’t seen the infamous BSOD (Blue Screen of Death) in some time, and most of our devices work pretty reliably. I’d say one exception is our Wink hub, which needs to be unplugged maybe once a week so it can reset, and our

Amazon Fire TV (at AmazonSmile: benefit a non-profit of your choice by shopping*)

which resets itself multiple times a week (interestingly, our Fire TV Stick with Voice Remote (at AmazonSmile*) almost never does that).

However, I take action on our applications quite often: I would guess every day.

I recently got a question from a reader about Amazon’s native web browser on Fire tablets, Silk. This person never used Silk, but it was spontaneously showing undesired content. I explained a way to do something which was likely to help, and it looks like it did.

That got me thinking that a post like this probably made sense.

While this definitely applies to my readers who use Fire tablets and Fire TVs, it also applies to people who use the Kindle reading app on other devices.

Exactly how you get into the settings to do this varies a bit by device, but you typically get to your settings (it may be a Settings Gear, which some people think looks like a sun) and then go to Applications.

There are basically four things you can do:

• Force stop (or more colloquially, “kill” the app)
• Clear the cache
• Clear the data
• Uninstall

Force stop (no, it has nothing to do with Star Wars 😉 ) means to turn it off. This can be effective. When my CNNGO app gets stuck, force stopping it will fix it. It’s like restarting your hardware, or flipping a light switch off and then back on (the latter when you re-open the application).

The risk is quite low on this one. Conceivably, you could be in the middle of something and lose that progress, but that’s about it. On an iPhone, when it is unlocked, double push (push-push) your home button. You’ll see all of your open apps. Find the Kindle app, for example, and swipe it up towards the top of the screen.

Clear the cache means to remove what is being stored in temporary memory. Think of your app as your kitchen table: the cache is what you put on the table…food, or in our case, usually mail and packages. 🙂 This can be an issue for you. If you were halfway through a video on YouTube and clear the cache, it won’t remember you were watching it. Video apps, like Hulu and Netflix, store how far you were into a video in the cloud, so it will usually still remember. However, everything will need to reload, so it may take longer to start watching a show.

Clearing the data is a strong action, and you should use it with caution. If you have set up your account in an app, and you clear the data, you’ll have to set up that account again. The data are the kitchen table itself: clear the data, and you’ll need the build the kitchen table again. My reader didn’t use the Silk app, so clearing the data was fine. For someone who used daily, clearing the data can mean a lot of work. If you clear the data, think of it as if you just downloaded the app for the first time.

Uninstalling the app removes the app from the device. For apps you got from the Amazon Appstore, they will still be in the cloud where you can download them again. It may also say that you are going to remove it from the device. If you don’t want to own it at all any more, you would do that in your cloud typically, not on your device.

That’s about it. 🙂 I have to force stop more than one app a day, I’d say.

Update: I meant to mention that if you have “active content” on a Kindle EBR (E-Book Reader…not a tablet), you don’t have the same kind of controls. You can remove them from the device, which can help, but you don’t have the force stop, clear cache, clear data options. Also, with some things, like browsers, you may have additional granularity: removing “form data” (which autofills things like your address), cookies (little programs installed on your device to let the internet identify you…it’s why sites like Amazon can know who you are without you logging into the site each time), history (a listing of where you’ve been…the cache stores the actual data temporarily, the history just says where the data was found)…those will all be wiped out if you clear the data.

Hope that helps…

Bonus story: Amazon Instant Pickup means you can get your order…in two minutes! In this

press release

Amazon explains the new program, which you can see here:

Amazon Instant Pickup (at AmazonSmile*)

In five cities now (“… fully staffed pickup locations in Los Angeles, Atlanta, Berkeley, Calif., Columbus, Ohio, and College Park, Md.”) with more to come, people can order drinks, snacks, and electronics, including especially some Amazon devices in the Amazon shopping app and pick up the item(s).

You also have to be an

Amazon Prime (at AmazonSmile: benefit a non-profit of your choice by shopping*)

member…and especially Prime for students, which is really where the marketing focus is on this.

Barnes & Noble’s college stores may take a further hit from this…

Join thousands of readers and try the free ILMK magazine at Flipboard!

All aboard The Measured Circle’s Geek Time Trip at The History Project!

*When you shop at AmazonSmile, half a percent of your purchase price on eligible items goes to a non-profit you choose. It will feel just like shopping at Amazon: you’ll be using your same account. The one thing for you that is different is that you pick a non-profit the first time you go (which you can change you want)…and the good feeling you’ll get. Shop ’til you help! 🙂