Kindle DX and K3: The Best Tricks
http://www.asiteaboutnothing.net/g_kindle-tricks.html
You can download this Kindle DX and K3 Best Tricks guide as a free ebook! Choose your format:
Current version: 1.2.1
Although this ebook focuses on the Kindle DX, much of the information presented here will also apply to other Kindle models, and even to other ebook readers. This is especially true of the Kindle "K3" (3G + Wifi), which has nearly identical menus to the DX, though its technical specs are quite different.
Before we start on the tips and tricks, a little introduction is due.
True to its name, the Kindle has rekindled my love for books. I don't read fiction anymore, and over the years I had come to the point where most of my reading happened on the internet. When the first Kindle came out, I saw it as a gadget for fiction readers. It couldn't possibly be for me.
But it was different for my lady companion. Gradually, a growing number of her friends and family members were buying Kindles, and she was attracted to it. Just when she was visiting the States, the "graphite" version of the DX model came out (in the Kindle community, this model is known as the Kindle DXG). During its first week, I ordered one for her birthday. We took it camping along much of Australia's East coast, all the way up to Cairns, where we had a three-week-long house- and dog-sitting appointment. Along the way, I fell in love. It was magical to be able to buy a book at two in the morning in a tent in the middle of nowhere.
After six weeks, it had become clear that we couldn't live with just one Kindle, so I gave in and got my own.
Some people use the Kindle mostly for fiction. I use mine for technical books and to read PDF documents that would normally burn my eyes on a computer screen. In fact, this is why earlier Kindle versions did not interest me: their screens were too small for regular PDF documents, and you could not easily transfer PDF files in the first place. Since my lady companion uses her DXG mostly for books, both sides of the Kindle story live under our roof.
Since buying my Kindle, I have been spending much less time on the computer. And I haven't read so much since I was about twelve, when I spent days curled up in bed with whatever author then captured my imagination. There is never a shortage of depressing statistics about child literacy… Maybe Kindle will save the kids!
A Word of Gratitude to the Kindle Community
I want to acknowledge that a collection like this one cannot be the work of a single person. Rather, it is made possible by the thousands of people who visit the internet and share their experience on newsgroups and websites such as blogs and forums.The places where I have learned bits of information that made it into this ebook are too many to mention explicitly, but many are linked in context in later sections. Nevertheless, two sources stand out for the dedication of their members and for their concentration of "ebook intelligence": the mobile read and kindle boards forums (or fora for those of you who prefer Latin plurals).
Deep gratitude to everyone who contributes to making the internet such a treasure trove of useful information… My own website, A Site About Nothing, proceeds largely from my desire to give back to the internet, from which I take so much, by contributing information on subjects as diverse as the Kindle, the most useful knots, movies that make you laugh and the Southern accent, to name just a few.
The Kindle World Goes Beyond Amazon
This may be obvious to you, but I need to stress it because many people who own Kindle devices only use them to read books they buy from Amazon. This is like buying a car from a Toyota dealer and only driving it around the dealer's parking lot. There are a lot of roads beyond the Toyota dealership… It's the same for the Kindle: there is a world to explore beyond the gates of Amazon. The Kindle is a really powerful device.For instance, in addition to reading books in Amazon's azw and "topaz" formats, the Kindle can read ebooks in the PDF and mobi formats. What's that? Mobi is a hugely popular ebook format, with tens of thousands of titles available to download for free. In fact, Amazon's azw file format is built on top of mobi. So if you own a Kindle, right from the start, you're actually in the mobi world.
Then there are other popular ebook formats, such as epub, that can be freely and easily converted to the Kindle. In fact, epub is the closest thing there is to an ebook format standard. Another format called chm is of particular interest to people who work in IT, as much software documentation is released in this format. If you use Windows, the user manuals for much of the software you use are contained in chm files that would be easier to read on your Kindle.
I'm sure you already know that you can use your Kindle DX or K3 to read work documents in the PDF format.
But it's not all about work. With Kindle DX and K3, you can check your Gmail messages and play Gomoku. And there's a lot more. This ebook presents many of the features and tricks that unleash the power of your Kindle.
Where Can I Get Free EBooks?
This question has several aspects that deserve to be explored separately.Best Ebook Search Engine
Free ebooks are hosted on a number of websites. When you're looking for a book, do you want to hop from site to site, or would you rather type the title in a search engine that does all the work for you?
My first stop is the Inkmesh Ebook Search Engine, which looks for titles across many ebook sites. You can restrict your search to free ebooks, or you can search the entire ebook universe—in which case Inkmesh tells you which ones are free, and how much the others cost.
There are other search engines, but in my view Inkmesh has the cleanest interface and most useful results.
Best Free Ebook Sites
Inkmesh is great if you know what you want, but sometimes you're just in the mood to browse.
So many sites offer free ebooks that deciding where to go can be confusing. If you look in the wrong places, you can find yourself downloading a virus instead of an ebook. What you really need to know is the names of the top clean sites.
Since the mid 1990s, I have had an on-and-off relationship with the granddaddy of public domain books: Project Gutenberg. I used to download ebooks as text files and spend hours formatting them so that I could print two pages together on A4/Letter size paper oriented in landscape. Nowadays, Gutenberg has books in the mobi format, which is great for Kindle devices. Nevertheless, I don't enjoy browsing Gutenberg—though I download the site's books when they show up in Inkmesh search results. In practice, I only look at two sites:
Feedbooks. This is a user-friendly site with a great collection of well-formatted books. It also features an ebook catalog that you can download on the Kindle and use to get books right from the device (see below).
Manybooks. Another rich catalog. I like that is has a large foreign language section. 28,000 titles as of October 2010.
Loading an Ebook Catalog (or "Virtual Library") on the Kindle DX and K3
There are three book catalogs that you can download to your Kindle. When you open one of these catalogs on your device, if you click on a title, it downloads automatically! The catalogs are updated daily.
The MobileRead Download Guide is published by the very worthy Mobile Read Forum (see the forum section below). The file has a huge list of books. Once it's on your Kindle, give the device some time to index the catalog. Otherwise, when you try to search, this message may freak you out: "Your search cannot be completed as this item has not been indexed. Please try again later." And you do need the search function to use the catalog, as browsing through a huge alphabetical list of titles would be impractical. If you are not actively using the device, the Kindle will go to sleep before it finishes indexing. Don't worry about turning it back on, as it continues indexing even in sleep mode.
The Magic Catalog of Project Gutenberg downloads as a 1.1MB file (as of October 2010). Once on the device, it is searchable instantly.
Feedbook's Kindle Download Guide follows the same principle. As of October 2010, the Feedbooks file only contains the most recent titles.
By the way, if you are reading this on your Kindle DX or K3 and you click the links for the download guides above, they will download to your unit and appear on your Home page automatically!
Pirated ebooks
Will ebooks go the way of music CDs (through mp3 files) and movies (through AVI files)? I don't see how, within a few years, it can be avoided that most books will be available for free to those who want to ignore copyright laws.
If you want to walk on the illegal side, you're on your own. The world of torrents, usenet and file postings is yours. But remember that most authors are not movie stars pulling million-dollar incomes. A typical author might earn one or two dollars on each copy sold, and few are the books that sell more than a couple thousand copies. If you want to share your books, perhaps you'd like to consider buying one copy and only sharing it with your immediate circle, as you would for a paper edition.
How to Read Epub and CHM files on Kindle DX and K3
I love that the Kindle DX reads PDF files. But PDF files can be limiting, because some of the Kindle's functions do not work with them—in particular, chapter navigation and font size selection. The Kindle can search PDF documents, but instead of presenting you a page of beautifully tabulated results, as it does with azw and mobi files, it only highlights the next match.Really, the Kindle works best with proper ebooks. And for the DX and K3 models, this means files in the mobi format, which either bear a .MOBI or .PRC extension.
What about the azw format, you might ask: Isn't that Amazon's proprietary ebook format? Yes, it is, but the azw format is the mobi format with an added layer of "digital rights management" (a.k.a. "DRM")—which basically means copy protection—on top. To the Kindle, the two formats are the same. Note that Amazon has a second proprietary format that is unrelated to azw: the widely disliked and rarely used "topaz" format, which comes in files with tpz or azw1 extensions.
Besides mobi, ebooks come in at least two other important formats: epub and chm. To read these books on the Kindle, the files must be converted to mobi. Do note that in many cases, converting an ebook file from one format to another will break the terms of service of the place where you obtained the ebook.
Converting CHM Files for Kindle
Files in the chm format are popular for computer books, such as software manuals. At first, I tried to convert these files to PDF. It was a lot of work for disappointing results. I used a CHM converter to output RTF files, then I opened the RTF files in Word to remove annoying graphics and format the text. This worked, but it wasn't very pretty.
Then I came across a wonderful free program called Calibre. Calibre has great features that I review below in the software section. Among these features, Calibre converts a variety of file types to the mobi format.
Calibre's mobi-converted CHM files are beautiful. They don't have any of the "Previous" and "Next" graphics that you get when you print CHM files to PDF. And, because CHM is a hyperlinked format, the resulting ebooks are very easy to navigate on the Kindle—with links, chapter jumps and so on.
Reading Epub files on the Kindle
Epub may be the closest thing to a standard ebook format. Many ebooks are available in epub. They work on Sony readers, but not on Kindle. Like for CHM conversions, I use Calibre (see the software section).
Other formats
Calibre also converts CBZ, CBR, CBC, FB2, HTML, LIT, LRF, ODT, PDF, PRC, PDB, PML, RB, RTF, TCR and TXT.
Best Paper Size for PDFs on Kindle DX
When you convert a Word document or web pages to read on your Kindle, paper size matters. If you use a standard Letter or A4 size, the document will be hard to read. What size to choose? If you have a program that gives you full control over output size (such as Adobe Acrobat Professional), you could produce documents at the exact size of your Kindle screen. But since Kindle uses part of the screen to display a status bar at the top and a search bar at the bottom, you would want to remove about half an inch from the height.To find the output size that works best for your device and your preferences, you can take a screen shot (Shift + Alt + G) then examine the file in a graphics program.
On my Kindle DXG (same screen size as the white DX), a crop of the readable area measures 824 by 1100 pixels. At the Kindle DX's 150 dpi resolution, that gives me an "ideal" paper size of 5.493 x 7.333 inches. If you take measurements on the K3, bear in mind that its resolution is 166 dpi.
For a quick PDF output without specifying custom paper sizes, here are my two favorite standard paper sizes for the DX:
—A5 (5.8 x 8.3 inches)
—Half-Letter (5.5 x 8.5 inches)
Making Existing PDF Books and Files More Readable on Kindle
Several techniques help improve your files.Cropping your margins
If you've scanned a book and want to add it to your Kindle, it pays to rework your PDF file before sending it to the device, because if your margins are too wide, the text will be hard to read. I use Adobe Acrobat Professional to crop my files to within a quarter of an inch of the text. If you don't have Acrobat Pro, don't despair, because you can crop your PDF files using BRISS, a free program that you'll find in the software section below.
I employ the same technique with documents I receive in A4 or Letter format.
Restoring two-page scans to single-page books
Scanning two pages at once is way faster, but that makes for books that are hard to read on Kindle. Fortunately, there is a beautiful piece of software that will restore two-page scans to their one-page glory: BRISS. Look for it in the software section below.
When everything is wrong: reformatting
Sometimes, everything about a PDF file is wrong: paper size, font, etc. In those cases, I use Acrobat Pro to copy the text of a PDF into a Word document. Then I print to PDF again using a Kindle-friendly paper size.
The Kindle's Secret Picture Viewer
What if you could use your Kindle to see the very best of your picture collection—in black-and-white, of course? Well, you can. And I don't mean by slapping your pictures in to a PDF document. The Kindle DX and K3 both have a secret picture viewer.My feeling is that the viewer is secret because it's a little buggy. Nevertheless, it's fun to know about.
Here's what you do. Access your DX or K3 via USB. Make a "root folder" (at the same level as the "documents" folder) called "pictures". Do not put pictures directly in the "pictures" folder, your Kindle will not display them. Instead, inside "pictures", make one or more subfolders called "animals", "people" or whatever theme you like, and paste your pictures there.
Now unplug your Kindle. Turn it on. Tada… nothing has changed.
To see the pictures, you need to press the "Alt" and Z keys together. This refreshes the list of documents on your Home screen. Now "animals", "people" or whatever picture "albums" you have created show up on your Home screen just the same way as books. In fact, you can move them to your Kindle's collections—or create new collections to contain pictures.
When you click on a picture folder, the "page forward" and "page back" buttons let you navigate.
You may soon notice that when you shift between pictures, the screen often doesn't refresh properly so that you are left looking at cut parts of several pictures. I don't know how to fix that, though I'm told that preparing your pictures for your Kindle helps smooth your relationship with the secret picture viewer. This means saving pictures as 4-bit grayscale images at 824 x 1200 pixels for the DX or at 600 x 800 for the K3.
In Photoshop, to save a picture as a 4-bit grayscale, select File / Save for Web and Devices. Near the top right of the "save screen", choose "GIF" for the file format (not "JPEG"). In the box just below "GIF", choose "Grayscale". In the "Colors" box, choose 16. Save.
If you should fall in love with the secret picture viewer, you may find these key combinations handy. You may also find that they're hit-or-miss. Some of them haven't worked for me.
—if it's your lucky day, the top three letters of the keyboard handle zooming. Q zooms in, W zooms out, E resets the zoom level.
—F is supposed to bring you in and out of "Full-screen mode".
—the five-way controller lets you pan.
—apparently, C attempts to show you a picture's aCtual size (whether in pixels or inches, I'm not sure).
—I think Alt + 1 brings you to the first picture and Alt + 9 to the last.
—And my favorite, R to rotate. At first, I thought "Why would I want to do that when I can just rotate my Kindle?" Well, when you rotate your screen, you may end up looking at a picture sideways; sometimes you do need the R key to see your picture in the right orientation. It's a bit of a mind twister, you have to try it to see it.
Software for Kindle DX and K3
Calibre is the one program you must have, your software "Excalibur" in the realm of ebooks. Like Kindle for PC, Calibre can read ebooks. Unlike Kindle for PC, Calibre can manage your ebook library. But, most importantly, Calibre can convert books from a variety of formats (such as epub and chm) to the mobi format, which the Kindle DX and K3 understand.The free BRISS PDF Converter can crop documents with multiple columns into separate files. Note: this is a cross-platform Java program with a "jar" extension. To run it, click on the main jar file, which will be called something like "briss-0.0.10.jar".
To produce your own ebooks, there is Mobipocket Creator, now owned by Amazon. But more about this in the next section.
Other software for Kindle DX and K3
Someone wrote to me about a piece of software called Kindle Collection Manager. He says that he uses the DX to read technical documentation and that the software helps him organize his 600 books. As of October 2010, the software is in beta and requires registration. The installation was a bit long for me because the installer required me to upgrade my version of the Microsoft .NET framework. The interface is clean and simple. On the left, you see all the files and folders on your Kindle's "documents" folder. On the right, you see your Kindle collections. You can drag-and-drop from the right to the left. Once you are done, you have to fully restart your Kindle (not just put it to sleep), which takes more than a few seconds. If I had hundreds of books, I would probably use this software.
For firmware upgrades, jump to the links section.
How to Produce Ebook files with Mobipocket Creator
The free Mobipocket Creator allows you to create prc ebooks from various types of documents. The Kindle DX and K3 read prc files without conversion (prc files are basically a mobi file with a different name). To create my ebooks, I start with html files. Below, I provide a working html file that will produce an ebook with a working table of contents if you read this entire tutorial.The simplest syntax of my html files is as follows:
(Stuff)
This is all you need to create a basic ebook file. Here is how.
Open Mobipocket creator. If this is the first time you run Mobipocket creator, click "Settings" in the top row, and choose a default folder on the left—somewhere that is easy to find as your completed ebooks will go there. To produce an ebook, click the "Home" star on the top bar. On the left, choose "Blank publication". Enter a name, click "Create". Click the green plus sign on the left to add your html file. Then in the top row, click "Build", then click "Build" again. That's it! The program will have created a file with a "PRC" extension. Look for it in your default Mobicreator folder, copy it and drop it on your Kindle's "documents" folder. Congratulations! You have made your first ebook.
To add a bit of fancy to your ebooks, one tag you may want to learn is
Wherever you paste this tag in your file, there will be a page break in the corresponding part of the completed ebook.
Next, you might like to be able to navigate between chapters using the Kindle DX or K3's five-way controller. For that, use header tags such as
or (it does not matter which). Use this exact syntax:
Your Title
For this part of the project, to make sure your html file looks exactly right, you may like to use a sample file that I made and tested—if you follow these instructions, it will produce an ebook with a working table of contents ("TOC"). You can use the file as a starting point and modify the file to put in your own text, add more chapters and so on. But I advise against going so until you have fully tested this procedure with the file as it stands. Click the link to download the zipped working html ebook file. Unzip it. To edit the file, stay away from MS Word (which injects custom html code). Instead, use a plain text editor such as Notepad or EditPad (better), or, even better, an html editor (which will use colors to highlight the syntax) such as Kompozer (free) or Dreamweaver (expensive but awesome).
In Mobipocket Creator, open your project (or the file I provided) and choose "Table of Contents" from the left column. Click "Add a Table of Contents". The next screen looks complex, but if you have used the syntax above, your work is almost done. In the row entitled "First level", enter "h1" in the first cell (the tag name), "class" in the second cell (the attribute) and "mobi" in the third cell (the value). Lower on the screen, click "Update". You will see that a table of contents has been added to your list of files. Click the "Build" icon in the top row and build your file. Sadly, one last step is needed because although Kindle DX and K3 read PRC files, they do not know how to skip between their chapters with the five-way controller. To get this feature to work, run your Mobicreator prc file through Calibre to create a mobi file. This procedure give you an ebook very much like this one.
If you have trouble with Mobicreator, consider reading Joshua's Kindle formatting site and ebook. I have not had a chance to read it myself, but I know that it has a good reputation.
Reading Gmail on Kindle DX—or Yahoo Mail etc.
The Kindle browser has saved me a few times. In Australia, I have been amazed to be able to check email in a car on a road to nowhere.
To see your Gmail, go to Menu / Experimental / Basic Web, navigate to the address bar and type in "m.gmail.com" (the address for the mobile version of Gmail). Once you have signed in, you can bookmark the page for faster access.
For Yahoo mail, login at "m.yahoo.com".
For even easier access from the Home screen, read the section about enhanced web bookmarks.
What's the best sleeve for the Kindle DX?
I don't pretend to know all the cases available on the market, but my companion and I have different ones that I can compare from first hand experience. 
She owns the Timbuk2 nylon sleeve, pictured in the left column. And I have the M-Edge Touring sleeve, pictured in this paragraph—though mine is navy blue rather than bright orange. We love both, and we have often talked of swapping as we are not sure which we prefer. Each product has its merits. I love the Timbuk2 for the material, whose texture reminds me of the ballistic nylon on my beloved roadcrafter motorcycle suit. I also like the discrete branding. The M-Edge has more prominent branding and wet-suit-style padding that will probably get dirty faster (that's why I chose the darker navy blue). What I like about the M-Edge is that you can charge the unit while it's inside the sleeve, and that it has a pocket for the USB cable. Whichever you choose, you can't go wrong.
How much space is left on my Kindle DX?
This is hardly a great secret, but it took me a while to notice. If you press the "Menu" key, the free space on the device will appear at the left of the top bar, and the time will display in the middle.
What's my Kindle DX Serial Number?
For whatever reason, this might be useful information to write down and store somewhere for future use. If you haven't thrown away your packaging, you can find the serial number on a white label on the box. It is the long string of letters and digits after "FSN", e.g. "B009…"
If you no longer have the box, you can find your serial number on the unit: press Menu, then Settings, and look at the bottom of the screen. Or, if you want to feel like James Bond, you have two options:
—press Shift (the up arrow key) + Alt + . (period), and you will see a secret screen with barcode and the serial number underneath.
—from the Menu / Settings, press type 411 (press Alt + RQQ)
Kindle DX Keyboard Shortcuts
I love keyboard shortcuts. Control + C and Control + V are just the beginning. My mind is overflowing with a hundred keyboard shortcuts for a dozen programs. Keyboard shortcuts make computer work faster. So I was looking forward to learning shortcuts for the Kindle.
Forget it! Sadly, the device has very few useful shortcuts. Here are the ones I find useful. To round off the list, I've thrown in two key combinations that are not technically "shortcuts" as they trigger functions that can't be accessed through the menu.
—Alt + B will bookmark the page you are on.
—Shift (the up arrow key) + Sym will start and stop the text-to-voice mode.
—The space bar will pause and unpause the audio in text-to-voice mode.
—Shift (the up arrow key) + Alt + G (think "Gif") takes a shot of your screen in the GIF image format. You can find it by connecting through USB and looking in the "documents" folder, where the file will be called something like screen_shot-23120.gif.
—Shift (the up arrow key) + Alt + M will launch the Minesweeper game, and another G will take you to Gomoku.
And here are ones that I haven't used, but that you may find useful:
—Alt + Space starts playing music from mp3 files located in your Kindle's "music" folder.
—When music is playing, Alt + F skips to the next track.
—Alt + G is said to refresh your screen to remove the unpleasant "ghosting effects" that may occur from time to time.
—If you use Alt + G to remove ghosting, then you may like Shift + Alt + H as an alternate key combination to take screen shots. Indeed, since the screen flickers with both the ghosting removal shortcut (Alt + G) and the screen shot key combination given above (Alt + Shift + G), you may sometimes be unsure which one you have pressed.
Kindle trick for Wikipedia Addicts
I love the Kindle DX's tight integration with Wikipedia. For Wikipedia fans, there's even better. On the Kindlepedia site, you can paste the web address of a Wikipedia article. The site then converts the article into a mobi ebook that's ready to transfer to your Kindle. I find it much easier on the eyes to read Wikipedia articles as ebooks than in the DX's experimental browser.
In the same genre, you may want to check out eReadsUp. When you want to read about a topic, you enter keywords in a search box. The website then presents you a list of articles. You select the ones you'd like to read, and the site packages them into a mobi book ready for your Kindle.
How to Delete a Book from your Archives Forever
Amazon automatically delivers the Kindle DX User's Guide, so you may end up with several versions on your Kindle. If you delete one (say the 3rd Edition), it will go into your Archives folder. What if you want to get rid of a book forever?
Logon to your Manage Your Kindle page on Amazon. Navigate to the section entitled "Your Orders". To the left of the book you want to remove, you will see a grey icon with a plus sign. Click it. This opens a panel with information about the book and a button offering you to "Delete this title".
Enhanced Web Bookmarks on your Kindle
There are several problems with the bookmarks in the experimental browser. For starters, they live somewhere far, far away from the Home screen. Then there is the fact that you cannot edit the URLs of the bookmarks you add, nor their position in the list.
To me, these are serious shortcomings of the experimental browser. It suggests that Amazon probably intended the browser to be just what they called it, "experimental". They wanted to make a device that's primarily a book reader, not a "browse anywhere" machine.
There is one simple way around the clunky bookmark situation. Paste your favorite bookmarks in a Word document. Edit them just how you like. Convert the file to PDF and transfer it to your device via USB. If you usually organize all your documents into collections, leaving that lone bookmarks file on your Home screen will give you fast clean access to your favorite websites.
If you would like to experiment with ebook creation, you can produce your bookmarks file as an ebook rather than a PDF. I explain how in the section about the Mobipocket Creator program.
Can I unlock my Amazon books to share them with friends?
Yes, but not without breaking Amazon's "terms of service", and possibly a number of laws! See also my comments about pirated ebooks above.
Sadly for authors, the removal of DRM protection from azw files is bound to become commonplace within a few years. You know how easy it is to copy a CD in programs such as Windows Media Player and ITunes? Perhaps sometime it will be even easier to unlock a book. At the moment, it is still a dark technique for people who enjoy breaking into locked places. According to a friend who knows about these things, you need to install a computer language called Python, then to run a "python script" in conjunction with an obsolete version of Amazon's Kindle for PC software… Not for your average book lover.
With so many ebooks available for free, why not keep the magic alive?
Can I back-up my Amazon books to a different format?
This is related to the unlocking question above, but it's not quite the same as you can back up a book without unlocking it—for instance, by copying its entire contents by hand into a notebook!
Let us first note that your Amazon Kindle books are always backed up on Amazon, so you can get them to your new devices any time you want. That is, as long as Amazon does not decide to remotely delete a book from your device, as it once did with an edition of 1984 that had copyright problems… After losing a class-action lawsuit for this move, Amazon is unlikely to repeat it.
Could there be times when you might want a backup of a book in a format other than Amazon's proprietary AZW format? Well, everything is possible in this great big world.
It seems to me that it would be easy to back up any of your books using the screenshot function. That might break your license for the book—I don't know. I have not tried the following technique myself on a full book, but I have tested it on a few pages. Here is how it works.
Go to the first page of the book you would like to back-up. Press the Shift key (the up arrow key) together with Alt and G. This takes a screenshot of the page and stores it as an image ("gif" file) in your Kindle's "documents" folder. Turn the page and repeat. When you're done, compile all the "gif" files into a PDF document using i2pdf, a brilliant free program.
Sounds tedious? Not if you've ever backed up a thousand-page paper book using a scanner. I've done that several times with some of the treasures in my book collection. If I put an audiobook on, I get into a grove and don't even notice the work.
Once you have your book as a PDF, you can transfer it back to your Kindle to see the result. At first, you may find the quality of your screenshot backup a bit shocking compared to the original. But hey… Backups are for emergencies!
But can you improve the quality of your backup? Yes, you can.
Since screenshots capture the entire Kindle screen, including the status bar at the top and bottom of the screen, these bars become part of your backup. If you do nothing else, you can use Acrobat Pro or BRISS (see the software section) to crop these out and reduce the wide margins.
And, if you have nothing better to do with your time, you can even rebuild a quality book by converting the PDF file to text, formatting the document the way you like, then converting it to PDF again. To do that, you need to use an "OCR program" (OCR stands for optical character recognition) to convert the images embedded in the PDF file back into the book's text. I use Acrobat Pro's OCR function, but if you're after a free program, people say good things about FreeOCR.
Is there a legal way to share my Amazon ebooks?
Within your family, if you own multiple Kindle units, instead of registering each unit to a different Amazon account, you could register all the units to the same person. That person (say, mom) would be in charge of buying all the books. Everyone in the family would then have access to the books. That sounds fair: after all, when a paper book comes into the house, everyone can read it.
At the moment, there is no limit to the number of Kindle devices and applications (the Kindle for PC software) that can be registered to a single Amazon account. However, the Kindle books you purchase from Amazon can only be on a limited number of your Kindle devices and applications. Usually, that limit is six, but it can be as little as one, depending on Amazon's agreement with the publisher. If the limit is less than six, this message appears on the Amazon page:
Simultaneous Device usage: Up to X simultaneous devices, per publisher limits.
Following the same logic, I can imagine a group of friends setting up a Kindle "collective", co-op or club, whereby everyone's Kindle unit is registered to one person's account. Funds would be donated to the account manager, who would buy the books, making them available to all members of the group. Again, a given book could only be "checked out" to six units at a time.
Would people go for this idea, or does that sound a bit too communistic for the 21st century? I wonder.
Buying a Kindle DX from Outside the United States
I hesitated before buying my Kindle DX because I was in Australia at the time, and I knew from experience that Amazon usually doesn't ship electronics outside the United States. On one idle day, I checked anyway. Lo and behold, Amazon did offer to ship the Kindle to Australia.
The great news didn't stop there. Clicking through to the "Checkout" screen, I worried about exorbitant shipping costs, but it turned out that Amazon ships the Kindle DX to Australia for a mere twenty dollars. And that's for a courier service! (DHL.) My unit was personally delivered in the middle of the bush. I guess Amazon is adopting the "Gilette strategy": sell the razors at low cost, make money on the blades. Except that the DX is not exactly cheap. Anyhow, I was grateful for Amazon's compassionate pricing on shipping.
I also worried about the customs duties and GST that Australian customs are known to inflict on foreign shipments. But I read that as of 2010, imports valued at a thousand dollars or less are exempt of such charges. So my Kindle DX sailed in without dramas.
What this all means, I think, is that your country of residence should not deter you from looking into buying a Kindle.
The Kindle DX's Missing Features
I love my Kindle DX, yet there are quite a few things that don't work the way I would like them to. In this section, as they come to the fore of my mind through repeated irritation, I plan to gradually add and present the features that I find lacking on the unit. To reach Amazon with feedback about the Kindle, the address is kindledx-feedback@amazon.com.
More keyboard shortcuts. I can't live without keyboard shortcuts. At the very least, I need a shortcut to take me to the beginning of a book, and a shortcut to open the bookmarks window. I'd also like a shortcut to launch the experimental browser.
Nameable Bookmarks. What is the good of twenty bookmarks if I don't know what they are? Hello, Amazon! I love you, can you please allow me to name my bookmarks?
Editable Web Bookmarks. Not the same request as above—this has to do with bookmarked web pages. I need the ability to edit the URLs and titles of web bookmarks. Especially the URLs. Why? Because many web addresses you type redirect you to a different address, and the redirection page may not be the one I want to bookmark. For instance, at the moment there is no way to bookmark "m.gmail.com" on the Kindle DX. Fortunately, there is a nice workaround—read the section about enhanced web bookmarks.
EPub support. Yes, I can convert Epub books in Calibre, but why not just make Epub support a Kindle feature? On forums, I have read threads where people reported having bought Sony devices because they didn't want to be stuck with Amazon's proprietary format. A misunderstanding, perhaps, since conversion is always possible, but a misunderstanding that loses Amazons a number of customers.
More memory. I really don't want a measly 4 gigabytes on a $400 device: The year is 2010, not 2007. Give me at least 16GB so I can store some graphic-rich books I have scanned, as well as a decent selection of audiobooks.
How to Change the Typeface (font) on your Kindle
Kindle's native typeface is called PMN Caecilia. Don't look for it on your computer, it's not one of those that installs by default. If you want to buy the whole Caecilia "family" from Linotype or Monotype, it will cost you close to 400 dollars.
Igor from Russia has posted a hack to change the fonts on Kindle. The article tickles me—though I would not dream of trying the technique myself, as I worry that it might compromise my favorite toy.
How to Change the Screen Saver Images on the Kindle DX and K3
I love the screen saver images on the Kindle DX and don't really want to change them. But I've come across several "hacks" that allow you to add or substitute your own images. These hacks invite you to flirt with danger—if anything goes wrong, you can say goodbye to your warranty… I haven't given in so far and I don't think I will! I can't report on the merits of the various techniques, but here are the most detailed pages I have read:
Screen Saver Hack From ComicBase.
Screen Saver Hack Tutorial on the MobileRead website.
Changing your Kindle K3's Margins and Justification Mode
When your Kindle is connected via USB, if you have set your operating system to display hidden files, at the "root level" (the same level as the "documents" folder) you may notice a "system" folder. Somewhere in that folder, there is a file called "reader.pref".
Apparently, on a Kindle 3, if you edit that file in a text editor, you can change the size of your default margins (some people like to reduce them) and add an option allowing you choose whether you want to justify text fully or to the left. I have tried these changes on my DX, and they haven't worked. I have also read that even on the K3, once you access certain menus, the default "reader.pref" file regenerates and the changes you have made disappear. But some people really like this trick.
I worry about describing procedures that could disturb your system's configuration, but if you want to take a chance, here is a message about the Kindle K3's justification and margin hack.
Dark Secrets
The Kindle DX has a number of features that we as end users are not really meant to access. These are best left to Kindle engineers and competent hackers. I am neither of these, and I abstain because I worry that one wrong maneuver could wreck my system.
Besides, this ebook aims to focus on the "best Kindle DX and K3 tricks". The emphasis is on "best": there may be other tricks, but if they can ruin your experience, who needs to know about them?
Nevertheless, thirsting for knowledge is a natural tendency of our big brains… So I'll mention a few things that might quench that thirst.
Calculator
The Kindle DX and K3 have a clunky calculator function. From the Home screen, if you press the "Del" key to bring up the search bar, you can type in calculations—for instance "12/2"—then press the Enter key (the bent arrow on the right). The results appear at the top of the results screen.
Time and Date
If you ever forget what date it is, press the "Del" key to bring up the search bar, type "date" then press the Enter key (the bent arrow on the right). The date and time appear at the top of the results screen.
Expanded System Information
In the section about serial numbers, I mentioned that from the Menu / Settings screen, typing "411" brings up your serial number. Rejoice, because typing "611" from that same screen brings up more data than you could ever have use for. Typing "311" offers to switch wireless providers. And on the K3 (but not the DX), apparently, typing "711" displays wireless information.
Debug Menu
If you cruise through the back alleys of Kindle forums, you may hear of a mysterious "debug" menu. This is where I shut my ears and turn around because curiosity might just kill the cat.
USB Network Hack
I have been told that there is something known as the "USB Network Hack". If I understood correctly, with this hack installed, when you plug your Kindle into your computer, your device can surf the web at ultra-fast speed using the computer's connection—assuming you're not on dial-up anymore! I'm not sure why you'd want to surf the web on a Kindle when you have a computer nearby, but there you go.
Alternate Kindle Firmware
No, you didn't misread. A team of developers (whether you call them hackers or freedom fighters is your politics) has created a complete replacement for the firmware that Amazon ships with the Kindle. It's called Duokan. At the moment, the whole website is written in Chinese, but an English version of the interface was released in November 2010. The Mobileread forum's Duokan thread is a good source of information.
Apart from the mind-blowing idea of running your Kindle on a completely different operating system, there are several Duokan features that I find intriguing. Duokan reads Epub files, opening a world of conversion-free Epub book access. Users report that Duokan also handles PDF much more graciously than the original Kindle firmware, particularly with respect to tables of contents, page turning speed, bookmarking and zooming—the latter function thanks Duokan's ability to "reflow" the text in PDF files. Duokan also lets you darken the font of your PDF documents. Apparently, Duokan might be a great firmware if you mostly use your Kindle for reading PDFs. On the other hand, Duokan won't read azw files, the format of ebooks you buy from Amazon; but you can have a dual boot system…
As for me, I won't be loading Duokan anytime soon because I worry that installing third-party firmware would break Amazon's Terms of Service and void the warranty. Besides, Duokan is not open-source, and my paranoid side feels uncomfortable about giving an unknown team of developers access to my wireless device, and in particular to the books I've purchased on Amazon, to my private documents and to the experimental browser's settings, where some of my site passwords are stored.
Winning at Gomoku
I saved the best of the "dark secrets" for last: You can learn to beat your Kindle at Gomoku every time! But do you really want to know? If you are sure to win, you may not want to play anymore…
If you opt for knowledge, you can follow a clear and simple animation on the Win at Kindle Gomoku page on the instructive blog of Little Professor, a distinguished expert in undocumented Kindle features.
Kindle Forums
The Mobile Read forum is a fabulous resource for everything ebook, and Kindle in particular.
Kindle Boards is an active forum brimming with Kindle enthusiasts. A great place to stay on top of everything Kindle.
Amazon also has its own discussion board in its "Kindle Community". If you only want to join one forum, this would not be my first choice. But if want to engage in in-depth conversations about Kindle accessories, this is the place.
Links
"Kindle DX Central" on Amazon. A good place if you need official information. For the record, to send feedback about the DX, the email address that sometimes appears on the screensaver is kindledx-feedback at amazon.
Amazon also has a page dedicated to Kindle firmware upgrades.
Kinworm is a blog brimming with great tutorials for the K3.
Reversing Everything is a fascinating blog by Igor Skochinsky, who has discovered hidden features of the Kindle by opening up the device and doing a bit of reverse engineering.
Enhancing you image is a site by a Kindle customer who is passionate about how the Kindle's display should look.
Please Keep in Touch
Well, that's about it for now. My Kindle DX and K3 page is a living page, so I will keep adding material on the website (and its ebook version) as I discover new tricks.
If you have enjoyed the ebook, I would be immensely grateful if you would visit its home, my Best Kindle Tricks, and share it on Facebook, link to it from your blog or bookmark it with Delicious.
Wishing you a fun day and happy kindling,
Smiles,
Andy
Would you like to be able to read this again at a comfortable pace? I offer this guide for free as a beautiful Kindle ebook. See the download link in the blue box at the top of the page.
Ebook Download Instructions
To read the ebook on your Kindle, you can either download it directly from this page using your Kindle's browser, or you can transfer the ebook to your Kindle via USB. To transfer via USB, click the "Mobi" link at the top of the page (Kindle reads ebooks in the "mobi" format). Save the file to your desktop. Plug your Kindle DX or K3 into your computer. Your Kindle will appear as a USB drive on your computer. This drive will have a "documents" folder. Copy and paste the "mobi" file into that "documents" folder. Turn your Kindle on… The ebook should be there!
Your Title
For this part of the project, to make sure your html file looks exactly right, you may like to use a sample file that I made and tested—if you follow these instructions, it will produce an ebook with a working table of contents ("TOC"). You can use the file as a starting point and modify the file to put in your own text, add more chapters and so on. But I advise against going so until you have fully tested this procedure with the file as it stands. Click the link to download the zipped working html ebook file. Unzip it. To edit the file, stay away from MS Word (which injects custom html code). Instead, use a plain text editor such as Notepad or EditPad (better), or, even better, an html editor (which will use colors to highlight the syntax) such as Kompozer (free) or Dreamweaver (expensive but awesome).
In Mobipocket Creator, open your project (or the file I provided) and choose "Table of Contents" from the left column. Click "Add a Table of Contents". The next screen looks complex, but if you have used the syntax above, your work is almost done. In the row entitled "First level", enter "h1" in the first cell (the tag name), "class" in the second cell (the attribute) and "mobi" in the third cell (the value). Lower on the screen, click "Update". You will see that a table of contents has been added to your list of files. Click the "Build" icon in the top row and build your file. Sadly, one last step is needed because although Kindle DX and K3 read PRC files, they do not know how to skip between their chapters with the five-way controller. To get this feature to work, run your Mobicreator prc file through Calibre to create a mobi file. This procedure give you an ebook very much like this one.
If you have trouble with Mobicreator, consider reading Joshua's Kindle formatting site and ebook. I have not had a chance to read it myself, but I know that it has a good reputation.
Reading Gmail on Kindle DX—or Yahoo Mail etc.
The Kindle browser has saved me a few times. In Australia, I have been amazed to be able to check email in a car on a road to nowhere.To see your Gmail, go to Menu / Experimental / Basic Web, navigate to the address bar and type in "m.gmail.com" (the address for the mobile version of Gmail). Once you have signed in, you can bookmark the page for faster access.
For Yahoo mail, login at "m.yahoo.com".
For even easier access from the Home screen, read the section about enhanced web bookmarks.
What's the best sleeve for the Kindle DX?
I don't pretend to know all the cases available on the market, but my companion and I have different ones that I can compare from first hand experience.She owns the Timbuk2 nylon sleeve, pictured in the left column. And I have the M-Edge Touring sleeve, pictured in this paragraph—though mine is navy blue rather than bright orange. We love both, and we have often talked of swapping as we are not sure which we prefer. Each product has its merits. I love the Timbuk2 for the material, whose texture reminds me of the ballistic nylon on my beloved roadcrafter motorcycle suit. I also like the discrete branding. The M-Edge has more prominent branding and wet-suit-style padding that will probably get dirty faster (that's why I chose the darker navy blue). What I like about the M-Edge is that you can charge the unit while it's inside the sleeve, and that it has a pocket for the USB cable. Whichever you choose, you can't go wrong.
How much space is left on my Kindle DX?
This is hardly a great secret, but it took me a while to notice. If you press the "Menu" key, the free space on the device will appear at the left of the top bar, and the time will display in the middle.What's my Kindle DX Serial Number?
For whatever reason, this might be useful information to write down and store somewhere for future use. If you haven't thrown away your packaging, you can find the serial number on a white label on the box. It is the long string of letters and digits after "FSN", e.g. "B009…"If you no longer have the box, you can find your serial number on the unit: press Menu, then Settings, and look at the bottom of the screen. Or, if you want to feel like James Bond, you have two options:
—press Shift (the up arrow key) + Alt + . (period), and you will see a secret screen with barcode and the serial number underneath.
—from the Menu / Settings, press type 411 (press Alt + RQQ)
Kindle DX Keyboard Shortcuts
I love keyboard shortcuts. Control + C and Control + V are just the beginning. My mind is overflowing with a hundred keyboard shortcuts for a dozen programs. Keyboard shortcuts make computer work faster. So I was looking forward to learning shortcuts for the Kindle.Forget it! Sadly, the device has very few useful shortcuts. Here are the ones I find useful. To round off the list, I've thrown in two key combinations that are not technically "shortcuts" as they trigger functions that can't be accessed through the menu.
—Alt + B will bookmark the page you are on.
—Shift (the up arrow key) + Sym will start and stop the text-to-voice mode.
—The space bar will pause and unpause the audio in text-to-voice mode.
—Shift (the up arrow key) + Alt + G (think "Gif") takes a shot of your screen in the GIF image format. You can find it by connecting through USB and looking in the "documents" folder, where the file will be called something like screen_shot-23120.gif.
—Shift (the up arrow key) + Alt + M will launch the Minesweeper game, and another G will take you to Gomoku.
And here are ones that I haven't used, but that you may find useful:
—Alt + Space starts playing music from mp3 files located in your Kindle's "music" folder.
—When music is playing, Alt + F skips to the next track.
—Alt + G is said to refresh your screen to remove the unpleasant "ghosting effects" that may occur from time to time.
—If you use Alt + G to remove ghosting, then you may like Shift + Alt + H as an alternate key combination to take screen shots. Indeed, since the screen flickers with both the ghosting removal shortcut (Alt + G) and the screen shot key combination given above (Alt + Shift + G), you may sometimes be unsure which one you have pressed.
Kindle trick for Wikipedia Addicts
I love the Kindle DX's tight integration with Wikipedia. For Wikipedia fans, there's even better. On the Kindlepedia site, you can paste the web address of a Wikipedia article. The site then converts the article into a mobi ebook that's ready to transfer to your Kindle. I find it much easier on the eyes to read Wikipedia articles as ebooks than in the DX's experimental browser.In the same genre, you may want to check out eReadsUp. When you want to read about a topic, you enter keywords in a search box. The website then presents you a list of articles. You select the ones you'd like to read, and the site packages them into a mobi book ready for your Kindle.
How to Delete a Book from your Archives Forever
Amazon automatically delivers the Kindle DX User's Guide, so you may end up with several versions on your Kindle. If you delete one (say the 3rd Edition), it will go into your Archives folder. What if you want to get rid of a book forever?Logon to your Manage Your Kindle page on Amazon. Navigate to the section entitled "Your Orders". To the left of the book you want to remove, you will see a grey icon with a plus sign. Click it. This opens a panel with information about the book and a button offering you to "Delete this title".
Enhanced Web Bookmarks on your Kindle
There are several problems with the bookmarks in the experimental browser. For starters, they live somewhere far, far away from the Home screen. Then there is the fact that you cannot edit the URLs of the bookmarks you add, nor their position in the list.To me, these are serious shortcomings of the experimental browser. It suggests that Amazon probably intended the browser to be just what they called it, "experimental". They wanted to make a device that's primarily a book reader, not a "browse anywhere" machine.
There is one simple way around the clunky bookmark situation. Paste your favorite bookmarks in a Word document. Edit them just how you like. Convert the file to PDF and transfer it to your device via USB. If you usually organize all your documents into collections, leaving that lone bookmarks file on your Home screen will give you fast clean access to your favorite websites.
If you would like to experiment with ebook creation, you can produce your bookmarks file as an ebook rather than a PDF. I explain how in the section about the Mobipocket Creator program.
Can I unlock my Amazon books to share them with friends?
Yes, but not without breaking Amazon's "terms of service", and possibly a number of laws! See also my comments about pirated ebooks above.Sadly for authors, the removal of DRM protection from azw files is bound to become commonplace within a few years. You know how easy it is to copy a CD in programs such as Windows Media Player and ITunes? Perhaps sometime it will be even easier to unlock a book. At the moment, it is still a dark technique for people who enjoy breaking into locked places. According to a friend who knows about these things, you need to install a computer language called Python, then to run a "python script" in conjunction with an obsolete version of Amazon's Kindle for PC software… Not for your average book lover.
With so many ebooks available for free, why not keep the magic alive?
Can I back-up my Amazon books to a different format?
This is related to the unlocking question above, but it's not quite the same as you can back up a book without unlocking it—for instance, by copying its entire contents by hand into a notebook!Let us first note that your Amazon Kindle books are always backed up on Amazon, so you can get them to your new devices any time you want. That is, as long as Amazon does not decide to remotely delete a book from your device, as it once did with an edition of 1984 that had copyright problems… After losing a class-action lawsuit for this move, Amazon is unlikely to repeat it.
Could there be times when you might want a backup of a book in a format other than Amazon's proprietary AZW format? Well, everything is possible in this great big world.
It seems to me that it would be easy to back up any of your books using the screenshot function. That might break your license for the book—I don't know. I have not tried the following technique myself on a full book, but I have tested it on a few pages. Here is how it works.
Go to the first page of the book you would like to back-up. Press the Shift key (the up arrow key) together with Alt and G. This takes a screenshot of the page and stores it as an image ("gif" file) in your Kindle's "documents" folder. Turn the page and repeat. When you're done, compile all the "gif" files into a PDF document using i2pdf, a brilliant free program.
Sounds tedious? Not if you've ever backed up a thousand-page paper book using a scanner. I've done that several times with some of the treasures in my book collection. If I put an audiobook on, I get into a grove and don't even notice the work.
Once you have your book as a PDF, you can transfer it back to your Kindle to see the result. At first, you may find the quality of your screenshot backup a bit shocking compared to the original. But hey… Backups are for emergencies!
But can you improve the quality of your backup? Yes, you can.
Since screenshots capture the entire Kindle screen, including the status bar at the top and bottom of the screen, these bars become part of your backup. If you do nothing else, you can use Acrobat Pro or BRISS (see the software section) to crop these out and reduce the wide margins.
And, if you have nothing better to do with your time, you can even rebuild a quality book by converting the PDF file to text, formatting the document the way you like, then converting it to PDF again. To do that, you need to use an "OCR program" (OCR stands for optical character recognition) to convert the images embedded in the PDF file back into the book's text. I use Acrobat Pro's OCR function, but if you're after a free program, people say good things about FreeOCR.
Is there a legal way to share my Amazon ebooks?
Within your family, if you own multiple Kindle units, instead of registering each unit to a different Amazon account, you could register all the units to the same person. That person (say, mom) would be in charge of buying all the books. Everyone in the family would then have access to the books. That sounds fair: after all, when a paper book comes into the house, everyone can read it.At the moment, there is no limit to the number of Kindle devices and applications (the Kindle for PC software) that can be registered to a single Amazon account. However, the Kindle books you purchase from Amazon can only be on a limited number of your Kindle devices and applications. Usually, that limit is six, but it can be as little as one, depending on Amazon's agreement with the publisher. If the limit is less than six, this message appears on the Amazon page:
Simultaneous Device usage: Up to X simultaneous devices, per publisher limits.
Following the same logic, I can imagine a group of friends setting up a Kindle "collective", co-op or club, whereby everyone's Kindle unit is registered to one person's account. Funds would be donated to the account manager, who would buy the books, making them available to all members of the group. Again, a given book could only be "checked out" to six units at a time.
Would people go for this idea, or does that sound a bit too communistic for the 21st century? I wonder.
Buying a Kindle DX from Outside the United States
I hesitated before buying my Kindle DX because I was in Australia at the time, and I knew from experience that Amazon usually doesn't ship electronics outside the United States. On one idle day, I checked anyway. Lo and behold, Amazon did offer to ship the Kindle to Australia.The great news didn't stop there. Clicking through to the "Checkout" screen, I worried about exorbitant shipping costs, but it turned out that Amazon ships the Kindle DX to Australia for a mere twenty dollars. And that's for a courier service! (DHL.) My unit was personally delivered in the middle of the bush. I guess Amazon is adopting the "Gilette strategy": sell the razors at low cost, make money on the blades. Except that the DX is not exactly cheap. Anyhow, I was grateful for Amazon's compassionate pricing on shipping.
I also worried about the customs duties and GST that Australian customs are known to inflict on foreign shipments. But I read that as of 2010, imports valued at a thousand dollars or less are exempt of such charges. So my Kindle DX sailed in without dramas.
What this all means, I think, is that your country of residence should not deter you from looking into buying a Kindle.
The Kindle DX's Missing Features
I love my Kindle DX, yet there are quite a few things that don't work the way I would like them to. In this section, as they come to the fore of my mind through repeated irritation, I plan to gradually add and present the features that I find lacking on the unit. To reach Amazon with feedback about the Kindle, the address is kindledx-feedback@amazon.com.More keyboard shortcuts. I can't live without keyboard shortcuts. At the very least, I need a shortcut to take me to the beginning of a book, and a shortcut to open the bookmarks window. I'd also like a shortcut to launch the experimental browser.
Nameable Bookmarks. What is the good of twenty bookmarks if I don't know what they are? Hello, Amazon! I love you, can you please allow me to name my bookmarks?
Editable Web Bookmarks. Not the same request as above—this has to do with bookmarked web pages. I need the ability to edit the URLs and titles of web bookmarks. Especially the URLs. Why? Because many web addresses you type redirect you to a different address, and the redirection page may not be the one I want to bookmark. For instance, at the moment there is no way to bookmark "m.gmail.com" on the Kindle DX. Fortunately, there is a nice workaround—read the section about enhanced web bookmarks.
EPub support. Yes, I can convert Epub books in Calibre, but why not just make Epub support a Kindle feature? On forums, I have read threads where people reported having bought Sony devices because they didn't want to be stuck with Amazon's proprietary format. A misunderstanding, perhaps, since conversion is always possible, but a misunderstanding that loses Amazons a number of customers.
More memory. I really don't want a measly 4 gigabytes on a $400 device: The year is 2010, not 2007. Give me at least 16GB so I can store some graphic-rich books I have scanned, as well as a decent selection of audiobooks.
How to Change the Typeface (font) on your Kindle
Kindle's native typeface is called PMN Caecilia. Don't look for it on your computer, it's not one of those that installs by default. If you want to buy the whole Caecilia "family" from Linotype or Monotype, it will cost you close to 400 dollars.Igor from Russia has posted a hack to change the fonts on Kindle. The article tickles me—though I would not dream of trying the technique myself, as I worry that it might compromise my favorite toy.
How to Change the Screen Saver Images on the Kindle DX and K3
I love the screen saver images on the Kindle DX and don't really want to change them. But I've come across several "hacks" that allow you to add or substitute your own images. These hacks invite you to flirt with danger—if anything goes wrong, you can say goodbye to your warranty… I haven't given in so far and I don't think I will! I can't report on the merits of the various techniques, but here are the most detailed pages I have read:Screen Saver Hack From ComicBase.
Screen Saver Hack Tutorial on the MobileRead website.
Changing your Kindle K3's Margins and Justification Mode
When your Kindle is connected via USB, if you have set your operating system to display hidden files, at the "root level" (the same level as the "documents" folder) you may notice a "system" folder. Somewhere in that folder, there is a file called "reader.pref".Apparently, on a Kindle 3, if you edit that file in a text editor, you can change the size of your default margins (some people like to reduce them) and add an option allowing you choose whether you want to justify text fully or to the left. I have tried these changes on my DX, and they haven't worked. I have also read that even on the K3, once you access certain menus, the default "reader.pref" file regenerates and the changes you have made disappear. But some people really like this trick.
I worry about describing procedures that could disturb your system's configuration, but if you want to take a chance, here is a message about the Kindle K3's justification and margin hack.
Dark Secrets
The Kindle DX has a number of features that we as end users are not really meant to access. These are best left to Kindle engineers and competent hackers. I am neither of these, and I abstain because I worry that one wrong maneuver could wreck my system.Besides, this ebook aims to focus on the "best Kindle DX and K3 tricks". The emphasis is on "best": there may be other tricks, but if they can ruin your experience, who needs to know about them?
Nevertheless, thirsting for knowledge is a natural tendency of our big brains… So I'll mention a few things that might quench that thirst.
Calculator
The Kindle DX and K3 have a clunky calculator function. From the Home screen, if you press the "Del" key to bring up the search bar, you can type in calculations—for instance "12/2"—then press the Enter key (the bent arrow on the right). The results appear at the top of the results screen.
Time and Date
If you ever forget what date it is, press the "Del" key to bring up the search bar, type "date" then press the Enter key (the bent arrow on the right). The date and time appear at the top of the results screen.
Expanded System Information
In the section about serial numbers, I mentioned that from the Menu / Settings screen, typing "411" brings up your serial number. Rejoice, because typing "611" from that same screen brings up more data than you could ever have use for. Typing "311" offers to switch wireless providers. And on the K3 (but not the DX), apparently, typing "711" displays wireless information.
Debug Menu
If you cruise through the back alleys of Kindle forums, you may hear of a mysterious "debug" menu. This is where I shut my ears and turn around because curiosity might just kill the cat.
USB Network Hack
I have been told that there is something known as the "USB Network Hack". If I understood correctly, with this hack installed, when you plug your Kindle into your computer, your device can surf the web at ultra-fast speed using the computer's connection—assuming you're not on dial-up anymore! I'm not sure why you'd want to surf the web on a Kindle when you have a computer nearby, but there you go.
Alternate Kindle Firmware
No, you didn't misread. A team of developers (whether you call them hackers or freedom fighters is your politics) has created a complete replacement for the firmware that Amazon ships with the Kindle. It's called Duokan. At the moment, the whole website is written in Chinese, but an English version of the interface was released in November 2010. The Mobileread forum's Duokan thread is a good source of information.
Apart from the mind-blowing idea of running your Kindle on a completely different operating system, there are several Duokan features that I find intriguing. Duokan reads Epub files, opening a world of conversion-free Epub book access. Users report that Duokan also handles PDF much more graciously than the original Kindle firmware, particularly with respect to tables of contents, page turning speed, bookmarking and zooming—the latter function thanks Duokan's ability to "reflow" the text in PDF files. Duokan also lets you darken the font of your PDF documents. Apparently, Duokan might be a great firmware if you mostly use your Kindle for reading PDFs. On the other hand, Duokan won't read azw files, the format of ebooks you buy from Amazon; but you can have a dual boot system…
As for me, I won't be loading Duokan anytime soon because I worry that installing third-party firmware would break Amazon's Terms of Service and void the warranty. Besides, Duokan is not open-source, and my paranoid side feels uncomfortable about giving an unknown team of developers access to my wireless device, and in particular to the books I've purchased on Amazon, to my private documents and to the experimental browser's settings, where some of my site passwords are stored.
Winning at Gomoku
I saved the best of the "dark secrets" for last: You can learn to beat your Kindle at Gomoku every time! But do you really want to know? If you are sure to win, you may not want to play anymore…
If you opt for knowledge, you can follow a clear and simple animation on the Win at Kindle Gomoku page on the instructive blog of Little Professor, a distinguished expert in undocumented Kindle features.
Kindle Forums
The Mobile Read forum is a fabulous resource for everything ebook, and Kindle in particular.Kindle Boards is an active forum brimming with Kindle enthusiasts. A great place to stay on top of everything Kindle.
Amazon also has its own discussion board in its "Kindle Community". If you only want to join one forum, this would not be my first choice. But if want to engage in in-depth conversations about Kindle accessories, this is the place.
Links
"Kindle DX Central" on Amazon. A good place if you need official information. For the record, to send feedback about the DX, the email address that sometimes appears on the screensaver is kindledx-feedback at amazon.Amazon also has a page dedicated to Kindle firmware upgrades.
Kinworm is a blog brimming with great tutorials for the K3.
Reversing Everything is a fascinating blog by Igor Skochinsky, who has discovered hidden features of the Kindle by opening up the device and doing a bit of reverse engineering.
Enhancing you image is a site by a Kindle customer who is passionate about how the Kindle's display should look.
Please Keep in Touch
Well, that's about it for now. My Kindle DX and K3 page is a living page, so I will keep adding material on the website (and its ebook version) as I discover new tricks.If you have enjoyed the ebook, I would be immensely grateful if you would visit its home, my Best Kindle Tricks, and share it on Facebook, link to it from your blog or bookmark it with Delicious.
Wishing you a fun day and happy kindling,
Smiles,
Andy
Would you like to be able to read this again at a comfortable pace? I offer this guide for free as a beautiful Kindle ebook. See the download link in the blue box at the top of the page.
www.smashwords.com
http://www.gutenberg.org/
