KindleChat RSS Feed

Favorable reviews by those I've shown it to

johngwest@gmail.com — 2007-12-27T16:05:55-06:00

Well I have had it almost a month, the reading slowed over the past week, though I attribute that to the holidays. I went back to work yesterday, I threw my back out over the holidays and noticed I had not brought it with me today at lunch when I went to read. So far the looks are dying down as people have now seen me with it for a while but the first time someone sees it is always a conversation.

So back to the crux of my question I posted over at the forum, what are your reviews like when you show it off? Are they favorable? I had one neutral review that I did not count in my review as it was by a person whom I know to be contrary to all of my technical positions. I am a Mac fan, and he is a mac hater, he immediately went into a that's an ugly ipod, when I showed it to him he changed tact when he discovered it was not an apple product. All he had seen was that it was supposedly the ipod of books and assumed it was from Apple, that is hilarious to me. It shows that Apple advertising works too well as apparently people now just assume interesting products come from apple, great if your Steve Jobs or an apple shareholder I suppose.

But for all my positive comments I have received why did the Kindle info die so much from amazon? Why not tell us they sold 500 or 50,000? Wish the silence would be broken. Have you heard anything?

Yahoo kindle group down temporarily?

johngwest@gmail.com — 2007-12-27T15:06:53-06:00

I am sure not happy that the yahoo group is down but Welcome any newcomers to the kindlechat site. I would imagine it will be back soon as Yahoo is normally very reliable and responsive. Until then, by all means, the more the merrier.

I was wondering if there was room for two strong kindle forums and I guess my answer came with the fact that we have 46 members while the initial yahoo group grew to over 700. Hopefully it will be back online soon, but until then maybe we will get the critical mass we need to really get the kindlechat forums going.

The kindle image to the right is the link to the discussion forums over at google. Click there or Click here.

How to skip more than 1 page on a Kindle

johngwest@gmail.com — 2007-12-18T16:47:14-06:00

So I was recently using a book that did not have a table of contents nor chapter links, so I was being beaten down by the need to press next page over 40 times. I was wishing there was a feature that would allow you to jump ahead with more than just a single page. I just learned that you can jump 5% of the book forward or backward by pressing and holding the alt key and the next or previous page keys.

That is a great feature that I can't believe I missed, is it documented? Perhaps, but I found it while trolling the amazon discussion pages. The Amazon discussion pages are horrible, I would prefer google or yahoo to them any-day, you can't follow what's up most of the time. Anyway just a tip you might not have discovered.

Alt + prev or Next page skips 5% of the books length.

Kindle Battery Life

johngwest@gmail.com — 2007-12-13T13:58:53-06:00

So it has been 10 days and i have recharged my Kindle several times. I had the unthinkable happen last night, while in a bible study my Kindle power ran completely out and I was ... ARRRRGGGGHHHH ... unable to follow along. So it was Wednesday and I had charged it Monday morning and I had left the wireless on... so... it was probably about the amount of time Amazon has insinuated I would need to recharge the device.

As Amazon put's it "Long battery life. Leave wireless on and recharge approximately every other day. Turn wireless off and read for a week or more before recharging. Fully recharges in 2 hours." It does recharge pronto, but I had hoped to last longer. Yeah that sounds reasonable doesn't it... longer... but in any event how long are you seeing it last?

I let it charge completely and turned it on this morning at 9am, wireless is on so I'll update with how long mine lasts this time until it gives me the Yeah, I'm shutting down again message.

The need for a hard case

johngwest@gmail.com — 2007-12-13T13:19:21-06:00

What have you found for an aftermarket case for the Kindle. Nada. Bupkis. Amazon really pulled an apple apparently and didn't let anyone really know when it was coming out, nor that they might like an aftermarket to exist for it. I have a lot of ideas on how a case could be made for the unit and just wonder if anyone else out there is thinking first to market might be nice...

So if you know of a case maker give them a nudge or if you are aware of a case that is out there respond here and in the discussion pages. I bet they could sell at least 3/4 of us on an alternative tot he default case, which by the way is now out of stock as well.

The Current state of Bible reading on the Kindle

johngwest@gmail.com — 2007-12-12T09:44:51-06:00

One of the reasons I bought a Kindle was to allow me to carry my Bible with me and read it anywhere. So far it has been a blessing in this regard. Without needing to grab a specific version or carry additional books when I want to read something else the Kindle allows me to have my Bible with me at all times. I have a Great pitt-minion Cambridge bible that I had been carrying for quite some time that has served me well, but the kindle is an adequate substitute.

Why only adequate? Mainly because so far none of the publishers have had time to release a version that makes use of the Kindle's ability to hyperlink anything and create a wonderful wiki-like experience. So what is it like right now? If you want to read it is wonderful, I love the single column and the ability to adjust the font is a great feature that has allowed me to rest my eyes from the strain I used to have with my little Cambridge Pitt-minion (The name is from the smaller 9 pt font face and location it originated) NASB I carried before. The shortcoming is if you want to hop over to a parallel passage or even know exactly where you currently are in the text. The NET version is superior to either NIV in it's embedding of the existing chapter and verse throughout, but it lacks the links to actually get to the chapter from the book opening page, so if you want to get to chapter 10 of 1st corinthians your paging quite a while to eventually get there. In either of the NIV versions the chapters are located under the book name and then at each chapter.

So between the NIV and the Today's NIV the later has better typesetting currently, in the standard NIV the chapter numbers are the same font and size as the regular text and that makes it difficult to pick out where the chapters begin. Additionally in the TNIV the book headings and chapter hints are set off in a different font and I think it looks a little better. I have high hopes that when the publishers do an update that we will be able to benefit from the ability to re-download the versions to our kindles and have a change made by the publishers reflected. This is contrary to how real books work, you buy a book with a typo and it's there forever. We'll just have to wait and see.

I am currently working with two very special fellows over at Bible.org to produce an improved readers edition, the current one is only .99 at amazon and does not have the chapter links yet but at least is available. I have some ideas on how to make the experience better that I hope to test this week and then describe to Todd and Dave. If you have not tried the NET translation I would recommend buying it at the current .99 cent price and using it to simply read the bible as I am currently. The folks over at Bible.org are not trying to profit from the sale of this quality translation and even if the ability to release updates is not available I plan to purchase multiple copies to support their efforts in the ministry of spreading a translation that is available for free for teaching and instruction. If you want to see a number of pictures of the three versions I have tried with comments click on this link to see my photo page of Kindle Bibles.

Check in with your experiences at the discussion pages or here in the comments.

How to fill your Kindle for FREE

johngwest@gmail.com — 2007-12-07T14:01:53-06:00

Just discovered that manybooks.net now has kindle formated books available. If you have wondered what can I get to try my kindle out with that won't cost me anything, search no longer. Many (Ha, that's part of their name) of the books I read when I was younger and would consider great books for your own library are available at the site. I downloaded Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe and although it has about 7 pages of pretext explaining that the text came from the Gutenbug project and how you can contribute if you want to there is a coverpage picture and the text is all there. So in my mind score one for FREE.

There is a large number of books at manybooks.net that I wouldn't bother with but I plan on grabbing many of the classics that I haven't read or haven't read since I was much younger. "Frankenstien" by Mary Shelly or Bram Stokers "Dracula" were a few that I have never read the book but have obviously seen ton of retread movies related to them. One I do want to get is Treasure Island and Gulliver's Travels that I haven't read since I was 10, but there are really too many to list here. A large number of Shakespere's works, Poe, well far more than I had expected. So Kudos to ManyBooks.net for hopping on the bandwagon early and getting their collection converted so quickly, go check it out, I can't image you won't find at least one book you'll download.

Day 2 - A possible problem & How many kindles are there?

johngwest@gmail.com — 2007-12-05T13:26:11-06:00

OK, my kindle has locked up several times now. Up to now I had believed it was my SD card that I took out of my camera and placed in the unit. It worked but for whatever reason my Kindle would quit responding so i would pop the back cover and reset it. A note on that, in speaking with the very pleasant Kindle support folks in Kennewick Washington he said I should keep the button depressed for at least 5 seconds to allow the power to drain from the capacitors completely before restarting. Sounds plausible so I will make that my hopefully infrequent practice in the future. Just a bit of info for the rest of you.

Now serving 11,501...

When doing this it has not locked up yet again. And on another occasion I thought it had locked up but it was merely playing possum as my grandfather would say and just as I was about to pop the back cover it sprang to life turning the page. When speaking with the support rep we discussed several things but one of them I found very interesting. When your Kindle has a problem the EVDO modem allows them to remotely access the logs to determine what is happening. They are also able to upload patches and make changes to the firmware via this mechanism. Interestingly enough the front line support staff is unable to do any of this as they merely "Ping" as he put it the device and gather the logs in a format they are unable to read and forward them on to the "production support" group for review. So I thought that was pretty interesting.

The last thing I got out of the conversation was that the initial run of the units have the same serial number up to the last 6 digits, so there are definitely less than a million kindles running around out there. He said they had shipped a little more than 11,500 in their first shipping batch. I was part of a batch well after that, so again I wonder how many are running around out there now. My serial number ends in 73 1xxx, what are your first 3 of the last 6? That might tell us how many are out there. I'll post this in the discussions groups for your answer, head over there to reply. Let's see if we can find any 74 xxxx numbers, or greater to see if they actually mean what they imply. Don't post your entire serial number by any means just in case you could do something with them I am unaware of.

Initial kindle unboxing images & thoughts

johngwest@gmail.com — 2007-12-04T13:00:48-06:00

It came yesterday and I am still pretty excited. I know, why only still pretty excited rather that elated or overjoyed, I guess because I always over-expect and almost always manufacturers under deliver. But after 22 hours I am still very happy I bought a Kindle. I read last night on it until 2am, overslept and missed a breakfast meeting I regularly attend but it was great to get into reading again. What did I read last night... Well I bought oswald chambers "My utmost for his highest" and "streams in the Desert" two extremely good daily devotionals that I have never been able to read regularly because they were never with me when I had the time.

Additionally I purchased the NIV bible and as far as reading it it is Awesome. Yes that was a capital letter inappropriately placed there to draw attention to it. Was it awesome because of what I was reading it on, partly. I have always wanted a single column everything out of the way just let me read the word of God version and they are extremely elusive. To make it easier I was able to jack up the font and take off my glasses and burn through some pages getting lost in the story of Joshua taking the Israelites into Jericho and crossing the Jordan with dry feet. For that it was great. Now the part that dragged down the experience, I am pretty quick at being able to flip over to another area and refer to something. That's where the problem lies currently. The Kindle is really not just a book, it is in fact an electronic book with indexing capabilities and hyperlink capabilities that as of yet have not been taken advantage by the publishers. I am thankful that the International Bible Society and Zondervan have released a valuable text for christians to be able to read and enjoy. But I can't wait for a second generation version to come out where the possibilities of annotation, bookmarks, notes and hyperlinks are fully utilized.

That comes to my own experimentation, for several hours last night I tinkered around with the NET or New English Translation that was available in a doc format online from bible.org and was pleasantly surprised how readable it was with just a straight translation. Having spoken to a fellow there they are currently working on a new version for the Kindle that will take advantage of some of the features of the Kindle initially, followed by a release of their full blown annotated with over 60,000 translation notes and helps. When that becomes available I will definitely be moving to it as my daily reading translation. If your unfamiliar with the NET translation you owe it to yourself to take a look at the video explanation of what all is going on there. (Link to page with video and info) I included a shot above with my own efforts at allowing myself to switch sooner than latter.

I am extremely excited to have several book with me to read when I can. I am a little disappointed in the Time subscription I am trying an suspect I will cancel it before I have to pay for it. Ironically I have too much else to read. The Wall street journal will probably also go as soon as a local paper is available, but for now I have read yesterdays news and the days before and enjoyed the experience. If your waiting for your Kindle I suspect it will be smaller than you imagined unless you thought it was the size of a standard paperback. It is not is is the size of the larger paperbacks but was smaller than I feared when I saw the box it comes in. If you want to see my unboxing it is available here.

What has your initial experience been? Pop over to the Discussion forums and share your thoughts and experiences if you have the time.

Kindle hits ebay

johngwest@gmail.com — 2007-12-03T13:46:57-06:00

Do you know you have hit the big time when your product is available on ebay for twice the price it sold for originally? I know it is no sure sign of success for the product but it is a sure sign of greed and seeing how many of them are for sale leads me to think that a lot of people are keeping their kindles when they receive them. We're only half a month into the shipping of the kindles but I still had expected them to show up in force much sooner.

Perhaps the fact the device has eluded really being pinned down yet as to what the buyer profile looks like is very telling. They either aren't shipping very many at all, or there isn't a stereotypical buyer established yet. What kind of buyer are you?

Click on the link to answer in the Discussion pages.

Anticipation... the common Kindle ailment

johngwest@gmail.com — 2007-12-03T10:24:40-06:00

Update: IT'S HERE!

Yeah! Check tomorrow (SEE ABOVE) for my pictorial of the un-boxing and news of an upcoming new release of the NET Bible for Kindle.

Amazon says it is on it's way, a Photo slideshow of un-boxing if it indeed arrives today before lunch. (SEE ABOVE ARTICLE)
Still no kindle, apparently it did not arrive on our early AM shipment. It may just be taunting me but a Fedex truck just drove by. Drat, just a false alarm... (IT FINALLY ARRIVED AT 3:13PM... That's what 2nd day air will probably get you if your at an office like I was.)

A new age of self publishing

johngwest@gmail.com — 2007-11-29T10:01:21-06:00

What Amazon has created is nothing short of extraordinary and as of yet I have heard virtually nothing about it. The new Digital Text Platform site that they have prepared is astounding in that any individual or organization or company can register and receive assistance in the creation of a Kindle version of their work. Registering is easy and somewhat exciting when you realize you are also registering where for them to send the money when someone has purchased your work. Currently the terms under which you would operate once you have published can be seen here and it would appear that as the author you will receive 35% of the cover price. I am looking into the terms and conditions document and will probably see many things I will initially not like, but on first blush it still seems extremely easy to get a work published and into the largest electronic bookstore around.

If you have access to anyone that knows the print industry and can comment on these conditions please send me an email as I would be very interested in interviewing them perhaps for their thoughts on the agreement. Apparently it is a modification of the self publishing that was available for mobipocket books, but it seems to me having your work available at amazon.com would be a much larger incentive to electronically publish than a site that I head never heard of before the Kindle.

If you Hate the terms or Love them pop over to the discussion forums and leave your feedback. I have been toying with a book for almost a year now and can see myself plunging into it with a bit more enthusiasm now that I can really see it getting published. Self publishing is always an option but it was too expensive and I suspect that getting a self published book onto Barnes and Nobles shelves would be quite hard much less having the funds to front the creation of sufficient copies to get any momentum nationally. This format offers a new hope for people that would love to get their work out there, and if it is any good then it may actually prosper and see physical print publishing. For some reason that still seems like my ultimate goal as I am prejudiced to think that an e-Book is somehow less permanent than a true printed one. What do you think? Will that ever change?

Calling Amazon Kindle Support, come in Kindle support

johngwest@gmail.com — 2007-11-28T18:19:03-06:00

I just got off the phone with Kindle support from Amazon. It was amazingly simple, I went to manage my Kindle, the one that won't arrive until the 11th and clicked the Kindle support Tab. Then clicked Contact Us and selected the phone tab. I entered my number and clicked the call button and the phone just rang. Not like a while for them, I mean instantly next to me. I answered and it said It was amazon Kindle support calling please hold, then less than 10 seconds later I was speaking to a human asking what he could do for me.

My problem was I had just sent an email with an 11 MB word doc attached to it to the free conversion site at amazon. For those of you like me who thought it was .10 cents to convert any document, that is only true if you want it emailed to your Kindle directly. If you happen to be at home with your Mac or PC for that matter you can email it to your kindle name @free.kindle.com it will convert the doc nd send you back an email letting you know it is done. There lies the rub, it was a little to easy. The email says "?????@gmail.com has sent the following files to your Amazon Kindle free conversion account:"NETBible_Noteless.doc"". The email address is a mail link and the doc name is a link as well, but it never occurred to me to click on it. That was why i had called to find out where my mystery doc had gone, I had expected it to be at my Amazon library. But no, it just a link, click on it and your getting the file to your Mac, too easy.

I was amazed at the size of the converted document, it was 11 MB now it is only 3.8MB which makes me think the format is a compressed one. In any event the impressive feat was the ease at which i got a human to talk to me, and they had the answer, albeit a fairly easy one in a snap. Kudos to amazon for creating a non-800 number or toll number support solution that undoubtedly is making use of a voip back end, but who cares I was helped jiffy quick.

How hard is it to return an ebook?

johngwest@gmail.com — 2007-11-28T18:18:58-06:00

Well you need not worry about how hard it might be to return an e-Book to amazon. Same day service in fact. When purchasing a copy of the bible for my Kindle I chose what I thought was the tried and true NIV version. In fact when I received the bill I had indeed selected the "Todays NIV" a newer updated version. Now I have not read the Todays NIV and it may be fine but I did indeed want the other for sure so I used the customer support option again and sent an email this time. The question I posed was "Is it possible to simply switch the books out on their end or did I need to return the original". Their reply is below.

Hello from Amazon.com.

Thank you for writing about returning "Holy Bible, Today's New
International Version", which you recently purchased for your Kindle.
You can return any item purchased from the Kindle Store within seven
days of purchase.

I've requested a refund for the purchase and removed the item from
Your Media Library. If the item is still on your Kindle, please delete
that copy. After the refund is issued, you will no longer be able to
access it. I've included instructions for removing an item from your
Kindle below.

Refunds are issued to the payment method used to make the original
purchase and usually complete within 2 to 3 business days.

You can purchase the correct ASIN # B000FC2KBU at your earliest
convenience.

Information about making purchases and managing your content is also
available in the Kindle User's Guide on your Kindle or on our Kindle
Support pages here:

http://www.amazon.com/kindlesupport

Also, I appreciate that you took the time to include your feedback in
your email to us. It is very important for us to hear about your
experience using Kindle and shopping in the Kindle store. Strong
customer feedback like yours helps us continue to improve the service
we provide, and we appreciate the time you took to write to us. I've
passed your feedback along to the Kindle team.

I hope you found this information useful. Our goal is to help you get
the most out of your Kindle experience. If you need further
assistance, please contact customer support at 1-866-321-8851.

Thank you for choosing Kindle.

*****
HOW DO I DELETE AN ITEM FROM MY KINDLE?
To move or remove an item from your Kindle, follow these steps:
1. If you are not already on the Home screen, press the Home key.
2. Scroll the cursor to the Menu selection, and press the Select wheel.
3. Select "Content Manager" from the Home screen menu.
4. Select one or more of the items listed using the check boxes to the
right of each item.
5. Scroll down to the Menu selection, and press the select wheel when
you have finished selecting items.
6. Select "Remove Selected Items" from the Menu.
7. Select "OK" to confirm removal or "Cancel" to abort.

*****

This may seem like a small thing but making it as easy to return a book as buy it was really important to me. If I wander into Barnes and Noble and get a p-Book (Paper Book for those of you like me who didn't realize there was such an abbreviation, but I was exposed to it recently and thought it funny ;) ) if I get it home and have buyers remorse they will typically take it back the next day with out fuss. Amazons has done the same thing.

The only surprising thing that was said was alluded to in the beginning of their reply... "If the item is still on your Kindle, please delete that copy. After the refund is issued, you will no longer be able to access it." That would seem to indicate that items that are in the protected .azw format somehow phone home and see that they should not be used. At first blush I was mortified by this apparent phoning home, but upon reflection realize that is the nature of DRM (Digital Rights Management) and really should have expected it.

Since I did return the book it is only fair and correct that they have some way of insuring I do not continue to use it. I think that despite my Orwellian tendency to dislike any type of phoning home that this is exactly why I don't have to pay for the wireless portion of the device. I can see this type of action occurring in a great number of devices and portends the ability for a MP3 device to truly be a subscription device shutting off access on a timed or tethered function in the future. But more on that perhaps later.

For now buy all the books you want, if you really hate them within the first 7 days you can return them, pretty much hassle free. How long will that policy remain unchanged? With the ability to shut them off by DRM perhaps a while, but there are some pretty fast readers out there. How long before we can simply rent a book?