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Update on the New KINDEAL: So Far At Least, Kindle Deals Are Like a License to Print Money!

May 1, 2011 by KND

I mentioned in a post on Friday that in the first 24 hours with my new Kindeal, I was up $35.

Forty-eight hours later, the tally is up to $45, because today I responded to my Kindeal’s offer of a $20 Amazon.com gift card for $10.

Here’s the only tally that counts on these Kindle deals, in my view:

Cost of a Kindle Wi-Fi at Time of My Kindeal Purchase: $139
Direct Savings with Kindeal, as of May 11, 2011: $45.00
Number of Times a Kindeal Ad Has Interrupted My Reading: 0

Note to Amazon: I have no plans to buy a Buick or hundreds of dollars worth of Olay products, but keep those deals coming where I get what is essentially currency for half price and I’m your guy! At this rate, the Kindeal may save me $139 and pay for itself before it is one month old!

But that doesn’t mean that the Kindeal is the best deal currently on the table for a new Kindle. It’s strictly up to you, and here are the contenders including special “Mother’s Day” Gft Card deals:

Amazon Adds Audible.com Audiobooks to the Kindle Store for Direct Download to Complete the Expansion of the Kindle Content Delivery System for Audiobooks: No Cables, Computers, or USB Connections!

August 22, 2011March 24, 2011 by Steve Windwalker

Good news from Amazon today for Kindle lovers who, like me, enjoy listening to Audible.com audio books on their Kindles!

As we’ve been saying since last Summer, the latest-generation Kindles are fully ready for prime time when it came to playing nice with Audible.com audio books, which is as it should be since Amazon owns Audible. We posted here in the past about how you could buy Audible.com audiobooks on your computer — with the same account to which your Kindle is registered — and then find them as if by magic on your Kindle “Archived Items” listing so that you could download them wirelessly via wi-fi, with no cables or USB connections required.

The only thing that was lacking was direct access to Audible.com titles in the Kindle Store. We wrote to Kinley in the Amazon PR department last August 20 to ask when we could expect that, among other things:

It appears from the material in the user’s guide that Audible.com titles will be available directly through the Kindle Store. I’m wondering when this will be a live feature, and also if there will be a special announcement at some point during the week.

The Audible.com feature is going to create a lot of buzz, of course, around whether there will be another shoe to drop soon regarding direct purchase and download of music MP3s.

Kinley wrote back that “as for Audible, I’ll have to ask you to stay tuned.” We did, and as of today the Kindle’s in-built Kindle Store has been nicely built out to include over 50,000 Audible.com titles.

Just click on the Audible Audiobooks line at the upper right to search or browse for any of these books, select the one that’s right for you and click either the cash or credit buy button to begin automatic downloading via your latest-generation Kindle’s wi-fi connection.

Two important caveats:

Audiobooks are much more storage-intensive than Kindle books, and if you get five or six of these babies on your Kindle at once there may not be room for anything else.

If you are new to Audible.com, you are in for a treat, but I heartily recommend checking out the Audible.com website on your computer where you can find save a ton of money by buying credits in advance. I purchase the 24-credit annual plan and pay in advance and as a result each Audible.com title costs me just $9.56 — a lot less than I would pay for some of these books in the Kindle Store!

I also recommend going back to the October post on this subject for more details on how to get the most out of Audible.com audiobooks on your Kindle. So far this month I’ve listened to The Information, The Social Animal, and The Paris Wife on my Kindle for just $9.56 each.

Here’s the text of Amazon’s own blog post today on this subject:

The Latest Kindle Offers Wireless Delivery of Audible Audiobooks via Wi-Fi

by Kindle Editors on 03/24/2011

Now hear this! We’re thrilled to announce that more than 50,000 Audible Audiobooks are available for download on the latest Kindle via Wi-Fi delivery. Of course, owners of any Kindle device can continue to purchase Audible audiobooks from Audible.com and transfer the titles to Kindle via USB.

Audible offers two free audiobooks with a 30-day free trial of AudibleListener® Gold Membership. To get started, go to the Audible Audiobooks Store to view audiobook titles available for purchase from Audible, read by your favorite celebrities, authors and professional performers.

Hear Donald Sutherland breathe life into The Old Man and the Sea; Listen to Frank Brady recount the remarkable arc of Bobby Fischer’s life in Endgame; Kathryn Stockett’s The Help is illuminated by three different narrators who portray the maids and the white families they toil for in 1960s Mississippi…

Whether you enjoy histories or mysteries, romance, or sci-fi, the latest bestsellers or timeless classics, Audible has something for every discerning audiophile and bibliophile.

We’re watching of this carefully, of course. We’ve known for the last three years that Amazon has developed a great content delivery system for text, and it is also clear now that the Kindle is a great content delivery system for Audible.com audiobooks and, perhaps in time with greater storage capacity, other MP3 files. With the launch of the Amazon Android AppStore the other day, we can’t help but think as well that we are getting ever closer to the time when Amazon will roll out an Android-compatible Kindle-branded tablet that is a great content delivery system for text, audio, apps, and video.

It’s Here At Last! NOTEPAD: The Kindle App That We Have Been Waiting For

July 7, 2019March 17, 2011 by Steve Windwalker

Finally, a fast, easy-to-use Kindle App that’s a time-saving convenience rather than an invitation to waste time!

Notepad (A Note Taking Tool for Kindle) – Just 99 cents on Kindle!

With respect to active-content “apps” that we can run on our Kindles, I am a man of at least two minds. I’ll stipulate to the fact that every now and then after a spell of reading I enjoy playing a game to clear my mind. But for the most part I am a Kindle purist, and I use my Kindle for the purpose Jeff Bezos intended when he put it on this earth: Reading. Reading books by reading, reading books by listening, and reading and/or listening to magazines, newspapers, blogs, manuscripts, reports, and memoranda. For all of these purposes m I love my Kindle. For Solitaire, Texas Hold ’em, and Hangman? Not so much.

Now the good folks at 7 Dragons, led by Kindle Review founder Abhi Singh, have launched a brand new app — Notepad — that I will use every day to set down, keep, and check notes, reminders, lists, directions, and other written annotations that I will be able to access both on my Kindle and — with a quick USB transfer — on any computer. It was launched in the Kindle Store early this morning and as I write this it has already garnered six 5-star reviews, and it would be fair enough to consider this a seventh.

As I have written about various uses for the Kindle for well over three years now, I’ve occasionally noticed times when we tried out various Kindle features — using email and the web come to mind — more to see if we and the Kindle could do certain things than because doing such things was particularly convenient. But here’s a tool that does not slow you down at all, and integrates seamlessly with reading on the Kindle.

There are some excellent videos on its many features here, and some detailed, helpful support pages here, so I won’t burden this post with a lot more detail, but a few things are worth highlighting:

It uses text and text files. You can transfer notes to PC or text files to app.
It amazes me how fast the typing is with this app.
There are 2 Font types and 6 font sizes.
There is a wide array of menu-driven options for searching, saving, sorting, and backing up your notes.

I’m going to post about it as well at Kindle Kids’ Corner because kids will be able to make great use of the app for saving homework assignments, phone numbers, email addresses, addresses, and gift lists. (Don’t you want your kids to remember what you want for your birthday?)

And I’m happy to say that, as you can see in the screenshot at the right, I’m using it to plot out this week’s Kindle Nation weekly email newsletter.

(This is a sponsored post. We accept only Kindle-related sponsorships and exercise discrimination in selecting the best of those, so we hope you will consider our sponsors’ ebooks and apps.)

From the Kindle Nation Mailbag: Larger Font Sizes, and Text-to-Speech, for Easy Reading on the Kindle

July 7, 2019February 24, 2011 by Steve Windwalker

Thanks to Marilyn for writing in with a question that may be important for many readers:

I have an amazon kindle and I want to know how to change the size of the type to larger as I just had eye surgery and I would like to read without reading glasses Please help

Thanks

Marilyn Burstin

Marilyn, just to the right of the space bar, on the bottom row of your Kindle keyboard, there is a font key marked “Aa.” Press that key from within any Kindle book or text document and you should see a display like the one in the screenshot at the right. Across the top, in this screen shot from my Kindle 3, are 8 font sizes including a couple of very large options that should suit many visually impaired readers.

You can select the font size that is right for you by using the 5-way controller at the right of the Kindle keyboard, and your setting will remain in place for all Kindle documents that you read. Kindle apps for computers and mobile devices also offer similar font sizing.

Unfortunately, Amazon has not figured out a way to increase the font sizes in the way our Kindles display the inbuilt Kindle Store, our Home screens, and other pages like the Kindle’s settings page. Given how useful the Kindle can be for visually impaired readers, such an enhancement would be terrific.

Meanwhile, on that same font-size page on the Kindle 2, Kindle 3, and Kindle DX, you’ll also see a line that allows you to turn on Text-to-Speech, which will really give your eyes a rest if you can get used to the slightly robotic voice and the fact that some publishers continue to opt out of the program so that Amazon is forced to block visually impaired readers from being able to enjoy their books. As you can see from the post linked just below, I’ve found it possible to get used to that voice….

How do I love thee, Kindle Text-to-Speech? Let me count the ways.

August 17, 2011February 24, 2011 by Steve Windwalker

Kindle Text-to-Speech

How do I love thee, Kindle Text-to-Speech? Let me count the ways. I have named thee, with a little help from an eyebrow-raising Significant Other who may a time or two have looked askance as I rolled over and donned my headphones of an evening. I have named my Kindle’s voice Ursula. This imagined creature may or may not be disembodied, but she never seems to tire of reading to me, talking to me, entertaining me. When it’s just me, my headphones, and Ursula, of course, it’s all about me.

I will admit it: I love listening to newspaper, magazine, and blog articles, including my daily Instapaper dispatch, in the robot-speak of Ursula’s Kindle Text-to-Speech. Originally I was resistant to listening to books with Kindle Text-to-Speech, but Ursula aims to please. Her voices and pronunciations have been upgraded over time by Kindle’s Text-to-Speech partner, Nuance Communications, and I have grown accustomed to listening with comfort, enjoyment, and enrichment as she reads me free and paid books purchased in the Kindle Store, downloaded from the websites mentioned in this book, or sent to me by authors and publishers interested in having their work considered for Kindle Nation Daily sponsorships programs.

With the exception of those Kindle Store books whose publishers have specifically opted out of Kindle Text-to-Speech — and shame on them! — Kindle Text-to-Speech will read aloud to you from any book, newspaper, magazine, blog, manuscript, dramatic script, memorandum or other file that you can get onto your Kindle Home screen.

I’ve even sent recipes to my Kindle so that Ursula could read aloud to me while I was preparing Potage Parmentier in the kitchen.

And please don’t tell the Massachusetts state troopers, but I have even sent driving directions to my Kindle so that it could read them aloud to me in my car. I’ve gotten handy at using the space bar to pause the read-aloud process, but I run into problems if a segment of my trip is longer than 15 minutes, because Ursula does have a tendency to doze off beside me if she goes that long without speaking. Alas, now that we’ve heard the horror stories of Kindle owners being arrested for having an open Kindle in the car while driving, I must ask you to destroy this page of the Kindle edition of your book immediately after you read it. A Kindle, apparently, is every bit as dangerous to highway safety as an open bottle of beer.

But that’s just the beginning. Don’t tell Ursula, but there’s more, much more. To learn about Kindle’s other free audio features, check out Chapter 9 of Kindle Free for All, just 99 cents in the Kindle Store or $7.99 in paperback.

Kindle User Tip: The Kindle Clock – Setting and Finding The Time on Your Kindle

July 7, 2019January 22, 2011 by Steve Windwalker

Anne H. asked: when you set up the kindle it has a clock setting; how do I get it to show on my home screen?

Hi Anne,

Just press Menu from anywhere on your Kindle and your local time should appear at the top center of your display.

Then if you need to reset the time while traveling, etc., you can do that by pressing Menu from the Home screen, selecting Settings, and hitting the Next Page button.

One last tip: the time that displays on your Kindle is not a dynamic clock, so you will need to refresh by hitting Menu again from time to time, otherwise you’ll have all the time in the world to read! 😉

Cheers,

Steve Windwalker

Kindle Lending: Now Available For Free Books

July 7, 2019January 12, 2011 by Steve Windwalker

Here’s a wee bit of good news:

When Amazon first made lending available for Kindle books a few days ago, it did not appear that the feature worked with free books. That might not seem like a problem because, well, the books are free, right? But if people are going to get into the regular practice of ebook lending, they will want to be able to lend or borrow as many books as possible, without regard to what price it was at when they acquired it. (My thinking here is that a lot of the lending that folks will do with Kindle books will be similar to what many of us have done for years with dead-tree books: we lend them to people we care about because we hope they will read them. When that’s what is at work, price is often a secondary consideration to content.)

So I’m happy to report that an increasing number of the free books reported each morning in our Kindle Nation Free Book Alerts are showing up with Lending: Enabled under their Product Details heading. This morning I tried loaning a copy of Deadly Sanctuary to my friend Alter J. “Al” Eggo, and although he hasn’t claimed it yet, it appears that the offer reached him.

Why should I provide my email address?

It’s Giveaway time! Get a free bonus entry into our monthly raffle and check out Fortune and Fate: The Complete Justice Belstrang Mysteries by John Pilkington

Get ready to devour these yummy stories. Download now to steam up your Kindle all night long! Dark Romance Books for Adults: 5 Spicy Novels by Natalie Brolack

A crippling EMP strike thrusts the nation into disarray… Hidden Homestead: A Small Town Post Apocalypse EMP Thriller Boxset by Colton Lively

Fans of James Patterson or Michael Connelly will love Retribution: A Gripping Paranormal Thriller by C. M. Sutter

A steamy, emotional secret rockstar small town romance set in Colorado, where the nights are cold…but steamy! Love and Lies by Jade C. Jamison

A fascinating and shrewdly-observed world that you will savor like your first-morning bite of pain au chocolate… Once Upon a Villa: Adventures on the French Riviera by Andrew Kaplan

It’s Giveaway time! Get a free bonus entry into our monthly raffle and check out Balance Exercises for Seniors Without a Personal Trainer: Easy & Simple Routines For Fall Prevention, Improved Posture and Increased Confidence in Just 5 Minutes Daily by Ioannis Lekkas

One picture really can reveal more than 1,000 words. Tune Up (Detective Qigiq Book 2) by Joe Klingler

I never asked Hemi Te Mana to rescue me. . . . Fierce (Not Quite a Billionaire Book 1) by Rosalind James

Former firefighter Hines Cannon saved a life. But in the process, he lost his own. Just a Cowboy’s Fairy Tale (Sweet Western Christian Romance Book 9) (Flyboys of Sweet Briar Ranch in North Dakota) by Jessie Gussman

It’s Giveaway time! Get a free bonus entry into our monthly raffle and check out The Master Butchers Singing Club: A Novel by Louise Erdrich

Claire and her mother are running out of time, but they don’t know it… Life on the Refrigerator Door: Notes Between a Mother and Daughter, a novel by Alice Kuipers

Update on the New KINDEAL: So Far At Least, Kindle Deals Are Like a License to Print Money!

Amazon Adds Audible.com Audiobooks to the Kindle Store for Direct Download to Complete the Expansion of the Kindle Content Delivery System for Audiobooks: No Cables, Computers, or USB Connections!

It’s Here At Last! NOTEPAD: The Kindle App That We Have Been Waiting For

From the Kindle Nation Mailbag: Larger Font Sizes, and Text-to-Speech, for Easy Reading on the Kindle

How do I love thee, Kindle Text-to-Speech? Let me count the ways.

How do I love thee, Kindle Text-to-Speech? Let me count the ways.

Kindle User Tip: The Kindle Clock – Setting and Finding The Time on Your Kindle

Kindle Lending: Now Available For Free Books

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