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From the Kindle Nation Mailbag: Printing a Recipe from Kindle for Mac

And thanks again to Kindle Nation’s own Al M. of Bardstown for another Kindle for Mac app challenge:


Steve, I have installed the Kindle for Mac on my MacBook and tried it out. The font size adjustment is really good with huge fonts and the highlights from the book that I downloaded has yellow highlighting where I had underlined on the Kindle version. However I cannot print or select anything, so if I want a recipe for example, I have to highlight it on the Kindle and then print if from My Clippings.

Al, I doubt that we will see any simple, straightforward print-enabling with the Kindle for Mac or Kindle for PC apps any time soon, but if all you are looking to do is to print out a recipe now and then for your strictly personal and non-commercial use, this should work pretty well.

Find a recipe in like the recipe for Sangria at locations 1,245-1,258 of the Kindle edition of my former college classmate Martha Rose Shulman’s Mediterranean Harvest cookbook. Position it appropriately on your Kindle for Mac screen and use the COMMAND+SHIFT+4 command to capture a screen shot of the area that you want to print. Once you initiate the command you’ll see an icon that lets you know you can press down on your mouse in one corner of the capture area and release the mouse when you have moved it (and the shaded area that you are creating) to the diagonally opposite corner. When you release the mouse you’ll hear a cool little sound like the one made, I think I recall, by a camera shutter.

Then just use the Mac’s Preview application to locate and open the screen shot and you’ll see something like this:

From within Preview, you should then be able to select “Print” from the File pull-down menu, make sure that you’ve chosen Landscape orientation (I always like a nice landscape with my Sangria), and in a moment or two you should have a printed copy of the recipe, for your personal and non-commercial use only, of course.

From the Kindle Nation Mailbag: Zooming in on Graphics with Kindle for Mac

Thanks to long-time Kindle Nation citizen Al M. for writing in with a couple of challenges that he faced while beginning to use the new Kindle for Mac App. Here’s one:

I see no way to increase the size of graphics. Right click does nothing. I was looking forward to being able to see things that were just too small on the Kindle, but his does not solve that problem, I have to use a magnifying glass on both. PDF files are best viewed in the original file on the computer using Reader or Preview as one can print pages, copy/paste and magnify the whole page, pictures included.

Al, it’s true that for now there’s no onboard “Zoom” feature with the Kindle for Mac app, but there is a relatively straightfoward work-around that may keep you from having to get out the magnifying glass. This suggestion could become rather tedious if you were forced to use it too repetitively, but it is a simple and pretty quick way to magnify and get a better look at any image (or small print that renders as an image and therefore is resistant to font-size increases) in a Kindle book.

Just use the COMMAND+SHIFT+4 command to capture a screen shot of the very specific area that you want to enlarge. Once you initiate the command you’ll see an icon that lets you know you can press down on your mouse in one corner of the capture area and release the mouse when you have moved it (and the shaded area that you are creating) to the diagonally opposite corner. When you release the mouse you’ll hear a cool little sound like the one made, I think I recall, by a camera shutter.

For example, I’ve just used the same command to select and capture a relatively small screen shot of Ty Cobb’s head from location 41,861 of the Emerald Guide to Baseball 2010 by The Society for American Baseball Research (SABR),  which I mentioned was (and still is) available for free download in this post from mid-February:

All well and good, but what if, for some twisted reason of my own, I want to get a much better look at Mr. Cobb’s right eye?

Simple. I just use the Mac’s Preview application to locate and open the screen shot and then, with half a dozen repetitions of the COMMAND++ command (or “Zoom In” from the View pull-down menu), and I’ll be literally “eye to eye” with Ty:

Hope that helps!

By the way, I love how that Emerald Guide to Baseball 2010 by The Society for American Baseball Research (SABR) with all its stat tables renders in the Kindle for Mac environment. I just sent the huge 101 MB PDF file to my me@free.kindle.com address with the word “convert”, without the quotation marks, in the subject field, and the following email was in my inbox less than two minutes later:

Your Amazon Kindle documents are here

Inbox X

Amazon Kindle Support

 to WindwalkerBooks

show details 2:44 PM (34 minutes ago)

Dear Stephen Windwalker,

hppress@gmail.com has sent the following files to your Amazon Kindle free conversion account at no charge:
EmeraldGuideToBaseball2010v2.pdf.azw

You can download the file(s) here EmeraldGuideToBaseball2010v2.pdf.azw, then transfer the file(s) by connecting Kindle to your computer over USB.

Sincerely,

Amazon Kindle Support

Please Note: This e-mail was sent from a notification-only address that cannot accept incoming e-mail. Please do not reply to this message.

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Brand new "KINDLE FOR MAC EXTRA" issue of free Kindle Nation newsletter at http://bit.ly/awXtdH

Greetings from Kindle Nation
A funny thing happened yesterday: Amazon issued a press release.

No, it wasn’t about the launch of a SuperKindle, or even the long-awaited Kindle for Mac app. Nope. Yesterday Amazon put out a press release entitled “Amazon Adds More Great Books for Cooks and Epicures to the Kindle Store.” It was the first Kindle-related release from Amazon in nearly a month, and I’ll admit to feeling a tad non-plussed when I read it. Nothing against cookbooks, mind you.

But then I got to thinking. Covering Amazon and the Kindle as I have been doing for the past couple of years requires a willingness, occasionally, to read between the lines, since Amazon has precious little to say about what it is planning for the Kindle, or anything else for that matter, at any given time.

So, long story short, I’m not saying that I read Amazon’s release yesterday and sussed out today’s Kindle for Mac launch. But whereas I usually rise at about 5 am to begin working on the day’s Kindle Nation Daily posts, this morning I rose at 3:30 and immediately checked my inbox for Amazon’s latest news release, which was there and, of course, announced the Kindle for Mac. Even so I was three hours late to the party, but I hope you’ll agree that the our take on the news and what it means for Kindle reading is worth sharing with you, beginning right now, in this brand new Kindle Nation Extra at  http://bit.ly/awXtdH