Customer workaround for user-definable folders

This is a popular blog-article which is being highlighted for newcomers and Kindle-blog edition subscribers.  During my vacation I'm including the more popular tips and guides. Kindle-blog edition subscribers will not have had these on their Kindles before and the subscription (99c per month) allows offline-review of the last 25 blog articles.

Original blog posting was May 24, 2009
In general, E-Readers that double as portable libraries really require a customizable folder feature.  Amazon recently extended the folder concept on the Kindle 2 for 1) "Archives" (which are for Amazon-purchased books already read and deleted from the Kindle but re-downloadable, free, from the customer's Amazon library area at any time via a click on the title in the Archives) and for 2) non-current periodicals.  They've always had folders for subscription newspapers and magazines (though not usually for blogs).

 The Kindle 2 (and Kindle DX) also has options for displaying 1) only books, 2) only subscriptions, 3) only "personal docs" or 4) all items.  These are also then sortable by Most Recent, Title, and Author (and searchable with the last two).

  However, as with bookstores and libraries, Kindle users have wanted user-definable dividers for categories such as Unread, Finished, Mystery, Non-Fiction, Romance, Biography, Self-improvement, etc.

  While this could make the process slower for displaying all books or less direct than finding a title or author by typing the first alpha-character and pressing the 5-way button, there's no question that categorizing books is a primary organizational tool when you have a lot of books and magazines.

Until the day that customer-defined folders are offered, customers have been recommending workarounds by using the "add-note" feature available for Kindle books.  

CUSTOMER WORKAROUND
An official Amazon Customer Service Forum post on March 5, 2009 stated:

' Kudos to Kindle Community member Bufo Calvin for this tip!
  With the ability to add notes to your Kindle 2 content and search for specific words or phrases on your Kindle 2's Home screen, you can categorize content by genre or other personalized terms.

' Open up one of your books, select Add a Note or Highlight, and enter in a word (or words) you'd like to categorize by - genres such as history, fantasy, biography, etc.  Try putting your initials or a common letter such as "x" before the word, "cshistory" or "xfantasy" for example.  Save the note you chose to enter.

' Now go back to your Home screen and type in the word you just used for your note.

' Once you've typed it, move your 5-way controller to the right and click on "Search My Items."  You'll see the book you just added the note to appear.

'  If you've added that note in multiple books, each one will appear in your search results. '

Note that this method is called "tagging" your book or "labelling" it.  This simulates folders except that it's more flexible.

  If you want a book for which two tag-words should exist together, then you can search for both words.  Only those books tagged with both words would show up in the results.

 Mainly, you won't find a word like "xwhatever" in any of your books, so this brings up only the books specifically tagged by you.

This does work for the Kindle 1 also, but the older model may take a day to index the 'tag' additions so that they're findable.  The Kindle 2 takes only a couple of minutes to do this.

 Amazon customers discuss various aspects of this in a current forum thread.  Robin McLaughlin located customer service's recommendation of Calvin's suggestion; "Laura" points out she posted this workaround at the same time and that many customers have thought about this.  "Tillamook Bay / lg" cautions that this system does not work with books done in the special Topaz format, which uses specially embedded fonts and is not searchable (nor can we change the line spacing in these).  The file extension can be .tpz or .azw1 but is essentially the Kindle format with slightly different description fields.
  UPDATE 8/17/09: I just learned that Tillamook Bay (Larry Goss) was using this workaround in September '08 based on another forum note he read earlier.

Mild shortcut for general searching:
Normally, when reading a book, you can bring up the Search box by pressing the spacebar.  If you're at the "Home" listing page, press the Enter key instead.

When typing in a keyword for a search while the 'action' on the right side says "find my items" (the default) or if it is already on the action you want ('google' or 'Wikipedia' etc), you need only press the Enter-key under the DEL key.

Otherwise, you need to 5-way over to the right and then press down on the 5-way.
  If the action for the keyword is not what you want (google, store, wiki, dictionary) then 5-way right, through some more options until you find the one you want to search.

My No-Hands-On Photos of Kindle DX at Work

There are about 20 photos at my KindlePlus page.  The link goes to a gallery of thumbnails, and you can click on any one of them for the larger version.

  It's easier, after clicking on a thumbnail photo, to continue by just pressing "Next" (or "Previous") at the top-right of each image. Going back to the thumbnails takes more time.
  Sometimes the photo-hosting site is slow; if so, it's better to try another time.

  If you have a question about any image, you can leave a note in the lower left-hand area of the image page.  Email addresses are not needed, but there's a delay on the postings of questions to minimize spam.

  If you are using Windows, you can toggle the F11 function key to get full screen by temporarily hiding the toolbars.  When you're finished, press the F11 key again to get the toolbars back.

I took pictures of the Kindle DX screen displays when browsing the web, as I wanted to see how much of a help the Landscape mode is. As with some PDFs, quite a help!

  But it re-loads the page from scratch!, so I won't be doing it that much.

I neglected to take a shot of one key PDF page (one that's in tiny print) in Landscape mode to show how much larger the text can be under the right cirumstances. Will add that later.

We've seen enough photos of the DX by now, but I've also added a couple of pictures showing it displaying the same book or web page as either the Kindle 1 or the Kindle 2 though I can't begin to do justice to the very solid dark, clear font of the DX.

UPDATE: 7/7/09 - 3:25 PM - I finally realized that since I had the DX in a smaller font when presenting it next to the K2 and K1, that was not an especially good way to show it.  The DX's default #3 font is larger than the Kindle 2's (which does make the DX look even bolder too) so I had gone down to #2.

  I will take a couple of more images later so that it'll be a fairer representation of spacing, instead of the very crowded page I showed.  In person, the #2 font is so sharp it didn't occur to me that it was too small for photographing.
  Also, will add a couple of night-time pictures with the Mighty Bright light attached to the Kindle. Should be up in a couple of days.

---

Earlier related postings:
. Kindle 1 vs Kindle 2 comparison photos on same material.
. The Kindle 2, out and about.

Sidenote:  PBase also has my travel images, from near and far, at http://www.pbase.com/andrys, for any that might enjoy that kind of thing.

Colored Kindles ? For that price ?

Color your Kindle for a pittance?   'Only' $200 to redo your current Kindle 2 and $600 for a new one (and try turning that one in within the 30-day period).  I thought this story was just a joke at first, but apparently not.

They do this for all kinds of gadgets but the Kindle 2 was added to the bunch on May 1.  Did someone say something about a recession?

For those with less $ to toss, try DecalGirl skins - Average $15, very popular with Kindle users, and you don't have to be stuck with one color.