Kindle Tip for all Kindles (Images) + San Francisco Bay Area dark again

I realize this is all getting pretty old, and I agree. Sitting here in complete darkness for hours again is no fun.

Power came back about 5 times but not Comcast ... then Comcast said it would be back in a few hours and then all the electricity went out yet again.

Normally I'm here briefly with the Kindle 3 or what's known as the Kindle Keyboard (UK: KK), but my new Samsung Galaxy 3G now provides tethering and acts as a WiFi router for my Kindle Fire, so I'm coming in that way and it's faster.

However, all my notes for the blog are on the main computer so I'll need to start backing that kind of thing up from now on to a dropbox so I can pull them down as needed, as this happens too much in this area lately.

It IS amazing to me that a little phone can provide WiFi to the Kindle Fire though.

A SMALL KINDLE TIP FOR NOW:
Images -- on the various Kindles, when reading Kindle Books
One thing that the Kindles can do that most other e-readers can't, when you're reading an e-book, is to allow you to use a small picture in the book so that it fills the screen--very good if a photo was published in higher resolution as many are today.


Kindle 1 - Put your silver column-cursor next to the area that would be the center of the image and click on the scroll wheel.  It'll show you a pointing hand image in the center if it acts as a link to an Internet web site, and it will also display the magnifier/zoom-in icon that you can click on to enlarge the image to fill the screen.

  If it has text it'll be much easier to read and if the photo is in high enough resolution, you'll see more detail in general.  The feature was added some time after the Kindle 2's had it.  When you've finished viewing the image, pressing any key will exit the full-screen image.

Kindle 2 and 3 - With the direct screen access that came to Kindles with the release of Kindle 2, you can just move the screen cursor into the center of the image, which will then display what the Kindle 1 does. Click down on the 5-way navigation button when the cursor is on the magnifier icon.  Even the smallest picture will then fill the screen.  Then click any key to end the full-screen viewing.

Kindle 4 Basic - I don't have the Kindle 4 Basic but it probably works the way the Kindle 2 and 3 do. Let me know.

Kindle Touch
TOUCH procedures are quite different.  With the Kindle Touch, touching any area of the screen except the top edge -- which brings up options at top and bottom -- will merely take you to the next or previous page.

  As mentioned last week, touching the left side of the screen brings up the previous page, and touching from the the center area to the right edge takes you to the next page.  This segmenting of the screen surface favors those who use mainly the left hand for single-handed reading.

To enlarge a picture or illustration, you do a very light long-press (instead of the page-turning short press) until you see a reverse image (white info on dark, like a photo negative) and a magnifying glass appears.  Lightly tap the magnifying glass icon, and the picture will fill the screen.  To end it, tap anywhere on the screen.

Kindle Fire
With the Kindle Fire, while reading a book,  you can just double-tap an image and the KFire will put it into landscape mode if needed and center the image if it's too small to fill the screen.
  At that point, you can then pinch zoom the image [using two fingers on one point  on the surface and  spreading them apart to cause an expansion of the screen contents] to zoom in to see more detail.  When done, tap the 'X' at the top right corner.

Life in the Dark
WELL, as I was typing the Kindle Touch portion, my lights finally came on again.  Comcast was still down, and my computer screen said that the Cooling Fan was not responding, and it was hung up.  What a great night.

   Needing some kind of reward, I grabbed an ice cream, took a break and reset the computer, which apparently restarted the fan, and now Comcast is up.  So I'm finishing this on a nice computer keyboard, which I don't appreciate enough until I have to use a virtual keyboard on a tablet or a laggy physical keyboard attached to a tablet.

Sorry for all the delays.   Will definitely catch up on the free-books log of forum alerts and will get that back on a more regular basis.  But I also have more interesting tips coming up on slightly more esoteric matters.



Kindle Touch 3G   Kindle Touch WiFi   Kindle Basic   (UK: KBasic)   Kindle Fire
Kindle Keybd 3G   (UK: Kindle Keybd 3G)   K3 Special Offers   K3-3G Special Offers   DX

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Check often: Temporarily-free recently published ones
  Guide to finding Free Kindle books and Sources.  Top 100 free bestsellers.  Liked-books under $1
UK-Only: recently published free books, bestsellers, or £5 Max ones
    Also, UK customers should see the UK store's Top 100 free bestsellers.

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Amazon quietly acquires Charlotte voice-to-text startup Yap ? Why? Update

The Atlantic reports that "I See Your Siri and Raise You a Yap: Amazon Quietly Snaps up Speech-Recognition Startup"

Information digger Edward Boyhan sent a heads-up on stories about Amazon's apparent acquisition of the Charlotte voice-to-text startup, Yap, as shown by an SEC filing which seems to have been completed in September,  although The Alantic's senior editor Alexis Madrigal reports that no public announcement has been made by either Amazon or Yap.  Igor and Victor, the Jablokov brothers, founded Yap in 2006.

  The Washington Post article, by The Verge, cites Charlotte's CLTBlog, as does the earlier Atlantic story Wednesday morning (10 a.m.).

CLTBlog is the original source, and many subsequent stories are referencing The Atlantic story because that's where the story was first noticed.

As Madrigal points out that although Amazon isn't mentioned by name, "Yap merged with a company called "Dion Acquisition Sub" (Yarmuth Dion Inc.), that "just so happens to be headquartered at 410 Terry Avenue in Seattle, Washington, an Amazon.com building."  This would be Amazon's first small step, Madrigal adds, into voice control, a feature missing from Amazon products.

  Also missing is a microphone in any of the new Kindle devices.  The only microphone available in a Kindle currently lies dormant in the Kindle 3 (Wired.com story by Tim Carmody), which is the August 2010 Kindle now sold under the name Kindle Keyboard  (UK: Kindle Keyboard also)  to differentiate it from the Kindle Touch models.

  CLT Blog's Justin Ruckman explains that Yap Voicemail "was a Google-Voice-like transcription app available for iOS and Android" which he used for over a year when it was in private beta -- so he was surprised to receive a notice that the service would be discontinued in a matter of days.  Considering the scope of its intellectual property and the lack of voice-recognition technology in Amazon's Kindles, it seems a smart move for both companies.

  The Washington Post, using The Verge story by Sam Byford adds that Microsoft had previously used the Yap technology for its Talk to Text BlackBerry app.  Is Dion Acquisition Sub Inc a "shell company"?

  There are more details about Yap, the company, in the stories linked above.

The most interesting article is, once again, by Tim Carmody for Wired's Epicenter.  He points out that it's unlikely that Amazon has its eye on competing with Apple's Siri (the much-discussed voice-driven interface for iPhone).

  Reason? Yap isn't very much like Siri -- Yap's specialty is transcriptions while Siri's is artificial intelligence, Carmody notes.

' Apple packages Siri’s core software with third-party search and transcription services to extend its functionality, which leads to some overlap (like voice-based text messaging).
  The heart of Siri, however, is the AI that strips human language for meaningful phrases and transforms them into actionable commands.
  Unless Yap is hiding something deep within its labs that they’ve never shown to anyone, the company doesn’t have anything quite like that. '

  What Yap DOES do though, and "very well," Carmody says, is cloud-based voice transcription:

' i.e., literal, word-for-word rendering of speech into text, at very high volume with very high accuracy but at very low cost.

  It can do this with direct dictation or recorded speech, with something as short as a text message or voicemail or as long as an entire keynote address.  Transcribed speech can then be used for search, commands, or output directly into a document.

  The closer analog to Yap then, isn’t Siri, but Nuance, the company behind Dragon’s collection of voice applications for desktop and mobile, and whose engine powers the speech-to-text component of — you guessed it — Siri. '

See Carmody's full article for his detailed, explained listing of what he sees as Amazon's possible reasons for its interest in Yap technology, arranged from most to least likely.

  These include 1) "licensable patents and other IP";  2) added user interface to aid search in its mobile applications, etc.;  3) a cloud company with matching robust cloud services, high-quality automated voice-to-text transcription;  4) commodity transcription services at competitive pricing for a cloud-computing, supercharged Yap; and  5. An Amazon Android-based smartphone "secretly" in the works  (I don't find this at all unlikely - the Lab126 job ads seem to point to that

I don't find #4 unlikely either.  Anyway, do see Carmody's full article at Wired.

  Update: @tcarmody replied at Twitter that
  'FWIW, I don't think 4) is "unlikely," exactly, just that the Yap acquisition isn't very good evidence for it.' 
   Notice that a Twitter status tweet now also shows the tweet that prompted a Twitter reply.



Kindle Touch 3G   Kindle Touch WiFi   Kindle Basic   (UK: KBasic)   Kindle Fire
Kindle Keybd 3G   (UK: Kindle Keybd 3G)   K3 Special Offers   K3-3G Special Offers   DX

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Check often: Temporarily-free late-listed non-classics or recently published ones
  Guide to finding Free Kindle books and Sources.  Top 100 free bestsellers.  Liked-books under $1
UK-Only: recently published non-classics, bestsellers, or £5 Max ones
    Also, UK customers should see the UK store's Top 100 free bestsellers.

  *Click* to Return to the HOME PAGE.  Or click on the web browser's BACK button

Kindle news - 6/20 Nook Touch vs K3. Software hack

KINDLE NEWS OVER THE WEEKEND

MOBILE TECH REVIEW posted an announcement and description of its usual, very thorough video comparison of e-readers, this time of the Nook Simple Touch vs the Kindle 3.  The video takes almost half-hour to view because they go through all the features for each e-reader, comparing their pro's and con's.  They explain that they look at these elements:

  . books,
  . highlighting
  . the dictionary
  . PDF support
  . buying books
  . text clarity   (not a small thing, w/ Pearl screen capabilities)
  . reading features.

Their full written review will follow next week.  This was of interest to me because I hadn't seen any other news-site "reviews" yet that paid attention to anything but the TouchScreen interface, and -- while it is the key factor for many people because it does make navigation easier -- the effectiveness of an e-reader for people who read many books and periodicals is a lot more than that.

 It seems that many who look mainly at hardware don't pay attention to the other 4/5ths of a user's guide that will deal with the many reader options and explain the functioning of features that are very useful for book clubs and for classes but also for people who like to make notes about their reading or who like to look up more info while they're reading, with the ability to get back to that page with the press of a Back button.

  That your highlighting and notes can be easily lost without backup beyond the device's dependence on what happens with an e-book (accidental or premature deletion) and the lack of a method for transfering those notes to your computer (for use with a text editor or for printing or just for backup) is getting too 'simple' for my tastes.  But Amazon's 'cloud' has provided these capabilities for 4 years.  Beyond this, they added an extra copy of your web-readable annotations in a Kindle owner's private Amazon web page, organized by book.

The video review is at YouTube but can also be seen at MobileTechReview's forum.  (Those using Kindle blog-editions to read this can't run videos of course.)

The feedback at YouTube is mainly happiness at how thorough the reviewers are and there's little of the blind-siding with either device because the review goes into so much detail.  I did see there, and at MobileRead.com, that viewers of the video report end up discussing the merits of each without just going into the side-taking that's normally seen.

CONSUMER REPORTS also posted their results of a review of the Nook Simple Touch (NST) and the Kindle 3 (K3).  The new Nook "beat" the Kindle 3G model by 1 point, though the Touch capability is a strong factor.  So one can wonder how it did in other areas.

But to an extent, it makes sense that the Touch Screen makes the difference and the other factors are less important (especially when they're not mentioned).

  Oddly enough, CR stresses that the new Nook is "emulating Amazon's focus on reading with minimal fuss and extra features and adds, "The Simple Touch drops those bells and whistles and the second screen.  As a result, it (like the Kindle) successfully "gets out of the way and disappears and lets you get on with your reading..."

That is bizarre because the Kindle 3 has a plethora of very useful features that the Nook has dropped from what it put into its original Nook Classic a year ago or that it never had at all.  Consumer Reports is normally known for looking at a myriad of features that, together, make a product what it is, but in this case they looked mainly at the type of navigational control, as if just driving a car a certain way would be the sole concern while not caring how the car functions along the way when there are several things you hope it will do well if at all. [Edited to correct a word choice.]

  In this case a car radio would be an unnecessary extra feature (the Nook dropped its mp3 player and ALL audio and has no speakers), and while its original Nook Classic had a GPS-like unit that would guide you to various web sites and allow you to download books from other stores, that is not functioning in this model, at least, and B&N shows it (the web browser) as non-existent, mainly because it fails at doing the most basic things and is therefore hidden.

  For one thing a web browser, while you're reading, can take you to a library (Wikipedia or Google) for more info on a subject.  One of the features that the Kindle allows free via normally-expensive 3G cell phone networks, in 100 countries, is access to Wikipedia FROM the page you are reading, for a search word or phrase.

  For students of any age, that free, 3G cell phone network access to Wikipedia (or Google) is no small feature, and it's been present since 2007 on the Kindle.  I've little doubt that if other e-Ink readers gave customers this feature for no add'l charge via 3G, a review would heap praise on it and not consider it not worth a mention.

  But the Nook is US only, for purchasing Nook books, so is relatively limited and that's not particularly known either.

For those interested in the actual features that were made for people who love to read, see both my Features-Comparison and, for sure, the MobileTechReview video of the features of both e-readers, as it's a very balanced report, giving credit to each where due.

  The depth of the look via that video means there is less hype over just one product feature and less reliance on weight to today's library-lending when Agreements have been announced that the Kindle will be participating in that but, unlike most ereaders, there'll be no additional software to be downloaded or required, and the borrowed books will be delivered over Wifi without the arduous Adobe 3 DRM rights-protection method that requires using a computer and an extra piece of software to do the library borrowing.  However, Amazon came from behind on that one and since it's not ready as of today, that's fair game.

Here's the interesting reaction by the Mobile Read forum crowd to the Consumer Reports evaluation.  It's of interest because it's not a group wedded to any particular e-reader but they are a tough, knowledgable crowd.


KINDLE 3.1 SOFTWARE HACK FOR OLDER KINDLES
First, I'm not recommending that anyone reading try this, since it not only violates the usual Terms of Agreement but it is also not a piece of cake for most and you could wind up with a non-working Kindle instead of an improved one.

  I just came across PC World's story about a software patch that opens up older Kindles to new features such as enhanced PDF support and better web browsing.  See the PC World story by Chris Brandrick for the details.

  More than anything, it's a strong sign that Amazon is long overdue on providing a software update for its Kindle 2 and DX models but especially for the expensive DX Graphite (which has the Pearl screen capability that the Kindle 3 has and was released only a couple of months before the Kindle 3).  The natives are restless.


"AFTER DISCOVERING THAT PEOPLE DO ACTUALLY STILL READ, APPLE DECIDES TO BE A LITTLE NICER TO PUBLISHERS"
Ad Age's Simon Dumenco writes an entertaining story about what has happened in the e-reader world since Steve Jobs originally told the NY Times's John Markoff that the Amazon Kindle was doomed because "It doesn't matter how good or bad the product is," he'd said. "The fact is that people don't read anymore.  Forty percent of the people in the U.S. read one book or less last year.  The whole conception is flawed at the top because people don't read anymore."

  While he provided a tablet for web-browsing, video watching, and games, it also allows the unusual reading-users an area also.   And now, Dumenco adds, "the next version of the iPad operating system, iOS 5, will finally have a unified home for all your iPad newspaper and magazine subscriptions: something called Newsstand."


JOHN LOCKE IS THE FIRST SELF-PUBLISHED AUTHOR TO SELL OVER 1M E-BOOKS THROUGH AMAZON
The Bookseller's Lisa Campbell reports that John Locke is the first self-published author to join what Amazon has dubbed the Kindle Million Club.  Here's his Amazon page.

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For daily free ebooks, check the following links:

Temporarily-free books - Non-classics - USA: by: NEW:  Apr  May  June 2011    Publication Date   Late-listed    Bestselling   High-ratings UK: PubDate   Popular What is 3G? and "WiFi"?       Battery Care Highly-rated under $1,  Newest: $1-$2, $2-$3

Most Popular Free K-Books U.S. & Int'l (NOT UK):    Top 100 free UK-Only:    Top 100 free USEFUL for your Kindle (U.S. only, currently):   99c Notepad 1.1,   99c Calculator,   99c Calendar,   99c Converter

Kindle 3's   (UK: Kindle 3's)   K3 Special ($114)   K3-3G Special ($164)   DX Graphite

A Look at Nook, Kindle, Based on Twitter Chat? Libraries lending Kindles - UPDATE2

A COUPLE OF INTERESTING STORIES

Today, a strange piece of research by Crimson Hexagon on the relative frequency of chatter about various ereaders on Twitter gets stories by Daemon' Books, CNet, and others.

The Nook and Nookcolor, the Kindle, and Twitter
 The study focuses on the effect of the entrance of the Nook and the NookColor this last year and looks at the amount of interest in it vs other readers based on Twitter conversations.  Yes, really.  While it emphasizes that there is much more conversation on the Kindle  (UK: K3)  than on the Nook and other e-readers See the right-hand reference column), the Kindle has been around longer and the Kindle 3 has delighted many with its clarity, lightness, and very smooth functioning of features.  The Nook monochrome and Sony have been popular with those who prize ePub e-book format and the ability to use the public library lending feature of Overdrive.

Crimson Hexagon's summary

' It’s worth noting that while the Nook readers have certainly established a solid and growing position in the e-reader market during 2010, our analysis also revealed that Amazon’s Kindle is still by far the most popular e-reader on the basis of total conversation volume on Twitter.

  Looking at the daily volume of relevant Twitter conversation for each of the devices, we see that conversation about the Kindle far outpaces the Nook and Nook Color, consistently adding up to more Tweets-per-day than both Nook devices combined (an average of about 1,000 Tweets per day for Kindle vs. just under 500 per day for Nook).
  Conversation volume for the iPad is also much lower (120 per day), though this is due to our analysis of the iPad being limited to conversations about using the device as an e-reader.  Although the Kindle continues to leverage its first-mover advantage and enjoys a dominant position in the e-reader market, consumer opinion expressed online shows the Nook is making up for lost time and quickly gaining ground and market share. '

The NookColor
I have the NookColor, as a matter of fact, and enjoy it very much as a secondary reader for books with color illustrations, magazines, and fast web browsing on a ultra-portable device, and I think that the functioning of it received a lot of thought when it was designed.  It's a lot of fun to use although I can't read longer books on the LCD screen with much comfort as I can on the e-Ink screen of the Kindle, so I don't.  But National Geographic is just amazing on it.

  Not so much the books with illustrations, it turns out, as one cannot ZOOM an image (in a book) on the NookColor, to my extreme surprise (the Kindle can).  So, while I have the color, I lose the detail that is often in illustrations used.  Nor can I rotate books to see an image larger that way.  Nevertheless I really enjoy magazines on it.  And the (easily-portable, light) web access.

More on Nook (monochrome), comparison of e-Ink model features next ...


The Nook (monochrome)
  The Nook (monochrome) is altogether another story, with an e-Ink screen manipulated by using the color strip below it as if it were a remote control and it feels like it.  Everything has a slight delay and the not-reliable touchscreen below makes it stranger that the top portion (the e-book screen) is not a touchscreen.  Those not familiar with the Kindle won't likely feel these are problems though.

Comparison of e-Ink model features
  I really prize a few things that can be done on a good e-reader (one designed with regard for how some avid readers use study tools or features, some in connection with their book club discussions).

  The weaknesses of the Nook have been the out-of-sight dictionary, the many menu-steps involved in getting to it, the highlighting and notes that are hard to find once you've made them, and the awkward and hard to find Search routines (I often search past-appearances of a character in the book).  Mainly, it's that there are multiple menu-steps for just about everything I would like to do.

  With the Kindle, the dictionary's summary-definition of a word is right there (bottom or top) for the word your cursor is on, the Search is started by merely starting to type a word or phrase, and the Results as well as Highlighting and Notes are shown, in context, in rows, rather than our having to go from one to the other slowly, and they're linked for fast access.

  Some extra features of the Kindle -- Text to Speech, which can be useful when you're cooking, washing dishes or driving; the Audible Books feature; and larger built-in storage -- are all nice to have.  There IS a music listening feature but it's limited.  And then there's the 3G cellular network access to the web that is free of web-data charges and which doesn't require finding a hotspot.
  Also, there's the private, password-protected Annotations webpage that we all have, if we allow backup of annotations.
  UPDATE - I forgot to add that the Nook is sold only in the U.S. and that e-books for it cannot be bought from Barnes and Noble outside the U.S. even by a U.S. resident who's just traveling.  As most know, the Kindle operates with 3G downloading in 100+ countries and allows free web-browsing in about 60 countries.

An unusually popular customer review of the Kindle
As far as comparisons go, however, I've been fascinated by watching the reactions to the leading customer review of the Kindle, which is unusual in that it compares the Kindle with the Nook, feature by feature, as the customer has both in his home.

  It currently has a count of 17,083 people who bothered to click Yes on the "Was this review helpful to you?" question.  The customer, Ron Cronovich, responds to questions there, as do some Kindle owners who usually have older Kindles and are interested in the Kindle 3 or who are used to helping on the various Kindle forums.
  But it's Cronovich who does the heavy lifting there, with a lot of patience, good will, and very little bias that I can see except that he's bought both e-readers and prefers the Kindle.  Cronovich gives the pros and cons of both, and the readers' responses show that he has been clearer than most reviews or reports that those browsing have read in the past.  The review has had 1,221 responses.  Really an amazing review-thread.

 The review with the next highest number of recommendations has 5,400+ 'helpful' votes and 89 responses.  If you or friends are trying to choose between the two readers, it's a good one to read, just for the detail included.

MEDIA BISTRO'S GALLEYCAT: THE RISE OF THE $5 BOOK
GalleyCat, which writes on the publishing industry, found that the Top 20 paid bestseller list in the Amazon Kindle store includes six titles with a $5 pricetag.

  So, they asked, over on their eBookNewser pages, "Is the $5.00 eBook the New $9.99 eBook?," pointing out that "Publishers have used the $5.00 eBook like a lure for fiction series, introducing readers to The Hunger Games or The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.  If successful, the new price point could drive eBook prices even lower."  They ask for reactions and thoughts there and have received some.

  With the low percentage that the larger publishers give authors, lower book pricing won't work that well for authors, the latter write there, as it requires more books to be sold to make the same amount, at a low percentage royalty, as at $10, but the reality is that paperbacks have always come down to $5 to $7 also, after the initial run.  The $5 books here tend to be for books no longer debuting.  Never mind that e-book pricing now tends to be higher than paperback pricing too often for a product you can't re-sell or give to a friend.   You CAN lend it once, if the publisher "allows" you to.  That will have to change.

  If an author is willing to hire editing and marketing help, they can do better, percentage-wise, with Amazon, Smashwords, and others.  Add that they won't be pink-slipped, so they can spend the energy that would be spent on sending the book to one and all, hoping for acceptance, on writing another one :-)
  The gate-keeping and marketing clout of the larger publishers are good for the authors who make it through, except for the reduced percentages in royalties in the last year.

LIBRARIES ADDING KINDLES
There is a story about the Rowan Public Library in Salisbury, NC, and the 12 Kindles it loans out, each with 80 books loaded, including latest fiction and non-fiction best sellers.  There are other news stories like this, as more and more libraries are lending reading devices, with some keeping on hand an assortment of different types.

  However, a librarian pointed out in a story yesterday that the Kindle allows an e-book to be shared on up to 6 devices, depending on the publisher's authorization.  Those depending on Adobe's ADE digital-rights-protection (Nook Sony, Kobe) present a tougher problem with that.


Kindle 3's   (UK: Kindle 3's),   DX Graphite

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Check often: Temporarily-free late-listed non-classics or recently published ones
  Guide to finding Free Kindle books and Sources.  Top 100 free bestsellers.
UK-Only: recently published non-classics, bestsellers, or highest-rated ones
    Also, UK customers should see the UK store's Top 100 free bestsellers.