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Posts Tagged Kindle

Getting your Kindle book notes into Evernote

Mar 28

Posted by sheffner in book notes, lifehacks + cooltools | Comments off

Do you read books on Kindle or a Kindle app on an iPad or similar device? Do you want to make notes or highlight passages in your ebooks but don’t know how? Would you like to have access to all your notes and highlighted passages even when you don’t have your Kindle or iPad with you? Would you like to do this but don’t have an Amazon.com account, or you buy your ebooks from some other store than Amazon.com? Would you like to share your notes and highlights with others? Would you like to transport all your notes and highlights into Evernote? If your answer to any or all of the above is ‘yes’ then read on.

In this post, I show you how I, a Japan resident who purchases most of his Kindle books on Amazon Japan (not Amazon.com, I don’t have an account there)  get my book notes and highlights made on my iPad’s Kindle app into Evernote. It’s a non-geeky (no coding required), unoriginal solution that makes use of free automation services and apps: Evernote, Kindle app for iPad, Twitter, IFTTT.

(This is for Kindles or Kindle apps only; I’m still figuring out how to do the same thing for notes/hightlights created in iBooks. Here’s a video on how to share notes and highlights in the iBooks app.)

Why bother?

Why would you want your Kindle notes in Evernote? As you’ll see below, notes and highlights made on a Kindle or Kindle app are automatically stored on your Amazon Kindle page. So why bother transferring them? You can edit them, sort them by book or by date, delete them, all on your Amazon Kindle page. Well, I like to have as much of my work- and research-related info as possible under one roof, not scattered across different programs or devices. Also, with Evernote’s offline notebooks capacity, I can access and edit my book notes in Evernote even without Internet access. If those considerations are not important to you, then you can stop reading right here. If you’d like to know more about your Amazon Kindle page, read Michael Hyatt’s post: How to Get Your Kindle Highlights into Evernote.

Evernote ambassador and SF writer Jamie Rubin has a geeky and long-assed post on how he gets his Kindle book notes and highlights into Evernote AUTOMATICALLY, but it requires knowledge of snakes and anyway it only works for notes taken on a Kindle device. If you take notes on, say, the Kindle App on your iPad, you’re out of luck. There is an app called Snippefy, which seems to do exactly what Rubin and I want, but unfortunately it’s not available for Apple Japan.

Michael Hyatt’s post: How to Get Your Kindle Highlights into Evernote, is good, but it involves manually transferring each highlight/note from your Amazon Kindle page to Evernote. This article gives a very good overview of Amazon’s Kindle page. I recommend it. For best results, and if you don’t mind not sharing your notes on Twitter, the simplest solution may be to wait until you finish reading your book and making all your notes and highlights, then going to your Amazon Kindle page, selecting all the notes for that book and copying and pasting those suckers into an Evernote. You have to do this manually, tho. Or perhaps Snippefy will do the job. Unfortunately, I cannot test it out.

Once set up (explained below), and assuming I’m reading a book on my iPad’s Kindle app, theree are just 4  manual steps, all done within the Kindle app (see below for details). Read the rest of this entry »

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What to Do if Your Ereader Is Lost or Stolen

Oct 22

Posted by sheffner in science & technology | 2 Comments

Bought my Kindle3 a few months ago. Quite satisfied, although I prefer playing with my iPad2. Still, here’s some useful advice in case you ever lose your Kindle.

If you lose your Kindle ereader, you’re mostly on your own. Amazon claims it is unable to locate the device via GPS, nor will the company remote-wipe the device to protect sensitive documents. If you want to retrieve your device, your best bet is checking with a nearby lost and found and/or filing a police report.

Although Amazon can’t locate your device or protect what’s on it, the company will de-register it to prevent someone else from making purchases on your account.

You can call 1-866-321-8851 if you live in the U.S.; 1-206-266-0927 if you live in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Guam, Hong Kong, Japan, Puerto Rico, the U.K. or the Virgin Islands; or 1-206-266-0927 if you live in another country. You can also do this yourself by logging in at amazon.com/manageyourkindle and selecting the “Deregister” button next to your device.

You’ll also want to cancel your subscriptions over at the Manage Your Kindle Subscriptions page.

To get your previous purchases on your new Kindle — should you decide to replace the earlier one — you’ll need to register your new Kindle in the “Manage Your Kindle” area. Then, you’ll need to navigate to the “Archived Items” menu on your new device to download your saved items.

via What to Do if Your Ereader Is Lost or Stolen.

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Using a Kindle in Japan

Aug 21

Posted by sheffner in lifehacks + cooltools | 3 Comments

I’ve finally figured out how to purchase and download Kindle editions of books onto my Kindle.  It’s not straight forward because I don’t have an Amazon.com account and I live in Japan. Here’s how to do it:

  1. Create an Amazon.com account (I have an Amazon UK account and was able to register with that; Amazon Japan accounts are not recognized by Kindle/Amazon.com)
  2. On your PC, go to Amazon.com and log in.
  3. Find the book you want (tip: add the word “kindle” to the book title in the search box; or select “Kindle Store” from the search-box drop-down menu).
  4. (Doing the above “kindle” search – step 3 – on Amazon UK brought up the following message: “Kindle titles for your country are not available at Amazon.co.uk.
    Please shop for Kindle titles at Amazon.com. “)
  5. Select “alternative formats” if it doesnt automatically appear (it should be in the next section down, below the photo of the book cover)
  6. If there is a Kindle version, it will be listed.
  7. If you’re logged in, on the right-hand side of the Amazon window, where the “Add to Cart” button is, you should see the following:
    Add to Cart (or Buy now with 1-click)
    Deliver to:     (followed by the name of your Kindle gadget. This is listed in the Settings of your Kindle and is created automatically when you register your Kindle)

  8. Click “Add to Cart” or “Buy now with 1-click” if you’ve got 1-click switched on, and the book you’ve selected will be downloaded to your Kindle. I have a Wifi-only Kindle, so the book was automatically downloaded the next time I moved my Kindle within the range of my Wifi network.
  9. You can also download the book to your PC and transfer it to your Kindle later. Here’s the help message from Amazon: “If you are outside a 3G wireless coverage area and cannot connect to Wi-Fi, select Transfer via Computer from the Deliver to menu when buying. You can then download the Kindle Edition to your computer and transfer to your USB connected Kindle. “
  10. Voila!
  11. Is Kindle cheaper than buying a physical book? I just checked with 2 books and found that the Kindle version is 72% of the hardback price, but (in 1 case) double the paperback price. In another case, the Kindle version was just 20 cents cheaper than the mass paperback version.

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iPad2 vs Kindle

Aug 19

Posted by sheffner in lifehacks + cooltools, science & technology | Comments off

I recently bought an iPad2 and a Kindle. I want to try and go paperless (or as near to it as I can). From my pre-purchase research, I learned that an iPad can’t be used as a substitute laptop because it can’t handle spreadsheets, and typing on it is a pain. So I’ll compare these 2 gadgets only as e-book reading tools.

iPad2

I live in Japan. I bought my iPad2 on AmazonJapan. I got the Wifi version, not the Wifi + 3G one as I figured I didn’t need to be online all the time. Just updating from my PC, like syncing my iPod, would be fine, I reckoned, and so far I’ve not wished I’d bought the 3G.

  1. You sync it like an iPod/iPhone, so if you’ve got either one of those gizmos, getting used to the iPad will take you all of 5 seconds (that’s how long it took my son to login to my Wifi and connect to the Internet).
  2. You can download books onto your computer then sync them on your iPad. You can also download books directly from the Internet, e.g. from iTunes, if you’re logged into a Wifi network.
  3. You need to download the iBooks app (free: just go to the iTunes App Store).
  4. There are tons of great books available in ePub format, many of them free or very cheap.
  5. You can also download/sync PDF files and read them like ePub formatted books. They don’t look quite so great and there are a few things you can’t do with PDF files (see below).
  6. iBooks app allows you to add bookmarks – the digital equivalent of turning down the corner of a page to mark your place – although the page numbering gets changed if you alter the font and/or if you simply turn the iPad sidewise.
  7. iBooks app also has a built-in dictionary. Very useful.
  8. iBooks app also allows you to highlight text (choice of colours) and to add notes to highlighted text. VERY useful, tho typing on that digital keyboard is a bit of a chore. I’ve only typed one-fingered. The keyboard isn’t really suitable for fast touch-typing.
  9. There’s also a search function.
  10. When you close /shut down your iPad, it remembers where you were and opens up at that page (and that book) when you fire it up again.
  11. iBooks app stores “books” (i.e. ePub formatted publications) and PDFs separately.
  12. You can sort the PDFs and the books by author or by title. PDFs tend to have these weird, shorthand titles, but you can edit them in iTunes before syncing them onto your iPad.
  13. You can’t add highlights or notes to the PDFs on your iPad2.
  14. I briefly tried the Internet connection –  it is faster than my home computer. I also managed to set it up to read my Outlook email, but I don’t use it for email because the iPad email software doesn’t filter out the spam, and believe it or not I get tired of reading 400+ variations on “Get Your Vi@gr@ Here”.
  15. iPad has a colour screen and also has backlighting so you can read in the dark. Useful.
  16. I bought this fake-leather case for it on Amazon.
  17. I bought this protective film for the screen.

Kindle3

  1. I bought it on Amazon Japan.
  2. I bought the Wifi version, not the Wifi+3G
  3. I bought this fake-leather case for it.
  4. In Japan, you can buy any colour of Kindle you like as long as it’s black (graphite).
  5. I assumed it would come setup for use in Japan.
  6. It doesn’t.
  7. There doesn’t seem to be a Japan-version Kindle. Yet. (This Japanese blogger tells me 日本語対応新型kindleとkindle DXはamazon.comに登録しないと購入できません。
    （今のところamazon.co.jpからは購入できません）
    日本語対応新型キンドルとキンドルDXの購入はこちらから
  8. There are apparently very few Japanese-language books available for Kindle, as yet. I won’t hold my breath.
  9. It’s set up to connect to your Amazon.com account. If you don’t have one, you will be prompted to create one.
  10. Your Amazon Japan account won’t work with this Kindle: you can’t login using your Amazon Japan ID, and you can’t buy books from Amazon Japan via your Kindle.
  11. So buying books on Amazon is pretty much a washout for me, as I don’t have an Amazon.com account and don’t like being forced to create one.
  12. I have an Amazon UK account. I want to be able to buy the Kindle version by connecting from my PC, then download the book to my Kindle, like I do with my iPad. But will Kindle let me do that? I can’t figure this out, and that is annoying.
  13. But you can plug it into your PC just like the iPad and drag and drop your PDFs. PDFs, but not books.
  14. Kindle has a built-in keyboard, a tiny real one, not digital like on the iPad. Well, it’s not really a “real” keyboard, it’s more like an extended punch-keypad like on your cell-phone.
  15. You can use it to search within documents, to highlight text, and to add notes.
  16. Kindle is smaller than the iPad2: it’s about the size of a paperback book. And about the same weight, so it’s lighter than the iPad2.
  17. Kindle is in b/w only, no colour.
  18. Kindle has no backlighting so no reading after lights out.

Verdict

iPad2 wins. If you want to save on weight and size, maybe get an iPad (1) which is probably closer to the Kindle in size and weight. I still want to explore the Kindle’s functions more, but playing with the iPad2 has been much more fun, I haven’t got around to it yet.

 

 

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