Blogs, Google Reader, Instapaper and a Kindle - testing started

Technologies are in perpetual change. A couple of months ago I set up Instapaper sending settings, but almost never got newspapers.

Well, I found a time to investigate and discovered that things changed, as usual and as everywhere. My sending e-mail has been changed so that Amazon was unaware of a new sender to a kindle. Read Later booklet has not been set in my Chrome too...

Okay, I'll describe below which settings I've done to Instapaper.

Taken my Google Reader settings for Powershell blogs:

At left can be seen that several chosen blogs generated more than four hundred pieces of content. Not surprisingly that I don't want read such a pile on a desktop, preferring a Kindle for this purpose.

Next, I go to Google Reader Settings -> Send To and check Instapaper box:

After that, at the http://www.instapaper.com/user/kindle page I check my settings:

Next, at the Amazon's Manage Your Kindle page I add Instapaper's domain:

After all above actions, I expect receiving blogs to my Kindle.

Alternatively, Instapaper offers Read Later bookmarklet, allowing you to send blog items one by one from the Google Reader.

One more alternative is to use one of numerous Chrome widgets, which I will test in future posts.

Amazon.De verkauft Kindler

Kindles go easter and easter. Recently, Kindle store expanded into Germany. Following the storefront banner, you find 3G device http://www.amazon.de/dp/B003DZ1Y7M as well as Wi-Fi here http://www.amazon.de/dp/B003DZ1Y8Q .

Actually, as a fly in the ointment is their price, Amazon merely transferred the same price numbers changing only the currency (what added, by the way, a great increase to Kindle Store's revenue). So that further transfer of KIndles to unsupported developing countries is under a doubt, as well as retail price decrease only by the cause of this market expansion.

Kindle To Visit Libraries

Amazon delivers. How can it be spelled in another way? The new initiative, not yet available though, is very tempting.

Amazon to Launch Library Lending for Kindle Books

As can be seen from the second level headlines, there are even more than one news:

Customers will be able to borrow Kindle books from over 11,000 local libraries to read on Kindle and free Kindle reading apps

Whispersyncing of notes, highlights and last page read to work for Kindle library books

These mean that we’ll have strong alternative to the only available methods of picking up the books. We could download samples, usually ten percent of a book or thirty or so for several technical books, or read users’ reviews.

Regarding samples, they never supported highlighting, public notes and sharing, but dictionary check was available.I must note that dictionary search without saving a fragment where the word is used is no much worth for language learners.

The worst thing here is that ten percent sample is not valuable if you need a dictionary, an encyclopedia or a technical book.

Reading of reviews may help here, but if there are less then tens of them, you are under the risk that one says about style, one about usability for on a device, one is about the story that the user bought it accidentally and so forth.

The new possibility is free from these disadvantages. We’ll be able to read a book for some time, see the book in a whole, do our notes that are preserved until we’ll borrow the book again or buy it. Other’s public notes won’t be visible in library books.

However, as a warning alarmed the phrase ‘Customers will be able to check out a Kindle book from their local library’, implying that the user should be registered in an offline library first.

Hopefully, Amazon will give us lending available for world-wide customers, not only those living in the US.

Kindle for Android – how to get it?

No earlier than yesterday I’ve bought our family’s first Android mobile. Leaving out of focus how hot we’ve been struggling who’ll be its owner, the question I faced first is that Amazon doesn’t provide Kindle application outside from the US.

Knowing that Amazon keeps an eye on the fact that something is downloaded outside of the US using 3G, but not having even a bit of interest if it’s done through Wi-Fi or downloading to PC, I’ll try to get it somehow.

The most disappointing fact here is that I’m not interested acutely in downloading content directly on an Android phone (but who don’t want), but only in having a book from their store in twilight when regular Kindle device is forceless. Even so, for people who are not planning to consume AT&T’s traffic, the application is unavailable. Too sad.

Kindle Price To Lose Weight

The beloved Frustration-Free company, I mean Amazon, announced further decrease of Kindle 3 Wi-Fi price. With almost twenty percent fall, readers can afford it since May for $114.

http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=176060&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=1549144&highlight=

"We're working hard to make sure that anyone who wants a Kindle can afford one," said Jeff Bezos, Amazon.com Founder and CEO. "Kindle with Special Offers is the same #1 bestselling Kindle - and it's only $114. Kindle is the best deal in consumer electronics anywhere in the world."

The absolute truth. Not only price, of course, but also Wi-Fi, 3G, reading the Internet including blogs, wikipedia, google, almost wherever you may navigate, dropping books to it over air and gettting email to the reader.

Living in the devepoping country outside of WTO ring is not a pleasure when you need to order a gadget being sold only in the US, Canada and Western Europe. Delivery cost is not only high, it also complicated. You need buy a Kindle as a gift from the American or ask middlemen like Shipito to re-route it with more or less significant increase of its price. Thus, lowered cost is not what we will ignore.

Thanks, Amazon! I don't know whether will or won't users see you screensavers, with screensaver hack is available, but as I think many agreed to use advertising screensavers if price they bought it lowered.

Klip.me has been recently updated

Klip.me've got a pair of interesting features.

If you had never heard about this Chrome extension, activate it now unless you don't need reading blogs (what do you read now?), news, online newpapers and other readable media.

The link is https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/ipkfnchcgalnafehpglfbommidgmalan

The first feature I enjoy is that since several days ago it sends articles not addressing as from Klip.me, but using the actual name of the publisher, dn.se ot latimes.com, as an example.

The second and most recent addition is a preview mode, turned on by default. When you press orange square, it generates a preview page displaying how it will be seen on your Kindle. After that you may press Send (it works slightly slower than earlier) and after getting positive response, you are able to press OK or Cancel and go back to the chosen webpage. The Cancel button is always available in case you are not satisfied with text prepared by the extension.

Despite what you see on the preview screen, pictures are not sent by default to a Kindle.

WASP by Eric Frank Russell

Non-stop reading

I have first time read this book in the early nineties, in the translation to Russian (I'm not a native speaker of English). Since than, the book has been read several times, needless to point out that every time it was a great pleasure to me.
What took me then? Believe or not, but Jaimec of the late fifties was very similar to Russia, Saint-Petersburg of the early nineties. Let's see, what I mean:
-personal computers were utterly uncommon due to their cost and the fact that ninetynine percent of the population was unaware of MS-DOS
-personal typewriters existed, but in opposite to Jaimecian users, there was the need to register any one bought
-mobile phones weren't available for citizens
-Russian kaitempi wasn't so severe, but rumors represented it so frightening as Jaimecian spec ops
-not many had a car, similarly to Jaimec, being free of heavy traffic
-the ruling caste was strong, admired and abhorrent, just as for now here
In other words, Jaimec matched exactly our life of those times.

Discussing the plot, it's one of the most dynamic and fun, the great combination, I ever read. The book is relatively short, so this factor along with aforementioned makes the impression of an explosion! The good fun explosion of actions performed by the protagonist James Mowry.

Recently I read this in English, of course slightly slower then in Russian, but the plot caught me again. I almost completely forgot the most of the book, since I last time read it in the late nineties, and it's been read as virtually new to me.
Indeed, no mobile phones even for military officers, no traffic jam and using of typewriters are not signs of the contemporary landscape, but the intencity of actions, somewhat formal style of narration combined with the humor, again overwhelmed me for a couple of weeks commuting with the Kindle.

Never regretting if you bought it. Also, this Kindle edition has a font slightly bigger than usual.

Posted here: http://www.amazon.com/WASP-ebook/product-reviews/B003TFESY2/ref=cm_cr_pr_top_recent?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=0&sortBy=bySubmissionDateDescending