RationalBiker Posted February 20, 2009 Author Report Share Posted February 20, 2009 Very nice. My "due date" is February 25th. I'm hardly showing too. If you go to the Manage Your Kindle section of the website they may already have your Kindle listed though I'm not sure you can manage much with it yet.... maybe a name change or something. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
intellectualammo Posted February 20, 2009 Report Share Posted February 20, 2009 (edited) If you go to the Manage Your Kindle section of the website they may already have your Kindle listed though I'm not sure you can manage much with it yet.... maybe a name change or something. I can add my email addy and my 1-click payment method. I want to see if Voices for Reason blog can be Kindle'd. I see that the current issue of The Objective Standard is offered. If I do it right, I imagine I could send as attachments many works from Project Gutenburg too, for .10 each. [i just emailed ARC about VOF] Edited February 20, 2009 by intellectualammo Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
intellectualammo Posted February 25, 2009 Report Share Posted February 25, 2009 Mine's here already!! I just had to buy Stephen King's UR and then just bought Cline's Companion book to his Sparrowhawk series. I love this thing! Within my short 1-2 mile drive from the USPS, I was already having it read King's book to me! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RationalBiker Posted February 25, 2009 Author Report Share Posted February 25, 2009 Within my short 1-2 mile drive from the USPS, I was already having it read King's book to me! I'm pleasantly surprised at how "listenable" the text-to-speech function is. There is some tone change and inflection in the reading. Of course there is the occasional mispronounced word but I usually understand what it meant. I'm very happy with the new version. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
intellectualammo Posted February 25, 2009 Report Share Posted February 25, 2009 I'm pleasantly surprised at how "listenable" the text-to-speech function is. There is some tone change and inflection in the reading. Of course there is the occasional mispronounced word but I usually understand what it meant. I'm very happy with the new version. I'll be testing more of the text-to-speech at work tonight. Fits perfectly in my cargo pants side pocket. When I get back home, I'll have to figure out how to send my Dickinson Journal PDF's to it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DavidV Posted February 25, 2009 Report Share Posted February 25, 2009 I'll be testing more of the text-to-speech at work tonight. How does it compare to high-end TTS engines like http://www.ivona.com/say/SrsNvXgi Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
intellectualammo Posted February 26, 2009 Report Share Posted February 26, 2009 How does it compare to high-end TTS engines like http://www.ivona.com/say/SrsNvXgi That one sounds better to me in the link, though I haven't listened with the female voice, only the male voice on my Kindle, because I don't know as of yet how to do that on it. But, regardless, neither can pronounce Ayn Rand's first name properly. My Kindle 2 seems to spell her first name, since it is unable to pronounce it, happened to me when listening to Cline's Sparrowhawk Companion book. Also the titles of chapters are not coming across good on that same book, so it spells those out to me. But other than a few mispronounciations, like "wound", "Barack", and the different ways we say "read" and "live" it's a wonderful device! I'm so attached to it right now, I'd rather not go into as to just how much... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Topliner Posted February 26, 2009 Report Share Posted February 26, 2009 I haven't received my Kindle 2 yet (it's due tomorrow), but I've been looking over the Kindle book store on Amazon. The "collected works" of various authors by Mobile Reference look like a great value, and each has a table of contents from which you can navigate to any of the works, and to any chapter in the particular novel or other type of book. For an average of under $5 each, you can get the collected works (or a reasonable facsimile thereof) of writers like Plato and Aristotle, Kipling, Stevenson, Dickens, Shakespeare, Hugo, Dumas, Voltaire, Dostoyevsky, Twain, Cicero, Tolstoy, Wilde, Scott, Goethe, and many others. Someone mentioned downloading books from the Gutenburg project onto Kindle. Do those come with a navigable table of contents? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
intellectualammo Posted February 26, 2009 Report Share Posted February 26, 2009 (edited) Someone mentioned downloading books from the Gutenburg project onto Kindle. Do those come with a navigable table of contents? Not the ones I did. Perhaps if you can get a .azw file it might, but mine read just like you see them on Gutenburg. I did it for free too, just hooked up my Kindle 2 via USB, opened a book and saved it to the drive my Kindle 2 was in. Worked perfect. But I think any annotation will not be backed up by Amazon, but I'm not 100% sure. I think that your clipping will always be backed, but maybe not the work itself, since it would be your own files. How clever I am...even though I don't know much about computer applications/software, etc. My Dickinson PDF's would not convert right to my Kindle 2, even when I emailed my Kindle, and Amazon sent me a converted file that it wouldn't take, and so it took me many hours of thinking to try to figure out how the hell am I going to get them onto it, and when I woke up today, it came to me, instantly, and mysteriously... Go to Project Muse, view the Journal as an HTML instead of a PDF version, then I copy and pasted it to a text document (notepad), and sent it via USB to my Kindle 2, and bingo! It worked. It's monotonous though, since each article in each issue has to be copy/pasted that way, but finally I will have them on it and annotate them and it cost me nothing to do, but a bit of thinking and time. This baby is paying itself off fast!! I think I can send just about any text to my Kindle now with this method! Including my own works. I felt last night that my literary life is changing because of this device! I love my Kindle 2! [i just checked my "Manage Your Kindle" on Amazon, and of all the 33 titles I have already on my reading device, only 3 show there, the rest are Gutenburg downloads and Dickinson Journal files (I still have 30 of them to download still!), so I think that they are not backed by Amazon like my others I bought there are. I just wonder if the annotation will bv or not. I'll have to play with it sometime to find out] Edited February 26, 2009 by intellectualammo Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KendallJ Posted February 26, 2009 Report Share Posted February 26, 2009 (edited) Someone mentioned downloading books from the Gutenburg project onto Kindle. Do those come with a navigable table of contents? No, but you can create one. The Kindle file format is just a version of Mobipocket Reader's .prc format, and the Kindle will read Mobipocket format that is not DRM protected. You can create mobipocket files from Gutenberg's HTML files that I believe will have functional TOC's, using Mobipocket Creator. All freeware. Also, many people have already generated Mobi versions of Gutenberg files and posted them. Just google them, and you'll find them. There is also a hack out there for reading mobipocket DRM files on a Kindle, although I think that would be a violation of copyright terms, but I've not confirmed that. Edited February 26, 2009 by KendallJ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
intellectualammo Posted February 28, 2009 Report Share Posted February 28, 2009 Just read this: Apparently, Amazon won't fight the publishing industry on the issue of whether the Kindle 2's text-to-speech function violates copyright. The retailer, which makes the popular Kindle electronic-book reader, announced late Friday that the company is modifying systems to allow authors and publishers to decide whether to enable Kindle's text-to-speech function on a per-title basis. Amazon starts its press release with tough talk. "Kindle 2's experimental text-to-speech feature is legal," Amazon wrote. "No copy is made, no derivative work is created, and no performance is being given." But then the company says: "We strongly believe many rights holders will be more comfortable with the text-to-speech feature if they are in the driver's seat," Amazon said. There is no mistaking what happened here: Amazon caved. For Kindle owners interested in the text-to-speech feature, the reader just lost value. This is the one function I value so dearly too... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
intellectualammo Posted February 28, 2009 Report Share Posted February 28, 2009 Someone mentioned downloading books from the Gutenburg project onto Kindle. Try this site. You can choose the Kindle .azw format. I tested it out on a book I already had downloaded from Project Gutenburg, and this version of it is so much better. I will probably go back and delete the others I have and go download the same titles from the site I just linked to. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RationalBiker Posted March 6, 2009 Author Report Share Posted March 6, 2009 Just read this: This is the one function I value so dearly too... I definitely enjoy the TTS function. That said, I've been following (and sometimes participated in) various threads in Amazon's forums regarding the outrage over Amazon's decision to cow to the Author's Guild. Some blame Amazon, some blame the Author's Guild, some blame both. My own opinion is that Amazon should have had some foresight that there might be an issue in adding some sort of functionality to digital media without considering how rightsholders would react. It's certainly nothing new in this day and age that there is a lot of attention paid to protecting and controlling the copying and usage of digital media. The way I see it, Amazon should have recognized that; 1) by adding functionality to this digital media (the ability to listen to it) they may have potentially increased its market value and; 2) by adding audio functionality to it there might be concern of decreased market value for audio books. The reaction of the Author's Guild should not have come as a surprise. In fact, I'm thinking they should have negotiated with them (or at least the various individual publishers) BEFORE the release of the Kindle 2 so that they wouldn't have to backstep on a touted functionality of the device. Other threads have complained about the price point of the ebooks. In some cases, there are apparently ebook versions that are more expensive than their paper counterparts. In the minds of some there is (universally speaking) no way to justify this pricing, period. Amusingly, some people made that statement without any supporting argument and expected people to accept it as true. Others seemed focused solely on production costs and allowing the publishers to only price for some minimal amount of profit. They can't seem to fathom that the only justification they need to price ebooks the way they want is mere whim and the fact that they own the property and/or rights to the property in the first place. The needn't justify the pricing for any reason beyond that. Granted, on the consumer side I can understand if many people decide not to purchase the more expensive ebook in which case the publisher might have to reconsider the pricing decision. These folks simply cannot understand anything beyond their sense of entitlement to a product at the price they want to pay. Any higher price than the one they arbitrarily determine is "fair" means the publishers (or Amazon) are trying to rip them off and that they are "greedy" (as if that is a bad thing). Other slightly more reasonable people are merely trying to organize a united consumer front to force Amazon (or the publishers) to provide ebooks at lower prices. Across the board, they do not get the idea that "value" is unique to the individual based on his or her purposes for a given product. Some people find the Kindle and what it offers to be more valuable than others for a host of rational reasons. Far too many people over there only use their heads to hold their hats. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RationalBiker Posted March 26, 2009 Author Report Share Posted March 26, 2009 Saw this thread in the Amazon Kindle forum; http://www.amazon.com/Response-from-Ayn-Ra...=fiona-hardware Looks like there may be negotiations going on to get Ayn Rand's works on the Kindle. That would be just fine with me. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
intellectualammo Posted March 26, 2009 Report Share Posted March 26, 2009 (edited) Saw this thread in the Amazon Kindle forum; http://www.amazon.com/Response-from-Ayn-Ra...=fiona-hardware Looks like there may be negotiations going on to get Ayn Rand's works on the Kindle. That would be just fine with me. I wager that it might be difficult to get works to be available as Kindle ed.'s, because they have audio formats for the works already, or the publisher and author have certain agreements/arrangements that could inhibit or prohibit publication in a different form. As an aside, I finally had to pick up an actual book, not one in digi format. I don't like having to copy out passage and quotes by hand, since it slows my reading down, but I made exceptions because I am totally interested in narcissism right now and they aren't available for Kindle. So I have twelve books I'm working my way through right now. I'm almost through the third one... Also, I don't know about you, but I don't like what comes up on the screen when Kindle falls asleep. Also waking it up slows me down, so if it is in my pocket I slide the button first, then pull the Kindle from out of my pocket, in order to have the words ready for my eyes to read them. One or two times, Kindle must have been in a very sound sleep, for I had trouble waking it up, and it frustrated the hell out of me, especially when I wanted to read it! Edited March 26, 2009 by intellectualammo Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
intellectualammo Posted April 8, 2009 Report Share Posted April 8, 2009 I forgot to take my Kindle 2 (K2) out of my back pocket when getting into my car two Friday nights ago and I sat on it! Broken! But that's OK. I just bought another one and had it shipped to me on the following Monday, just in time for when I will need it for work again, since I don't use it during the weekends at work, because I have to be able to listen to calls. I'm very surprised that I wasn't upset at all over what I did, seeing how attached I am to K2. I break things so often, not purposely either (anymore) - I knew it was only a matter of time with my K2 - and that time had come, and I only had it for just over a month... Let's see how long the next one lasts... Also there are some books available through the Kindle store that are free. All the material that I transferred to my first K2, was not saved by Amazon, only what I had purchased at the store, and all my annotation was saved on the works directly, but no "My Clippings" file. I managed however to finally get about 70 items back onto my new K2, just took a while for me to figure out how to do that. And in "My Clippings", not everything is clipped with some items, due to limits placed on some of them by the copyright owner, but if you open the work up itself, it's all there, just not all in "My Clippings". Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thales Posted April 8, 2009 Report Share Posted April 8, 2009 That's too bad! And therein is one of the drawbacks of the Kindle. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
intellectualammo Posted April 8, 2009 Report Share Posted April 8, 2009 That's too bad! And therein is one of the drawbacks of the Kindle. Yes, from what I understand there isn't a place to fix it out there, unless something is wrong, manufacturally speaking, it's done for. There is no warranty that covers damage done by my dumb ass. Plus, even if I could send it away, I would have just bought another one anyways, because I cannot be bothered with the whole shipping and the waiting thing. My literary needs are super impatient when not being adequately met. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
intellectualammo Posted May 4, 2009 Report Share Posted May 4, 2009 (edited) Instead of considering bailing newspapers out, let them evolve, bailing themselves out - already in the process of really happening: Plastic Logic expects to begin making digital newspaper readers by the end of this year. by BRAD STONE Published: May 3, 2009 Now the recession-ravaged newspaper and magazine industries are hoping for their own knight in shining digital armor, in the form of portable reading devices with big screens. it is Amazon, maker of the Kindle, that appears to be first in line to try throwing an electronic life preserver to old-media companies. As early as this week, according to people briefed on the online retailer’s plans, Amazon will introduce a larger version of its Kindle wireless device tailored for displaying newspapers, magazines and perhaps textbooks.An Amazon spokesman would not comment, but some news organizations, including The New York Times, are expected to be involved in the introduction of the device, according to people briefed on the plans. A spokeswoman for The Times, Catherine J. Mathis, said she could not comment on the company’s relationship with Amazon. These devices from Amazon and other manufacturers offer an almost irresistible proposition to newspaper and magazine industries. They would allow publishers to save millions on the cost of printing and distributing their publications, at precisely a time when their businesses are under historic levels of pressure. Perhaps most appealing about this new class of reading gadgets is the opportunity they offer publishers to rethink their strategy in a rapidly evolving digital world. The move by newspapers and magazines to make their material freely available on the Web is now viewed by many as a critical blunder that encouraged readers to stop paying for the print versions. And publishers have found that they were not prepared to deal with the recent rapid decline of print advertising revenue. From this article Edited May 4, 2009 by intellectualammo Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
intellectualammo Posted May 4, 2009 Report Share Posted May 4, 2009 Amazon.com Inc. on Wednesday plans to unveil a new version of its Kindle e-book reader with a larger screen and other features designed to appeal to periodical and academic textbook publishers, according to people familiar with the matter.Beginning in the fall, some students at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland will be given large-screen Kindles with textbooks for chemistry, computer science, and a freshman seminar already installed, said Lev Gonick, the school's chief information officer. The university plans to compare the experiences of the students who are issued the devices and those who use traditional textbooks, said Mr. Gonick. The new device will also feature a more fully functional Web browser, he said. from this article Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thales Posted May 5, 2009 Report Share Posted May 5, 2009 Apparently the NYT, et. al, do not realize that it's not so much the form of the media that is the reason for their demise, as it is the content. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
intellectualammo Posted May 6, 2009 Report Share Posted May 6, 2009 And here's what the new Kindle DX looks like (it was unveiled earlier today) : click It costs $489 or so. Here they (K2 and KDX) are side by side on Amazon site: click Here is all about it on Amazon: click Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
intellectualammo Posted May 28, 2009 Report Share Posted May 28, 2009 Amazon now has a site for Kindle in which your highlights and notes will appear online. It's a really great thing to be able to do, because now I don't have to hook up my Kindle to my laptop, then open up My Clippings and try to find what I wanted to copy paste somewhere, instead of typing out a quote or passage. I guess it only brings up the ones that you purchased through Amazon and not personal files, and downloads, because none of those of mine are up. Still, it's pretty cool. Those of you who have one, go to this site and plug in your Amazon account, and it will all appear, just like that. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
intellectualammo Posted October 7, 2009 Report Share Posted October 7, 2009 According to this article Amazon Kindle Goes International - BusinessWeek: The new, international Kindle model will launch on Oct. 19 and sell for $279. The price of Amazon’s domestic-only Kindle, which used to sell for $299, has been reduced to $259. Anyone interested in the new international Kindle, with global wireless connection, can check it out by clicking here to see if you can get it in your country (there is a place to check it on this link): Amazon.com: Kindle Wireless Reading Device (6" Display, U.S. & International Wireless, Latest Generation): Kindle Store I don't need an international one, obviously, but now others can have one in other countries, and it's so reasonably priced!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
intellectualammo Posted November 19, 2009 Report Share Posted November 19, 2009 Kindle for PC is now available for free download! Now you don't have to have a Kindle to read the e-books now. I just loaded it and it turns the page as fast as you can click it. Here is where you all can download it: http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?ie=U...ocId=1000426311 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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