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.

Pixel Qi combines e-ink challenger and color for sometime next year

The Pixel Qi will be quite a combo and I hope Bezos is looking at it for the next generation Kindle, beyond the Kindle DX.  A lot of work is needed first.

It combines an e-ink type of screen mode with a color screen mode.  As for the time-frame we can expect this to beocme a reality for actual devices on the market, Josh Quittner writes:

' The displays still have a way to go, of course.  A third party would need to build a proper motherboard, optimized for the display and an e-reader.  (Simply slapping a PQ display on the Acer gives it an extra hour or so of battery life; an optimized e-reader essentially goes to sleep between the turn of each page, saving far more power, among other things.)  But Mary Lou said that a manufacturer could buy PQ's technology today and have an e-reader that could render high-def text, on a full color page, and video, by the first quarter of next year.  The screens are cheap to produce, too—well under $200, she said. Such a device ought to enjoy 40 hours or so of use as an e-reader, between charges.  Video would drain the battery faster, obviously. '

I can't imagine that if this is workable that Bezos won't make an effort to use it for future Kindles.

UPDATE - 6/1/09 (Original posting: 5/31/09 - 9:03 PM)   In an earlier entry on this blog about the cost of the components for the Kindle, iSuppli's supervising analyst, Andrew Rasseiler, estimates the cost of the e-ink display at $60 "or about 42% of the cost of materials."  So, the Pixel Qi screen costing "well under $200" indicates a fairly costly device, when the wireless is included as it is now.

  Also, Taiwan’s Prime View International is buying E-Ink in Cambridge, Massachusetts, for $215 million.  They are the company that currently integrates the Kindle's E-Ink screen into the final module and will combine the two companies now into a single public company.  E-Ink's founder and CEO, Russell J. Wilcox, says they can now "streamline the supply chain and speed up new product." It'd be nice to lower the costs while they're at it. :-)

UPDATE - 6/3/09 - CNet offers more info on what PVI does and what its relationship has been with epaper manufacturer E Ink of Cambridge, Mass.  They worked together on Sony readers as well.  As a wholly-owned subsidiary of PVI, once the deal is approved, E Ink will likely add another 20 workers to its 120-member staff.

UPDATE - 6/3/09 - (Original posting: 5/31/09 - 9:03 PM)   A closer look at Pixel Qi's images.
  Kindle Zen's Steve Bains has an interesting article on Pixel Qi's images and the lighting and angles involved, and there's a video demo of the prototype screen in action on the streets in sunlight.  Bains points out that CNet's Peter Glaskowsky has cautioned that some of the marketing in the past by Mary Lou Jepson, Pixel Qi's founder, who was CTO for the One Laptop Per Child project, has included claims that Glaskowsky doesn't find quite supportable and which he terms "hyperbole." I'm not quite sure why Glaskowsky finds PQ's focus too narrow when I'd think that would be a criticism of companies like E Ink also - and Pixel Qi's technology looks quite promising.

Pay a visit to Kindle Zen to see the full report by Bains and the many other interesting stories on their site, somewhat off the beaten path.

UPDATE - 6/8/09 - New video of Kindle 1 next to Pixel Qi in all kinds of light.  I was surprised at how green the Pixel Qi screen looks, next to the Kindle.

Accessing Facebook with the Kindle 2

It does take patience.
 I was asked by mathmom, at the Web-browsing guide/tips article here, if I was able to access Facebook with the Kindle 2 to do anything interactive rather than just passive reading.

That's a very complex site and I'd never thought to go there, so I tried it out.
  Often, large sites today will offer a mobile-unit version of their pages, so I tried using m.facebook.com and that link got me to a somewhat trimmed-down version of the Facebook site.  And, even if you put in just 'facebook.com' (the Kindle provides the "http://" part for us), it knows when you're on a mobile unit web browser and then takes you to the mobile version anyway.

    Update 1/4/11 - Try touch.facebook.com if encountering problems.  That works best with Kindle 3's, according to reports.

Since the site tends to run a lot of scripts and Basic Mode did not seem to allow me to log in, I went to the Kindle browser's Menu option for "Settings" and chose "Advanced" and enabled Javascript.  That allowed me to log in with the user email and password I usually use for Facebook though I don't go there often.  BUT sometimes the site is busy and you have to try again.

(This all works far better with the Kindle 2 than with the Kindle 1, as the latter requires the silver scrollbar's pop-up menus and many more menu choices just for input, and even I don't have the patience for it with a place like Facebook.)

The 5-way button did allow me to navigate Facebook's stream of personal news from everyone and to read what I wanted pretty quickly, but the goal was to post a note.

  I went to the profile of a friend and followed the instructions to post a message to his space.  When I finished typing a short note (you don't want to type long ones on small devices), I clicked on 'Post' and got a notice that I had to sign in first.  I was already signed in or would not have had access to see my private areas!  Nevertheless, I dutifully logged in again, and after I did, I was taken back to that page and saw that the note was posted, as you can see here.  (I did remove the user ID from the photo.)

I later went back to try again.  This time, after I wrote a note, I was again told I had to log in.  So I obeyed, but it then told me that the site could not be accessed and to try again later.  This is the type of false alert that I described in the Kindle webbrowser guide.  The failure alert pops up when sending email or posting to a forum.  I went to my computer and found that the note HAD been posted. This false failure-message for posting/sending from the Kindle seems to happen consistently.  I'll report this to kindle2-feedback@amazon.com.

  The upside is that the message does go through and is posted.

Not the best experience in the world, but useful if really needed and you're away from computers.  As many know, you can Twitter away at m.twitter.com

Nikkei Elec teardown-comparison of Kindle 1 and 2

Nikkei Electronics Teardown Squad takes apart the Kindle 1 and Kindle 2 and examines and compares them.

  The article is written in five parts.  Some choice observations:

' "The old model adopted the reference design, without making any changes, that drives E Ink's electronic paper," he said.  "They probably thought, 'we have to drive the device by all means.'  As a result, the number of parts increased, and the design became complicated. On the other hand, looking at, for example, the microprocessor, the circuit architecture of the new model was designed from scratch.  It's like they adopted a design concept used for a mobile phone."

' In other words, the engineer pointed out that the new model grew out of the reference design and was designed to make the main board simpler.
. . .
' It seemed that the number of tones and the response speed were improved by replacing the controller IC.
. . .
' "I think the power consumption of the Kindle was reduced by improving the driving method like changing the controller IC of the electronic paper," the engineer said.
. . .
' "the design of the new Kindle's main board was sophisticated as if it employed a design concept used for a mobile phone. So, it is likely that design engineers were more involved in the design of the Kindle 2 than in the design of the Kindle. '

This article, posted May 18, after the introduction of the Kindle DX, ends with this:

' "The next version, Kindle 3, is now under development behind the scenes." How will the Kindle 3 look like? We will continue to keep an eye on it. '