Light My Kindle

Last Friday, I accidentally left my cell phone at home. It was in my sweatshirt pocket, sitting on the floor of my living room. As soon as I realized the cell phone was at home, I regretted not bringing my Kindle with me that day. I had only left it at home because I was trying to get through Lisey’s Story by Stephen King, which I finally started reading in hardcover despite the enormous size of the book.

As I sat at the train station, I kept thinking I would email my husband as soon as I got to work and let him know that I would be unreachable by cell, and to please not wash my sweatshirt. I had a sinking feeling that he, having taken the day off work for his birthday, would be doing laundry. I was kicking myself for not having the Kindle - I knew I could have emailed him from the Kindle and he would have gotten the email on his BlackBerry before he even got home.

Alas, I didn’t have my Kindle. By time I got to work and emailed my husband about the cell phone, the response I received was - “Your sweatshirt and cell phone were in the washer. It’s now drying out on the bathroom counter, but it won’t turn on. We’ll buy you a new one tomorrow. I’m so sorry!”

To make the need for my Kindle even more evident, my train home in the evening was stuck behind a broken down train. Since I had no cell phone, I couldn’t call my husband to let him know. Had I been carrying my Kindle, I could have emailed him, and once again, my BlackBerry toting husband would have known not to bother leaving the house for at least another 45 minutes or so. Instead, he was stuck waiting at the train station for over an hour, worried about why so many trains had gone by but I hadn’t gotten off any of them.

Needless to say, I will not be leaving my Kindle at home anymore.

Although the Kindle holds up to 200 books, and can hold even more with an SD memory card, you might feel the need to delete items.

Scroll to Menu at the bottom right hand corner of your home screen and choose Content Manager. All the content on your Kindle will show up with little checkboxes next to the titles. To delete an item, use the scroll wheel to click next to the title to put an X in the checkbox. Then choose Remove Selected Items from the Menu.

You can easily delete several items at once by checking more than one box.

If you accidentally delete an item that you purchased from Amazon, you can re-download it from the Manage Your Kindle page when you’re logged into your Amazon account.

Last week we covered a shortcut to search Wikipedia from your Kindle. This week, we have a shortcut to search Google. While Wikipedia is wonderfully informative, sometimes you just need the Big G.

Press Search on your Kindle keyboard. Type @web followed by your keyword. Your Kindle will search Google and return the results as if you had opened up the web browser, navigated to Google, and then entered your search terms. Of course, you need to make sure your wireless switch is turned on first.

All the Harry Potter fans can be happy that there will be one more piece of Rowling-approved Potter literature in the world soon. According to The MTV Movies Blog, J.K. Rowling has written the introduction to a new novel called Harry, A History. The book is written by Melissa Anelli and recounts the craze surrounding the Harry Potter books.

Anelli is the webmistress of The Leaky Cauldron, a Harry Potter fansite. Rowling not only wrote the intro to the book, but also gave Anelli tips on authorship, as well as encouragement and exclusive interviews.

Harry, A History will be available on November 4th. Unfortunately it is not yet available for the Kindle, but you can request it using the Kindle request button on the Amazon page.

Personally, I’m looking forward to reading about the <b>Potter</b> phenomenon. I’m sure as the webmistress for one of the most popular fansites Anelli will have unique insights into the hardcore fans.

As I’ve said before, one of the most wonderful things about the Kindle is the ability to search the internet. One of the benefits of this is having instant access to Wikipedia.org. To search Wikipedia on your Kindle, navigate to the Experimental Web Browser (make sure your wireless switch is on!). For help on how to do this, check out our previous post.

Your bookmarks page already contains a link to Wikipedia. However, you can also enter in the URL by clicking on the Enter URL in the upper right hand corner. Once you’re on Wikipedia’s home page, you can click search next to the “Jump to” navigation, search” line near the top.

There’s also a handy Kindle shortcut to search Wikipedia.

Happy searching!

Horror author Stephen King celebrates his sixty-first birthday today. As he is my absolute favorite author, this is almost a holiday for me.

It’s an interesting coincidence because both my husband and I are both currently reading King novels. He’s reading Hearts in Atlantis and I’m reading Lisey’s Story

So, happy birthday Mr. King. And many more…

Ever wanted to see the insides of your Kindle? Now you can without taking it apart yourself. CNet took apart a Kindle and posted the pictures on their site.

It’s a pretty informative post about what all the shiny pieces are and how they help your Kindle be one of the coolest gadgets out there.

Check out news.CNet.com for the pictures.

Crunch Gear reports that Target will now be selling the Sony E-reader and various accessories. This is a big step for Sony, since some consumers may hesitate to buy the Kindle, a product they can’t see and hold before pulling out the credit card. If Target’s smart about their promotion, they’ll have a demo version available for customers to play with in-store, just like video games, digital cameras and other gadgets.

Do you find yourself searching Wikipedia frequently from your Kindle? There’s a quicker way to do it than manually going to the Experimental Browser and then navigating to the Wikipedia bookmark.

First check to make sure your wireless switch is turned on. Then press the Search key on the Kindle’s keyboard. Enter in “@wiki” using the keyboard, followed by your search term. Use the select wheel to press Go and the Kindle will open the Experimental Browser and navigate to the correct Wikipedia page for your search term.

We all know the Kindle isn’t the only e-reader in the game, but this new reader from Plastic Logic could be a big draw for the morning commuters. It’s designed specifically for newspapers, having a screen two-and-a-half times the size of the Kindle’s screen. To top it of, it’s flexible, like your morning newspaper.

Boing Boing has more details and a picture of the new device. It could attract the morning commuters who prefer to read The Boston Globe over, say, a Stephen King novel on their Kindle.

There’s no word on price yet, but I would assume it would be competitive for the Kindle and the Sony e-reader. Would you prefer a bigger screen and a flexible display to the book-ish design of the Kindle?