Light My Kindle

This one might be a no-brainer for most Kindle users, but for new users it might be a helpful tip. The easiest way to preserve battery power is to turn off your wireless connection. The switch is on the back of your Kindle, next to the power switch. Whenever you’re not actively using the wireless connection, you should turn the switch off.

You should only turn it on when you’re browsing the Kindle Store or the internet or when you need to download something you purchased on Amazon.com from a computer. Any other time - when reading a novel or managing your content, for example - you’re just wasting your battery power.

Another fantastic feature of the Kindle is the ability to make notes within passages, much like sticking a Post-It on a page or writing in the margins of a “real” book.

To make a note in a book, magazine, or any other piece of content, just position the scroll wheel next to the line you’d like to make a note about and click. Choose Add Note from the menu that appears. Type your note and use the scroll wheel to click Done. That’s it!

To see all your notes, you can visit My Clippings - it appears as a piece of content on your Kindle homepage.

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.

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!

Last week we discussed how to highlight a passage on your Kindle. This week we’ll cover how to find your highlighted passages.

Choose a piece of material you know you have made highlights in. Click the scroll wheel on the Menu button in the bottom right-hand corner. Choose My Notes & Marks from the menu using the scroll wheel. The next page will show you all your notes and highlights in that text. You can use the scroll wheel to select any one of them to view them in context.

Next week we’ll discuss how to delete highlighted passages you no longer need.

Some readers enjoy making notes and highlighting bits of books that they’d like to refer back to later. The Kindle allows you to do both, and this week we’ll go over how to highlight a passage.

When you find a passage you’d like to highlight, position the select wheel next to the top line of the passage you’d like to highlight. Click and choose Add Highlight… from the menu. You’ll see a line appear where you had positioned the select wheel, and a message at the top of the screen that reads “Select range of text to highlight. Press select wheel when done.” Do just as it says: scroll the wheel to the bottom of the passage that you’d like to highlight and click. The screen will refresh and you’ll see a thin line outlining your highlight.

To read your highlighted materials, open the My Clippings content from your Kindle homepage. All of your highlighted passages and notes will appear here.

The true beauty of the Kindle is being able to shop directly from the device and start reading your new purchases in a matter of seconds. Buying books on the Kindle is as easy (maybe even easier) than buying them from Amazon.com.

First, navigate to the Kindle Store (if you don’t know how to do that, see our previous post on getting to the Kindle Store). Once there, you have several options for finding a book to buy. If you know what you’d like to buy, you can search for it by typing your search term using the keyboard. Then click Go using the scroll wheel.

If you’d rather browse for a book, you can use the scroll wheel to choose from the Kindle Top Sellers list, New & Noteworthy Books, the National Best Sellers List, or even books recommended for you (these are based on previous Kindle purchases and, it appears, previous book purchases from Amazon.com).

Once you have found a book to purchase and you are on the book’s Kindle Store page (seen at right for Twilight), use the scroll wheel to select Buy. Your Amazon account will be charged and your book will appear on your Kindle homepage within seconds (the last book I purchased appeared in ten seconds flat).

Happy reading!

One of the wonderful things about the Kindle is the ability to change the font size to your liking. This is useful for several reasons. One, if you’re used to reading large print books. Two, if you forget your reading glasses one day. Three, if you want to make the font small so as to avoid flipping pages so often.

Even more impressive is how easy it is to change the font. On your Kindle, there’s a small button on the bottom right-hand corner of the keyboard. It has two capital As on it - one small and one large. Press that to bring up the font change choices.

The font sizes are shown as 1 through 6, with your current font size displayed with an arrow next to it. Each size is shown in its actual size to make it easier for you to decide which you’d like. Just move the scroll wheel to the font of your choice and click. The screen will refresh and your new font size will be in effect. To change it again, repeat the process.

Now that we’ve covered putting music on your Kindle, we should discuss how to know how much space is left for your music, books, audiobooks, magazines, and more on your Kindle and/or SD card. Luckily, it’s really easy.

From your Kindle homepage, click on Menu and then choose Settings using the scroll wheel. The last entry on the settings page tells you how much space is available on your Kindle. If you have an SD card inserted, it will automatically tell you how much space is available on that as well.

Putting your Kindle in sleep mode allows you to prevent buttons from being pressed without turning the Kindle completely off. It’s especially useful when you’re only going to stop reading for a short period of time - switching trains during your commute, putting the Kindle down to answer the phone, etc. It prevents you, or others (such as young nephews attracted to buttons) from losing your spot in your reading material.

It’s extremely easy to put Kindle in sleep mode. Just press ALT and the text key. The text key is the one with two As on it that you can use to change the font size. It’s the button in the bottom right-hand corner of the Kindle keyboard.

Once you’ve pressed those two buttons together, the screen will blink as it does when you turn a page, and an image will appear. The images rotate so you might get a tip about the Kindle, an image of a famous author, or just an interesting image.

To wake your Kindle up, just use the same two buttons. Press ALT and the text key together during sleep mode and your Kindle will wake right up and you’ll be right where you left off in your reading material.