Thursday, February 12, 2009

Kindle 1.0 Tips & Tricks, Part 1

A few useful things
  • Alt + AA - Sleep or wake
  • Alt + B - Set a bookmark
  • Alt + T - Display the time
  • Alt + Next page or Alt + Prev page - Skip forward or backward several pages
  • Alt + P - Play or pause music
  • Alt + F - Skip to the next song
  • Alt + backspace - clear text field
  • Alt + H - Move cursor left
  • Alt + J - Move cursor right
  • J (while the text menu is open) - Open a text justification sub-menu
  • Alt + Z - View pictures (on SD card)
  • Alt + 0 - Enable automatic page turning mode
  • Alt + 1 - Start auto page turning
  • Alt + 2 - Stop auto page turning
  • Shift + Alt + M - Play minesweeper
  • Shift + Alt + R - Reboot your Kindle
  • Shift + Alt + . - Restart the GUI
  • Shift + Alt + G - Take a screenshot (stored on SD card)
Free content

There are several sites that offer free books for the Kindle. In general, you will need to download a book in Kindle format (.azw) to your computer, and then transfer it to your Kindle via the usb cable.

There are a few sites that will allow you to download free books directly to your Kindle via Amazon's Whispernet. My favorite is manybooks.net. From your Kindle's basic web browser (see Tips & Tricks Part 2), navigate to mnybks.net, find the book you are interested in, and select download in .mobi format. The book will appear on your Kindle in a few seconds., ready to read.

Content storage

Books that you have purchased from Amazon are automatically stored in your content manager on Amazon's servers. Any bookmarks or annotations are stored as well. This means that you do not need to worry about saving your library. Once you've finished reading a book, you may simply delete it from your Kindle memory. If you wish to read it again later, you can just transfer it back to your Kindle and re-read it, or pick up where you left off.

To download an Amazon book that you've removed from your Kindle, from your Kindle Home screen, select Content Manager from the menu. At the top of the screen, there is a "Show and Sort" menu. You can use this to show content in your Kindle memory, on SD card, or in your Amazon account storage area. Show items in Amazon storage, select the book you wish to download, and choose download from the menu.

You can also go to your Amazon account to re-send books that you've deleted from your Kindle. Log in to amazon.com and click the "Your account" link at the top of the page. Select "Manage Your Kindle". Find the book(s) that you want to download in the "Your orders" section, and send them to your Kindle.

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