A Kindle World blog

Kindle News: Android market growing due to Kindle Fire, + Amzn to compete w/ Netflix? + good Intro to Kindle e-Ink devices w/ tests of e-Ink screen differences (slight) + Best free comics on KFire, Amazon digital pirate unmasked

noreply@blogger.com (Andrys Basten) — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 23:31:00 +0000

A GOOD ASSORTMENT OF NEWS
And I'll mainly point you to most of it.

ANDROID MARKET SHARE'S SHARP RISE
Intomobile's Blake Stimac writes that Android’s tablet market share rises to 39 percent in Q4 2011, according to Strategy Analytics, "which has counted the Kindle Fire into the Android mix."

Stimac, who presents the global table of operating system shipments and market share on Infomobile's page, says, "it's probably safe to assume that the sharp rise is likely due to the Kindle Fire. See their page for considerably more detail.

NETFLIX AGREES WITH RUMOR ABOUT AMAZON PLANS
Tech Buzz Examiner Michael Santo writes that Netflix agrees that Amazon, which is obviously constantly expanding its streaming video service, Amazon Instant Video (many announcements about it recently), may expand their video service "into a standalone subscription service" as described by the New York Post. See story and detail at Santos' TechBuzz page and at the NY Post. A Netflix comment stressed by Santo:

' “We expect Amazon to continue to offer their video service as a free extra with Prime domestically but also to brand their video subscription offering as a standalone service at a price less than ours.” '

BEST 15 FREE COMICS ON KFIRE
Comics Alliance's John Parker gives us a list of 15 best free issues of comics that he's found, based on "device readability, likelihood of drawing in new readers, and how badly they make you want more."

He was surprised to get a Kindle Fire for the holidays and not initially excited about it due to what he terms his "tactile orientation" making it hard for him to "get along with the idea of digital comics" but he is coming along. Profusely illustrated, his list gives you his reasons for his choices.

TOM'S HARDWARE LOOKS AT THE KINDLE TOUCH AND THE KINDLE NON-TOUCH
Writer Andrew Ku has some really good illustrations for his article on the new e-Ink Kindles and does an update on the 4th Generation Kindle screen quality issue.

Newcomers to the new Kindle Touch and Kindle BASIC e-readers can easily be confused by Amazon's non-numbering of the many current Kindles, as shown even by this article and definitely in all the forums.

On the screen quality issue having to do with the Kindle 4th Gen (Basic Kindle NoTouch), he updates the analysis of what is or isn't happening there but he then says he's extending this to the Kindle Touch and then calls them both "Amazon's fourth-gen Kindles."

Unfortunately that perpetuates a misunderstanding. The Kindle Touch is Generation 5, as these things go (and I'll explain this in a minute) and the Kindle Basic is what has been called "Generation 4." They were born together and may seem identical twins but are more along the lines of fraternal ones.

Ku references the concern seen in a Mobileread Forum thread over the screen display of the Kindle 4 vs the Kindle 3 (now called the Kindle Keyboard).

That Kindle Keyboard is sold in the UK also, but only in the 3G/WiFi configuration (K3-UK)rather than the WiFi-only one.

As Mobileread Forum's Blossom and I both explained today in the forum thread to any who were lumping the two e-Ink Kindles as "Gen 4" Kindles:

The numbers 3, 4, and 5 have been used for the "generation ID" of any Kindle.

Amazon has used "Kindle 3" (actually, "Third Generation Kindle" has been said in some marketing) and this matches its operating system software version 3.x.x

The NoTouch $79 (confusingly named by Amazon as only "Kindle") is the Kindle 4 in the lineup, using operating system software version 4.x.x.

The Kindle Touch would be Kindle 5, as its operating system uses what Amazon calls software version 5.x.x.

Note that the Kindle Fire's operating system is software version 6.x.x .

Since they're all quite different, I think it's important to separate
Kindle 4 NoTouch/No Keyboard (v4.01 currently) and Kindle 5 Touch (which has the v5.0.3 update)

The Kindle 4 (Kindle Basic Non-Touch) has been the subject of the screen quality concern by some Kindle owners.

As mentioned in the thread, we haven't heard much about the K5 Touch having the problems that some K4 owners have seen.

At any rate Andrew Ku does a great job on describing the new eInk Kindles' features and, as mentioned, he illustrates and describes the functioning of these models very well -- and it's important to be aware of the Kindle Touch's "Easy Reach" feature on the touch screen. So be sure to go see the article I am fairly familiar with how these Kindles work but the article was interesting to me.

On the screen-quality issue, Ku's team did a terrific analysis of what might be happening there and why some see it and some don't -- they test many models of each. Sometimes there's something to be seen, and other times not so much, and this may have involved a problem with batches.

UNMASKING A DIGITAL PIRATE ON AMAZON
Many Kindle owners having to browse huge lists of promo-free or low-cost books will be interested in this article. I'm not going to get into it in this blog entry but those interested should definitely go read this article by Fast Company's Adam Penenberg

It explains how this kind of thing is done (to too great an extent) and includes a "Who, me? I didn't know" story about someone caught (who didn't even make decent money on this) and saying he had NO IDEA what he was doing was not exactly ligit. It also highlights the extent of "copyright infringement come-ons at Warrior Forum.

That's it for now! Kindle-Edition subscribers, who get the last 25 blog entries on their Kindles, can read these linked stories on their Kindles if they are uncommonly patient but will have an easier time reading that news by visiting this blog on your computer if wanting the details (Link: kindleworld.blogspot.com ).

Kindle Touch 3G Kindle Touch WiFi Kindle Basic (UK: KBasic) Kindle Fire
Kindle Keybd 3G (UK: Kindle Keybd 3G) K3 Special Offers K3-3G Special Offers DX

Check often: Temporarily-free recently published ones
Guide to finding Free Kindle books and Sources. Top 100 free bestsellers. Liked-books under $1
UK-Only: recently published free books, bestsellers, or £5 Max ones
Also, UK customers should see the UK store's Top 100 free bestsellers.

*Click* to Return to the HOME PAGE. Or click on the web browser's BACK button

Kingston Wi-Drive App for Kindle Fire now in Android App Store, 16-32Gig drive at Amazon. UPDATE-7 Jan 24 (Unit originally only for Apple)

noreply@blogger.com (Andrys Basten) — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 19:07:00 +0000

KINGSTON WI-DRIVE NOW SUPPORTS KINDLE FIRE AND IS AT AMAZON STORE - FREE WI-DRIVE APP FOR KFIRE IS NOW DOWNLOADABLE

See several updates below. I'll do a report soon from having worked with the Wi-Drive now, which has been working better than I expected. - Jan 24 (Original blog entry was Jan 17, morning)

Now we can add a 16 to 32 gig pocket-sized drive to the Kindle Fire -- and soon, Kingston Digital says, a 64GB drive (price not known yet). The drive can be carried in your pocket.

Android Mag's Pallavi had one of the several announcements of the availability of Kingston's WiDrive a few days ago, but the Kindle Fire app was not available in the Amazon AppStore. It is now. I just downloaded it.

Pallavi writes:

' It utilizes "Flash-based technology to store data from USB-compatible PCs." The content can be retrieved via Wi-Drive’s built-in wireless signal; and you do not require cables or an internet connection to do so. What's more, three users can work on different file types simultaneously from a single Wi-Drive. '

THAT SHARING FEATURE
That would mean each could be accessing different movies, music or other data at the same time, without wires.

The product description for the Wi-Drive with Kindle Fire Support mentions that you can run other apps while using WiDrive features and that there are "enhanced photo features."
Also mentioned: "Additional Network Setting - select WiFi channel"

Update - The first, very helpful customer review there, by Steeler Nation "Peter", written from use with iDevices, explains that the unit provides its own WiFi network in which the Kindle Fire connects to the Wi-Drive, and two or three devices can access different or same media files on the drive at the same time, all streaming smoothly, per customer reviews of the use of Wi-Drive with the iPad and other Apple devices using this drive for add-on storage and Non-Internet streaming.

His caveats are that with two or more people using it at a time, constantly streaming, it runs for only 3 hours and then must be re-charged again and ~~you cannot recharge this with the miniUSB adapter while using it~~. He doesn't say how long it lasts with one person using it. [End of Update]

Update 6 - I struck the part in the last paragraph that I found probably not to be true I'm able to recharge it at home when plugged into a power source (though we cannot recharge it via a computer USB port as explained in the manual) and it should work with a car charger unless there is something added that is necessary for a charger to power it.
I called up Kingston Tech Support and talked with a Level 2 support rep who said that a car adapter does charge it while you're using the drive but the car adapter has to be up to a certain standard and the best thing to do is look for car adapters that are Apple Product Certified. [End of Update 6]

Mobile Magazine has some very good photos.

The Wi-Drive can be shared by 3 users concurrently, as we've seen, and is already available from Amazon in 16GB (~~%60~~$50) and 32GB ($90) versions, and the 64GB version is coming, mid-year.

Wi-Drives are the shape and approximate size of Apple's iPhone 4s.

The unit comes with a one-year warranty and free technical support.

Amazon customer reviews of the basic unit (which had been only for Apple devices previously) -- 34 reviews at 4.5 stars average. No '1' or '2' ratings.

There's one customer review at the Amazon product page, for the Kindle Fire version, from someone who already had the drive for his Apple devices.

' By Wayne2626 [January 12, 2012]
Amazon Verified Purchase
This review is from: Kingston Wi-Drive 16 GB USB 2.0 External Hard Drive WID/16GBZ (Personal Computers)

I have a Iphone 4 and I was give[n] a gift certificate which I used to get a 16g wi-drive and it worked great with the iPhone. I also got a kindle fire for christmas. I found that amazon was going to come out with the wi-drive program which I just downloaded and it was no problem getting it to work with the fire giving me 24g of usable memory with the fire for shows, movies, and pictures.

Also one person can watch a movie stored on the wi-drive and another person can watch the same movie or a different movie stored on the same wi-drive at the same time, sharing media on the same wi-drive at the same time with two different devices... '

UPDATE 2 - An example of the convenience of sharing the drive, from one review (by Vurtis):

'...exactly what I needed. My family was flying across the country and we didn't have enough memory on our iPhones & my iPad. After being told from several stores that there was no way to expand with extra hard drives ... I tried the Kingston. I couldn't be more happy. The device works great. My wife watched a chick flick, I watched an action adventure and my daughter watched a Disney film. We made it across the country and all were happy. We had about 15 movies ripped onto it. It is about the same size as the iPhone and was a bit lighter. '

In that case he chose the 32-gig drive, but this spelled out the apparent ease of sharing without problems. We'll see. I'll try the smaller one out soon.

DOWNLOADING THE WI-DRIVE APP
Here's the downloadable Wi-Drive app for KindleFire, which you can order this way and it'll be ready for your Kindle Fire. Or, after checking this app page, you can just get on the Kindle Fire, go to "Apps" and then click on "Store" at upper-right and search for it and download it there.
But it's simpler to just click on the product page's download box and get the app ready for your Kindle Fire to install (and the record of $0.00 'purchase' is on your server records already that way).

WI-DRIVE FOR KINDLE FIRE USER MANUAL
Kingston offers a downloadable Wi-Drive for Kindle Fire User Manual in PDF format

HOW YOU USE WI-DRIVE - A VIDEO
Kingston's press release of Jan. 10 recommends their (high definition) YouTube VIDEO about the Wi-Drive.

REMINDER ABOUT VIDEO FORMATS - A CONVERTER
Any video you play on the Kindle Fire, whether from a DVD or from your personal videos, must be converted to MP4 first.
I was exploring Miro, which is free but I was waiting until their support for Kindle Fire is ready, and it apparently is, for their main software "Miro," rather than for the more limited MiroVideoConverter (MVC) program which doesn't have all the features of Miro 4.04 - a free, open source program by Participatory Culture Foundation for Win XP, Vista, Win 7.

UPDATE 7 - Unfortunately, although it's free and I imagine they will improve their conversion methods for the Kindle Fire, they produced files that don't work well with the Wi-Drive streaming to the Kindle Fire, with my Flip Mino HD files, nor even on the Kindle Fire itself nor on my Samsung S2 phone and my Samsung Tab 10.1 tablet. The video was unstable on all of them. You may have better luck with other video files. It offers only one automated option for Kindle Fire conversion with no size specifications.

I've had great luck with the extremely flexible and ultra-effective Tools4Movies' DVD Catalyst 4, which is easily the best one of the several I tried and worth much more than the $9.95 price. Another one, which is not as flexible but which has the easiest 'joining' of mp4 files I've encountered, is Emicsoft, but it's $35 and the author won't give you a full file result with the Trial copy. Tools4Movies' DVD Catalyst has the most responsive, quality tech support I've experienced while Emicsoft comes with virtually no support.

UPDATE 3 - I received later information from Miro that the program "does batch processing of conversions," (depending on computer's CPU capability), and an additional feature is that when you connect your device, you can "just drag -n- drop and the file will be converted and placed on your device." They say they have an entire new set of features for device syncing coming with Miro 5. But the experience is mainly of their requesting donations even when starting the first conversion attempt.

Beth Sexton, a Kindle forum member writes that she used Miro to convert .avi to .mp4 and that it worked well for her, but she also recommends that when installing it that you UNcheck the toolbar option and other extras unless you really want them.
She used VLC to convert .divx to .mp4 ...

Miro is not for me, but I'm keeping the info in this entry because Gdgt software developer Mitchell McKenna, tweeted about Miro on Jan. 12, "I see Vimeo feeds now work again in Miro 4.0.4! Awesome work, big kudos to @TheMiroFolks!" -- getmiro.com's webpage is, along with Wikipedia folks, on strike today against the "SOPA" House bill that they feel may give the government and larger corporations too much power over allowable access to other websites. Here's Google News on the latest SOPA stories for those who want to know more about this.

UPDATE [1] -- Video Converter tools
I've asked the knowledgeable Amazon Kindle Forum members what good, free or low-cost utilities they know of for converting videos to mp4 and have already received very good information from L. Leverton, Pineapple, Tink-erbell. Q, cicsos2, and kwajkat in that forum thread.

So far, DVD Catalyst 4's full $9.95 version (vs free versio)n, stands out. L. says:

' It now has new Fire upgrades that do some amazing things. It can eliminate the gray bar and make it a full screen video among other things. I tried it again yesterday on the Liam Neeson Unknown movie. I stuck the dvd in the drive and selected kindle fire as the device and selected go. It was done in a matter of minutes and was great. '

L. also mentions seeing a new Movie Gallery app that was $2.00 ... so there's another possibility.

Visit that thread for any additional very useful input from the members there.

(Later) I've seen more recommendations and the fact that DVD Analyst has a rep for very good customer service. Apparently, their Movie Gallery 2.0 feature allows you to keep videos there for later streaming by you, which would be a good feature for non-Amazon videos you have. Amazon will store, free, up to 5 gigs of any of your non_Amazon video files but not stream them, and of course 5 gigs of videos don't go that far.

UPDATE 4: Highrider, in another forum thread, writes, about DVD Catalyst:

' It has a drop down menu to select the device you want the video formatted for. You can select the Kindle Fire from the list and then choose one of several quality formats. I've had the best luck with what they call Kindle Fire (fast). Haven't had one fail to play after using this setting and it's formatted to 1024x600 already to fit the Fire screen '

[End of Update 4]

UPDATE 5 - kwajkat described Maxell's AirStash, a flash thumb-drive that comes with 8 or 16 gigs of memory and data is stored on SD cards. &bnsp;This is $149 to $179 depending on how much internal memory you want to use for running it, but you'd have access to several 16 or 32 gig SD cards this way.

HOWEVER, I read that you must switch to this drive's network and turn off the Kindle Fire's Internet access, and the AirStash's access when the AirStash is itself connected to your WiFi router, is limited, though there are utilities that can improve that.

The customer reviews are less positive for this but it's still a strong competitor, except that you cannot do the Net while it's attached unless it is itself connected to a WiFi network.

The Wi-Drive has a 2nd wireless built in that allows your connected Kindle Fire to work with it while the KFire is connected to the Internet

Also, the AirStash uses WEP security only, not WPA, so is considered less-secure in public places. The SD card switching is a great feature though.
I'd like to hear any comments pro and con that you have, on either device. Thanks. [End of Update 5]

HandBrake - This is a free converter very useful for resizing segments when you run up against contraints such as the 4-gig file-size maximum on the FAT system (which is used by the KindleFire device), but users get only 5.5 gigs for user data on that anyway. It's a very good adjunct to your video converter toolbox but is not known as the easiest program to use otherwise.

SUMMING UP
This Kingston Wi-Drive info should be good news for many :-)
If you have any first-hand experiences with this, now that it's available for the Kindle Fire (or even with Apple devices in the past), let us know in the Comments area. Thanks.

Apple users who don't already know about this unit might benefit from it also.

Kindle Touch 3G Kindle Touch WiFi Kindle Basic (UK: KBasic) Kindle Fire
Kindle Keybd 3G (UK: Kindle Keybd 3G) K3 Special Offers K3-3G Special Offers DX

Quick Note + Free Kindle Books - Reminders and recommended browsing

noreply@blogger.com (Andrys Basten) — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 17:28:00 +0000

Just a quick note

Have been somewhat under the weather, but things are clearing up and I'll be back at it tomorrow morning.

I did take a little time to check out more closely the Wi-Drive and looked at what is needed for putting video on your Kindle Fire and also on the tiny Wi-Drive that can smoothly stream video or display images and personal documents to your Kindle Fire. And of course it is very useful pocketable storage for images, documents, video, for transfer to the Kindle Fire as needed. That the streaming or image and document access can be shared with two others is an unusual plus not possible with SD cards, though I'd like that feature too.

Kindle-Edition subscribers of this blog who've never visited the web page might want to come visit briefly (Link: kindleworld.blogspot.com), to take a look at the right-hand column that holds earlier articles that can answer questions that many have had about any of the Kindle models, older or newer, and info on how to make use of the many features not often described or publicized. Thanks for visiting, either here, or via the Kindle edition, and for the helpful comments I get to blog items or in email.

FREE AND LOW-COST KINDLE BOOKS IN GENERAL
If you'd like to browse for current free books (especially non-classics) or lower-cost offerings from Amazon that are available on an ongoing basis (although the books themselves go off-sale quite quickly) but which newer visitors will not have seen before, here's some light browsing:

Links to Free Kindle Books - Non-Classics - available today

Dec 2011 Jan 2012, by:
Publication Date Bestselling
High-ratings

   Amazon's Limited Time Free Promos

UK: PubDate Popular

Most Popular Free K-Books:
U.S. & Int'l (although NOT UK):
   Top 100 free
UK-Only:
   Top 100 free

Here's the blog's general Free Books Guide

Top 100 free Android apps, for Kindle Fire owners (who should check out the free app of the day each day)

PRIME Lending Library - borrowing books
In the forums, I've found some who did not know that with the Prime membership, which gets you free 2-day shipping on almost all of Amazon's own items (not so much 3rd party Marketplace items), you not only have access to about 12,000 no-add'l-cost streaming videos, you can also borrow one Kindle book per calendar month, from a choice of over 75,000 now, without dealing with waiting times or due-dates.

Prime's Lending Library:
   Rules; Borrowing;
   How to Browse or search the now voluminous List
Note: When you borrow a Prime library book, you do it from your Kindle, at the Kindle Store
and not from the Amazon web pages.

NOT FREE, BUT MOSTLY UNDER $1
Non-Classics under $1:
Highly rated, under $1
Amazon's specific mostly 99c Kindle Books page

And then there's the Kindle Daily Deal that changes each night, at around midnight, into a pumpkin and then back into a new carriage.

OVER $1 BUT SPECIALLY FEATURED POPULAR BOOKS
There are also the monthly Kindle book deals, with 100 Editors' Choices priced at $1.99-$3.99.

CUSTOMER DISCUSSION THREADS
Ongoing or completed but informative popular discussions (See Kindle Forums for more.)
. Are you sorry you bought a Fire?
. Kindle touch or Kindle Keyboard
. Kindle Fire for nonTech person?
. Kindle Fire Keyboard.. Anyone else having issues?
. Any happy Kindle Touch owners?
. Kindle Fire video on airplane compared with iPad video, a tense thread :-)
. Got my Fire!
. Feel like almost crying - Kindle loss and personalizing Kindles - lighthearted
. Unusual calls from Amazon because of forum posts
. Personal docs now sendable to individual Kindles again
. To Avoid Confusion, Please Use the Official Product Names in Forum" [entertaining]
. Discussion of geographic restrictions on digital purchases
. Discount-alert books discussed on separate message thread
. What have been your favorite public domain books that are not so well known?
. Best "Free" books you've read (many are no longer free, however).
. Highly recommended Indie authors
. Unique Uses of Kindles

Other current forum threads that might interest some
Public Library Lending questions at the forums, and Lendle's Kindle borrowing
. How many e-books does your public library have?
. Public librarians: what has been your Kindle/Overdrive experience?

Kindle News: What Apple's textbook revolution means + the Lawsuit against Apple and Big5 Publishers is modified. Update

noreply@blogger.com (Andrys Basten) — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 20:29:00 +0000

I'm typing in the dark again
Not only that -- after slowly typing a few things on Google's blogger.com, with a wildly malfunctioning cursor on my 10" tablet, Blogger.com was itself down for over an hour and nothing I wrote had been saved or saveable. [End of sob story, AKA the Power Dog ate my homework]

SOMEwhat undaunted, here's a bit of it anyway, that I could remember. My power is still not back, so these are the stories I remember finding. [Later: I went to sleep without completing it as I wanted to add some detail, and finished the entry this morning on an old-fashioned computer.]

TechRadar leads off with the following headline about their new textbook authoring program:
Apple iBooks Author ties your book to iBookstore You can't sell it anywhere else

It may not be as bad as some fear though, because the authors' "work" that can't ever be distributed except by Apple is defined as the "software" package completed by the author using the Author program and it doesn't appear to refer to the basic Content of the book.

The larger story is Apple's attempt to bring sweeping changes to textbook publishing and the costs involved for students. Basically, it could be seen as a good thing, as textbook costs have been outrageous for a long time. Apple's pricing will generally be $14.99~ But as with everything else, a suspicion remains that Apple makes plans that are wholly Apple-centric.

Current example: Apple iBookStore books can't be read on anything but Apple devices. As a result the language in the Agreement for Author software authors is disconcerting to some because of the reality of how closed Apple's system can be for its own books. Since Apple's focus is on Apple hardware, it's of more interest to them that you be interested in buying more of that.

E-Books sold at Amazon, B&N, Kobe, etc., are readable on Apple devices, Android, webOS, Windows Phone 7, BlackBerry Mac and Windows machines. In these cases, the book's the thing.

The wording
Per several stories yesterday, the actual wording by Apple for Author-generated interactive ebooks::

' IMPORTANT NOTE: If you charge a fee for any book or other work you generate using this software (a “Work”), you may only sell or distribute such Work through Apple (e.g., through the iBookstore) and such distribution will be subject to a separate agreement with Apple. ... '

Today, all the google news stories on first reactions to this clause are seen in this google-news search on the clause.

So, it actually seems, to me, to mean the package 'generated by their software' and not the contents of the basic book, and if you put your book into another e-format elsewhere, it's fine as long as you don't use one generated by iAuthor, That makes sense, if I'm reading that right.

I do think though that Apple's more-than-savvy lawyers were aware it could be interpreted the other way by some and probably felt that if an author chooses to not publish the book elsewhere in a form generated by another venduor's publishing mechanism, that would be fine by them.

Update - I just read Appside's take from the news-list link I gave, and it's one of the better ones, from his initial thoughts to another opinion he quotes after that. [End of Update]

"The Truth about Apple's Textbooks Announcement"
That's the Business Insider's headline, or part of it. They found the announcement "underwhelming" with the new items being an area for downloading textbooks and the iBooks Author software that makes it easy to make interactive textbooks. Their take is that it's just a start.

"Apple Kindles Textbook War" - Wall Street Journal's Rolfe Winkler writes:
"Electronic textbooks may look cool on Apple's iPad, but they are likely to end up selling more Amazon Kindles."

His reasons? iTunes Store has "only a handful available to start" and publishers may limit supply because they're used to selling textbooks at more like $100+. Amazon, Winkler argues, has the Kindle Fire at 60% less than an iPad 2 and there are "already far more textbook titles available for the Fire, direct from Amazon" or through CourseSmart. He ends with, "The cool factor may mean kids prefer iPads. The price factor likely means more will be sent to class with Kindles."

AMENDED Lawsuit against Apple and the Big6 publishers
AppleInsider headlines: "Class-action lawsuit alleges Apple, publishers engaged in 'price-fixing conspiracy."

Hagens Berman modified the lawsuit to include new allegations as well as information that could support their case, including Walter Isaacson's description of Steve Jobs boasting about his known and reported leadership part in the Gentlemen's Agreement to raise ebook prices to fixed amounts that would be required to be the same between all -- to thwart Amazon's strategic low-ball pricing. The interesting changes to the lawsuit include this wording:

' "The information we’ve included in this new filing shows the deep antagonism that publishers had toward Amazon for its consumer-friendly pricing," said Steve W. Berman, managing partner at the firm and lead counsel on the case. "Since we began the action last August we’ve uncovered statements from executives at several publishers that demonstrate they viewed Amazon as a significant threat to the long-term survival of their profitability.” '

In Steve Jobs' own words:

' Amazon screwed it up. It paid the wholesale price for some books, but started selling them below cost at $9.99. The publishers hated that -- they thought it would trash their ability to sell hard-cover books at $28. So before Apple even got on the scene, some booksellers were starting to withhold their books from Amazon.

So we told the publishers, "We'll go to the agency model, where you set the price, and we get our 30%, and yes, the customer pays a little more, but that's what you want anyway." But we also asked for a guarantee that if anybody else is selling the books cheaper than we are, then we can sell them at the lower price too. So they went to Amazon and said, "You're going to sign an agency contract or we're not going to give you the books."

Given the situation that existed, what was best for us was to do this aikido move and end up with the agency model. And we pulled it off. '

As we've seen, the complaint's alleged increase in pricing, as a result, by 30 to 50 percent, is not exaggerated and, the Complaiint continues, "completely changed the competitive pricing landscape that had existed for decades in the industry." to the point that often the e-book price exceeds the sales price of the print book.

Also see: History of the Pricing Wars in News Articles, with Sourcing for details and sources

Kindle Touch 3G Kindle Touch WiFi Kindle Basic (UK: KBasic) Kindle Fire
Kindle Keybd 3G (UK: Kindle Keybd 3G) K3 Special Offers K3-3G Special Offers DX

Quick alert on $10 Kindle Fire app that's free today. Links to free Kindle books

noreply@blogger.com (Andrys Basten) — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 20:23:00 +0000

FREE KINDLE FIRE APP FOR THE DAY, JAN 19

Easy Money, by Handy Apps, Inc., is "a personal finance app that combines an expense tracker, a checkbook register, a budget manager, and a bills reminder. EasyMoney provides a rich, detailed window into your finances. A simple and intuitive data entry system is combined with a wealth of easily accessible financial information. Input your bills and never lose track of payments. Analyze how and where your money is being spent. Set spending limits on a variety of customizable categories."

66 customer reviews at 3.6 stars average, $0.00 today

It gets some good reviews, while some say it has bugs, and others advise today that people "purchase" it for $0.00 and keep it in their Amazon library to download after it has received another update, as it's normally $9.95. You can read about the features as well as the pros and cons on the product page.

If you get it at the product page, for $0, it'll be ready to be installed when you next access the Amazon Android AppsStore on your Kindle Fire. You can then choose to not install it or maybe install it and check it out and then if you decide you don't want any bugs you might encounter, you'd UNinstall it but it would remain yours with later updates. Some of the reviews are from use with other devices in the past.

You can get it straight from the Kindle Fire of course, but reading the reviews is slower there. If you sort the reviews by Newest, you'll see more reviews that are for use with the Kindle Fire.

Today's Kindle Daily Deal
Longtime Kindlers know there's a new Kindle Daily Deal today, which changes at midnight each day, and is available mostly in the U.S.

Breathless, by Jessica Warman, 24 customer reviews at 4.2 stars average.

Genre: Teens, Fiction. It has a starred review at Booklist.

$4.61 yesterday, $0.99 today, at 79% off

Reminders and Notes for newer Kindlers
. Amazon's specific mostly 99c Kindle books page
. Amazon's monthly 100 Kindle book deals, from $1.99 to $3.99
. Temporarily-free non-classics for January 2012

Kindle Touch 3G Kindle Touch WiFi Kindle Basic (UK: KBasic) Kindle Fire
Kindle Keybd 3G (UK: Kindle Keybd 3G) K3 Special Offers K3-3G Special Offers DX

Kindle Fire SOFTWARE UPDATE, VERSION 6.2.2 is here. SSL and what it means. Flash default: Change to "On Demand' might be better.

noreply@blogger.com (Andrys Basten) — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 01:05:00 +0000

flash
KINDLEFIRE SOFTWARE UPDATE VERSION 6.2.2 IS READY

Kindle Fire Software Update, V6.2.2 is now available online (after many of us downloaded it from XDA Developers yesterday and discussed it, and it's officially downloadable at the link, in case the update isn't already on your Kindle Fire (some got it "by air") and you decide you want it right away.

The announcement was made by Amazon on a Kindle Forum thread. Mine was still at v6.2.1 yesterday, and the 'Update your Kindle" button for "System Version" setting was grayed out. So I did update it prematurely instead of waiting (despite knowing that a later revision could be placed there before the official announcement). Waiting for delivery of the software update will be easier for most. I don't think they'll take their time on sending this to the devices as they started delivering the update over the air a day before they announced it on the fourms topday.

The forum announcement in whole (bold face emphases mine and formatting mine):

Initial post: Jan 18, 2011 3:26:22 PM PST
Amazon Kindle Customer Service:
(AMAZON OFFICIAL)

We wanted to let you know that we've released a new, over-the-air software update for Kindle Fire. As with all of our free software updates, this will be delivered automatically to your Kindle Fire.

This update contains several performance improvements and additional features.

First, we've made improvements to the graphics system. You will notice smoother rendering when performing common operations like pinching and zooming, panning and scrolling.

Second, you will notice a new icon (four arrows pointing outward) in the lower right corner of the display. Tapping on this icon enables a full screen mode that maximizes the amount of the screen devoted to the web site. To exit full screen mode, you can tap on the up arrow at the bottom center of the display.
[ Andrys here: The bottom bar is nicely just a sliver.]

We think you will find this new feature especially helpful when browsing with the device in landscape orientation.

We've also made it easier to turn Flash on and off. The "Enable plug-ins" setting in the browser settings has been changed to "Enable Flash." The Flash default is "Off" but if you'd like Flash to be turned on, it's easy to do - simply go to Silk settings and select "Enable Flash."
[Andrys here: I use "On Demand" setting so you can see the box for the video not being loaded and then press the down-arrow to start it running if you want. This means not having to go to Settings to turn it 'on' ... The 'Off' default was causing people to think yesterday that Flash is now not allowed anymore.]
Finally, we've made a change to the way that the Kindle Fire communicates with the Silk acceleration servers when in cloud acceleration mode. To reduce overhead and speed up page loads, we've changed the way these communications are processed and will no longer use SSL by default.

If you want to enable SSL for the communication between the Kindle Fire and the Silk acceleration servers, you can select the "Optional Encryption" setting in the browser settings menu.

This change does not affect traffic to SSL (HTTPS) web sites; that traffic is routed directly to the those web sites and remains encrypted.
[ Andrys here: SSL stands for "Secure Sockets Layer" and is a commonly-used protocol for managing the security of a message transmitted on the Internet.

It's an extra step which some will want but it also would take a bit longer, as it encodes data sent ver the Web and makes it unreadable to anyone intercepting the transmission. ]
For more information about the software update go to www.amazon.com/kindlesoftwareupdates.

As mentioned, here's the actual software update page for the Kindle Fire update v6.2.2 rather than have you choose from several possible ones on the page they cite.

Amazon's directions on the software update page:

' If you are not sure what software version you're running, tap the Quick Settings icon, tap "More," then tap "Device." If your System Version is "Current version: 6.2.2," you are running the latest software. If your System Version is "Current version: 6.0, 6.1, or 6.2.1" follow the instructions [at the 6.2.2 update page] to take advantage of all of the features available for Kindle Fire.
. . .
To update your Kindle, ensure
. you are connected to a Wi-Fi network and that
. your battery is fully charged.

Tap the Quick Settings icon in the upper right corner of your device,
then tap "Sync."

The software update will automatically download in the background and will be applied once download is complete and the device is asleep. '

The above describes a semi-automated update.

However, if you don't have a WiFi connection at the time and want to do this, you can do a MANUAL update at the software update page for Kindle Fire, where Amazon has step-by-step directions, for doing this with a USB cable to transfer the update to your Kindle Fire.

It was great that this time, Amazon did provide more specific notes on what is being updated.

If you have reactions to these changes or find any other ones, and have time, please let us know what you find. Thanks.

LONG, with UK
Kindle Touch 3G Kindle Touch WiFi Kindle Basic (UK: KBasic) Kindle Fire
Kindle Keybd 3G (UK: Kindle Keybd 3G) K3 Special Offers K3-3G Special Offers DX

Kindle Active Content for $0.99 for January 2012

noreply@blogger.com (Andrys Basten) — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 23:49:00 +0000

KINDLE ACTIVE CONTENT FOR 99 CENTS FOR JANUARY

These are 23 "active content" items (productivity & educational tools in this case) for the non-Touch Kindles and are all at 99c during the rest of January.

Some are usually higher-priced while some are always 99c but are among the most popular in customer reviews. This is a collection that Amazon decided to highlight for those who aren't aware they're available.

I haven't been able to find wording by Amazon today on availability of these outside the U.S. Let me know if you can't download these in your country or if you can. I don't know why that information is not on the product page header.

They work with "the Kindle" (which is the NON-Touch/Non-Keyboard {also UK}, the Kindle Keyboard {also UK} -- formerly known as Kindle 3 -- and most of these work with the older Kindle 2 also, and Kindle DX devices.

Kindle Touch 3G Kindle Touch WiFi Kindle Basic (UK: KBasic) Kindle Fire
Kindle Keybd 3G (UK: Kindle Keybd 3G) K3 Special Offers K3-3G Special Offers DX

Kindle Touch SOFTWARE UPDATE, VERSION 5.0.3 is ready -- How to get it.

noreply@blogger.com (Andrys Basten) — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 22:17:00 +0000

KINDLE TOUCH SOFTWARE UPDATE VERSION 5.0.3 IS READY

Kindle Touch Software Update, V5.0.3 is available online, and downloadable at the link, in case the update isn't already on your Kindle Touch and you decide you want it right away.

I received an alert on the update by eagle-eyed Randall Leverette.

My Kindle Touch is still at v5.0.0 and the 'Update your Kindle" button is grayed out. So I'll be updating instead of waiting, although the latter will be easier for most. As with the Kindle Fire update, I don't think they'll take their time on sending this one to the devices.

I recommend that most wait for it to happen unless they need to have it now and haven't been updated yet. See further below on that.

As mentioned, here's the actual software update page for the Kindle Touch update v5.0.3 rather than have you choose from several possible ones on the general page. They have been sending these types of updates out pretty quickly when they happen.

On the Kindle forums, some have reported sporadic freezes on the Kindle Touch.

The reason given by Amazon for the update:
"This update features general software improvements for Kindle Touch."

Amazon's directions on the software update page:

Determine your software version: From Home, tap "Menu," and then tap "Settings." On the Settings screen tap "Menu" and select "Device Info." If you see "Firmware Version: Kindle 5.0.3" you're running the latest software. If you see a prior version, proceed with the following steps to update your Kindle Touch to the latest software.

Download your software: Click on the link below to download the software update file directly to your computer:

At THIS point go to Amazon's page to get the actual file, linked under this #2 point. and follow the rest of the directions there. It's pretty straightforward. But it's important to follow EACH step completely to avoid problems.

Important things to remember:
. This uses your USB cable as you'd be opting to do this transfer manually.
. Don't drop the file into one of the Kindle folders. Put it at the top.
. Make sure the transfer is complete before you disconnect.
. Then 'safely disconnect' (depends on your computer) the Kindle.
. Disconnect the USB cable from both your Kindle Touch and your computer.

After you're finished with that, follow Step #5 to start the Kindle up using the new updated software.

The software update will automatically download in the background and will be applied once download is complete and the device is asleep.

If you have reactions to these changes or find any other ones, and have time, please let us know what you find. Thanks.

Kindle Touch 3G Kindle Touch WiFi Kindle Basic (UK: KBasic) Kindle Fire
Kindle Keybd 3G (UK: Kindle Keybd 3G) K3 Special Offers K3-3G Special Offers DX

Kindle News and Tips: How to use Amazon's own SendtoKindle for PC

noreply@blogger.com (Andrys Basten) — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 21:26:00 +0000

AMAZON's OWN SEND TO KINDLE feature "for PC"

A lot has been said about this recent Amazon development, and from my read of the forums, many are confused by it.

The newish feature is titled Send to Kindle for PC (similar name as a popular Google Chrome add-on), and a paragraph I saw in the Help pages for this feature gives the essence of it.

The "for PC" part means that the feature isn't ready for Macs yet but it's expected to be, soon. What caused some confusion is that the most popular Amazon Kindle app is named "Kindle for PC" and some are not quite comfortable with the concept of a PC-Windows or Mac program that works on your computer, rather than on the now many Kindle devices that Amazon is offering -- where they are called 'apps' whether a Kindle app, an Android app, a Kindle Fire app, iOS app (Apple), etc.

First, read the description of and download Send to Kindle for PC

The GOAL
From the Help page mentioned, a Question and Answer:

' I installed Send to Kindle on my PC, how can I start using it?

From Windows Explorer [ TWO options ]
Right click on one or more documents and choose Send to Kindle

From any Windows application that can print, select Print and choose Send to Kindle (documents are delivered in PDF format). '

[ This is done wirelessly, without a cable. ]

Many at the forums are finding this very useful. Others don't know where to download it to or how to use it. But it's essentially as simple as the above paragraph, modified from the Amazon Help page.

Features:
. You no longer have to email a a personal document to your Kindle.
. It's free if, as most will, you use WiFi for the action
Those with 3G-only Kindles (all models prior to Kindle 3 (UK: K3)) would either:
1. Pay a small fee: 15 cents per megabyte (U.S. residents), (non-US):$0.99
(calculating SIZE: most novels are under 1 megabyte)
2. Forget wireless delivery like this and use a USB cable to transfer the file instead.
NOTE: Kindle Personal Docs Service is not available via Whispernet (3G) in Canada.

   Tip: you can set the Maximum Charge that you allow for delivery of personal docs by 3G:
         1. Visit Manage your Kindle
         2. Select Personal Document Settings from the left hand menu.
         3. Scroll down to the heading "Whispernet Delivery Options."
         4. Select "Edit" on the right hand side of the page
         5. Enter your preferred personal document charge limit.
         [Could be $0.00 to avoid 'accidents']
         6. Click "Update."

Important Feature
"You can also store your personal documents in your Kindle Library
and download them conveniently to your Kindle device AND
[to] supported Kindle reading applications when connected wirelessly.

Additional bonus of this feature
Essentially, this means that if you have a Kindle 3 or later (which means WiFi is always an available option) AND you have an older 3G-only Kindle (3G transfers are more expensive for Amazon because they pay AT&T or Sprint for that), you can now:
. transfer a personal doc on your PC wirelessly to any Kindle you have that uses WiFi
and then
. download from your Amazon Library to your 3G Kindle that personal doc,
with no personal doc fee involved.

Compatibility at this time
"Send to Kindle for PC is compatible with your Windows-based personal computer running Windows XP, Windows Vista, or Windows 7 (64 or 32 bit).
At this time, the only Kindle reading application supported by Send to Kindle for PC is the Kindle App for iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch."

Supported file types
. Microsoft Word (.doc and .docx)
. TXT (.txt)
. RTF (.rtf)
. JPEG (.jpeg, .jpg)
. GIF (.gif)
. PNG (.png)
. BMP (.bmp)
. PDF (.pdf)

Update: Commenter Julie quickly and rightly noted that they didn't include *.mobi or *.prc files, but these are always supported file types, as they are Amazon's own, so they may have just forgotten to list them. [End of Update]

Amazon's main description of what Send to Kindle for PC does

Send personal documents to your Kindle from your PC.

From Windows Explorer, simply right click on one or more documents and choose Send to Kindle.

From any Windows application that can print, select Print and choose Send to Kindle (documents are delivered in PDF format).

Choose to archive documents in your Kindle Library, where you can re-download them conveniently anywhere at any time.

Added Note
This feature is different from other tools previously discussed
. sendtoreader
. The Google Chrome add-on, sendtokindle
. the original, Instapaper.

These 3rd party web to Kindle tools are helpful in other ways, mainly for sending documents from web pages without ads included, to your Kindle.

Kindle Touch 3G Kindle Touch WiFi Kindle Basic (UK: KBasic) Kindle Fire
Kindle Keybd 3G (UK: Kindle Keybd 3G) K3 Special Offers K3-3G Special Offers DX

Free Kindle Books (Jan 14 -- 534 books) Forum member selections with links

noreply@blogger.com (Andrys Basten) — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 19:25:00 +0000

FREE KINDLE BOOKS from Joyce's daily forum thread of free Kindle book alerts and forumner recommendations.

534 newly and temporarily free Kindle books for Friday, 1/14/12. Recommendation-listings by forum members + discounted-book alerts.
Some of these are free for only a few days, others maybe two weeks.
[ Doublecheck the prices always.]

THIS BLOG ARTICLE CONSISTS OF LISTS OF BOOKS SELECTED BY FORUM MEMBERS
and posted so that others can see what was found to be interesting to them, out of over 500 book titles.

Some Kindle Forum members are going through the full lists and then creating links to the books that were of interest to them, to make it easier for others to find them.

Lists by forum members are compiled from the several postings they make while plowing through the titles -- All their recommendations are listed together under their forum names so we can easily see sets by each in these public forum threads.
I also included their duplicated picks, as they give a sense of what strikes people, in general, as worth picking up.
If a book is free for only ONE day and is no longer free, let me know and I'll strike it off the lists.

Listing-types and some genre identification
If you can see that some forum members choose the types of books you like, that'll help, and if you can see that any choose the types of books you may not find as interesting, that should help too! Many also specify the genre involved, which is very helpful. Even as subsets, there are 3 links involved in this set, although some are duplicates, chosen by different members. I hope this approach will prove useful for readers, when I have the time to do them.
Kindle-Edition subscribers (thank you for the support) should use their computers at the web page to use these links at kindleworld.blogspot.com

MORE... ( If you are reading this from the main blog page, the temporarily newly-free books and discounted-book forum-alerts link(s) are on the 2nd page, to load the main page more quickly and so that those wanting to go through the details can do so by: Clicking on "MORE" just below)
*****

January 14 free books - 534. The following are:
Forum members' free-book choices for Jan. 14:

Ashley says:
Roses in Winter
Kissing Through a Pane of Glass
CALIFORNIA MAN

"Princess" Joyce says:
My selections to share ...
House of Cards
Captain's Day
DIRTY (Jackie Mercer)
Waiting On Hope
A Falling Knife: An Evan Adair Mystery
Survival Instinct (The dark side of dating)
Nuclear Winter Wonderland
Ladies First
Meg's Moment
Fearless Heart
Fourth and Forever
Endo
Following are all 4 books (FREE) in "The Ocean Beach Island Series" by Donald Wells
Book 1 = The Many and The One (The Ocean Beach Island Series-Book 1)
Book 2 = Sins & Second Chances (The Ocean Beach Island Series-Book 2)
Book 3 = Dry Adultery, Wet Ambition (The Ocean Beach Island Series-Book 3)
Book 4 = Of Tongue And Pen (The Ocean Beach Island Series-Book 4)
Death by Facebook
Zen Queen - Author: Kirsty McManus - Genre: Fiction - Humor
Death Has a Name - Author: Jerry Hanel - Genre: Paranormal Thriller

mary says: [Linked by Nospin] [Suspense]
Farewell to Goodbye
Headhunters
Dying Memories

Sibel Hodge
Impeding Justice (Revised version) (DI Lorne Simpkins thriller (Book Two))

AnnieB
1. Dove Creek I have a friend who lives in Coeur d'Alene Idaho.
2. A Falling Knife: An Evan Adair Mystery murder/mystery
3. The Rozabal Line mystery
4. Nice Girl Does Noir: A Collection of Short Stories (Vol. 1) I have a couple of Libby's books but none with short stories.
5. Tested by Fire: He Sought Revenge. He Found Life | A Riveting Story for First Responders (Police Officers, EMTs, and Firefighters) in a Post-911 World (A Medic-7, First Responders Novel) thriller
6. Farewell to Goodbye mystery
7. SEALED CORRESPONDENCE thriller
8. WIDOW mystery
9. Final Edge (Edge Series #4) murder/mystery This is a series of 4. I missed book 1 when it was free so will cross my fingers it will be offered again :-)
10. Coming Home (Sophie Anderson Book 6) murder/mystery set in Australia.

Nospin says:
Cookbooks
Quick & Easy Gourmet Muffins

Health
Brains, Trains & Video Games (Living The Autism Life)
Beyond Medicine - ...based on a doctor's personal experiences suffering with ARDS
Mysteries
A Falling Knife: An Evan Adair Mystery
Impeding Justice (Revised version) (DI Lorne Simpkins thriller (Book Two))
Coming Home (Sophie Anderson Book 6)Death by Facebook

Denise Long
my picks:
Andraste
The Briton and the Dane: Birthright
Homemade Skin Care Recipes 2
Delicious Slow Cooker Vegan Meal Recipes (Easy Delicious Vegan Slow Cooker Cookbook Collection Vol. 1)
25 Easy & Delicious Homestyle Desserts (Just like Grandma use to make) (Homestyle Recipes)
Stonebridge Manor
Will Writing - An Informational Guide To Making A Will Easily
The Serpent in the Glass (The Tale of Thomas Farrell)
Spindlecrook
Practical Craft Tips For Beginners - Scrapbooking, Card Making, Rubber Stamping, Paper Crafts, Embossing, Quilting And More!
No More Tears (The Dead Trilogy)
15 Vegetarian Crock Pot Recipes

bailey1 says
Nude Foods Raw Food Diet Recipes Salads and Sauces Collection
Blood and Sunlight: A Maryland Vampire Story
Forever Summer
B.Y.O.B. - How to Sneak Alcohol Onto a Cruise Ship and other ways of reducing your bar tab
Julia's Vow (Telluride Trilogy)
Town Social

Sabrina says:
All Jacked Up: Prequel (All Jacked Up Series) [Humor]

K. Weber says:
Here are my picks today:
Kissing Through a Pane of Glass
The Pizza Boys
Mama's Boy
Rin-Tin-Tin:The Movie Star - As a German shepherd mama, I'm looking forward to this. As a matter of fact we are picking up our new GSD puppy today. :)
It's Because I Love You

Sarida says:
Trying these:
Realistic Recipes - Volume 2
How To Make Candy
15 Vegetarian Crock Pot Recipes My Favorite Mexican Cookbook
20 Quick and Easy Breakfast & Brunch : Fruits & Vegetables 20 Recipes for Every Day
31 Day Delicious & Nutritious Crockpot Soup Recipes. Easy & Healthy Betty's Crockpot Cookbook. Set & Ready Meals for Busy Moms. Let Your Slow Cooker Cook. ... Get Home. (Crockpot Cookbook Best Sellers)
100 Swiss Food Recipes
\Westward Ho, the Children

Great Dane says:
Secret Writing by B. A. Beers [Contemporary women's fiction]

isanythingopen says:
[For] Kids
Andraste
The Serpent in the Glass (The Tale of Thomas Farrell)
The Firestone Crystal
Elle's Journey (Book I, The Foretold Trilogy)
The Gifted Ones The Fairytale
Orphan Runaways: The Perilous Escape to Bodie
To Kill A Mocking Dog (A Marty & Weedgie Mystery)
Spindlecrook

Fantasy
Hidden Sidhe (The Keening Trilogy)
Feeling Theocidal (The Thrice-Cursed Godly Glories)
Prince (Blue Moon Rising Trilogy)
The Doomfarers of Erin (Alternate Europe Series)
The Vitalis Chronicles: White Shores
Nocturnal Origins (Nocturnal Lives)
The Stranger--An Archon modern fantasy
Agent of Artifice
The Story Makers The Foundling
Trefoil
The Wishing Hour
Dragonslingers

niki says
My selections:
Blood Crimes: Book One
Endo
Headhunters 2012 Apocalypse Organiser (Humor) ~ I couldn't resist this one; easy read and LOL funny
Nocturnal Origins (Nocturnal Lives) (Fantasy)
The Founding (Epic Sci-Fi)

MadVilla says:
...here are my picks-
Mystery:
DIRTY (Jackie Mercer)
Murder Never Retires (A Rushmore Oshansky Mystery)
A Falling Knife: An Evan Adair Mystery
Hotline to Murder The Front Door Murders (The Mollie Parkinson Mysteries)
The Great Detectives (From Vidocq to Sam Spade)

Nonfiction:
Energy Work - Cleanse, Heal And Strengthen Your Aura (Personal Transformation) (Intuitive Living)
Let's Get Organized!

Food/Cooking:
15 Vegetarian Crock Pot Recipes
Nude Foods Raw Food Diet Recipes Salads and Sauces Collection
Delicious Slow Cooker Vegan Meal Recipes (Easy Delicious Vegan Slow Cooker Cookbook Collection Vol. 1)
31 Day Delicious & Nutritious Crockpot Soup Recipes. Easy & Healthy Betty's Crockpot Cookbook. Set & Ready Meals for Busy Moms. Let Your Slow Cooker Cook. ... Get Home. (Crockpot Cookbook Best Sellers)

Fiction:
Walden 3.0
Death by Facebook

Games:
Puzzlebook: 101 Puzzle Quizzes (color and interactive!)

Reader says:
I went outside my usual genres today for the first several of these.
A Close Approximation of an Ordinary Life (I know several people with Asbergers)
Fractured Allegiance
No. 6 (High Times and Hard Time in Japan)
House of Cards
The Wishing Hour
A Falling Knife: An Evan Adair Mystery
DIRTY (Jackie Mercer)Chicken Recipes To Die For and it has an active TOC!

Marco says:
My selection is restricted to suspense stories:
1. Il Vendetta
2. Headhunters
3. Endo
HARD WORKING RED (Short Stories)

Maeflower says:
A few romance I picked up...
All In
Forever Summer
Poor White Trash

AuntOh says:
My Favorite Mexican Cookbook
2012 Apocalypse Organiser
Coming Home (Sophie Anderson Book 6)
SEALED CORRESPONDENCE
The Rozabal Line
The Walk (This was on my wish list!)
The Vitalis Chronicles: White Shores
Blood Crimes: Book One
Spindlecrook
To Kill A Mocking Dog (A Marty & Weedgie Mystery)

Family Kindle says:
Here are my picks and thanks everyone for helping me decide what to look for:
Wildflowers Come Back
Opal Fire (A Stacy Justice Mystery)House of Cards
Ladies First
Meg's Moment
Farewell to Goodbye
SEALED CORRESPONDENCE
Death by Facebook

angelmum3 says:
Rin-Tin-Tin:The Movie Star
B.Y.O.B. - How to Sneak Alcohol Onto a Cruise Ship and other ways of reducing your bar tab

Christine H. says:
Dove Creek( Pacific Northwest/American Indian Fiction)
SEALED CORRESPONDENCE(Thriller/Mystery)
The Briton and the Dane: Birthright (Medieval Historical Fiction) got the first book The Briton and the Dane free Dec 23rd,so it's great to get it's sequel too!
Stonebridge Manor(British Mystery)
The Serpent in the Glass (The Tale of Thomas Farrell)(Fantasy)
Town Social(Western Romance)
Agent of Artifice(Fantasy)
Christmas Spirit(Regency England Holiday Mystery Novella)
Il Vendetta(Thriller about Corporate Greed)
The Companion of Lady Holmeshire (Regency England Historical Romance)
[UNlinked: but I'll include the titles for AmazonKindle Book searchbox ]
. Why Don't They Come With Instructions? [Kindle Edition]by Jan Beaver (Special Needs Kids)
. BROTHERLY LOVE [Kindle Edition]by BILL STENLAKE (Mystery)
. The Walk [Kindle Edition]by Lee Goldberg (post-apocalyptic/Thriller)
. That makes 352 on my Kindle Touch now,and it still behaves like a dream. :]

WD says:
My picks - so far..........
Do Not Cross Me... Archangel Justice Action/Adventure, with a little Sci Fi thrown in
Robot Maid Is Broken Sci Fi
The Wishing Hour Fantasy
SODIUM (Heroes) FictionThe Last Prophet Science Fiction / Religious Fiction
The Ultimate Choice Mystery Thriller / Science Fiction

DoraLady says:
DIRTY (Jackie Mercer) by Debra Webb
Meg's Moment Amy Johnson
Anywhere But Here Jenny Gardiner
Minding Amy
Roses in Winter
Land That Job! How To Answer Interview Questions
Practical Craft Tips For Beginners - Scrapbooking, Card Making, Rubber Stamping, Paper Crafts, Embossing, Quilting And More!
Kids in the kitchen and they are cooking tea
Lose Weight Now: How To Turn Your Body Into a Powerful Weight Loss Machine
Diabetes Type 1 And Type 2 The Bare Facts
Some of these are short.
Fearless Heart by Gail Cauble Gurley
SEALED CORRESPONDENCE by RICHARD RUDOMANSKI

Series:
The Many and The One (The Ocean Beach Island Series-Book 1)
Sins & Second Chances (The Ocean Beach Island Series-Book 2)
Dry Adultery, Wet Ambition (The Ocean Beach Island Series-Book 3)

Until There Was You
The Portrait A little thing called Destiny
In Lies Trilogy
Silver Angel
Kathryn (Chosen)
Hallbury Summer
Hot Summer TAKEDOWN
EMMA DANIELS CONTEMPORARY LOVE STORIES (3 Books in 1)
Can't Take The Heat (A Contemporary Romance) (Brooklyn Heat)
Light Of Eidon

C Hayes says:
Here are a few I picked that I don't think I've seen listed yet...I apologize if they are duplicates.
Unique & Easy Tortilla Soup Recipes (Not Your Same Ole' Boring Recipes)
My Favorite Mexican Cookbook
21 Quick and Easy Fruits & Vegetables : Dips, Spreads and Salsas Recipes for Every Day

Peggy Jentoft says:
Extraordinary Healing: Transforming Your Consciousness, Your Energy System, and Your Life
I attended a 4 hour Seminar from the Author in 1994 and it has had a continuing positive effect on my life, so I'm breaking my restricted download rule for this book.

kiss04bam says:
The Portrait
Kathryn (Chosen)
Roses in Winter
Kissing Through a Pane of Glass
Blood and Sunlight: A Maryland Vampire Story
Meg's Moment
Series:
The Many and The One (The Ocean Beach Island Series-Book 1)
Sins & Second Chances (The Ocean Beach Island Series-Book 2)
Dry Adultery, Wet Ambition (The Ocean Beach Island Series-Book 3)
Of Tongue And Pen (The Ocean Beach Island Series-Book 4)
Breathless: Book One of the Jason and Azazel Trilogy
Broken Hearts Damaged Goods

Becky (beckygardens) says:
...these sounded really interesting
Zomblog
Realistic Recipes - Volume 3
The Maiden Voyage of the Maryann
Homemade Pastrami and To-Die-For Corned Beef
Theatrica
If You Can't Stand The Fun, Stay Out Of The Go-Go
Armwrestling The Dead
Jackalope Season: A Trio of Twisted Tales

K. Naughton says:
House of Cards
Rapid Weight Loss for Women: How to Lose 10 Pounds Quickly and Easily
15 Vegetarian Crock Pot Recipes
DIRTY (Jackie Mercer)
Land That Job! How To Answer Interview Questions
Boppin' Birthday Party Cupcake Recipes - 25 Adorable, Delectable & Scrumptious Recipes
Unique & Easy Tortilla Soup Recipes (Not Your Same Ole' Boring Recipes)
Can't Take The Heat (A Contemporary Romance) (Brooklyn Heat)
The Serpent in the Glass (The Tale of Thomas Farrell)
Chicken Recipes To Die For
Quick & Easy Gourmet Muffins
Fantastic Slow Cooker Crock Pot Recipes

joshp_84 says:
Puzzlebook: 101 Puzzle Quizzes (FREE for a limited time!) which has been on my wishlist for a little while now. today i got lucky and saw it for free on the link provided. for those who like challenging themselves with puzzles and stuff this is great. i had gotten the 12 puzzle book for free last year and now this one is available which contains 101

Elizabeth says:
Here are my picks. Thank you all for your posts.
Puzzlebook: 101 Puzzle Quizzes (FREE for a limited time!)
Delicioso Authentic Mexican Desserts (Mexican Fiesta Cookbooklets)
Fantastic Slow Cooker Crock Pot Recipes
21 Quick and Easy Fruits & Vegetables : Dips, Spreads and Salsas Recipes for Every Day
25 Easy & Delicious Homestyle Desserts (Just like Grandma use to make) (Homestyle Recipes)
Homemade Skin Care Recipes 2
31 Day Delicious & Nutritious Crockpot Soup Recipes. Easy & Healthy Betty's Crockpot Cookbook. Set & Ready Meals for Busy Moms. Let Your Slow Cooker Cook. ... Get Home. (Crockpot Cookbook Best Sellers)
Chicken Recipes To Die For
My Favorite Mexican Cookbook
Fruits & Vegetables Dessert Recipes : Quick and Easy Dessert Recipes for Every Day
[2 UNlinked ones people can search if they are interested in them. ]
- Restaurant Favorites Homemade: Eating Your Favorites at Half the Cost
- 15 Vegetarian Crock Pot Recipes
Amazing Cakes
America's Most Delicious Recipes-desserts
5-minute Recipes
Black and White: A Song That is a Story About Freedom to go to School Together
Time in Thailand
PowerPoint Pro - Level 1
No Worries Word - Level 1

carol ann says:
The Geronimo Breach
Innocence Turned Deadly
Heroes R Us: A Superhero novel
Shark & The Wolf: Predators and Prey

and for the kiddies :
The Seventh Birthday Wish
Taggie's Remedies
Chinese Plays for Kids
Plays for Children - Part One - Fifteen One Act Plays

M. Ratcheson says
I believe AnnieB has already posted Nice Girl Does Noir: A Collection of Short Stories, which is actually volume two of the collection of short stories by Libby Fischer Hellmann.
Nice Girl Does Noir: A Collection of Short Stories (Vol. 1) is also free at the moment.
...She's a good writer.

AmeliaA says:
The Serpent in the Glass (The Tale of Thomas Farrell) Sort of "Narnia" meets "Hogwarts" with a touch of Celtic legends thrown in. Not hugely original, but fairly entertaining.
If you have a young reader between the ages of nine and twelve or so, they'd probably enjoy it a lot -- but so would other lovers of British fantasy.

DonnaBeeGood says:
My picks for tonight:
Awakening - Romance
Sacred Intentions (Arrington Saga: prequel book, 3) - Romance, prequel to The Girl In The Lighthouse
Past Lives, Present Dangers (Women's Suspense - Past Lives Series) - Suspense
Family History: Part 2 - Romance, Part 1 was offered free January 9
Opium - Romance
The Last Mountain - Mystery/Thriller
A Seat In the Middle - Fiction

The Girl says:
House of Cards
Cats 101
Restaurant Favorites Homemade: Eating Your Favorites at Half the Cost
Forever Summer
Regal Wind (A Jeanne Wilcox Adventure)
Poor White Trash
Immortal Embrace (Embrace Series)
Past Lives #1: Rachel (The Past Lives Series)
Minding Amy
Dying Memories Chicken Recipes To Die For
Kathryn (Chosen)
EMMA DANIELS CONTEMPORARY LOVE STORIES (3 Books in 1)
SEALED CORRESPONDENCE
King's Blood: Musings of a Postmodern Vampire (A Serial Novel, Part One)
Linkage: The Narrows of Time Series (Volume 1)
Headhunters
Nocturnal Origins (Nocturnal Lives)
Remembering Valentine: A Novel
The Revelation (Wickford High)
The Wishing Hour
The Walk
Delicioso Authentic Mexican Desserts (Mexican Fiesta Cookbooklets)
Death by Facebook

Sarah M says:
...all of my picks for today
House of Cards
DIRTY (Jackie Mercer)
Christmas Spirit
The Story Makers
Blood and Sunlight: A Maryland Vampire Story
Murder Never Retires (A Rushmore Oshansky Mystery)
A Falling Knife: An Evan Adair Mystery
Immortal Embrace (Embrace Series)
Nightworld
Dying Memories
Blood Crimes: Book One
The Vitalis Chronicles: White Shores
Final Edge (Edge Series #4)

Listings included were from Joyce's forum thread page for 1/14 after 225+ posts were done.

TODAY'S KINDLE DAILY DEAL
SEAL of My Dreams - January 15, Sunday. Saturday's price $7.99, discounted by $7.00 today (Sunday), with a Kindle Daily Deal Price of $0.99 88% off

For the 50th anniversary of the commissioning of the Navy SEALS - "Novellas and short stories by 18 top-romance authors, with proceeds going to the Veterans Research Corporation - a non-profit fundraiser for veterans' medical research."
Varied stories, per customer reviews, 20 reviews with average rating of 4.7 stars

LINKS TO FREE KINDLE BOOKS - NON-CLASSICS - AVAILABLE TODAY
Dec 2011 Jan 2012
Publication Date Bestselling
High-ratings

Amazon's Limited Time Free Promos

UK: PubDate Popular

General, ongoing: Guide to Free Kindle books

Ongoing Forum Discount-Alerts thread, starting from the last exit point:
Jan. 13-15

Kindle Touch 3G Kindle Touch WiFi Kindle Basic (UK: KBasic) Kindle Fire
Kindle Keybd 3G (UK: Kindle Keybd 3G) K3 Special Offers K3-3G Special Offers DX

Free Kindle Books (Jan 13 -- 498 books) Forum member selections with links

noreply@blogger.com (Andrys Basten) — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 20:49:00 +0000

FREE KINDLE BOOKS from Joyce's daily forum thread of free Kindle book alerts

498 newly and temporarily free Kindle books for Friday, 1/13/12. Recommendation-listings by forum members + discounted-book alerts.
Some of these are free for only a few days, others maybe two weeks.
[ Doublecheck the prices always.]

THIS BLOG ARTICLE CONSISTS OF LISTS OF BOOKS SELECTED BY FORUM MEMBERS
and posted so that others can see what was found to be interesting to them, out of hundreds of book titles.

Notice that the forum members have taken the time to go through the full lists and then have created links to the books that were of interest to them when going through almost 500 free book titles, and the links they made are so that others can find those books also.

LISTS ARE COMPILED -- I've taken each members' several listings and included their choices under their names so you can see all the choices by each in these public forum threads.
I also included their duplicated picks so you get a sense of what strikes people, in general, as worth picking up.

Listing-types and some genre identification
If you can see that some forum members choose the types of books you like, that'll help, and if you can see that any choose the types of books you may not find as interesting, that should help too! Many also specify the genre involved, which is very helpful. Even as subsets, there are 278 links involved in this set, although some are duplicates, chosen by different members. I hope this approach will prove useful for readers, when I have the time to do them.
Kindle-Edition subscribers (thank you for the support) should use their computers at the web page to use these links. kindleworld.blogspot.com

For those regulars who are reading the blog article from the main page, the listings will be on a 2nd page, which you get to by clicking on the "...MORE"-area link below.

MORE... ( If you are reading this from the main blog page, the temporarily newly-free books and discounted-book forum-alerts link(s) are on the 2nd page, to load the main page more quickly and so that those wanting to go through the details can do so by: Clicking on "MORE" just below)
*****

January 13 free books - 498. The following are:
Forum members' free-book choices for Jan. 13-14:

"Princess" Joyce says:
Don't forget to take a peak at this book offering ... Great author and the complete series today is FREE

The Callahans: The Complete Series
[ Each individual book in that series costs $3.99 or so otherwise. ]
Terror Travels the Devil's Highway
Dance Tough Guys
Candlewood Lake
TwistedPerception: a Detective Elliot Mystery
Colors
Head Games
Inside the Mirrors
Love Me Gently
Presumed Guilty until proven innocent
Hollywood Scandals (Hollywood Headlines)
Friends and Other Perishables: a Carl Jacobs Mystery
Wildflowers Come Back
The Perfect Dish
Opal Fire (A Stacy Justice Mystery)
Iron City
Fatality Management (Emergency Operations Center Mystery)
claire-obscure
Veronica's Nap
The Callahans: The Complete Series
Year of the Chick
Vampire Love Story (#1) Author: H.T. Night Genre: Fantasy-Vampire

AnnieB says:
...Here's my first selection:
1. The Callahans: The Complete Series this is the complete 5 book series by our very own Gordon Ryan. I'm so excited to be able to get all the books together in one set! Thanks Gordon where ever you are. :-)
2. Candlewood Lake set in the early 70's
3. Twisted Perception: a Detective Elliot Mystery mystery
4. ~~The Sinking of the Titanic a history of the Titanic~~
5. Presumed Guilty until proven innocent this mystery is set in Fairfield Iowa
6. Hollywood Scandals (Hollywood Headlines) mystery
7. Two Graves (A Kesle City Homicide Novel) mystery

Brian Toomer says:
U Mad? The Internet's Guide to Idiots
If you're into Internet culture, this one is free today.

K.J.T says:"Cozy" mysteries
Fatality Management (Emergency Operations Center Mystery)
Death of an Obnoxious Tourist (Dotsy Lamb Travel Mysteries)

Cookbooks
Ultimate Cookie Recipes
NB: Ultimate Cookie Recipes has clear formatting but no table of contents.
Easy & Healthy Crock Pot Cookbook: 31 Delicious & Nutritious Crockpot Chili Recipes for 31 Days of the Month. Set and Let Your Slow Cooker Cook. Ready ... Get Home! (Crockpot Cookbook Best Sellers)

Teresa Lyons says:Truth and Lies Destroyer of Lives
Jack's Off; He's Gone. Jack Has Disappeared. (The Book of Oprah)
...a quirky little one (and i am not affiliated with this book in any way), but it looks like a good read. Will let you know what I think!

Sarah M says;
Dying Breath (Dean Grant Series #4)
Shadow Hunters
Terror Travels the Devil's Highway
Calamity
Yellow Eyes (The Guardian Saga)
Twisted Perception: a Detective Elliot Mystery
Base Spirits
Dying Breath (Dean Grant Series #4)
Shadow Hunters
Terror Travels the Devil's Highway
Calamity
Yellow Eyes (The Guardian Saga)
Twisted Perception: a Detective Elliot Mystery
Base Spirits

Nospin says
Health and healing
Feel Better Plan for Fibromyalgia in Remission
Unique Healing
Cookbooks
~~Veganess Breakfast Recipes-~~
Unique & Easy Vegetarian Soup Recipes (Not Your Same Ole' Boring Recipes)
Delicioso Guacamoles & Quesos (The Mexican Fiesta Cookbooklets)

babel
Head Games
Death of an Obnoxious Tourist
Opal Fire
Hollywood Scandals (all mysteries), and
Veronica's Nap.

Christine H. says:
Be sure to check each book's price carefully!
CRISIS(Thriller)
THERE IS NO HOPE HERE(Christian Bio)
Places in Ireland a Visitor Must See - A Travel Guide
Tasty Tex-Mex Recipes: Breakfast Edition (Tasty Tex Mex Recipes)
Winter Wonderlands: 150+ Classic Winter Scenes

T. Cook says:
Wow, I guess some people really don't like Spider Robinson's Callahan's Crosstime Saloon series...
Anyway, was just saying the Callahan's book series available for free today is not the more well-known Spider Robinson's Callahan's series.

kiss04bam says
Baking Love In The Kitchen - 25 Recipes To Keep Your Stove Lit!
SID-City (December edition is Free)
Candlewood Lake
See You At The Show
Bound by Blood (Paranormal Romance/Time Travel)
The Perfect Dish
The Fall
Opal Fire (A Stacy Justice Mystery)
Happy Birthday to You (Birthday Trilogy, Book 3)
Wildflowers Come Back
claire-obscure
Every Last Kiss (The Bloodstone Saga)

K. Weber says:
Spousal Abuse
Sari Caste
Calamity
Ten More Bodies
~~The Sinking of the Titanic~~

bailey 1 says:
In Dreams (The Dream Series)
Bits of You & Pieces of Me
Haunting Refrain
Sudden Storms
My Dog Died for us dog lovers!!!
Teenagers - Can You Survive Them? I'm learning to with my 13 year old son!
The Best Vegetarian Pizza Recipes (Fast, Easy and Delicious Pizza Cookbooks)
The Trials of Virtue

isanythingopen says:
Choices for the kids ["Quite a few for the older ones this time."]
Shadow Hunters
WereWoof
Dragons' Bane
The Mayfair Moon
Death Whispers (Death Series, Book 1)
Eria
Forever Freaky
Cristo's Chronicles (Book One-The King's Challenge)
Wingling (Ellery Rider)
Lance Sidesaddle, Private Investigator
PETER AND THE VAMPIRES (Volume One)

Fantasy
Light Of Eidon
Eve of Destruction
Hindustaan: An Epic Adventure of the Mughal Empire
Burning Light (The Seventh World Trilogy)
The Spiral Tattoo
The Phoenix Prince (Royal Blood)
Shotgun
The Woodcutter
The Ills of Saardu
The Adventures of Guy
The Axe of the Dwarf Lords (Chronicles of the Nameless Dwarf)
Azuri Fae - Urban Fantasy (Caledonia Fae, Book 2)

Science Fiction
Forbidden The Stars (The Interstellar Age Book 1)
Majesty's Offspring (Book 1) (Age of Majesty)
Escape to Destiny

Horror
See Jack Hunt (See Jack Die)
Black Damask
Diana's Dreams (Whispers)
Generation Evil
The Heretic (The Templar Chronicles)

Historical Fiction
The Master's Wall (Iron & the Stone)

Mom of 2 says:
The Callahans: The Complete Series, ~~The Sinking of the Titanic~~, From Ashes to Honor (First Responders), Unique & Easy Vegetarian Soup Recipes (Not Your Same Ole' Boring Recipes), ~~Veganess Breakfast Recipes-~~, Healthy Cooking Recipes With Olive Oil, ~~Juicing For Health, Detox, And Weight Loss: 77 Reasons Why Having Fruit And Vegetable Juices In Your Diet Will Change Your Life~~, and ANYTHING HE CAN DO... (A Woman's Guide To Home Repair)

[ Interesting Sidenote from Annieb, though less interesting for her mom!:
Hi everyone!
I'm at the hospital with my mom. She fell and broke her arm this morning. Let me tell you this little Fire is great. I can read and keep in touch with family members. And of course1-click to my hearts content." ]

MadVillaa says:
Memoir
A Parrot in My Soup

Mystery:
Twisted Perception: a Detective Elliot Mystery
Friends and Other Perishables: a Carl Jacobs Mystery
4 A.M. Until 4 P.M.
Death of an Obnoxious Tourist (Dotsy Lamb Travel Mysteries)
Head Games Wildflowers Come Back
Two Graves (A Kesle City Homicide Novel)
The Schliemann Legacy

Nonfiction:
The Power Of Relationships: Solutions To Strengthen Your Marriage, Love Life, and Friendships (Effective Ways To Unlock The Power Of Your Relationships)
The Second Half Begins at 50 ~ the best half... (Boomer Book Series)
Living in Naples: Three Years of Working, Eating, Traveling, and Making the Most of Italy
Unique & Easy Vegetarian Soup Recipes (Not Your Same Ole' Boring Recipes)Ken Kesey and Storytelling as Collaborative Ritual
Are You Battling Fatigue? Find Out The Truth About It And How You Can Overcome It Today
The Invention of Religion
Re-Rambled: Food and Thought: Ramblings Special Edition
Easy & Healthy Crock Pot Cookbook: 31 Delicious & Nutritious Crockpot Chili Recipes for 31 Days of the Month. Set and Let Your Slow Cooker Cook. Ready ... Get Home! (Crockpot Cookbook Best Sellers)
Communing with the Infinite - a Path of Awakening Awareness
Edwardian Accrington Observed

Fiction
Veronica's Nap

angelmum3 says
Cloud Computing Explained: 92 Practical Tips For Understanding The Cloud's Applications, Software, Strategies, And Services (there is a warning only free for 24 hours)
Legends of Tsalagee
From Ashes to Honor (First Responders)
~~The Sinking of the Titanic~~

WD says:
For those who have MS Access, don't know how to use it, and may WANT to use it for tracking their books (hint, hint)
Microsoft Access for Beginners
Fiction
Corner Store
Political Fiction
Potus - The E-book
Science Fiction
The Trilobite Affair - Part 1
Edwardian Accrington Observed

Jill Angus says:
The Rape of England

AuntOh says:
Wildflowers Come Back
Every Last Kiss (The Bloodstone Saga)
The Woodcutter
claire-obscure
Iron City
Lance Sidesaddle, Private Investigator
Places in Ireland a Visitor Must See - A Travel Guide
~~The Sinking of the Titanic~~
Delicioso Guacamoles & Quesos (The Mexican Fiesta Cookbooklets)

DoraLady says
Ok, here goes making links.
Wildflowers Come Back by Sarah Spann $0.00
Toiletrivia - World History: The Only Trivia Book That Caters To Your Everyday Bathroom Needs (Volume 2) by Jeremy Klaff $0.00
Mama Never Told Me... A Diary of Unbelievable Comments and Questions Posed to a Pregnant Woman Van Do, Emily
Alternative Acne Treatments Handbook - Great Skin Without Toxic Side Effects (Health and Wellness Series) Nicholas, Dustin
Cold and Flu Home Remedies - Alternative Treatments Without Toxic Side Effects (Health and Wellness Series) Nicholas, Dustin
The Rape of England Kelley, M. G.
The Master's Wall (Iron & the Stone) Rog, Sandi
The Law of Attraction Made Simple - Magnetize Your Heartfelt Desires Manske, Jonathan
Fatal Destiny Force, Marie
The Perfect Dish Painter, Kristen
Dare to Live: A Devotional Book for Those Over The Hill, Not Under It! Liere, Elizabeth Van
Orchard of Dust Bahr, Brian
How To Get Things Done: Lessons In Living To Your Maximum Productivity Potential (Effective Ways To Get Things Done) Johnson, Tim, Pavlina, Steve
See You At The Show Betham, Michelle
The Power Of Relationships: Solutions To Strengthen Your Marriage, Love Life, and Friendships (Effective Ways To Unlock The Power Of Your Relationships) Johnson, Tim, Pavlina, Steve
Baking Love In The Kitchen - 25 Recipes To Keep Your Stove Lit! Chiles, Kristie
Are You Battling Fatigue? Find Out The Truth About It And How You Can Overcome It Today Payne, Dr. Madison
The Second Half Begins at 50 ~ the best half... (Boomer Book Series) by Ph.D. Jane L. Bilett
Witch Mistake Nemnich, Shireen
Swallow the Moon (Dark Harbor) Jordan, K. A.
Black Pomegranate Cowles, David W.
Feel Better Plan for Fibromyalgia in Remission Dr. Diana Josephine Rossano
When It Hurts to be a Woman Dr. Diana Jo Rossano
The Monster Quiz Book Meyer, Rich
Mahko's Price O'Dowd, John
Love Me Gently Pellegrin, Kristy
Troubled Waters (Walter and Godiva) Wakeham, Jon
Dance Tough Guys James, Osmund
Candlewood Lake Penny C. Sansevieri
Garters, Gunslingers, & Grace Derringer, Lilly
DREAM LOVER Reeves, Kimberley
AIDEN'S BAYOU Reeves, Kimberley
For All We Have and Are 1914 (Princes of the North) Bouchard, Cindy
Haunting Refrain Vidler, Ellis
Sudden Storms Marcia Lynn McClure $0.00
PR in Paris Van Der Meer, Darcy
Scale of Justice Amore, Dani
Awakening Mercy (Genesis House) Benson, Angela
Picture Perfect Remiel, Deena
Clouded Rainbow Sturak, Jonathan
Jacob's Ladder (Stone & Randall 1) Ellis, Tim
Murder on Spyglass Lane (The Sarah McDougall series) Griffin, J.M.
Venice Via Venice (1) Brailovsky, SF
Miss Anna's Frigate Kuhn, Jens
Gunboat Number 14 Kuhn, Jens
Scars Of Defiance Angell, Lorena
The Hot Girl's Friend (from Flirts! 5 Romantic Short Stories) Scott, Lisa
Love Transposed (A Valentine's Tale) (Cupid Gone Wild) by Chelsy Day
Forever Young East, Carl
The Clever Detective Lanier, Linsey
Clever is as Clever Does (The Clever Detective) Lanier, Linsey
The West Wind Blows Lanier, Linsey
SMART SCHOOL TIME RECIPES: The Breakfast, Snack, and Lunchbox Cookbook for Healthy Kids and Adults Fleming, Alisa Marie
How To Make French Toast: Quick & Easy Recipes To Feed Your Hunger And Much More... Laurent-Tatum, Sofie
Year of the Chick Moondi, Romi
Seeing Spots Fisher, Ellen
The Bride and the Brute O'Donnell, Laurel
Happy Birthday to You (Birthday Trilogy, Book 3) Rowe, Brian
DREAMBOAT (The Frisky Chronicles) Dimplebuns, Frisky
Crap Chronicles: When IBS Strikes in all the Wrong Places Estill, Diana

Emerald Coast says:
Sherlock & Sherlock
Piddly poems for children vol:1
Eve of Destruction
Still Life Paintings
Fatality Management (Emergency Operations Center Mystery)
Savvy Holiday Entertaining
Wargeld & Other Stories
Yellow Eyes (The Guardian Saga)
Twisted Perception: a Detective Elliot Mystery
Base Spirits
Miranda Warning
Ten More Bodies

James A. Anderson says:
Gamal's Assassin
Elvis And The Sports Card Cheat (The Reed Ferguson Mystery Series)
With Love And Squalor
The Schliemann Legacy
Through The Soul's Window

The Girls says:
In Dreams (The Dream Series)
Forever Freaky
Black Pomegranate Toiletrivia - World History: The Only Trivia Book That Caters To Your Everyday Bathroom Needs (Volume 2)
The Adventures of Guy
Tasty Tex-Mex Recipes: Breakfast Edition (Tasty Tex Mex Recipes)
Every Last Kiss (The Bloodstone Saga)
DREAMBOAT (The Frisky Chronicles)
Bound by Blood (Paranormal Romance/Time Travel)
AIDEN'S BAYOU UNDERGROUND GUARDIANS: PROTECTOR (Underground Guardians 1)
Unexpected Love and Other Stories
Crap Chronicles: When IBS Strikes in all the Wrong Places
Trefoil
PETER AND THE VAMPIRES (Volume One)
Veiled (Veiled Series)
New Year's Day (Redshift #1)
The Enchanted Book
Seeing Spots
Year of the Chick

DonnaBeeGood says:The Blue Pen - Contemporary Fiction
Deadly Decisions - Mystery
Criminal - Suspense/Action/Adventure/Mystery/Thriller (?)
Show Off - Mystery/Thriller
Rattlesnake Knob - Mystery/Thriller
DON'T LOOK DOWN - Suspense
Net of Lies - Romance
The Swarm - Mystery/Thriller

Listings included were those through this thread page after 350 posts were done.

Ongoing Forum Discount-Alerts thread, starting from the last exit point:

Jan. 11-14

UPDATE: LATEST temporarily-free non-classics for January 2012

Kindle Touch 3G Kindle Touch WiFi Kindle Basic (UK: KBasic) Kindle Fire
Kindle Keybd 3G (UK: Kindle Keybd 3G) K3 Special Offers K3-3G Special Offers DX

The Emergency App, Battery tracker, Free Word Ball app today, 90% off 35 87th Precinct series Kindle books today only,

noreply@blogger.com (Andrys Basten) — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 18:26:00 +0000

EMERGENCY HEALTH INFO KIT AND OTHER INTERESTING OFFERINGS

I noticed early Thursday that a new, unusual Android app was just released by 7 Dragons, creator of the popular Kindle Keyboard Notepad Kindle app, not yet released in Kindle Touch format but they say it will be, and in the meantime they released recently, for the Kindle Fire, the fun-to-use Alarm Clock, Calendar, Todo List app.

I really like the background wallpaper settings they offer for it, the easy ToDo and the loud Alarm Clock, and I enjoy it overall although calendar events need highlighting. Their support is good, and they say they're working on the highlighting and on Google Calendar support, plus features that have been requested on the reviews page.

Now they've added The Emergency App, for $1.00

I'll quote from the product page, and bold-face some of it to make things easier:

'

Product Features
Be better prepared for emergencies with this app for your Kindle Fire

Keep lists of your medical information and emergency contacts

Create emergency 72-hour, first aid, and car kits

Seek help in an emergency with an SOS signal, sound alarm, and flashing light

Use the night light in case of a power outage

Product Description
The Emergency App helps you be better prepared for emergencies. It also has a variety of tools that help you if you find yourself in an actual emergency.

The Emergency App lets you prepare for emergencies in multiple ways:
- List all your medical information, as well as medical information for multiple people.
- List all your emergency contacts.
- Use the included lists to put together a 72-hour kit, a first aid kit, and an emergency car kit.
- List emergency websites that can help you in case of emergencies.

You will have all this valuable information on your Kindle Fire, easily accessible via The Emergency App.
[While I would update this on the KFire and put it upfront in Favorites shelf so others MIGHT find it, if something was happening with me, I'd be more likely to print out the health and contacts info each time I update it and be sure to have the hard copy on me.]
The Emergency App also helps you if you find yourself in an actual emergency:- Access all your medical information and emergency contact information easily.
- Use the night light in case power goes out during emergencies.
- Use the SOS signal to signal for help.
- Use the sound alarm to alert others to your location.
- Use the flashing light signal to attract attention.

The Emergency App lets you be better prepared for emergencies, and it helps you in multiple ways if you find yourself in an actual emergency. '

Track your Battery Life (w/ battery alarms)
I have utilities that tell me details on battery life but some are bloated doing all kinds of things, so I begin to wonder if they're using battery life more than I want, and I don't need more than one or two good task managers.

So I decided to try this simple app, "optimized for Kindle Fire" that I saw on the 7 Dragons list. It's Track your Battery Life, which comes with Battery Alarms.

Since the carousel label for this is huge, I removed it from the Carousel (via a long press on it and then lightly tapping 'remove from Carousel') and then added it to 'Favorites' on the topmost book shelf, which makes it Small. You can modify the % shown when clicking on it, if you think that it's being too generous.) The Kindle Fire battery icon at top right usually indicates I have more left than I do.

I don't like going into settings 3 levels deep to see the percentage left, and leaving the smaller icon in my shelf allows me to just press it to get the latest battery percentage left. But that's not necessary because the battery percentage used is in your Notifications info at upper left (Amazon doesn't allow battery % there) and you can just pull it down to see it.

This tool, if you open it, also indicates how long the battery will last for the current session, depending on what type of usage you intend. It has an alarm when it's getting low, and tracks your free memory.
You can also have the option of having it NOT run in the background if you want, via Settings.

In fact, you are only reading downloaded books, newspapers, or magazines, there's no need to have WiFi 'On' so you can turn off the WiFi for that kind of activity and save battery life.
Revised blog entry

TODAY'S FREE ANDROID APP:

Word Ball, by Continuous Integration - a fast-paced word-building game meant to reinforce word and pattern recognition, featuring high-resolution graphics with shrinking and bouncing letters from which you build words. You can play this with friends also. Personally, it would drive me batty, but it's a favorite at 99 cents, so while it's free for a day ...

TODAY'S KINDLE DAILY DEAL
Crime novelist Ed McBain's "87th Precinct" series" - 90% off 35 of them for today, January 12, Friday. Thursday's price $4.99, discounted by $4.00 today (Friday), with a Kindle Daily Deal Price of $0.99 80% off
This is also the Gold Box Deal of the Day.

LINKS TO FREE KINDLE BOOKS - NON-CLASSICS - AVAILABLE TODAY
Dec 2011 Jan 2012
Publication Date Bestselling
High-ratings

Amazon's Limited Time Free Promos

UK: PubDate Popular

General, ongoing: Guide to Free Kindle books

NOT FREE, BUT UNDER $1
Non-Classics under $1:
Highly rated, under $1
Mostly 99c Kindle Books page

DISCOUNT ALERTS FROM KINDLE FORUMS
Latest: Jan. 11-13

Kindle Touch 3G Kindle Touch WiFi Kindle Basic (UK: KBasic) Kindle Fire
Kindle Keybd 3G (UK: Kindle Keybd 3G) K3 Special Offers K3-3G Special Offers DX

Free Kindle books (Jan. 9-12-- 1,504 books), NON_angry-birds, Discount alerts, Specials

noreply@blogger.com (Andrys Basten) — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 14:51:00 +0000

FREE KINDLE BOOKS, DISCOUNT ALERTS AND RECOMMENDATIONS BY FORUM MEMBERS JAN 9-10 + SOME RANDOM KINDLE NEWS

This week's Free Books from Joyce's multi-daily threads, going back to Monday, Jan. 9 through Jan. 12 (Thursday morning)
These are newly announced (this week), temporarily-free books, along with recommendation-listings by forum members + discounted-book alerts as of Jan. 9-12
Some of them are free for only a few days, others maybe two weeks. ['Doublecheck the prices always. Going backwards:

' JAN. 9-12, MONDAY-THURSDAY - 1,504 free books

. Thurs., Jan. 12 - 303 books, followed by members' recommendations from this set.

. Wed., Jan. 11 - 541 books, followed by members' recommendations from this set.

. Tues., Jan. 10 - 350 books, followed by members' recommendations from that set from this set.

. Mon., Jan. 9 - 310 books, followed by members' recommendations from this set. '

An unusual freebie
iBird Lite 2 from the Amazon Android appStore.

This app was indirectly recommended by forum member ManyDawgs - The Snow Catche in the Discounted-Books alert thread, except that it's not a Kindle book but an Android app for those who own the Kindle Fire and other Android devices, including phones.

It's offered at the Amazon Android AppStore, at $0.00. The store is still available only to customers located in the U.S.
I wonder what happened with that global AppStore test people noticed one night a couple of months ago. ?

However, the free app version is a Sample from the full app/database that was chosen as Macworld's "Best Reference App of 2009."

Sample vs Full - details:
While the Full app includes more than 900 species of No. American birds, along with 1,000 drawings and 2,500 photos (and several hours of bird songs that can draw those birds closer to you for photos or to watch), this free sample app includes just 30 species of birds, though there are "50 illustrations, 127 photos, 58 audio recordings, 30 range maps, and thousands of facts to help you identify some of the most popular birds in North America." It would be a good way to see if you want the full program or not.

The database of illustrations, photos and sounds must first be downloaded from the iBird server, they say, so a normal fast connection is needed. (It took only a few minutes on my WiFi with Comcast Internet, but the full paid app's database would take quite a bit longer.) After that, no connection is needed.

With the full program you can select one bird type to download facts on but since you normally would want to ID one when when you see it, you're not likely to have WiFi in an outdoor setting where birds are.

The discount alert, though, was actually for yesterday's noted drop in price (temporary or permanent? -- it doesn't say,) from $9.95 to $4.99 for iBird Pro 2 - the full database.

I tried the free one and then went straight to the full app at the new price of $4.99 because I've been taking some walks nearby and wondering what kind of birds those are. I'm not a bird watcher. Just curious and they've done great job with the app. It makes me wish I'd paid more attention earlier. It also links to other web pages for more info on a specific bird.

At any rate, the full app was released September and it has 47 customer reviews with 5 stars average. Unusual ratings for a paid app.
The Free Sample App was released in November (probably to encourage people to try to see if they like the app) and it has only 2 customer reviews with a rating of 5.0 also.

NOTE: The full database takes up 400KB - that's almost half a gig, and the Kindle Fire has only about 5.5 gigs available for all user data files, so that's a consideration.

SIDE-NOTE: re WiFi-only devices (like Kindle Fire and the first iPad + Nook tablet) and "phone 3G tethering" :

The iBirds app is for the Kindle Fire and other Android tablets and phones. The Kindle Fire is WiFi only. Some of us have taken advantage of the feature that most of the 3G carriers have now, of having a capable newer smartphone share its 3G access with other devices via the phone's creation of a WiFi "personal hotspot" for them, turning that "tethering" feature on as well as configuring it for a password that the Kindle Fire will enter on its end when seeing your phone's "hotspot"...

I have a Samsung Galaxy S2 with AT&T, from Amazon Wireless (bought when Amazon had its one-penny price on cell phones November), which does this, when I make sure the phone is not connected to my WiFi and when I turn on Make Personal Hotspot on the phone after making a name and password to access it. AT&T has a $20/mo. plan (on top of regular data plan) to provide support for something like up to 5 devices this way, and it works well, wherever there's good reception. Similar phones from other services should work, but check with them to make sure. The AT&T purchase of the phone is $100 for new accts and $129 with existing individual ones.

Where I live, there is now 4G also!, with AT&T, so it's very fast (up to 10x faster than 3G). This way, any WiFi-only devices with you when you're out can still have WiFi access wherver there's a 3G or 4G signal via a "tethering"-capable smartphone with you and when the carrier supports the tethering function.

My Samsung S2 requires no "rooting" for this -- it's a built-in feature.

Bear in mind that the phone will use up the battery faster when it's providing a hotspot for your other devices. [END of Side-Note]

To sum it up: I highly recommend the free sample iBird app to see what can be done with these apps.

LATEST DISCOUNTED Kindle books (some temporarily) -

Ongoing Forum Discount-Alerts thread, starting from the last exit point:

Jan. 8-11

TODAY's KINDLE DAILY DEAL
Today's Kindle Daily Deal is His Last Duchess (Link: amzn.to/his-last-duchess ), by Gabrille Kimm, with 16 customer reviews (all seem to be review copies, some to other authors) and an average rating of 4.7 stars.
Priced at $9.99 Wednesday, with a $9.00 discount today, it's $0.99 today (Thursday) (90% off)

Historical novel about Lucrezia de Medici and Renaissance Italy -- Tuscany and Ferrara. I'm taking a chance on this one becaues I took a 3-week trip driving around Tuscany a few years ago and have a special interest in things that have to do with Florence...

Reminders
. Amazon's specific mostly 99c Kindle books page
. Amazon's monthly 100 Kindle book deals, from $1.99 to $3.99

UPDATE: LATEST temporarily-free non-classics for January 2012

Kindle Touch 3G Kindle Touch WiFi Kindle Basic (UK: KBasic) Kindle Fire
Kindle Keybd 3G (UK: Kindle Keybd 3G) K3 Special Offers K3-3G Special Offers DX

Free Kindle books (1/8 --297 books) + Kindle News + Discount Alerts + Amazon promos

noreply@blogger.com (Andrys Basten) — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 02:21:00 +0000

FREE KINDLE BOOK AND DISCOUNT ALERTS AND RECOMMENDATIONS BY FORUM MEMBERS JAN 8 + SOME RANDOM KINDLE NEWS

(See yesterday's blog article for details on how the free-books and discount-alert forum threads work, to save space and prevent eye fatigue here.

Jan. 8, Sunday -- approximately 297 newly announced, temporarily-free books, plus discounted-book alerts as of 1/8 and recommendation-lists by forum members

TODAY's Free Books from Joyce's multi-daily threads:

Sunday, Jan. 8 - 297 books
A few are free for only one day.

Why so many free books these days? Here are the reasons described in the blog article dated December 12. It seems this will continue.

NOOK News inserted here
Apropos the massive influx of free Kindle books due to Amazon's allowing these promos for authors who participate in the PRIME free-borrowing program, a new Kindle forum thread today is "Anyone know of a FREE NOOK BOOK List?"

The replies and the recent news about what is speculated about B&N currently considering spinning off its Nook business, can give pause when making buying decisions. But it can mean either it leaves that expensive but fast-growing business and no longer has to explain the costs of development that had led to lowered profitability despite a growing market share, or B&N might want to create an independent company through sale or distribution of new shares of the existing business, boosting the company's valuation, with incentives to those who work in the Nook area while B&N can focus on its core operations.

Some have thought that if they sell it, the quick income will please the stockholders in uncertain times or soften any blows. I don't think anyone knows what they're planning. Here are a lot of articles speculating on the possible spin off. Meaty speculation by WSJ (thanks to Edward Boyhan for the alert 2 days ago though I wanted to read more about it and there's certainly that now). Key, from WSJ:

' One possibility is that Barnes & Noble could sell a minority stake in the Nook business in a public offering. The two businesses would likely have different managements and different boards. Under such a scenario, Barnes & Noble would continue to have close ties to its Nook devices. Another possibility is selling the Nook business outright.
. . .
Barnes & Noble investors may not have the patience to fund Nook growth here and abroad, said Forrester Research analyst Sarah Rotman Epps. "It's going to require sustained investment." '

LATEST DISCOUNTED Kindle books (some temporarily) -

Ongoing Forum Discount-Alerts thread, starting from yesterday's exit point:

Jan. 7-8

TODAY's KINDLE DAILY DEAL
Today's Kindle Daily Deal is The Other Guys Bride (Link: amzn.to/other-guys-bride ), by Connie Brockway, with 53 customer reviews and an average rating of 4.7 stars. Genre: Historical Romance.
Priced at $4.99 Saturday, with a $4.00 discount Sunday, it's $0.99 today (80% off)

Reminders
. Amazon's specific mostly 99c Kindle books page
. Amazon's monthly 100 Kindle book deals, from $1.99 to $3.99

R A N D O M K I N D L E NEWS

VALUING ONE'S KINDLE A FEW MEGABITS TOO MUCH
How much is your Kindle worth to you?
TDN's Daily News reports:

' ... a female acquaintance claimed she was owed money and attempted to steal the victim's Amazon Kindle tablet device as payment, according to police.

When the victim resisted, the other woman allegedly stabbed her in the abdomen with a kitchen knife and fled the apartment with the Kindle, Longview Sgt. Ed Jones said Saturday. '

While I thought this story read like an idea for a SNL skit or a new Amazon ad for a Kindle, it was a relief to read that the victim was treated for a 'minor wound.'

*NOT* RECOMMENDED - REPARTITIONING YOUR KINDLE FIRE STORAGE SPACE
I'm including this news as some mainstream news sites are writing about a utility to expand your app space on the Kindle Fire. I have to stress that 99% of people shouldn't even try this. Note that the maker of the utility, FireParted, say says

' There is some inherent risk associated with repartitioning your device. If something goes wrong, you can always attempt to re-partition again, but there is a risk data loss will occur. However, since the essential system partitions are never touched, I would consider it highly unlikely that you will brick your device. Please understand that there is potentially some risk involved, and that you choose to take this risk when using FireParted (so don't hold me liable, mmkay?).

Edit: Some problems have been reported with the partitioning failing. If this occurs, please try to provide an output if your partition layout (if possible). Also, I strongly recommend that you do not install a stock update zip since you will blow away FIREFIREFIRE and your custom recovery. Partition issues are fixable, but you need a custom recovery to do it... '

Here's one App Space solution
IF you really are running out of app space (we get 1 gig and only 1/3 of mine is used up although I have mapping apps on it and a ton of productivity tools), here's a tip:

It's like removing or deleting a Kindle book from your Kindle-reader when you don't need it. It remains in your Amazon library and can be re-downloaded at ANY time that you do need or want it; there's no need to keep everything on a device with the multiple Cloud areas we have at Amazon these days. The less crowded your storage area, the faster a device will run.
You bought it, it's still yours, whether it's currently on your device or not.

So, you can UNinstall apps that didn't come pre-installed, if that helps. I've uninstalled ones I know I will almost never use or have no need for currently, but the apps I get from Amazon remain 'mine' on Amazon server records and I can re-download them as needed, at no charge.

NOT likely anyway that I'd want to decrease my data storage area to allow me to hoard more apps, most of which I wouldn't use in a year.

SOLAR POWERED KINDLE COVER to Debut at CES 2012
SolarKindle - "the world's first solar powered e-reader cover" will be introduced at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) starting this Monday, reports Larry Magid of Forbes.

Well, to get to the nitty gritty, this is a nice idea, for many reasons, but the cost of it is expected to be $80 or the cost of the least-expensive Kindle, or $20 less expensive than the WiFi-Only Kindle touch. Knowing how fast the Kindle models change as they improve certain hardware and software features, and how the SIZE changes also, it'll be interesting to see how well this sells.

Kindle Touch 3G Kindle Touch WiFi Kindle Basic (UK: KBasic) Kindle Fire
Kindle Keybd 3G (UK: Kindle Keybd 3G) K3 Special Offers K3-3G Special Offers DX

Free Kindle books (1/6-1/7 -- 915 books) + Discounted-book Forum Alerts + Amazon promos

noreply@blogger.com (Andrys Basten) — Sat, 07 Jan 2012 21:03:00 +0000

FREE KINDLE BOOK AND DISCOUNT ALERTS BY FORUM MEMBERS Jan. 6-7

Jan. 6-7, Friday thru' Saturday -- approximately 915 newly announced, temporarily-free books, plus discounted-book alerts as of 1-6 to 1/7 and recommendation-lists by forum members

This is the somewhat ongoing logging of Joyce's daily Kindle forum threads about newly announced temporarily-free books, which are so plentiful now that the forum listings are not being itemized, currently -- but she gives links to a website that posts them, in identified batches, and then forum members post links to books that each selected from the hundreds available that day, a useful filtering mechanism by people with very varied tastes interested in specific genres.

The member recommendations can be especially helpful for those who may not have the time to view the full listings each day, and there are links that go to somewhat manageable subsets of the full listings, by date.

Red Mojo Mama, by Kathy Lynn Hall, 19 customer reviews, 4.6 stars average, $0.00 (Link: http://amzn.to/red-mojo-mama )

A short, light-hearted book although it's listed under Fiction->Horror->Ghosts ... Readers describe it as a fun read.

Saturday's Kindle Daily Deal (Amazon's Daily Deal changes at about midnight each day)

Saturday's special deal is 1,000 Recordings to Hear Before You Die, by Tom Moon, 86 customer reviews, 4.1 stars (Link: amzn.to/1000-recordings-before )

Priced at $9.99 Friday but, with a $9.00 discount today (Sat, 7th), it's $0.99 for just today (90% off)

Draws from "the diverse worlds of classical, jazz, rock, pop, blues, country, folk, musicals, hip-hop, world, opera, soundtracks and more...arranged alphabetically by artist [and, sometimes by composer for classical]...to break down genre bias..."

There are genre listings with page numbers in the back though, and Kindlers have the Search feature.

"Award-winning music journalist Tom Moon is a regular contributor to National Public Radio's All Things Considered as well as Rolling Stone, Blender and other publications. During his twenty-year tenure as a music critic at the Philadelphia Inquirer, his writings appeared in hundreds of daily newspapers and magazines..."

Some customer reviewers expected an encyclopedia of what they personally consider the best. Others point out that the title is about recordings "to hear" before departing the surly bonds of earth* and involves the opinion of one person, which means it can't be all-inclusive nor a match for one's own tastes always. Another felt that it's good for discoveries of items not on our radar. I like all types of music, so for 99c I did order this one.

* That 'surly bonds' sonnet was written by a Canadian Air Force pilot, John Gillespe Magee, who flew in a British Spitfire squadron and was killed at the age of nineteen, in 1941 during a training flight.

LATEST DISCOUNTED Kindle books (some temporarily) -
Forum-thread starter RandomizeME cautions, "This thread is [only] for discounts and price drops that readers find from publishers." Another main finder is Emily Bronte.

For Jan. 5-7 postings.

TEMPORARILY-Free books: Alerts from the Amazon Kindle forums - via the tireless "Happy Reader" Joyce, who is ever on the lookout on behalf of forum members.

NOTE: The alerts are quoted from Joyce's roundup from several sites with news of mostly temporarily-free books. Those listings, when itemized, are not recommendations by anyone but the forum threads have often listed popular, usually unfiltered daily sets of forum release-alerts and are logged here for those who don't or can't make it to the forums. These eBooks are often no longer free within just days, sometimes, within hours. Thanks to Joyce for gathering them for us.

LATELY, with so many temporarily-free Kindle books released (400-650+ at a time these days), Joyce of course is not listing each one but is referring readers to one of the main sites she uses when collecting the titles.

To make the forum alerts more useful, with hundreds of newly-free titles each day, members who join these forum threads are trying to help filter them by posting the titles (and links) for the ones that most interested each of them from all those listed.

As of this morning, there were several recommendation lists already for today's temporarily-free titles.

Going backwards to January 6, here are the message-threads with members' recommendations from having gone through the humongous lists.

. Saturday, January 7 - 485 books

. Friday, January 6 - 430 books

Reminder: Amazon's specific mostly 99c Kindle books page.

Ongoing popular discussions (See Kindle Forums for more.)
. Are you sorry you bought a Fire? Newer
. Kindle touch or Kindle Keyboard Newer
. Kindle Fire for nonTech person?
. Kindle Fire Keyboard.. Anyone else having issues?
. Any happy Kindle Touch owners?
. Kindle Fire video on airplane compared with iPad video, a tense thread :-)
. Got my Fire!
. Feel like almost crying - Kindle loss and personalizing Kindles - lighthearted
. Unusual calls from Amazon because of forum posts
. Personal docs now sendable to individual Kindles again
. To Avoid Confusion, Please Use the Official Product Names in Forum" [entertaining]
. Discussion of geographic restrictions on digital purchases
. Discount-alert books discussed on separate message thread
. What have been your favorite public domain books that are not so well known?
. Best "Free" books you've read (many are no longer free, however).
. Highly recommended Indie authors
. Unique Uses of Kindles

Other current forum threads that might interest some
Public Library Lending questions at the forums, and Lendle's Kindle borrowing
. How many e-books does your public library have?
. Public librarians: what has been your Kindle/Overdrive experience?

Kindle Touch 3G Kindle Touch WiFi Kindle Basic (UK: KBasic) Kindle Fire
Kindle Keybd 3G (UK: Kindle Keybd 3G) K3 Special Offers K3-3G Special Offers DX

Free Kindle books (1/1-1/5 - ~1,548 books) + Discounted-book Forum Alerts + Amazon promos

noreply@blogger.com (Andrys Basten) — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 02:06:00 +0000

FREE/DISCOUNTED KINDLE BOOKS DISCOVERED BY FORUM MEMBERS

Jan. 1-5, Sunday thru' Thursday -- approximately 1,548 newly announced, temporarily-free books, plus discounted-book alerts as of 1-1 to 1/5.

This is the logging of Joyce's daily Kindle forum threads about newly announced temporarily-free books, which are so plentiful now that the forum listings are not being itemized, currently -- but she gives links to a website that posts them, in identified batches, and then forum members post links to books that each selected from the hundreds available that day, a useful filtering mechanism by people with very varied tastes interested in specific genres.
This can be especially helpful for those who may not have the time to view full listings each day, and there are are links that go to somewhat manageable subsets of the full listings, by date.

I just happened to see the following on one of the "Recommended" lists:
Slammed, by Colleen Hoover, 16 customer reviews, 5.0 stars average, $0.00 (Link: amzn.to/slammed_colleen-hover )
These are almost all "Amazon Verified Purchase" reviews, and is an unusual item in that most customer-reviewers describe themselves as people who don't normally like to read or haven't read a book for years, which I found odd to see on a product page for a Kindle book. The key seems to have been word of mouth at message boards for the the Sony folk/rock group, The Avett Brothers. In any case, as you can see, the book gets raves from their fans.
May be a good book to recommend to non-reading friends. I gave a Kindle for a special birthday to a family member who expressed interest in one though he'd not read books for some years but is now reading all the time.

A free Kindle book that uses the "X-ray" feature
The House of the Whispering Pines, by Anna Katharine Green, 13 customer reviews, 3.8 stars, $0.00 (Link: amzn.to/house-whispering-pines )

The new X-RAY feature for Kindle Touch:
I'm including this Kindle book again for the apparently millions who now have a Kindle Touch model, because Chloe from the Kindle forums mentioned it as a free book that has the new X-ray feature. Many have wondered how the X-ray feature works.
I'd explained some of it in the The X-Ray reference tool - What it does blog article, but that doesn't do much good if you can't see it in action, and it's hard to know which of the newer Kindle books has been given this feature.

Thursday's Kindle Daily Deal (changes at about midnight each day)

Thursday's special deal is The Yellow House: A Novel, by Patricia Falvey, 49 customer reviews, 4.3 stars (Link: http://amzn.to/yellow-house )

Priced at $9.99 Wednesday but, with a $7.00 discount today (Thurs., 5th), is $2.99 for just today (70% off)

"...This novel delivers the best of both worlds: secrets, intrigue and surprising twists will keep readers flipping the pages, while Falvey's insight and poetic writing tugs at the heartstrings of the most cynical audiences. (Feb.)" –- Publishers Weekly
(Another one of her books is featured in Amazon's January Kindle editors-choice monthly deals that are priced at between $1.99-$3.99

TEMPORARILY-Free books: Alerts from the Amazon Kindle forums - via the tireless "Happy Reader" Joyce, who is ever on the lookout on behalf of forum members.

NOTE: The alerts are quoted from Joyce's roundup, from several sites with news of mostly temporarily-free books. Those listings are not recommendations by anyone but the forum threads list popular, usuallly unfiltered daily sets of forum release-alerts, logged here for those who don't or can't make it to the forums. The eBooks are often no longer free within days, sometimes, within hours. Thanks to Joyce for gathering and organizing them for us.

LATELY, with so many temporarily-free Kindle books released (400-650 at a time, often), Joyce of course is not listing each one but is referring readers to one of the main sites she uses when collecting the titles.

To make the forum alerts more useful, members who join these forum threads are trying to help filter them by posting the titles (and links) for the ones that most interested each of them from all those listed (as noted in the opening of this blog entry).

As of early this morning, there were several recommendation lists already for today's 412 temporarily-free titles, Thurs, Jan. 5.

Going backwards to January 1, here are the message-threads with members' recommendations from having gone through the humongous lists.

. Thurs, January 5 - 412 books

. Early Morning, Wed, January 4 - 329 books

. Tuesday, Jan. 3 - 339 books

. Early Morning Tuesday, Jan. 3 - EST (was Late Night, Tues, Jan. 2, PST) - 1 book

. Monday, Jan. 2 - free-form member posting of about 35 titles

. Sunday, Jan 1 - 432 books

Also ongoing, Amazon's specific mostly 99c Kindle books page.

Ongoing popular discussions (See Kindle Forums for more.)
. Are you sorry you bought a Fire? Newer
. Kindle touch or Kindle Keyboard Newer
. Kindle Fire for nonTech person?
. Kindle Fire Keyboard.. Anyone else having issues?
. Any happy Kindle Touch owners?
. Kindle Fire video on airplane compared with iPad video, a tense thread :-)
. Got my Fire!
. Feel like almost crying - Kindle loss and personalizing Kindles - lighthearted
. Unusual calls from Amazon because of forum posts
. Personal docs now sendable to individual Kindles again
. To Avoid Confusion, Please Use the Official Product Names in Forum" [entertaining]
. Discussion of geographic restrictions on digital purchases
. Discount-alert books discussed on separate message thread
. What have been your favorite public domain books that are not so well known?
. Best "Free" books you've read (many are no longer free, however).
. Highly recommended Indie authors
. Unique Uses of Kindles

Other current forum threads that might interest some
Public Library Lending questions at the forums, and Lendle's Kindle borrowing
. How many e-books does your public library have?
. Public librarians: what has been your Kindle/Overdrive experience?

Kindle Touch 3G Kindle Touch WiFi Kindle Basic (UK: KBasic) Kindle Fire
Kindle Keybd 3G (UK: Kindle Keybd 3G) K3 Special Offers K3-3G Special Offers DX

January's 100 Kindle Deals $1.99-$3.99

noreply@blogger.com (Andrys Basten) — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 07:25:00 +0000

JANUARY 2012's 100 Kindle Deals, $1.99-$3.99 (Link: amzn.to/100kbooks-2to4)

I normally highlight this feature at the beginning of the month for newcomers who don't know it exists, and this month there are a lot of newcomers :-) -- and in fact many oldtimers don't know either.

These are Kindle books "hand-selected" by Amazon's Editors each month, and what you'll see on that special monthly-deals page (Link: amzn.to/100kbooks-2to4) are the new ones for January 2012.

As most are probably aware, Kindle books are easily readable, in color, on the Kindle Fire also, a hybrid tablet/e-reader with some Amazon bonus material.

Kindle Touch 3G Kindle Touch WiFi Kindle Basic (UK: KBasic) Kindle Fire
Kindle Keybd 3G (UK: Kindle Keybd 3G) K3 Special Offers K3-3G Special Offers DX

Kindle Tip Reminder re Tiny Fonts on web pages with Kindle Fire or Kindle Touch

noreply@blogger.com (Andrys Basten) — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 15:18:00 +0000

READING FULL WEB PAGES WITH UNREADABLE TINY FONT ON A 6"-7" SCREEN

SO, here's to a good 2012 to all -- definitely it was good to take time off from the usual to relax and celebrate and to have a calendar system that makes us feel we have a new start :-)
Welcome! to all the new Kindlers and visitors to this blog and Thanks to the regulars.

In the blog article with many general tips on using the Kindle Touch and Kindle Fire, I went into detail on dealing with web pages or with PDFs in which you can see the full page but which are usually unreadable in that format or screen width that is considerably smaller than our computer screens.

I've found that many news-site reviewers still don't know about a valuable Android feature that is crucial to enjoyment of web pages on small devices (this applies to Android smartphones also), and of course those just using a device like the Kindle Touch or Kindle Fire won't tend to know about them either.

So I'll focus on just this topic here, with all the new Kindle owners after the holidays and because those who did read the earlier article will probably find it difficult to remember where they may have read about tiny fonts on web pages and probably skipped the section anyway in an article that included many other tips.

While joining in discussions on the the Amazon Kindle Forums community where so many Kindle owners hang out to help other owners and get tips in return, I saw the following question and replied to it more briefly than I do in the blog article -- it's likely that a shorter answer can be more helpful, at least at first.

' Posted on Jan 1, 2012 10:00:01 AM PST
RE says:

[Q]: I like my Kindle, but can't figure out how to surf the web and be
able to read things. Yahoo com is so small a magnifying glass is
needed to see it. I know this is off subject, but can someone tell
me how they do it?

[A} in reply to an earlier post on Jan 1, 2012 8:11:12 PM PST
Arts&HistoryFan/Kindleworld says:
RE,
You can use an Android feature to pinch-zoom the font/text to a large size, to the point the paragraph of a column extends beyond the screen borders ... then double-tap the screen, and it will keep the large font while adjusting the text to the width of the screen and wrapping it appropriately.

SOMEtimes, the double-tap leads to the tiny version again, but if you double-tap once more, then it goes back up to the large font for text (which exceeded the boundaries you were at when you first double-tapped) but now adjusts the screen-wrap. It's called "re-flowing" the text and when it's done for a nicely large font, it is very nifty.

I explain this more at a blog article I wrote -- and some of the tips work for both the KTouch and the KFire.

http://kindleworld.blogspot.com/2011/12/kindle-tips-for-kindle-touch-and-kindle.html

- Shortcut: http://bit.ly/kwt1205

- Andrys '

For considerably more detail, including other steps to take in Settings to make this work more reliably, do see the longer TIPS article.

Reminder: With both these units, but especially the Kindle Fire, a barely perceptible, very light press or tap will be more likely to activate touchscreen responses.

Added note to new Kindlers: Besides monitoring the Free Kindle Books guide with prepared search links to free Kindle books in more organized, smaller subsets:
be sure to check each day for Amazon's Kindle Daily Deal, which changes at midnight each day. Unfortunately the Daily Deal is mostly U.S. for now.

Kindle Touch 3G Kindle Touch WiFi Kindle Basic (UK: KBasic) Kindle Fire
Kindle Keybd 3G (UK: Kindle Keybd 3G) K3 Special Offers K3-3G Special Offers DX

Updates for KindleFire's Scrabble and Solitare apps, 976 more free books, unusual history special on Kindle Daily Deal today

noreply@blogger.com (Andrys Basten) — Sat, 31 Dec 2011 16:00:00 +0000

SCRABBLE FOR KINDLE FIRE UPDATED TO ADD SINGLE-PLAYER MODE

There have been 280 customer reviews of Scrabble for Kindle Fire and a full 80 of them are rated only 1-star because Electronic Arts did not provide a single-player mode at first. What were they thinking?

As of December 19, the single-player mode was added, and the latest reviews reflect this (Link: amzn.to/kfscrabble ) and are very positive. Since I used to be a Scrabble addict, this is bad news for me. The updated Scrabble app is downloadable at no added charge, of course, for those who purchased it earlier. (Link: amzn.to/kfscrabble-dl ) The price is $0.99.

Solitare v1.1.4 for Kindle Fire, by MobilityWare, has been updated for customizable designs and bug fixes, and is $0.00

Currently, Android apps are still U.S. only.

Unusual Kindle Daily Deal today - Three history books by Stephen Ambrose
As the Amazon editors say,
"Today only, three top-rated American history books from the inimitable historian Stephen E. Ambrose are just $1.99 each." All were $9.99 Friday, have a discount of $8 each today (Saturday), and are then priced today at $1.99 each 80% off
Here are the details and links to each of the 3 books. Two of them have hundreds of reviews and are ranked at 4.5 stars, and the third one has 65 reviews averaging 4.3.

The flood of free Kindle books continues
Friday morning, brought 356 more newly released temporarily-free books after Thursday's 294 books, and members of the forum in which Joyce and, sometimes AnnieB, announce these alerts, are trying to help filter them by posting the titles (and links) for the ones that most interested each of them from all those listed.
And now, Saturday morning, we have another 326 books! and already the forum members have listed some that stood out for them.

Discounted/Price-Dropped alerts on Kindle books
The latest, since I last linked to this message thread are from Dec 29 until today.

Happy 2012 to All!

Kindle Touch 3G Kindle Touch WiFi Kindle Basic (UK: KBasic) Kindle Fire
Kindle Keybd 3G (UK: Kindle Keybd 3G) K3 Special Offers K3-3G Special Offers DX

Free Kindle books from Konrath and Crouch, 23 each, for one more day. Other free books and promos. Update: Millions of Kindle Fires + Millions of Kindle ereaders purchased, two Indy authors #1 and #4

noreply@blogger.com (Andrys Basten) — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 15:01:00 +0000

Happily satiated with so many free Kindle books

Danish Polar Bear Cub Siku lies in bliss after just being fed, and it reminded me (okay, I just needed an excuse to post that picture!) of Kindlers after downloading so many free books each day lately (although I've seen that some are actually exhausted by the sheer number of them and the choices to be made).
(For the others interested, here's the story and video for Siku. Kindle edition subscribers can't do video but can use the following link at a computer: bit.ly/blissed-out-siku )
One more: an even better Siku videoclip (1-1/2 min.) (Link: bit.ly/siku-2 )

I actually ran across a Daily Mail comment that makes Siku almost on-topic :-)

Back to the many free Kindle books available lately
And now, J.A. Konrath and Blake Crouch offer a few more.
Two days ago, at 9:35 AM, December 27, the bestselling author J.A. Konrath announced:

' I've sold 7000 ebooks in the last 36 hours, making over $14,000.

For the next three days, I'm making 23 of my titles free on Amazon Kindle. '

He added that "Blake Crouch is doing the same" and then linked us to their general pages of books.

Since there is only ONE DAY REMAINING (I tweeted this but then was not here most of the time to blog it) I'm giving two links that will lead straight to the free 23 books for each, heading lists of their books, sorted low-to-high price. The "next three days" would end Thursday night (tonight) or at 9:35am Friday morning. I'd go for midnight tonight to be sure you get them while they're free.

J.A. Konrath's 23+ free Kindle books [ Update 12/31/11 - That sale is now over.]

Blake Crouch's 23+ free Kindle books [ Update 12/31/11 - That sale is now over.]

UPDATE - Am adding that Amazon just announced that "Amazon customers purchased millions of Kindle Fires and millions of Kindle e-readers" in what they describe as "...the Best Holiday Ever for Kindle"

So you'll see the news sites quoting the numbers galore for a few days.

They also mention a nice side effect: "Authors also continue to benefit from the success of Kindle — the #1 and #4 best-selling Kindle books released in 2011 were both published independently by their authors using Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP)."

Darcie Chan, the author of ‘The Mill River Recluse,’ and Chris Culver, the author of ‘The Abbey,’ wrote "two of the best-selling Kindle books of the year."
I remember noticing The Mill River Recluse, on August 25, when looking for a good, low-cost book to highlight for blog readers and the same for The Abbey, on August 30. Sometimes, a high number of positive customer reviews, along with low-negative counts, will indicate very high interest.
See the press release for quite a bit more detail.

Today's Kindle Daily Deal
This particular link will always get you the current deal, ending midnight each day. (mostly U.S.)
Today's is Margaret Atwood's infamous and uplifting (just kidding) "The Handmaid's Tale" which was priced at $8.99 yesterday but, with a $7.50 discount today (Wed., 29th), is $1.49 83% off

In the meantime, what about the daily free Kindle books?
Here's this morning's announcement, by the Kindle Forum's Joyce, of the latest release of (294) free Kindle books. She of course is not listing each one when there are so many but is referring you to one of the sites she uses when collecting the titles and it's the one with a lot of information for each book although it then takes some time to go through them.
When wanting to browse the latest titles faster although with less detail upfront (more will show in popups when hovering over one) try EReaderIQ.

Discount Alerts from the Kindle Forum
Haven't had time to keep up with all the free books and discount alerts, but here's the latest page of the discounted and dropped-price alerts from the forum community, and you can work back if interested in earlier pages.

Don't forget Amazon's LtdTime Free Kindle Book Promos or Amazon's mostly 99c Kindle books page.

Ongoing popular discussions (See Kindle Forums for more.)
. Are you sorry you bought a Fire? Newer
. Kindle Fire for nonTech person?
. Kindle Fire Keyboard.. Anyone else having issues?
. Any happy Kindle Touch owners?
. Kindle Fire video on airplane compared with iPad video, a tense thread :-)
. Got my Fire!
. Feel like almost crying - Kindle loss and personalizing Kindles - lighthearted
. Unusual calls from Amazon because of forum posts
. Personal docs now sendable to individual Kindles again
. To Avoid Confusion, Please Use the Official Product Names in Forum" [entertaining]
. Discussion of geographic restrictions on digital purchases
. Discount-alert books discussed on separate message thread
. What have been your favorite public domain books that are not so well known?
. Best "Free" books you've read (many are no longer free, however).
. Highly recommended Indie authors
. Unique Uses of Kindles

Other current forum threads that might interest some
Public Library Lending questions at the forums, and Lendle's Kindle borrowing
. How many e-books does your public library have?
. Public librarians: what has been your Kindle/Overdrive experience?

Kindle Touch 3G Kindle Touch WiFi Kindle Basic (UK: KBasic) Kindle Fire
Kindle Keybd 3G (UK: Kindle Keybd 3G) K3 Special Offers K3-3G Special Offers DX

Check often: Temporarily-free recently published ones
Guide to finding Free Kindle books and Sources. Top 100 free bestsellers. Liked-books under $1
UK-Only: recently published free books, bestsellers, or £5 Max ones
Also, UK customers should see the UK store's Top 100 free bestsellers.

*Click* to Return to the HOME PAGE. Or click on the web browser's BACK button

Beam N Read reading and general light - 1 wk holiday-discount of 25%

noreply@blogger.com (Andrys Basten) — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 05:32:00 +0000

BEAM N READ 3-Led light, made by ASF Lightware Solutions.

As regular readers will know, my personal favorite in reading lights (I've bought too many different types) has been the Beam N Read "LED 3 Hands Free Travel Reading Light; for Kindle, Power Outages & More" that I first wrote about in early October 2010.

I'm including much of what I wrote at the time, as the company who makes the Beam N Read, noting my now long-term enthusiasm, is offering a 25% discount to readers of this blog for Dec. 26 - Jan. 1, 2012. Sorry I didn't get to this earlier today. Was caught up in getting some information together for owners of the new Kindles found under trees yesterday.

As before, I'm including a couple of photos below to show light coverage on my Kindle 3 with the Amazon cover for the Kindle 3, with built-in light vs. using what, by last year, became my favorite light for the various Kindles I have.

This portable light is worn around the neck and has an adjustable strap. The light is said to last about 120 hours, and I do use it nightly for weeks before needing to change batteries.

It comes with 4 standard alkaline AA batteries and a clip-on red filter to minimize "night blindness" and soften the light if needed, they say (I've never needed that). Because it's very lightweight and flexible with a patented flip-up design, reflector, and the adjustable strap, I usually have it on when I'm home. Going downstairs at night or to a less well-lit room, or when I just can't see something well enough, I can just turn this on briefly, which is done by flipping up the hood/reflector.

For reading a book or an e-book reader, you can also reverse it if you prefer (as I do) to hold the book higher than on your lap, and then flip the reflector down instead, so that the light angles up. But if someone is sitting across from you, that may not be very comfortable for that person, as the Led lamps would be directed at their eyes too.

I do love that it's always available when I need extra light. No, I'm not associated with the company that makes them. I was just tired of clipping on a light and adjusting it, as much as I love the ease of the Mighty Bright Xtraflex 2 which has the little foam pad where the clip-on meets the top of the Kindle's bezel. The Beam N Read is pretty good at keeping the light from reaching the other person for night reading in bed. There are times that I would like a somewhat brighter light, and when I do (not when reading a Kindle), I've used:

The 6-led version (not part of the holiday promo but I'll include the info for those curious about it)
Their 6-led version is VERY bright and probably overkill for reading a Kindle 6" reader, though I've sometimes used it for situations where the light is just dim. I tried one for other uses, and for my Kindle DX in Landscape mode. The batteries for this last, they say, about 48 hours, only 40% of the lasting power of the 3-Led model. This one doesn't come with batteries included though it has a magnifier for short-session, detailed craft work, but I found the texture quite hard to see through and it's not not a feature I'd use.

I DO use both Beam N Read units for piano music though, depending on how well the room is lit.

I had bought a head lamp for a trip I took in October 2011, since we needed to go into some unlit places (Egyptian tombs!), but I don't at all like wearing something around my head just to read so I wondered if there was anything like this. Amazon doesn't make this easy to find, but I found it extremely useful for any e-reader.

Here are photos of the effect of two reading lights on my Kindles.

Lit by the Amazon cover with built-in light, the upper right hand corner of my Kindle 3 (UK: K3) ("Kindle Keyboard") is brighter than the lower-left area, of course, and the light isn't as bright as I like but it's useful if you're out and need a light for reading. That special cover light needs no batteries, as it runs off the Kindle's own battery, and it shuts off automatically if the Kindle goes into sleep mode after about 10 minutes.

The second picture is of the same Kindle lit by the Beam N Read 3-Led light -- the lighting on my Kindle 3, in this case (no flash was used, as you can tell from a click of the image that leads to the EXIF camera data included with the larger image at PBase) is very even and brighter overall than from the one built into the Amazon cover, but one would seldom wear the Beam N Read when out, probably, though I've definitely done it :-).

Again, I hope this helps some who are looking for good lights to use with the Kindle. I did the various photos, as choice of a light has been one of the most asked questions on the Kindle forums.

Here are reviews and user feedback cited on the company's website collected from several types of communities, including gadget and e-reader blog site staff. At the Amazon product page, the light, though not promoted by Amazon as a Kindle light, has 23 customer reviews with an average rating of 4.6 stars.

I do use this light daily, as I don't have to worry anymore about which light fits which Kindle model and because I use it for other purposes as well, as mentioned. Although I'm not affiliated with the company that makes and distributes Beam N Read, my enthusiasm's been noted by ASF Lightware Solutions (website: www.readinglight.com ) and I'm delighted they've offered Kindleworld readers the special 1 week holiday pricing of $14.95 for the Dec. 26-Jan. 1 period, as they just released in mid December a new model with a more elastic neck strap that's easier to adjust and can be worn higher.
Remember that I like to reverse the way it's worn when I'm reading in sitting position as I prefer to hold the Kindle higher than some.

Amazon customers can use the coupon code "KNDLWRLD" when ordering the 3-LED light model during the next week to get the 25% discount off the MSRP of $19.95. While I receive many offers of products for review, I don't do actual reviews, writing only about products I've bought and really enjoy. In this case, I've bought some for friends, and friends have bought them as well. It's just an unusual, generally useful product.

Amazon Forum Announcements: Kindle Fire Tips: Getting Started, Setting up Wi-Fi, Excellent Connect-Problem-Solving Guide

noreply@blogger.com (Andrys Basten) — Mon, 26 Dec 2011 23:29:00 +0000

AMAZON FORUM ANNOUNCEMENT - Kindle Fire: Getting started

I just saw the first announcement shown below at the regular "Kindle Forum" and that refers us to the Q&A forum for questions about Kindle Fire and WiFi, taking us to the "Setting Up WiFi" announcement.

For those who don't have time to make it to the forums, Amazon Kindle Customer Service gave some general Kindle Fire Start-up tips on Christmas Eve at almost 8pm PST, and I'll quote those here adding active links (the forums don't use links for these announcements). (Any bold-face emphases are mine)

Initial post: Dec. 24, 2011 7:47:31 PM PST
Last edited by the author 20 hours ago

' Amazon Kindle Customer Service says:
(AMAZON OFFICIAL)

Do you have a question about how to get started with your Kindle Fire? We have compiled some of the most common questions to help get you started!

If you have questions about the Kindle Fire and Wi-Fi, make sure to check out our "Kindle Fire Tips: Setting Up Wi-Fi" post here.

Q. How do I register my Kindle Fire?
A. To register online, visit Manage Your Kindle at www.amazon.com/manageyourkindle.
You can also register your Kindle Fire directly from the device by following the steps found here: www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html/?nodeId=200729250#registering

Q. Having trouble registering from your Kindle Fire?
A. Here are some troubleshooting steps that may help:

a. Go to the "Your Account" page (found by clicking [that link at the top] of this page) and then Click "Change Account Settings" under Settings-account Settings. Make sure that your name is entered in the Name field.

b. Make sure you are connected to a Wi-Fi network. You should see the Wi-Fi icon in the top right of your Kindle Fire. You can also test your connection by browsing to a web page using the Silk web browser found under "Web". Your Kindle Fire needs to be connected to a Wi-Fi network to complete the registration process.

c. If you cannot connect to a Wi-Fi network check out the troubleshooting steps found in our Kindle Fire Tips: Setting Up Wi-Fi post here

Still having problems registering? Please contact our Customer Support team by clicking Help at the top of the page and using the Contact Us button.

Q. How can I purchase apps for my Kindle Fire?
A. You will need to have a 1-Click payment method set up with your Amazon account. You can learn more about how to setup a 1-Click payment method here:
www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html/?nodeId=200729570#start

Q. What can I do if my Kindle Fire will not turn on? [Do read this.]
A. Charge your Kindle Fire for 30 minutes. If it is still unresponsive, unplug it from the power source and hold the power button for 20 seconds. After the Kindle Fire turns off, press the power button again to turn it back on.

Q. What is Amazon Prime?
A. Amazon Prime is an annual membership program that offers customers unlimited Free Two-Day Shipping on millions of items and instant streaming of movies and TV shows for $79 a year with Prime instant videos. Eligible customers who purchase a Kindle Fire will be given a free month of Amazon Prime.
When you purchase a Kindle Fire as a gift, the gift recipient will receive a free month of Amazon Prime benefits once they activate the Kindle Fire, provided they are eligible for the offer. You can learn more about Amazon Prime and Kindle Fire at www.amazon.com/help/kindle/prime.

Q. How do I update the software on my Kindle Fire?
A. Kindle Fire will automatically update when a new software update is available and when the Kindle Fire is connected via Wi-Fi.
Visit the Kindle Software Updates page at www.amazon.com/kindlesoftwareupdates to see if a free software update is available.

Q. Why doesn't my computer recognize my Kindle Fire? [Do read this.]
A. To use your Kindle Fire in USB mode, ensure that it is NOT in sleep mode when it is plugged in.

Not sure which Kindle is for you? Learn more about each new device and compare features on our website at www.amazon.com/kindlefamily

If these FAQs don't answer your question, please start a new discussion. '

Below, for the record, is the full Amazon Forum Announcement on "Setting up Wi-Fi." This one will have only minimal prepared links and will use only what was given in the forum (where they don't have active links). Will boldface questions.

Initial post: Dec. 24, 2011 7:39:14 PM PST
Last edited by the author 7:41:28 PM PST

' Amazon Kindle Customer Service says:
(AMAZON OFFICIAL)

Do you have a question about how to connect your Kindle Fire to a Wi-Fi network? We have compiled some of the most common questions to help get you started!

Q: How do I connect my Kindle Fire to a Wi-Fi Network?
A: Follow the steps found here: www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html/?nodeId=200729310

Q: Having trouble connecting to your Wi-Fi network?
A: Here are some troubleshooting steps that can help:
1. Is your Wi-Fi turned on? Tap the cog in the upper right corner, select Wi-Fi and make sure Wireless Networking is set to ON.

2. Verify that your Kindle Fire software is up to date by going to www.amazon.com/kindlesoftwareupdates. You can check the version of your Kindle Fire software by tapping on the cog in the upper right hand corner, select More.., and then select Device. Your software version is listed under System Version. If your Kindle Fire is not up to date, follow the instructions found on the Kindle Software Updates page.

3. Are you getting one of these error messages?
a. "The password you entered is incorrect or invalid" - The password is the one associated with the Wi-Fi network, not your Amazon account password. If you don't know your Wi-Fi password, contact the person who set up your Wi-Fi network, your Internet service provider, or the manufacturer of your Wi-Fi router for help. Your Wi-Fi password may also be written on the bottom of your Wi-Fi router.
b. "Wi-Fi network connection failed" - The network you chose could not be found or did not respond. Contact your network's administrator for more assistance.
c. "Wi-Fi is not available right now" - Wi-Fi might be turned off on your Kindle Fire. Tap the cog in the upper right corner, select Wi-Fi and make sure Wireless Networking is set to ON.
d. "Local Network connection failed" - Try rebooting your router or contacting your network's administrator. Let them know that this error may be related to a failed DHCP request.
e."Internet connection failed" - Your Kindle Fire is connected, but unable to contact our servers. Try again in a few minutes or contact Amazon Customer Support for more assistance.

4. Do you see your desired network in the list of available networks?
Some networks may not be broadcasting (even though they are active). If you do not see the network, make sure the network is active by using another device that uses Wi-Fi. If it is and you have the network name, you can enter it manually by tapping the cog in the upper right corner, select More.., and then select Wireless Network. Scroll down the list to "Add a Network" and enter the network name manually. If you do not know the name of your network, or still cannot find it, you may need to contact your ISP or the network's administrator.

5. Can you connect to the web on another computer?
If you cannot connect at all, something might be wrong with your network - you may want to try rebooting your router or contacting the network's administrator. If you can connect with another computer, take the Kindle Fire to another local Hot Spot (libraries often have free Wi-Fi Hot Spots). If you can connect there, you may still need to refer to your network's administrator. However, if you cannot your Kindle Fire connect [sic] to any network, please contact us for more assistance.

6. Can you connect using the Silk Web browser?
If you can bring up a web page, you are online and should be able to use all the other functions of the Kindle Fire.

7. Do you need to have a static IP address?
Some networks may require this, while others may not. Check with your network's administrator for more assistance.

8. If none of these steps help, or you continue to have problems,
please select Help at the top of the page and use the Contact Us button to contact our Customer Support team.

In addition, you can watch a video at www.amazon.com/help/kindle/fire/wifi/video or consult our troubleshooting tips at www.amazon.com/help/kindle/fire/wifi for additional guidance on common issues.

For more information troubleshooting Wi-Fi issues see this post: http://www.amazon.com/forum/kindle/?_encoding=UTF8&cdForum=Fx1D7SY3BVSESG&cdThread=Tx2RY4L7G1R2KE [*] '

[*] That last one, by a S. Yelvington is an EXCELLENT document on troubleshooting WiFi connection problems. If you're having connection problems, you should definitely follow this link to Yelvington's guide and print it out to make it easier to go through each step as appropriate.
That's the Ultimate set of Internet connection tips, as far as I'm concerned :-)

Kindle Touch 3G Kindle Touch WiFi Kindle Basic (UK: KBasic) Kindle Fire
Kindle Keybd 3G (UK: Kindle Keybd 3G) K3 Special Offers K3-3G Special Offers DX

Kindle and Kindle-Fire Helpers, Guides, app, podcast, and an off-topic short story - Updated w/ more books

noreply@blogger.com (Andrys Basten) — Mon, 26 Dec 2011 18:51:00 +0000

SOME KINDLE AND KINDLE FIRE HELPERS

The 7 Dragons group has created probably the most popular tools and utilities for the Kindle Keyboard series (Kindle 2, Kindle 3, Kindle DX, and now Kindle 4 Basic-no Touch-no physical Keyboard):
Notepad, Calendar, Calculator, and Converter

At least some of these are being converted for Kindle Touch, and I'll be watching for those.

In the meantime, they have released a Kindle Fire app:
Alarm Clock, Calendar, ToDo List - Productivity Helper. A sort of "Productivity Swiss knife"...
As with other apps for now, it's available only to U.S. customers.

NOTE: This is for Kindle Fire only and NOT for other 7" tablets, despite Amazon's "Compatability" wording in the Buy box. This set was tested and optimized ONLY for the quite wide-screen Kindle Fire, and A. Singh of 7 Dragons wrote the first comment to request that people not buy this if you have another 7" tablet.

It was just released and there are already a few very positive reviews with one reviewer wishing only for Google sync for calendars

The Product Description includes details such as the inclusion of Backup and Restore functionality and built-in, detailed Help. The alarm clock works even when you're in another app and includes a Musical Alarm that allows the setting of a song as your alarm. The ToDo List handles priorities, and you can choose one of the provided backgrounds or use one of your own images.
There's also a stopwatch and a live Antique Clock with a second hand.
Cost: $1.00

A Kindle book for those wondering how to work this Kindle Fire thing
Love Your Kindle Fire: The ILMK Guide to Amazon's Entertablet, by Bufo Calvin, 12 customer reviews, 4.6 stars, $2.99 (Link: amzn.to/love-your-kindle-fire )

Bufo Calvin is the author of 5 other Kindle books and is very popular in the Amazon Kindle forums for his clarity and good humor in answers to questions there, which he does on his own time. He also has a best-selling Kindle-Edition blog, "I Love My Kindle."

Calvin goes through each menu option, step by step, explaining what each does. A lot of the book is in conversational Question and Answer format, in which he interviews himself with the types of questions he has seen most, from the Kindle forums and at his blog, but most important, with some very thorough answers.
The writing style may be best suited to those new to the Android scene.
The author has updated the book since it was first published and it now includes what he's found after a month with the Kindle Fire, his Android App recommendations, and some details about the recent v6.2.1 software update.

The Kindle Chronicles Podcast
The Kindle Chronicles is the very popular Friday Podcast by Len Edgerly for listeners who'd like to know "All About the Kindle." It includes both audio and text sections on News, Tech Tips, a Weekly Interview, and Comments received from the Kindle community during the previous week.
Quick, sharp, and enthusiastically curious about much more than things Kindle, Len is also a relaxed, engaging interviewer. Catch his very interesting blog "Random Reflections."

I did a report on his poetry book on Kindle and Bufo Calvin's earlier books in the July 2, 2009 blog article.
He has a large Twitter following at http://twitter.com/LenEdgerly. Len's Kindle Chronicles, begun July 2008, is practically a log or history of the Kindle and its impact on readers and the publication world in the short time since its release.

Stephen Windwalker's Complete Kindle Books series
The Complete 2012 User's Guide to the Amazing Amazon Kindle: Covers All Current Kindles including the Kindle Fire, Kindle Touch, Kindle Keyboard, and Kindle, by Stephen Windwalker who has been explaining what can be done on Kindles since the beginning of Kindle time, and as you can tell from the title, he provides information on all the current Kindles. A prolific writer, he has a large following on Facebook and for his Kindle Nation blog. $1.49

Mobi Manuals Guide (Mobile Reference)
Kindle Fire Survival Guide: Step-by-step User Guide for Kindle Fire: Getting Started, Downloading FREE eBooks, Buying Apps, Watching Movies, and Surfing the Web, by Toly K.

This is quite a detailed book, at a decent price (I bought all three books), though it has a couple of errors noted, and some customer review statements and ratings are quite odd.

A "For Dummies" book
Kindle Fire for Dummies, by Nancy C. Muir.

Expensive at $9.68 but it has 12 customer reviews and an average 4.4 stars.
This one I haven't bought, but I felt it should be included.

And for something completely different, and free for maybe one more day (I'm not sure how long it's free.)
Our Dog Lucca: A funny, short, picture scrapbook, by Moe Zilla, probably better known as Jon Cog, the writer behind Beyond Black Friday (which was formerly known as the "Me and my Kindle" blog). The book, recently released and his first, is a look at the life of his dog, written in rhyme for children, with photographs, and has shot up to #2 in the Kindle Store's genre Kindle subcategory of "Children's eBooks-) Animals-) Dogs and Nonfiction -) Children's Nonfiction -) Animals."
It's a Kindle blog to put on your Visit list. His tribute to a young Kindle blogger who died suddenly was not the usual Kindle blog read.

Kindle Touch 3G Kindle Touch WiFi Kindle Basic (UK: KBasic) Kindle Fire
Kindle Keybd 3G (UK: Kindle Keybd 3G) K3 Special Offers K3-3G Special Offers DX

Kindle Tips: Kindle Fire/Touch info for new users + B&N closes up Nook Tablet loophole. UPDATED Dec. 25 for added links.

noreply@blogger.com (Andrys Basten) — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 17:50:00 +0000

RANDOM THINGS ABOUT AND FOR KINDLE FIRE

By now, everything's in place for Christmas and the calls to Buy this, Buy that will finally scale back, well, until the day after Christmas.

In the meantime, a few million people will suddenly find themselves with Kindles of one type or another. So, I'll write a few reminders about the Kindle Fire, about which there has been some misunderstanding in recent news stories.
There are some tips for Kindle Touch e-readers also.

New Best of Digital page
Amazon just added a page they call "Best of Digital" -or "amazondigital Deals" (the odd capitalization is Amazon's) which is described as "The year's best MP3 music, games and apps for Android, movies and TV shows, Kindle Books, Audible audiobooks, software downloads, and video game downloads."

Prime Program features
For the first month, free Prime membership is included with Kindle Fire, though many of us have had that for awhile because it is basically a program to get free shipping within 2 days for almost any purchases from Amazon with no minimum purchase amount, BUT they've now added other features such as over 10,000 free streaming videos and the ability to borrow a Kindle book each calendar month with no library waits and no due date. The cost of that is $79/yr, or $6.58/mo.

They recently added current PBS specials and unusual items from the BBC and lots of documentaries if families are into that. While doing reading for the blog the other day, I had the Kindle Fire behind the keyboard, hooked to external speakers, to watch recent offerings of a current documentary on Steve Jobs by PBS and a special on North Korea (after hearing so much news about their leader's death, and the concern over how this will affect us). Both were fascinating to me. They also have seasons full of TV favorites but they'll not be current seasons. These are viewable at essentially no added cost for Prime members.

That power button
The NY Times has complained mightily, quickly followed by other news-sites quoting them, about missing features that anyone with a $500 tablet is used to and can't do without. They've quoted a few with unhappy reactions in Kindle forums while ignoring the rather large majority very pleased with the KFire.

A power button on the 'bottom' that can put the tablet to sleep (not 'off') if your stomach presses it is a big concern although top and bottom are interchangeable and you can turn what is up(side), down and the speakers (low-powered) are then pointing toward you. I miss the hardware volume button too, but they've whittled features down to get to the $199 price point.
For $300 difference, what is it that some will find impossible -- that's the key and those unhappy really should get other devices and pay a bit more.

B&N's Nook Tablet and B&N policies
There is also the Nook Tablet, at $250 plus another $20 for a good microSD card to expand storage space, so that is an additional $70 for what is more expandable hardware by a company that itself doesn't have much for the tablet to use as it doesn't offer its own streaming of music or video, and now it's been found that their latest update no longer allows their customers to use a web browser to work around the fact that B&N will not allow side-loading (via USB cable) of non-B&N apps. They've closed off that avenue, or loophole.

And, as most know, they've limited non-B&N files on the internal storage, to 1 gigabyte. But since their launch emphasized that the Kindle Fire is "not open" the way the Nook Tablet is, I'll talk about that a bit.
B&N's first odd claim was that they had Netflix and Hulu Plus and that Amazon wouldn't allow that, due to wanting to bind customers to only Amazon content.

That turned out to be strangely uninformed, since Netflix and other companies were announced as having the Kindle Fire Sept. 28 and working on it. And, as KFire owners know, Netflix and Hulu Plus were both available for the KFire upon delivery. As you'll see, most actual KFire users find the video streaming, and the quality of it (if your Internet host is giving you good download speeds and your router is good), a big plus.

Sideloading of non-Amazon store apps
Amazon, interviewed at the launch, said that side-loading of non-Amazon apps IS allowed, and with the latest update it still is. Bear in mind that some of these may not be entirely compatible with Amazon's heavy customization of the Android operating system.

Amazon also shows, with the latest update (v6.2.1) as any Android device will, how much is set aside specifically for app files. In this case, 1 gig. I've added many apps, almost daily, and have used up 1/3 of my space for that (including mapping programs), but I don't keep on the device what I know I won't use.

Server storage of your purchases or even your own non-Amazon files
If I got an app from Amazon's app store, Amazon still keeps it for me on the servers at no charge and I can re-download it at any time, for use when wanted.
Many are hoarding the daily free Android apps and when they're not using them, these should be deleted from the device until wanted, as they'll be available to the customer at any time via Amazon's servers which keep records of the 'purchase' even when $0.00.

These are not charged storage use against the free 5 gigs that all customers globally get for storage of non-copyrighted data from anywhere else. That's in addition to another free 5 gigs of Kindle-device storage/backup for personal documents (non-Amazon purchased material) that you decide you want backed up on the server and sync'd.
B&N-purchased material is stored by B&N but they don't provide storage for non-B&N files.

"Sideloading" non-Amazon apps is explained at the earlier article on how to sideload non-Amazon apps.

I'll have more info on the more reliable sites to get good non-Amazon apps, in a future blog article.

Android Marketplace, which isn't readily available on either Kindle Fire or Nook Tablet
Neither company allows access to the full, non-curated Android Marketplace. And those of us who do use the Android Market via our other devices need to be careful about what we get there as malware/virus-infected files are proliferating in the Marketplace because they are not checked, at this point, by Google before being made available to the public. See:
. Dec 23 article by ZDNet "More Trojanized games enter Google's Android Market app store."
. Techworld's more-detailed article
. A list of pulled malware in December, that was targeting Europeans.

In the meantime, LinuxInsider has a story on Dec 20 titled, "Can Amazon Save Android from Malware Hell?" They point out:

' Simply put, Amazon tests apps to death before letting them into its app store. Every app submitted undergoes tests for various aspects of its performance. There are linking tests, stability and functionality tests, tests on content issues and tests on security issues.

Each aspect is tested in several ways. For example, stability and functionality tests look to see whether an app opens within 15 seconds; whether it is compliant with the major carriers' networks; whether it freezes, has forced closings or exhibits other forms of instability; and how it reacts to phone calls, text messages, and alarms.

Content issue tests look for missing content, unreadable text and incorrect graphics. They also ensure the app complies with Amazon's content guidelines on offensive content, copyright infringement, illegal activities and other issues.

Security tests include making sure the app doesn't store passwords without the user's content, doesn't collect data and send it to unknown servers, and doesn't harm existing content on the device. '

They add that Apple puts apps through a tortuous approval process also, but adds that

'However, malicious content has slipped through because "the application reviews focus is on the end user experience, not end user security," Sutton pointed out.

Taking a more proactive stance on security, as Amazon has, would help secure Android apps better.

"Providing a known secure source for apps will greatly enhance the overall value of the app store, especially in the Android space where competing app stores exist -- an approach that Amazon appears to be adopting," Sutton concluded. '

Having said that, Amazon is known to be too controlling about what applications can be released, when it comes to whether users might like a particular app and can delay developer efforts by many months, including the time it takes to approve improved apps with features that users have requested, causing the creators to seem non-responsive to customers.

RE tiny fonts on WEBpages
Be sure to read the blog article here on how to enlarge web-page fonts and reflow the text for much more comfortable reading.

WiFi connection concerns
This is already too long, so I'll close this with some info on WiFi connection problems I've done some reading on, and I'll be back within the next day or two with some good new books and software for the Kindle Fire and e-Ink Kindle e-readers, in time for those with newly unwrapped Kindles.

Common solution to some WiFi problems (from the forums)

' DiabetesDoc says:
Just got my KF, and it recognizes my wireless network, and a bunch of others. But when I try to access my wireless network (using the same cryptic series of letters & numbers as usual), it says "Unable to Connect to Wi-Fi Network" and despite tapping on "Keep Trying", it gets the same screen. I've tried from 3 feet, 10 feet, and 30 feet from the wifi base, all with same results. What should I try next?

Addendum, 11/16/2011: My KF is now working fine. I turned off computer, modem, router, then back on (a trick mentioned to me by CS [Customer Support] and the KF came up w/o problem.

[ and the next one from another message thread ]
Dec 17, 2011 6:23:13 PM PST
Old **Bah Humbug** Rocker says:

I had the WiFi issue 2 days ago and resetting my router did the trick. '

NOTE: WiFi problems were seen by the thousands with the first iPad and then with the first NookColor. It's often a combo of many factors, with a new device suddenly not connecting easily as the other devices had.

A recommended router
In my case, my Kindles had worked fine with the WiFi router but my NookColor would not connect most of the time and when it did it would drop out all the time. I decided to try a new router and bought a Netgear N300 (mid-$-range type) and I've not had a problem since.

There are better, more capable routers out there, but this was a relatively inexpensive one that works well for me, and I've not tried others because I've not had reason to look for one.
For instance, there are dual-band routers that will isolate the two currently popular speeds so that slower ones won't slow down the newer type devices.

Important tips for navigating both Kindle Touch and Kindle Fire models
. Tips for using Kindle Touch and Kindle Fire
. Notes & tips on Kindle Touch
. Browse the list of borrowable Prime Kindle books that new Kindle-device owners can download (only one per calendar month) without waiting and without due dates. This is part of Prime, and new Kindle device customers get one month of Prime free.
. Kindle Fire cases and a sleeve I like for the Kindle Touch + a GREAT mini speaker for the KFire.

Free Kindle Books guide
This blog's guide to finding free books for your Kindle from Amazon and elsewhere, plus prepared searches filtered by non-public-domain books (and vice versa) and sorted on published date, or bestselling, or highly rated. It includes a way to find the lower-cost books also.

Articles or forum threads on the Kindle Fire
. Kindle Fire Owners Love Their Tablet, Flaws and All.
. Kindle Fire first impressions: Wow!
. Taking Amazon's Kindle Fire on vacation
. Kindle Fire's Volkswagon Moment
. 12 things that kinda suck about the Kindle Fire
. Is Fire's touchscreen responsive?
I enjoyed one post that merely said, re the lighter touch that should be used,
"B.Hart says:
"I have to keep reminding my husband it is a touch screen, not a thump screen. The lighter touch seems to work better."
. A motorcyclists forum discussion about the Kindle Fire

VIDEO Demos that are especially illuminating
(Kindle-Edition subscribers need to go to http://kindleworld.blogspot.com to click on video links - see entry for December 24.)
. Video of MobileTechReview's thorough hands-on review/demo of the Kindle Fire
. Video by reviewer djramsey shows how responsive the Kindle Fire can be with a lighter touch (and that was before the software upgrade).

Kindle Touch 3G Kindle Touch WiFi Kindle Basic (UK: KBasic) Kindle Fire
Kindle Keybd 3G (UK: Kindle Keybd 3G) K3 Special Offers K3-3G Special Offers DX

Today's Update (12/21) to Free Kindle Books Guide, for free public-domain-only books + UK free books

noreply@blogger.com (Andrys Basten) — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 01:22:00 +0000

MORE FREE-BOOK LINKS

U.S.
I updated the Free Kindle Books Guide yesterday and today to now include prepared search links for CLASSICS OR PUBLIC-DOMAIN ONLY - separating them from the 33,000 free books, with only about 3,000 being non-classics and non-public-domain.

As with the others, the free public-domain books include sorting by Bestselling, High-to-Low Ratings, and Publication Date.
The latter sort-choice, to find the latest ones released, can be interesting, as it includes later books or documents that are offered to the public by government or informational organizations.

As of today, 12/20/2011, there are over 29,000 Classics and Public Domain offerings. Currently showing at the top of this list are some definitely esoteric titles released a day ago.

. The Ancient Phonetic Alphabet of Yucatan by Daniel Garrison Brinton, Dec 20, 2011
. The Arabian Art of Taming and Training Wild & Vicious Horses by P. R. Kincaid and John J. Stutzman, Dec. 20, 2011
. Artistic Anatomy of Animals by Édouard Cuy, Dec. 20, 2011
. Bakhchisaraiskii fontan. English by Gavrila Romanovich Derzhavin and Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin, Dec. 20, 2011
. Boy Scouts: Tenderfoot Squad or, Camping at Raccoon Lodge by Alan Douglas, Dec 20, 2011
. By Desert Ways to Baghdad by Louisa Jebb, Dec 20, 2011
. The Chevalier d'Auriac by S. (Sidney) Levett-Yeats, Dec. 20, 2011
. The Children's Hour, Volume 3 (of 10) Stories from the Classics by Eva March Tappan, Dec. 20, 2011

I also updated information on Feedbooks.com

U.K.
I've adjusted the Free non-classics, non-public-domain links to the new system:

Recently published free books and bestsellers

Hoping a few will find some of these worth exploring.

Kindle Touch 3G Kindle Touch WiFi Kindle Basic (UK: KBasic) Kindle Fire
Kindle Keybd 3G (UK: Kindle Keybd 3G) K3 Special Offers K3-3G Special Offers DX