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fishmech
Jul 16, 2006

by VideoGames
Salad Prong

stubblyhead posted:

This is more about Amazon's kindle store than the kindle itself, but here goes. Since kindle purchase are all one-click buys, is there any way to prevent it from using gift card balance? I have a few things I want to buy something, but it's for work and I intend to expense it, so I'd rather not use my gift balance to buy it.

You can preorder something expensive that won't be out for months, have the gift card balance dumped into that item, then buy a bunch of Kindle books. When you're done, simply cancel the order and the gift card balance goes back to your account.

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Ziir
Nov 20, 2004

by Ozmaugh
Are Amazon refurbished Kindles the same as Apple refurbished iWhatevers in that it's pretty much like a brand new unit and the battery was replaced?

Duckman2008
Jan 6, 2010

TFW you see Flyers goaltending.
Grimey Drawer
For anyone looking for a dirt cheap ereader find the borders nearest you, they are selling Kobos for $50 at the one in my area. Got it for my girlfriend, will post a bit later this week a short review.

hope and vaseline
Feb 13, 2001

Oh man, just tried this method of using custom fonts on the nook. Requires a bit of fiddling with the epub's css file, but drat I love reading with New Century Schoolbook.

Call Me Charlie
Dec 3, 2005

by Smythe
Guess I'll ask here before calling Amazon.

I was downloading books via wifi from a dropbox account I set up. I picked a fairly large one (10.xx MB) and my Kindle froze after a little bit.

I tried restarting it and now, nothing is showing up on my screen. The screen is completely blank. The light is still working on the power button. If I hold the power button to reset, the screen will flash black before going back to nothing. I tried plugging it into my computer and nothing, except for the light on the bottom turning orange.

Is there something I'm missing or do I have to call Amazon?

-edit And I dont think it is the battery. It was at half charge when this happened and my lighted cover still works (yes I also tried removing it to see if that would help)

The screen doesnt seem to be working anymore

-edit And of course as soon as I make the edit, I check it and it is back to the main menu. Strange.

Call Me Charlie fucked around with this message at 22:40 on Apr 1, 2011

Ara
Oct 18, 2003



Sporadic posted:

Guess I'll ask here before calling Amazon.

I was downloading books via wifi from a dropbox account I set up. I picked a fairly large one (10.xx MB) and my Kindle froze after a little bit.

I tried restarting it and now, nothing is showing up on my screen. The screen is completely blank. The light is still working on the power button. If I hold the power button to reset, the screen will flash black before going back to nothing. I tried plugging it into my computer and nothing, except for the light on the bottom turning orange.

Is there something I'm missing or do I have to call Amazon?

-edit And I dont think it is the battery. It was at half charge when this happened and my lighted cover still works (yes I also tried removing it to see if that would help)

The screen doesnt seem to be working anymore

-edit And of course as soon as I make the edit, I check it and it is back to the main menu. Strange.

This is what happens every time the web browser freezes up. It's usually not for more than 30 seconds or so, though. Just continue holding the power switch over for a couple long blocks of time and it'll start up.

Fuzz
Jun 2, 2003

Avatar brought to you by the TG Sanity fund
Anyone know what reader the Nook uses? I was thinking of doing the full flash to Froyo, which would wipe all the default B&N poo poo, but that would also mean I'd need a new epub reader... what's the best one around on the Marketplace? Is there one that's as nice (or hey, nicer?) than the default B&N one?

Stupid_Sexy_Flander
Mar 14, 2007

Is a man not entitled to the haw of his maw?
Grimey Drawer
Dunno what the nook uses, but I use Aldiko for epubs. Works pretty good and the premium version is something like 1.99 or 2.99.

TheScott2K
Oct 26, 2003

I'm just saying, there's a nonzero chance Trump has a really toad penis.

Fuzz posted:

Anyone know what reader the Nook uses? I was thinking of doing the full flash to Froyo, which would wipe all the default B&N poo poo, but that would also mean I'd need a new epub reader... what's the best one around on the Marketplace? Is there one that's as nice (or hey, nicer?) than the default B&N one?

FYI, a full flash to Froyo will cost you a fair amount of wifi performance, and there's an update coming this month to add Flash support (meaning an upgrade to Froyo) and "an app store" (meaning you can use ALL the Froyo apps once it gets rooted). It may be worth just sitting tight a couple of weeks.

Fuzz
Jun 2, 2003

Avatar brought to you by the TG Sanity fund

TheScott2K posted:

FYI, a full flash to Froyo will cost you a fair amount of wifi performance, and there's an update coming this month to add Flash support (meaning an upgrade to Froyo) and "an app store" (meaning you can use ALL the Froyo apps once it gets rooted). It may be worth just sitting tight a couple of weeks.

Hmm... I'm already rooted, I guess I'll have to revert to a standard build and then update, then flash again, huh?

TheScott2K
Oct 26, 2003

I'm just saying, there's a nonzero chance Trump has a really toad penis.

Fuzz posted:

Hmm... I'm already rooted, I guess I'll have to revert to a standard build and then update, then flash again, huh?

Yea, instead of five minutes it'll take ten.

I'm starting to wonder if a seperate Nook Color thread might be a good idea. We seem to be filling the "ereader" thread with "how do I make the most out of my rooted quasi-tablet?"

Javid
Oct 21, 2004

:jpmf:
Is there any way to change the "list every book on the device at once" default view on the kindle 3 to, say, subfolders by author or something? Having 12 pages of books to scroll through blows, and it's only going to get worse.

ahobday
Apr 19, 2007

Javid posted:

Is there any way to change the "list every book on the device at once" default view on the kindle 3 to, say, subfolders by author or something? Having 12 pages of books to scroll through blows, and it's only going to get worse.

If you scroll up on the home screen until "Showing all XX items By XXXX" is underlined, you can press the right button to sort by Title and Author. You can also sort by Collections, which is the closest to what you want, but you'll have to put books in collections yourself.

To make that easier, create a collection by pressing "Menu" and then "Create New Collection", name it after an author, and then highlight the collection, press the "Right" button, and select "Add/Remove Items".

This will let you select multiple items in one go, so you're not having to select every book and choose "Add to Collection".

Fuzz
Jun 2, 2003

Avatar brought to you by the TG Sanity fund
Is there a way to delete poo poo off the B&N bookshelf? My sister downloaded a bunch of demos of lovely books, and now they're on my pretty bookshelf next to all m Vonnegut books, and it's painful to look at. I checked in the directories, tried clearing teh cache, and there's no option to do it on the shelf itself. Really annoying.

RightClickSaveAs
Mar 1, 2001

Tiny animals under glass... Smaller than sand...


The B&N bookshelf? I'm not sure what you're talking about, is that on the website or something?

Kazy
Oct 23, 2006

0x38: FLOPPY_INTERNAL_ERROR

Fuzz posted:

Is there a way to delete poo poo off the B&N bookshelf? My sister downloaded a bunch of demos of lovely books, and now they're on my pretty bookshelf next to all m Vonnegut books, and it's painful to look at. I checked in the directories, tried clearing teh cache, and there's no option to do it on the shelf itself. Really annoying.

You have to go to the B&N Website > My Account and My Library, move poo poo to the Archived section and delete it from there. It really is a huge pain in the rear end. I don't know why ebook sellers think samples of books should go into libraries permanently. Amazon is the only one who doesn't do that, I think.

Gucci Loafers
May 20, 2006

Ask yourself, do you really want to talk to pair of really nice gaudy shoes?


Fuzz posted:

Anyone know what reader the Nook uses? I was thinking of doing the full flash to Froyo, which would wipe all the default B&N poo poo, but that would also mean I'd need a new epub reader... what's the best one around on the Marketplace? Is there one that's as nice (or hey, nicer?) than the default B&N one?

Heh, there was a huge chat about that earlier on #nookcolor. It's quite nice and no one has yet to port it over. :/

big mean giraffe
Dec 13, 2003

Eat Shit and Die

Lipstick Apathy
Where can I find this #nookcolor channel?

anothertenbux
Aug 17, 2010

by Fistgrrl
What's the best option for editing .mobi and .pdf files?

Specifically I want to go through them and get rid of the author/title/page numbers that are added to PDFs as headers/footers and don't get removed when the .pdf is converted to .mobi or when the .pdf is reflowed by my Kindle. They end up scattered randomly throughout the page and it's very annoying.

I've tried Sigil and Adobe Acrobat but can't get either to find & replace those bits.

withak
Jan 15, 2003


Fun Shoe
Calibre has some regex capabilities that might help with a .mobi, but with a pdf you are probably screwed unless it can convert to a real ebook format.

BrainParasite
Jan 24, 2003


anothertenbux posted:

What's the best option for editing .mobi and .pdf files?

Specifically I want to go through them and get rid of the author/title/page numbers that are added to PDFs as headers/footers and don't get removed when the .pdf is converted to .mobi or when the .pdf is reflowed by my Kindle. They end up scattered randomly throughout the page and it's very annoying.

I've tried Sigil and Adobe Acrobat but can't get either to find & replace those bits.

You could use Mobipocket creator to convert it to HTML and then edit it with your HTML editor of choice.

Fuzz
Jun 2, 2003

Avatar brought to you by the TG Sanity fund

big mean giraffe posted:

Where can I find this #nookcolor channel?

The XDA channel is on chat.freenode.net.

Javid
Oct 21, 2004

:jpmf:

anothertenbux posted:

What's the best option for editing .mobi and .pdf files?

Specifically I want to go through them and get rid of the author/title/page numbers that are added to PDFs as headers/footers and don't get removed when the .pdf is converted to .mobi or when the .pdf is reflowed by my Kindle. They end up scattered randomly throughout the page and it's very annoying.

I've tried Sigil and Adobe Acrobat but can't get either to find & replace those bits.

For PDFs you could use something like Briss to crop off the page numbers and headers/footers - this makes PDFs more readable even if you don't convert them, too.

dynodash
Jul 14, 2010
Is it possible to add a German-English dictionary to my Kindle? I'm trying to read more in German to build my vocabulary, and if I could look up / translate words as easily as I can look stuff up in English it'd be a loving game-changer.

Javid
Oct 21, 2004

:jpmf:

dynodash posted:

Is it possible to add a German-English dictionary to my Kindle? I'm trying to read more in German to build my vocabulary, and if I could look up / translate words as easily as I can look stuff up in English it'd be a loving game-changer.

http://www.amazon.com/BARRONS-GERMAN-ENGLISH-DICTIONARY-ebook/dp/B003DMJDSM/

dynodash
Jul 14, 2010
...Hm. It's that easy? I had assumed it would be trickier. :doh: Thanks!

Guilty
May 3, 2003
Ask me about how people having a bad reaction to MSG makes them racist, because I've never heard of gluten sensitivity

great, I'm living in loving germany and can't get it. Is there anyway I can just circumvent the whole location thing and get it?

Guilty fucked around with this message at 18:16 on Apr 5, 2011

ahobday
Apr 19, 2007

Do you think there'd be enough interest / knowledge for a thread specifically devoted to cheap and decent books available on the Amazon and B&N book stores?

There are a lot of cheap books on Amazon, and most of them are probably crap, but there might be some real gems in there, and the Kindle store is terrible for finding that stuff.

maxnmona
Mar 16, 2005

if you start with drums, you have to end with dynamite.

Centipeed posted:

Do you think there'd be enough interest / knowledge for a thread specifically devoted to cheap and decent books available on the Amazon and B&N book stores?

There are a lot of cheap books on Amazon, and most of them are probably crap, but there might be some real gems in there, and the Kindle store is terrible for finding that stuff.

If you could separate the crap from the decent ones, I'd be very interested in that thread. Searching the Kindle store, especially for classic books, is useless because there's just an endless pile of badly formatted lovely versions.

traslin
Feb 19, 2004
Hooked On Phoenix

Centipeed posted:

Do you think there'd be enough interest / knowledge for a thread specifically devoted to cheap and decent books available on the Amazon and B&N book stores?

There are a lot of cheap books on Amazon, and most of them are probably crap, but there might be some real gems in there, and the Kindle store is terrible for finding that stuff.

I'd be interested in this as well. Also, I'm assuming the Google Bookstore could also be included in the thread.

calandryll
Apr 25, 2003

Ask me where I do my best drinking!



Pillbug

maxnmona posted:

there's just an endless pile of badly formatted lovely versions.

This is one of the biggest problems I have with eBooks. Some people care, others don't give a poo poo what it looks like and push it out. It is quite annoying.

The Aphasian
Mar 8, 2007

Psychotropic Hops


Centipeed posted:

Do you think there'd be enough interest / knowledge for a thread specifically devoted to cheap and decent books available on the Amazon and B&N book stores?

There are a lot of cheap books on Amazon, and most of them are probably crap, but there might be some real gems in there, and the Kindle store is terrible for finding that stuff.

Might want to combine a thread with a public Google spreadsheet so that people can quickly see reviewed books and sort by genre, quality, etc. Like the iPhone Jailbreaking "what apps work, what don't" sheet. (If only to make updating the OP easier.)

Call Me Charlie
Dec 3, 2005

by Smythe

Centipeed posted:

Do you think there'd be enough interest / knowledge for a thread specifically devoted to cheap and decent books available on the Amazon and B&N book stores?

There are a lot of cheap books on Amazon, and most of them are probably crap, but there might be some real gems in there, and the Kindle store is terrible for finding that stuff.

I did this a long time ago but it was a massive pain in the rear end without people actively helping out and all the self-publishers trying to push their wares - "hey Sporadic I lowered the price of my book for some weird amount of time, plz add it to your list thx" and I still get private messages like that at the forum I use to have it at, even though I haven't done it for a year.

But yeah, people liked it when it was around. Go for it.

These threads would be a good jumping off point

http://www.kindleboards.com/index.php/topic,60213.0.html
http://www.kindleboards.com/index.php/topic,60210.0.html

The Aphasian
Mar 8, 2007

Psychotropic Hops


For SciFi nerds: Iain M. Banks's Consider Phlebas (first in the Culture series) is 99¢ this month for all ebook formats.

http://www.orbitebooks.com/

Trig Discipline
Jun 3, 2008

Please leave the room if you think this might offend you.
Grimey Drawer

The Aphasian posted:

For SciFi nerds: Iain M. Banks's Consider Phlebas (first in the Culture series) is 99¢ this month for all ebook formats.

http://www.orbitebooks.com/

Cool, thanks for this!

bigmcgaffney
Apr 19, 2009

The Aphasian posted:

For SciFi nerds: Iain M. Banks's Consider Phlebas (first in the Culture series) is 99¢ this month for all ebook formats.

http://www.orbitebooks.com/

Thanks, I've had this on my wishlist for months.

cool new Metroid game
Oct 7, 2009

hail satan

I wish deals like this were international. It's regular price on the UK Kindle store. :sigh:

Speaking of being screwed over for not being American, Amazon still haven't released any Active Content poo poo for the non American Kindle stores. Not that I really desperately want to play Scrabble or whatever on my Kindle, it just seems arbitrarily pointless. I know I can just change my Amazon address to a US one to get all this stuff, but why not just release it over here already? [/disgruntled Britisher]

ahobday
Apr 19, 2007

Megadyptes posted:

I wish deals like this were international. It's regular price on the UK Kindle store. :sigh:

Speaking of being screwed over for not being American, Amazon still haven't released any Active Content poo poo for the non American Kindle stores. Not that I really desperately want to play Scrabble or whatever on my Kindle, it just seems arbitrarily pointless. I know I can just change my Amazon address to a US one to get all this stuff, but why not just release it over here already? [/disgruntled Britisher]

Your post, and the Consider Phlebas deal being American only, has made me realise that I may not be the best person to start a thread for Kindle / Nook deals, since I'm in the UK and might not be able to verify a lot of them.

There's going to be a point in the future where people find out that in 2010 online stores were limited to different countries, and they'll think it's the stupidest thing they've ever heard, but unfortunately that time is not now.

Ziir
Nov 20, 2004

by Ozmaugh
What's a good way to convert wikipedia articles to Kindle format for offline reading?

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dynodash
Jul 14, 2010

Guilty posted:

great, I'm living in loving germany and can't get it. Is there anyway I can just circumvent the whole location thing and get it?

I did a bit more digging, and stumbled across this:

http://blog.mikeasoft.com/2011/01/05/free-as-in-gpl2-translation-dictionaries-for-the-kindle/

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