O2 Xda Zest phone sitting on top of an Amazon Kindle 3

On Tuesday my Amazon Kindle 3G + Wi-Fi arrived. And there was much rejoicing.

Why I bought a Kindle

For a few years now I’ve wanted an eBook reader to make my growing collection of geeky books in PDF more portable.

I have a laptop, but it’s not terribly practical with its brightly glowing screen and its fan-assisted knee warmer.  And as any reader of Jakob Nielsen will be able to tell you: reading on computer screens is tiring and about 25% slower than reading from paper.

My Psion Series 5mx has a PDF reader but it’s not being developed now and so doesn’t support the latest version of PDF files.  My Windows Mobile phone does support the latest formats, but the screen is so small that it makes reading PDFs cumbersome with all the scrolling that’s required.

So I wanted something in between a laptop and a PDA, that would support PDFs and wouldn’t put too big a dent in my wallet.  The new Amazon Kindle 3G + Wi-Fi seemed to promise all of that, so I pre-ordered one.  It arrived two days ago.

Initial reaction

When I unpacked the Kindle I tried to peel away the cellophane instruction that was telling me what I should do next (plug it in!), until I discovered that it wasn’t a stick-on film it was the screen itself.

Of course! The Kindle doesn’t need power to maintain an image on the screen, it just needs power to change the image.  Genius! and a perfect introduction to the quality of the E Ink technology.

Cover

Close-up of how the Kindle is secured to the leather cover

The first thing I did was fix it into the chocolate brown Kindle leather cover that I also bought.  I decided not to pay £20 extra for the one with the built-in light as I rarely have to read in the dark, what with us having electric lighting in the house and everything.

The Kindle feels great in your hands; the slightly rubberised feel to its casing makes you feel confident that you’re not going to drop it easily.  Once the Kindle is secured into the case it just feels great, like you’re reading a classic, leather-bound book.  It’s a very tactile experience.

First use

I plugged it in, switched it on and very quickly got to grips with the basic functionality: selecting a book and navigating through the pages.

It feels quite intuitive and I love the feel of the qwerty keyboard: the keys are quite rough like very fine sandpaper which I guess makes them easier to use than similar-sized smooth keys on which your fingers might more easily slide off.

Clarity

I can’t compare the Kindle 3 with earlier models to judge whether it does offer “50% better contrast than any other e-reader” or “crisper, darker fonts”.  But what I can say is that it just looks great.  And everyone I’ve shown it to today has commented on both the clarity of the text and how easy it is to read, even when held at strange angles and from a distance.

Connection to PC

Of course, what I really wanted to do was check out how my PDFs would render on the Kindle.

The power cable comprises a USB cable (it looks like USB A to Micro-B) that plugs into a … well, a plug.  Unhook the plug and you have yourself a USB cable.  It took seconds for Windows 7 to recognise the Kindle as an external drive.

Screenshot of Kindle folders

The Kindle contains four directories:

1. \.active-content-data
2. \audible
3. \documents
4. \music

I dragged and dropped about 300 MB of PDF files into the \documents directory, ejected the Kindle from Windows and lo-and-behold! there they were.

Collections

eBooks can be organised into what the Kindle calls collections, which is like organising your files into folders or directories on your PC; books can be assigned to more than one collection. This makes it easier to find your books, and cuts down the clutter on the home screen.

Screenshot of my Kindle home screen

Once organised into collections you can still view a list of all your books by title, author or most recent.

Reading eBooks

While most of my books are in PDF, I have a few eBooks in either .Mobipocket or Amazon’s proprietary .AZW format (which is based on the Mobipocket standard) which allows the text to be resized. There are eight possible sizes ranging from tiny (30 lines per page) to enormous (5 lines per page).

Showing viewing options on the Kindle 3 while reading an eBook

With eBooks the typeface (regular serif, condensed serif or sans-serif), line spacing (small, medium large) and words per line (fewest, fewer, default) can be adjusted, and text-to-speech can be turned on enabling the Kindle to read out loud the text on the page, either through the built-in speakers or via the headphone socket.

I spent about 30-45 minutes sitting reading an eBook the other day and it felt really natural.  It really is the quality of the screen that makes all the difference: it really does look like ink printed on light grey paper.

Navigation through the pages is via the forward and back arrows on both the left- and right-hand side of the Kindle; although once secured into the leather cover left-handed users I imagine would have to bend the cover back on itself (the kind of action that is drilled into you from an early age that you should never do with a paperback), or remove it from the cover altogether … or, I guess, use the buttons on the right-hand side of the Kindle.

Reading PDFs

Thankfully reading PDFs was just as easy as reading standard eBooks.

Of course, the whole point of PDFs is that the author can determine how they look and that they will retain their design regardless of the device they are being viewed on.  This means that the viewing options are reduced to just zoom, screen contrast and screen rotation.

Screenshot of PDF reading options on the Kindle 3

Depending on the size of the text I’ve found that reading some books with the fit-to-screen option and a 90° rotation is best. Depending on the size of the original page, the navigation keys will then shift your view from the top to the bottom of the page before moving on to the next page.  It really is very impressive.

I just wish that there was a keyboard shortcut for rotating the screen.  On the Kindle 1, I’ve read, it is Alt + R, but on the Kindle 3 this inserts a number ’4′ into the search box.

No support for PDF bookmarks

Here’s my biggest niggle with the Kindle, though, when using it to read PDF documents: it doesn’t appear to have support for PDF bookmarks.  This seems to me to be a huge failing, as it is often the way that I navigate around large PDF documents when viewing them on my PC.

I hope that Amazon address this in a future update.

Crashes

And speaking of failings: my Kindle has crashed about 5 or 6 times since I received it, and it has rebooted itself once.  I’m hoping that the latter was a software update, I’m currently on version 3.0 (515460094).  eBookvine wrote about the freezes and crashes yesterday.  Mine have happened while browsing the Web and viewing long, complicated PDF documents.

I do wish manufacturers would include instructions on how to soft- and hard-reset their devices. On the Kindle 3 you hold in the power switch for 7 seconds to switch it off, and for 15 seconds to reboot it.

It’s inconvenient, but it’s not enough to put me off using it.

Shortcut keys

A few shortcut keys I’ve found useful:

• Alt + Shift + G
  Takes a screenshot (think of ‘g’ for ‘grab screenshot’)
• Alt + Shift + M
  Play Minesweeper (press G within the game to play GoMoku)
• Alt + Home
  Open the Amazon Kindle Store
  
• Alt + Q, Alt + W, Alt + E, etc.
  Pressing Alt and the top row of keys will produce numbers 1-9 and then 0.
  
• Alt + G
  Screen refresh
• Alt + B
  While reading a book you can toggle user-created bookmarks
• Menu
  Pressing Menu on the Home screen will show you both the time and available memory.

I knew that my mobile phone ring tone was missing something: a drummer!

Back in May I published a post about WordPress 2.9 not publishing scheduled posts. Recently I did an automatic update to WordPress 3.0.1 … and guess what: scheduled posting has been broken once again.

I’ll try the method I used before, which was to delete all the core WordPress files and upload them again manually, but in the meantime I found this WordPress plugin has done the job: Missed Scheduled.

By default the plugin is set to run every 15 minutes, but I’ve changed mine to 2 minutes by editing line 12:

12

define('MISSEDSCHEDULED_DELAY', 2); // Number is in minutes, change it according to your needs

If it turns out that uploading the files manually fixes the issue again I guess I’ll be running manual upgrades in future.

This might be a bit geeky for most but for those that get it it’s very well done and funny.

Joshua eating Heinz Beanz from a can

On Tuesday evening I was tidying up the kitchen after the boys’ tea when I turned around and who had climbed up onto one of the dining room chairs and was eating Heinz Beanz from a can off the breakfast bar?

Joshua!

He was so pleased with himself.

A couple of weeks ago I decided to upgrade my photo editing application to the latest version: Corel PaintShop Photo Pro X3. However, I ran into a fairly fundamental problem: I couldn’t get it to activate.

It was a couple of days before I went to Glen ’10 (the Scottish Episcopal Church’s summer youth camp) when I realised that I didn’t have a photo editing package on my laptop (which I’d be using to produce the daily newspaper at Glen) and being a good boy and not wanting to violate the license terms by installing my old copy on more than one PC I decided to upgrade and obtain a shiny new license for my laptop.

Corel offer two “delivery methods” for PaintShop Photo Pro X3: download or DVD.  I needed it fast so rather than waiting for a disc to arrive in the post I selected the download option.

But that’s where the troubles began!

I purchased the software, downloaded it, installed it, ran it and this is what I saw when I clicked on the Activate now button:

PaintShop Photo Pro X3 activation window ... hmm, something is wrong here.

Erm … ok.  I had a blank dialog window and nothing that I did would get me past that.  I then wasted a couple of hours fruitlessly surfing the Web looking for a solution. But nothing I tried would activate it.

How frustrating!

Corel Support – excellent customer support

I quickly got on to Corel Support, initially demanding my money but their customer support was so good, and I eventually calmed down about it (!), that I gratefully accepted their help.  Even though this was now the week after Glen ’10 had finished!  This was now the week after the week that I actually needed the program!

I got a call from a support advisor who walked me through the activate by phone option.

“Could you please read out the long installation code on that dialog?”

“It’s blank,” I said.

“Ok, you must be using Windows Vista or Windows 7 then,” she said. “Windows must be blocking the installation code.  We’ll send you a DVD in the post.”

A couple of days later I received a DVD in the post.  Using the DVD Corel PaintShop Photo Pro X3 installed in minutes with no online activation required.

What I learned

1. I need to plan further ahead when preparing for Glen ’11 and check that I have all the software I need on my laptop, and not just do two nights before I leave!
2. Don’t send support calls when you are really tired and grumpy from failing to activate your new software for a couple of hours. Go to bed, sleep on it, then contact them.
3. Don’t select the download delivery method the next time!  Almost every time I’ve selected the Corel download method I’ve ran into problems, not just with PaintShop Pro (as it was then) but with other Corel applications too.  From now on I’ll go for DVD only.

The Amazon Kindle 3G in someone else's hands

Probably like a lot of people of the geek persuasion, I have a lot of e-books: articles, books, cheatsheets, leaflets, manuals. I have e-books about CSS, design, Flash, HTML, JavaScript, jQuery, microformats, MySQL, PHP, regular expressions, RSS, servers, WordPress, XML and a whole lot more.

The only problem is: if I want to read them then I’m tied to sitting in front of my PC, lugging my laptop around, or peering at the tiny screen of my mobile phone and scrolling left-right-up-down for dear life. So for a couple of years I’ve been looking for an e-book reader that would adequately handle PDFs as well as standard e-book formats.

I think (I’m hoping) that I’ve found the answer in the new Amazon Kindle 3 that will be released this week (27 or 28 August, if I remember correctly).  I have had mine on pre-order since 30 July; before they pre-sold out!  I’ve ordered the model offering both WiFi and 3G.

A full review will follow shortly after receipt.

Who needs a Kindle?

In the meantime, here’s a parody video I discovered about the Kindle.  Excuse the rude reference near the beginning of the video if that offends you.

Creative X-Fi Platinum soundcard, breakout box and remote control

What a fabulous discovery: I can now use my Creative RM-1800 infra-red remote control to control WinAmp.

Creative drivers

For the last few years my shiny, silver Creative remote control has sat beneath my PC monitor looking rather forlorn and underused. So a few months back I emptied it of batteries and handed it over to Reuben and Joshua’s toy box.

The remote control was one of the reasons that I went for the X-Fi Platinum in the first place.  I had visions of sitting in my study and being able to control my music from the other side of the room.

It was great for a couple of weeks.  I had to make do with Creative Entertainment Center rather than WinAmp but that was fine. I could live with that.  But then the first time I had to do a clean reinstall of Windows XP and upgraded my Creative X-Fi Platinum drivers I lost use of the remote control.

1. Install Creative Entertainment Center

I had assumed that the remote control drivers were a part of the soundcard drivers, after all the infra-red receiver is firmly embedded into the break-out box that is installed just beneath my DVD-RW drive.  But they are not: they are installed with Creative Entertainment Center.  I only discovered that yesterday!

I installed the Creative Entertainment Center software this evening.  It ended with a rather abrupt error message but it did install ok — at least, both the remote control driver and Creative Entertainment Center are installed and appear to be functioning correctly.

2. Enable Remote Control

Once installed I fired up the Entertainment Center Settings, which brings up this dialog box in which you need to enable the remote control:

Creative Remote Control Settings window

3. WinAmp plugin

The final step was to install the Creative Remote Control plugin for WinAmp.

Under Windows 7 I had to install by right-clicking the installer file and selecting “Run as administrator”. This is because the plugin installer needs to write to the C:\Program Files\WinAmp directory and for security reasons it needs administrator rights to be able to do that.

4. That’s it

And that was it!  When I fire up WinAmp I can now sit in my study and control my music from the other side of the room.

I’m running

• Windows 7 Professional (32-bit)
• Creative Entertainment Center 3.40.21 (19 December 2007)
• WinAmp 5.581
• Creative Remote Control plugin (25 July 2002)
• Creative RM-1800 infra-red remote control

Outlook appointments gadget for Windows 7

One of my favourite Windows 7 gadgets is the Outlook Appointments gadget. As gadgets go it’s pretty simple: it shows me  upcoming appointments. From Outlook.

But oddly, only when Outlook is open.

Anyhow, when I upgraded Microsoft Office from 2007 to 2010 a couple of weeks ago I discovered that it no longer worked … it just complained that it didn’t have the correct version of Outlook installed.

The hack

But there is a simple hack:

1. Make sure that you can view hidden and system files (Control Panel > Folder Options > under View tab select “Show hidden files, folders, or drives”).
2. Close the Outlook upcoming appointments gadget.
3. In Windows Explorer navigate to C:\Users\YOURNAME\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Sidebar\Gadgets\OutlookAppointmentsGadget.gadget\en-US\js\” where YOURNAME is the name of your user account.
4. Open the file “outlook.vbs” with Notepad (or other text editor; personally I wouldn’t use WordPad).
5. On lines 22 and 42 change the two occurrences of the number “12″ to “14″.
6. Save the file.
7. Open the Outlook  Appointments gadget again.

Outlook Tasks gadget

The same hack also works for the “Outlook Tasks” gadget.

Congratulations! By looking at this photo of a call centre you qualify for an £850 voucher for ...

Who you gonna call? Not me…!

A few years ago, around about the end of May 2006, I signed up for the Telephone Preference Service (TPS). I know that because I have a letter from them confirming that I had signed up for it.

The TPS is

“the official central opt out register on which you can record your preference not to receive unsolicited sales or marketing calls. It is a legal requirement that all organisations (including charities, voluntary organisations and political parties) do not make such calls to numbers registered on the TPS unless they have your consent to do so.”

Despite that we still get unsolicited sales calls from time to time, wrapped up in a cunning disguise to make them look like we’ve won a competition or money-off voucher for a new kitchen, bathroom or bedroom.

I got another one of those calls this evening, and I have to confess to have … well, see for yourself.

The call

As professional sales calls go this one didn’t get off to a terribly good start.  When I picked up the phone the caller was in the middle of a chat with a colleague.  They were laughing about something.

I said hello.

“Oh! Sorry,” she replied, “Hello!”

I’d clearly taken her by surprise. But ever the professional she started to read from her script.

“Congratulations! You’ve been selected in a … blah blah blah … to receive an £850 voucher towards the cost of a new kitchen or bedroom.”

“Sorry, I’m not interested,” I said.

She ignored me and pressed on with her script.

“Can I ask you how old is your kitchen?”

“My what?” I asked.

“Your kitchen,” she said.

“Kitchen?! What’s a kitchen?”

“You know,” she said, a little taken aback, “a kitchen.”

“I have no idea what that is. I don’t think we’ve got a … what did you call it?”

“Kitchen”

“Yeah, I don’t think we’ve got a kitchen.”

“A kitchen,” she said, her voice getting more animated now. “Surely you know what a kitchen is…”

And then she went to the trouble of trying to describe it for me.

“… A kitchen: a room with a sink and cupboards in it.”

“Hmm … no, sorry. I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Come on!” she said, “stop taking the mickey, everyone knows what a kitchen is.”

“I have … no … idea,” I said, sounding genuinely confused.

“Okay,” she continued, “then can you tell me how old your bedroom is?”

“Well!” I exclaimed, “that’s a very personal question!”

“No it’s not!” she said, quite forcefully.

I’m pretty certain that bit wasn’t on her call centre script.

“It is to me.”

“How can it be a personal question?” she challenged me.

“Well, I don’t phone up complete strangers and ask them how old their bedroom is! How rude!”

“But it’s for a voucher,” she said.

“Ahhh!” I said, sounding quite enlightened. “A VOUCHER!”

“Yes,” she said, almost audibly sighing with relief.

“Yeah, I’m not interested.”

“What?!” she exploded. “I can’t believe that you’re turning down the opportunity for an £850 voucher for a new kitchen or bedroom.”

“I … I …,” I wasn’t quite sure what to say.  But that was okay because I didn’t have to.  She was back to her script.

“Can you tell me how old the furniture in your bedroom is?”

“No.”

“Well, can you tell me how old your kitchen is?”

I think she was trying to catch me out.  But how could she, had she forgotten, I don’t know what a kitchen is.

“My what?”

She then called for her manager, and I could hear her talking to him.  ”This guy says that he doesn’t know what a kitchen is,” she said to him.

There was a pause while she handed me over to her manager, Dan.

“Hello sir,” he said, quite politely.

“Hello,” I replied, as is the custom.

“Are you having a good evening?” he asked.

“Erm, yes.  I was just trying to explain to your colleague,” I ventured, “that I wasn’t interested in your offer just now because we already have twins and have another baby on the way so we’re really not planning to upgrade our kitchen or bedrooms in the near future.”

“That’s fine,” he said. “I’m sorry about that, she must have been a bit slow to understand what you were saying.”

“That’s ok, I understand.  Thank you. Good night.”

I hung up.

Next time

We seem to get these calls every couple of weeks.  The next time it happens I really need to take the company’s name so that I can contact the Telephone Preference Service and ask them to follow up the call to ascertain why we were being contacted.

In the meantime I’ll just continue to have fun.  The last time I got a call like this I just told them that we hadn’t had a kitchen since the explosion and that the insurance company was dealing with it.  The next time … any suggestions?  Leave them in the comments, if you like.

p.s. I do know what a kitchen is. We’ve got loads of them!