See UPDATE added late afternoon (Original post 8:53 a.m. 9/10/11)
7 Dragons, maker of the popular Notepad, Calendar (which handles recurring events), Converter, and Calculator apps, just released their very useful Tips for Kindle, with over 100 tips you can browse through. Here is their description:
' Did you know that your Kindle can play music, read text to you, and display your own pictures? 7 Dragons' Tips for Kindle shows you how to do these things and more.
Tips for Kindle has over 100 useful tips, and every time you open Tips for Kindle you are shown a Featured Tip. You can browse through the Tips at your own pace, or use a slideshow mode that circles through the Tips for you. You can add the Tips you like most to a Favorites List so they're easy to look up quickly if you forget one. If you find a tip for Kindle elsewhere, you can type it in to Tips to become part of your Tips library... '
Many of my friends have Kindles, several of them having bought theirs before I got mine in 2008, and I know that they don't know about the many things you can do with the Kindle, described here. They mainly want to read on it, and the Kindle (UK: K3) allows them do that very conveniently -- and that's the extent of the interest in exploring.
However, for those who are more curious about other Kindle capabilities and who want to browse a guide to features (including undocumented ones) at their leisure -- a tip or two at a time -- this app is recommended.
I've long recommended an interesting Amazon Kindle Forum thread on unique or creative uses of the Kindle, and that recommendation is one of the tips.
The app opened, in my case, with information on the How to Manage your Kindle page, which has been expanded by Amazon from one page to several now.
You can export favorite tips in order to view and/or print them. The Tips for Kindle app creates a text file for you, with the title and text of each of your favorites, and each time you use the Export feature it overwrites the previous text file of favorite tips.
TIP for using the app
The Menu's "Slideshow" option seems to function in the same way as "All Tips" selection on the Menu, but the "All Tips" doesn't move to the next tip as quickly.
I wanted a Pause button for both and later found it in the Help area. At the top right, there's an indication that you are in Play or Pause mode, something I hadn't noticed. Alt-M starts or pauses/stops a slideshow (which 'All Tips' is also). You can change the speed of the slideshow with Alt-N.
What I'd like to see in the next version
I'd like to choose from categories of tips or be able to Search the tips for a keyword.
The purpose of the app
I noticed that a customer reviewed the app with expectations that it would be for very advanced users who want to "hack" (as she said) the Kindle. But the app is for people who want to know what they can do with the Kindle as it is, with the many given features you won't find on other e-readers.
I just saw a customer review mentioning that even as an experienced user, the person found useful tips. The customer also mentions a glitch with adding one's own tip. I tried adding a tip on my own Kindle 3 and it added the tip and allowed me to edit it later also, so the customer should contact 7 Dragons.
UPDATE - After being gone for the day, I just got back and checked to see if the problem had been resolved and saw that the customer added this update to the review:
' It was a problem with my Kindle and not the app. Kindle Customer Service solved my Kindle problem in minutes. The app developer also followed up to make sure and I was able to tell them that it was not the app. After fixing the Kindle problem the app works flawlessly when adding my own tips '
Summary
As I go through the app, I saw several items that many even-experienced users on the forums wouldn't tend to know. I learned some of these from others in the forums, but not everyone gets to those places or has time to hang out in them. The answers are concise and the tips are very useful for the non-hacker Kindle owner.
Kindle 3's (UK: Kindle 3's) K3 Special ($114) K3-3G Special ($139) DX Graphite
Check often: Temporarily-free late-listed non-classics or recently published ones
Guide to finding Free Kindle books and Sources. Top 100 free bestsellers. Liked-books under $1
UK-Only: recently published non-classics, bestsellers, or £5 Max ones
Also, UK customers should see the UK store's Top 100 free bestsellers.
No comments:
Post a Comment