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

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

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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.

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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.

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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

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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.

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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.

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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

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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

New Kindle CALENDAR with Recurring Events, by 7 Dragons - Update

A KINDLE CALENDAR WITH RECURRING EVENTS

For now, Amazon Kindle apps like this are U.S. only, still, although they have said on the forums that they intend them to be international at some point.

7 Dragons has done it again.  There are several Kindle calendar apps now but no other with Recurring Events (apparently quite difficult to do) or some of the other features included.

From the product description: (All emphases mine)
"Calendar is a user friendly scheduling tool and daily planner for Kindle.

Calendar lets you see events and to-do lists quickly and easily with day, month and week views.  It lets you create events (including recurring events) and daily to-do lists.  You can set reminders that show up when you start Calendar; and copy/paste, sort and search tools make working with your data a breeze.  US Holidays are included, but you can turn them off if you want to do so.

A Go-to-Date and Go-to-Today feature helps you move around quickly, and fast typing speed with word-wrap helps you work quickly too. You get 6 font sizes and 9 backgrounds or a simple full-screen mode from which to choose, and you can use the built-in Backup and Restore feature to save your calendar data to a PC or Mac."

Abhi Singh replies to customer questions about Kindle Calendar at this Amazon Kindle Forum message thread.

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For daily free ebooks, check the following links:

Temporarily-free books - Non-classics - USA: by: NEW:  Apr  May  June 2011    Publication Date   Late-listed    Bestselling   High-ratings UK: PubDate   Popular What is 3G? and "WiFi"?       Battery Care Highly-rated under $1,  Newest: $1-$2, $2-$3

Most Popular Free K-Books U.S. & Int'l (NOT UK):    Top 100 free UK-Only:    Top 100 free USEFUL for your Kindle (U.S. only, currently):   99c Notepad 1.1,   99c Calculator,   99c Calendar,   99c Converter

Kindle 3's   (UK: Kindle 3's)   K3 Special ($114)   K3-3G Special ($164)   DX Graphite

Free Books, Bob Dylan book, Calculator app! Lady Gaga Album 1-day 99c

MISCELLANEOUS FREE BOOKS AND DEALS
Lady Gaga album for $0.99 again - only today, 5/26
The new Lady Gaga [Album] for $0.99 again - "This Time We're Ready," Amazon said in their press release.

  They added, "...we saw extraordinary response to Monday's promotion - far above what we expected - she definitely melted some servers," said Craig Pape, director of Music for Amazon. "So we're doing it again, and this time we're ready. We're pleased to offer 'Born This Way' - the whole album - for $0.99, today only."

"Along with this purchase, customers get 20 GB of free Amazon Cloud Drive storage so they can store and play their music anywhere."


New CALCULATOR App by 7 Dragons - creators of Notepad
7 Dragons created the very popular Notepad, my favorite Kindle app, which I use daily, and Converter, which is very useful.

 Now they've released their Calculator for the Kindle. $0.99

  It's a very flexible calculator, useful for computing sales discounts, double-checking an invoice, or computing a restaurant tip.  If your Kindle is usually with you, outside, the calculator will be available too.

From the Product Description (emphases mine): "In addition to basic math operations, Calculator also includes Square Roots, percentages and exponents, and the trigonometric functions Sine, Cosine, and Tangent.  You have standard calculator Memory Functions, and you also get Calculator History; in which the last 10 items and last 10 calculation results are saved for later reference. [Very nice!]

Calculator offers keyboard shortcuts to help you work quickly, and a last function undo and digit by digit undo functions to help you correct errors.  Help pages explain each feature, and a Shortcuts List page clearly lists all shortcuts."


Revolution in the Air - The Songs of Bob Dylan, 1957–1973, by Clinton Heyland. (ePub format...see below.)
Publisher: Chicago Review Press (April, 2009)
  Normally $23.95. the e-book is $0.00 through June 6.

 Those w/o an ePub reader can read this on either a Windows or Mac computer/laptop via Adobe Digital Editions.
  Paul Biba at Teleread brought this to our attention.  He writes, about Copia's special free offering (emphases mine):

' For any Dylan fan this looks like a "must have".  From the press release:
  As rock and roll legend Bob Dylan celebrates turning 70 today, Copia, the groundbreaking social eReading platform and web site, is honoring the event with a gift to fans of the American Icon.  Starting Tuesday, May 24 and continuing through June 6, Dylan fans will be able to visit the website and download Revolution in the Air, noted Dylan biographer Clinton Heylin's comprehensive, 446-page, song-by-song guide to Dylan's work from 1957–1973.  "We wanted to do something fun for readers and fans that would pay tribute to one of America's greatest songwriters and... '

For the younger among us who haven't heard what is considered one of the best rock albums of all time (Highway 61 Revisited, Dylan's voice will be an acquired taste but it's the lyrics and drive behind it (and the band) that make it.   An example: Ballad of a Thin Man on the album (which is maybe more popular than Like a Rolling Stone).
  .  Words & Music, in various versions of the piece
  .  Audio of the song, streamed here in quite compressed sound.  The downloaded audio, either song or album, will have far better sound.  There are annoying animated ads on the page.
  .  What the lyrics may mean - Lyrics only plus a good analysis of the piece, in the Comments area.  Wait a few seconds and the large top ad will be bypassed as you go straight to the Comment although you might have to click a pop-up if you don't use a pop-up blocker.


Free Kindle Book picks today
Canadian Meds, by John Moynihan, 4 customer reviews, 4 stars
Publisher: Xlibris; 1 edition (October 15, 2009)
  "Canadian Meds is a work of fiction that highlights the world of selling prescription meds over the Internet."

Famous men of science, by Sarah Knowles Bolton
  It's #1 Bestseller in Amazon sub-genres History of Science and Sciences

Gunboat Number 14, by Jens Kuhn
Publisher: lulu.com; 2 edition (October 11, 2009)
  "It's 1808 and Sweden is at war with Russia...

Still Life With Murder (Nell Sweeney Mysteries (formerly Gilded Age Mysteries)), by P.B. Ryan, 29 customer reviews, 4.5 stars
  From Product Description: "Nominated for the prestigious Mary Higgins Clark Award, Still Life With Murder is Book #1 of P.B. Ryan’s acclaimed historical mystery series featuring Boston governess Nell Sweeney and opium-smoking former battle surgeon Will Hewitt. Long thought to have died during the Civil War, Will is arrested for murder, and it's up to Nell to prove his innocence. Originally published by Berkley Prime Crime."

Treasure Lost, by R.G. Cordiner, 6 customer reviews, 4.5 stars
  Customer reviews say it's fun for young and old.

A truly unusual e-book:
Development of Nominal Inflection in First Language Acquisition: A Cross-Linguistic Perspective, Editors: Ursula Stephany, Maria D. Voeikova, Ursula Stephany, Maria D. Voeikova, Hardcover $123, Paperback $19.95
  "Language documentation is a rapidly emerging new field in linguistics which is concerned with the methods, tools and theoretical underpinnings for compiling a representative and lasting multipurpose record of a natural language."
  I don't think there'll be a run on this one.  :-)


Check the below at any time:

Temporarily-free books - Non-classics - USA: by: NEW: Last 30+ days  May 2011    Publication Date   Late-listed    Bestselling   High-ratings UK: PubDate   Popular Highly-rated e-books under $1

Most Popular Free K-Books U.S. & Int'l (NOT UK):    Top 100 free UK-Only:    Top 100 free USEFUL for your Kindle (U.S. only, for now):   99c Notepad,   99c CalendarPro,   99c Converter

Kindle 3's   (UK: Kindle 3's)   K3 Special ($114)   K3-3G Special ($164)   DX Graphite

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New Kindle app: Notepad for Kindle - finally! +NON-US reported.. Tip on type of text used. UPDATE5

NOTEPAD FOR KINDLE - by 7 Dragons

See Update4 - Received a report today in the comments area that a NON-US download was doable, at least in the UK.  But, it may be explainable another way, alas.

This is the type of Kindle app I've been waiting for, a Kindle tool rather than yet another game (even if I enjoy some of those).

  Kindle apps are probably still not available outside of the U.S., but I've seen several articles that indicate the Android AppStore will likely be available before the end of March and maybe Amazon will extend availability of apps soon after, then.  We can hope.

Product Description
The 7 Dragons group created the Notepad for Kindle.
  With Notepad, you can write and edit text notes on the Kindle-3, Kindle-2, and Kindle DX models.  (The Kindle-1 model doesn't have direct user-access to the screen content.)

  They mention that you can write meeting notes, grocery reminders, jot down quick ideas, phone numbers and addresses, etc.  The sample screen images above give you an idea of what you can do.  The Search function should definitely be very useful.

When creating or viewing a note, you can chose between two font types and from six font sizes.
  "Your notes can be sorted by date or alphabetically by title.
   Notepad also allows you to search for text in real-time within the body and title of your notes.   Simply start typing in the word you are looking for, and Notepad instantly displays the notes that contain that word.  This allows you to find anything you may have previously written, without having to browse through notes individually."

The app was released yesterday and already has a review involving an Amazon Verified Purchase (not always the case, since some get review copies).  It's by Jose M Salas and is definitely helpful (to the extent I just bought the app), so I'll insert a copy here while bolding the item headings to make it easier to read in an already wordy blog article.

' Amazing! Fast,Simple and Easy to Use, March 17, 2011

I have been looking for a few ways to get my notes into the Kindle - since I have had it for about 8 months now - and this "meets" the needs that I had.

Needs:
o Quick - it must be quick
-- Did I mention that it has to be "Quick"? -- and this is the fastest I've seen on the Kindle - I have about 500MB free (yup - I like books,magazines, etc.) and my kindle is sluggish - but this app works really fast.
-- Disclaimer - I've only put in about 50 notes (so far)
o Easy to use - this is SUPER easy
-- All the key mappings you need are displayed in an intuitive manner - Alt+X (Save and Exit - I really like this)
o Copy Notes to my PC and Vise Versa
-- The video shows that this can be done - I've yet to try it - but it's a simple copy / paste operation
o Font Sizes:
-- I am a fan of small fonts and this allows me to use small fonts - to be able to add more notes
o Search by Note Title
-- This works as advertised - quickly locate notes by title
o Search Notes by Body keyword
-- Again, works as advertised - quickly and painlessly
o Saves work in progress (for the "all thumbs folks" (like me)
-- I have a tendency to hit the home button - and this saves my "unsaved" note - so I can go back to it - sweeeeet!
o Simple, Clean UI: [User Interface]
-- This UI reminds me of the Old Palm Days (think Palm Notepad) - but on steroids - so nice to KISS

In a nutshell, this is worth $0.99 many times over,.... BUT only if you are looking for a Quick, Easy and Intuitive UI that allows you to enter notes on your Kindle. '

UPDATE - I contacted Abhi of 7 Dragons and found out a bit more and will include here some notes:

' If your Kindle is shown as D: drive on your computer, the path/folder where your notes are stored will be:
  D:\.active-content-data\8a5982e82ae68fb2012bc688405e0026\work\user

  . The "e0026" at the end of the long folder name is an easy way to find the right folder.
  . Fonts are not anti-aliased to preserve speed.
  . Changing font size changes everything - buttons, labels, help, everything.
  . There is a time/date stamp and you can sort by time or alphabetically.
  . There are lots of other small things:
      Press Home accidentally and a copy is saved with your changes.
      Progress bars for main page and for a note.
      Character count and "Page 1 of 2" for note.
      Backup in the app itself.

There are also some caveats:
  There's a size limit so the app can't be used for reading Gutenberg books.
  For simplicity purposes they had to remove extensions so everything is saved as ".txt" although ".txt" isn't shown.
  There are no folders.
  The focus on speed means they don't use anti-aliased fonts or pretty backgrounds. '

He mentioned there will be Kindle Notepad Help Videos and a Help Page that will include downloadable help files.

UPDATE2b - The HELP when you press the app's Menu button and then "Help" is voluminous.  I had originally used the 'Welcome' link in the default "All Notes" page and mistook the SHORTCUTS there for a help page.  No, the Help page is 12 pages long. (Menu >Help).

  These are some of the best Help notes I've seen on any app.  I also like that the bottom screen reminds readers that the Kindle number keys on the Kindle 3's are always available using the alt key with the top row and displays which top-row key it is to get any number.  Great way to remember the alternate way of getting numbers whenever you're using the Kindle 3.

The "About" page in the app (Menu >About) means that on your Kindle you'll have access to their website too.  Enter the website link in your experimental web browser:
 ( Home >Menu >Experimental >Web Browser ) and then, when you arrive at the website, Save that page as a Kindle web bookmark.
  When on your computer (but not on the Kindle) you will be able to view videos on their website.

UPDATE3 - (Original post, 3/17/11)
TIP: Because the fonts aren't "anti-aliased" - to keep speed - they won't be as smooth looking but I prefer the speed (typing and moving around are amazingly fast).  I found that instead of using the default font-size '3'  I use size '4'  which I actually like anyway, and the 'SansSerif' family of fonts.  That's done the usual Kindle way, via the "Aa" type/font key at the bottom of the Kindle.

UPDATE4 - 3/21/11.  An anonymous commenter wrote today that "Notepad is now available from Amazon in the UK I downloaded it yesterday."  I don't know if it applies to other countries yet (or whether the person did it as a resident of a non-US country or was a U.S. person downloading it while abroad, but it happened close to the date that the Android Apps Store is expected to open (Tuesday, 3/22) so it's a possibility they are working on it for the appstore opening.
  KinWorm reported in from the UK and was NOT able to find the file in the UK Kindlestore nor download the file from Amazon-US.

UPDATE5 - TIP: The program manager of Notepad has this note on the Amazon Kindle forum thread about Notepad:

' Last edited by the author 15 hours ago
A. Singh says:
Debi, sometimes the encoding used is different.

The KDK supports text files in ANSI format. If you open a text file in Notepad and click Save As you will see the options in the bottom right - UTF-8, Unicode, ANSI, etc.

So if the characters used are ones not supported by ANSI then the KDK (on which the app is built) can not recognize them and it cuts the notes.

Another Kindle owner had a similar problem where note was getting cut at '-' and when she removed that it went away. Notes that are made in Notepad on Computer and saved using ANSI format should open up fine.

**** In particular, the ` and the ... in that note might not be the standard ones.

So if you just open up your note on your computer and replace it with typed out ones using your keyboard it should work fine. '

Kindle 3's   (UK: Kindle 3's),   DX Graphite

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Check often: Temporarily-free late-listed non-classics or recently published ones
  Guide to finding Free Kindle books and Sources.  Top 100 free bestsellers.
UK-Only: recently published non-classics, bestsellers, or highest-rated ones
    Also, UK customers should see the UK store's Top 100 free bestsellers.