Kindlerama

Sadly, this contest has ended.

Original post:
With all the media coverage about the Kindle 3 right now, we Kindle 2 owners are feeling a little left out. Where’s the K2 love?

It’s right here! I’m giving away a free ReBindIt case hand-made for the Kindle 2.

I wrote about ReBindIt last month. Their cases are perfect if you’re looking for something that’s full of character and completely unique: each one is a repurposed hardcover book with a special die-cut well inside to hold your Kindle 2 firmly in place. As you can see from the photos, the books ReBindIt converts are graphically bold and well-worn from years of use.

The case up for grabs is called “The Great Divide,” which I think is a funny title for a print book that houses an ebook reader.

To enter, send an email to the address below by 11:59 pm EST on Wednesday, September 1st. I’ll randomly select a winner from all entries by September 3rd. Also, note that in this case ReBindIt will mail the case to the winner directly–I will not be handling fulfillment, and ReBindIt will need your mailing address to send you the case.

Rules:

1. You only have to enter once; I’ll remove duplicate entries.
2. Don’t send me any personal info; I’ll contact you and ask for a shipping address if I select you as the winner.

By the way, if you like one-of-a-kind accessories, be sure to take a look at some of the other options I’ve listed under the “Hand crafted and custom made cases” section of the site.
 

Want to know how to make your Kindle environmentally friendly? Read at least 23 books on it, says consulting firm Cleantech. At that point, you’ll have caught up with the carbon emissions from print books, and each ebook you read after that will add a smaller amount to your carbon footprint than if you’d stuck with print.

These numbers are based off of several rough estimates: analysts are guessing that the Kindle’s CO2 footprint is around 168 kg, compared to about 7.5 kg for one book. The Kindle estimate doesn’t include any extra energy used to keep your ebook stored on a server or to display it, but Slate’s Brian Palmer notes that any such energy costs are likely very small compared to the primary Kindle number.

That’s for CO2. If you want to look at water consumption, Palmer points out that the printing of a book uses about 7 gallons of water, versus about 79 gallons for an ereader as well as 2 cups per ebook. (I like to imagine that the water is compressed into book/ebook form, because it makes this whole conversation even sillier.) Based on those numbers, you need to read about 12 ebooks on your Kindle before you can start outpacing the environmental impact of print.

Of course, if you don’t care about or are skeptical of environmental issues, you can still take comfort in the longterm cost savings. If you’re a heavy reader who doesn’t go to the library very much, an ebook device can save you quite a bit of money over the years, especially if you take advantage of freebies and promotional pricing. (I can’t believe how many free books I’ve acquired through the Kindle.)

“iPads and Kindles are better for the environment than books” [Slate/Washington Post]

(Photo: oskay)

Hey, remember when these books were all released to Amazon directly by the literary agency instead of through the print publisher? No? You don’t care? Yeah, it’s a bit insidery, but the reason it was interesting to consumers is it meant that twenty classics of American literature that had never been in ebook format were finally being made available.

Anyway, that’s all mostly been called off. The agency and the publisher, both of which made some pretty strong public statements about the other back when the Amazon deal was announced, have made up. The two companies are now saying that Andrew Wylie’s agency will pull 13 of the 20 books from the Amazon store and Random House will take over as the ebook publisher for those titles.

Enough industry prattle; what does this mean for you? As of right now, nothing. The books are still available at the $9.99 price point (full list here), which while expensive for a classic is still better than what some publishers are doing with their backlists (cough Penguin and Ayn Rand cough). Will Random House hike the prices when it takes over? My guess is yes, but we’ll have to wait and see.

I also think this explains the minimalistic–I would argue design-free–covers that Wylie used for the ebook editions. This was likely never more than a gambit to improve his agency’s negotiating position with Random House, so a real cover design would have been a waste of money (and an expensive waste considering there were 20 titles to work with). The next time an agent releases a book with a non-cover, I’ll be more skeptical.

[Updated 25 Aug 2010 to correct info in 2nd paragraph.]

“Exclusive e-book deal with Amazon is called off” [Crain's New York Business]

(Photo: ganesha.isis)

If you read Kindle books on your iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch, be sure to upgrade to the latest version, which was just released a few hours ago. The new version corrects some wackiness that was happening with the highlighting feature.

I use this feature a lot on my phone and I’ve been fighting with the app over this the past couple of weeks, so personally I’m thrilled. I performed a couple of quick tests with the update and it seems to be working great.

Here’s the full list of improvements:

• Improved highlight sensitivity to reduce inadvertent highlights when turning pages
• Fixed a crash some customers experience when highlighting a word
• Corrected a problem where the most recent page is not saved when returning to the app
• Other bug fixes based on customer feedback

Kindle for iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad [iTunes App Store]

One of the benefits of having Wi-Fi on the latest Kindle model is you can use the feature to send yourself documents without incurring a fee:

“If you transfer personal documents to your Kindle via Wi-Fi there is no delivery fee. If you transfer personal documents to your Kindle via 3G while inside the United States, the fee is $ .15 per megabyte. When traveling outside the United States, a fee of $.99 per megabyte will apply.”

[Amazon.com Help]

This means you can use Calibre’s automated news-fetching feature to grab content on a regular basis, convert it to a Kindle-friendly format, and email it to your Kindle 3 every day/week/month. For free. Yes, that is awesome.

By default, the Kindle 3 will try to connect via Wi-Fi before switching over to 3G, so if you have the more expensive model you can still take advantage of this feature as long as your Kindle 3 is able to access a working Wi-Fi network when it downloads new content. Unfortunately, there’s no way I know of to turn off 3G entirely other than buying the model that doesn’t have it–but if you’re that hardcore about saving money then you’ve likely already made that decision.