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Amazon launches new lists: “Top 100 Free” and “Top 100 Paid”

Chris Walters — Sat, 22 May 2010 14:40:47 +0000

This morning I logged onto Amazon’s Kindle store and checked out the bestseller list, and was happily surprised to see that Amazon has just implemented the change that it announced to Publishers Weekly less than two weeks ago. From now on, all books that cost money will have their own top 100 list, and all free books will have their own top 100 list.

If you were worried that Amazon would make the free books go sit in a windowless room off to the side, you’ll be pleased to know that the retailer is keeping that list in a prominent place. In fact, the two lists are presented in columns on the same page, which means you can now see 50 titles per screen.

For bargain hunters, this makes it even easier to find free offers. I think this may also help readers find those books that aren’t free but are steeply discounted. For instance, this morning I found that Stephen King’s new novella Blockade Billy is currently priced at $4.99, which is $3 less than what it’s been priced at lately.

Bestsellers in Kindle Store (new and improved!)

Now you can access your notes and highlights online

Chris Walters — Tue, 26 May 2009 17:09:44 +0000

Amazon just quietly introduced a handy new web portal, kindle.amazon.com, where you can log in and view your list of books. What really makes it useful, however, is each book automatically lists any notes or highlights you’ve added while reading it. Now instead of having to access those things from the device via a USB cable, you can simply log in, then read or copy-and-paste as needed.

There’s also a handy “manage your Kindle” link at the top of the page, so you can bookmark this URL and use it to quickly access your device’s email addresses, downloads, etc.

Meet kindlefeeder, the best online tool you’ll find for your Kindle

Chris Walters — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 08:00:17 +0000

If you read a lot of online content, you need to know about Kindlefeeder, because it will drastically improve your reading experience on the Kindle. Kindlefeeder does two things extraordinarily well:

It lets you pick up to 30 rss feeds from blogs, magazines, whatever you can find online that you like to read, and it converts those into a single document with full navigation and lets you wirelessly send it to your Kindle on a schedule you determine;
It lets you copy and paste any text you find online into a simple form and, with one button press, send it wirelessly to your Kindle.

Thanks to Kindlefeeder, I get a little giddy when I pick up my Kindle each morning and see that day’s new blog feeds waiting for me. It would cost me well over $50 to “subscribe” to this many blogs through the Kindle store, if I could even find all of them on their store, which I can’t.

Option 2 is a real time saver for me. I subscribe to the print version of The New Yorker, but of course I’d much rather read each issue on my Kindle. Currently I have to look through the print issue for articles I’m interested in, go to their website and download the full text, paste it into a Word doc and clean up the formatting, save it and email it to my Kindle. With Kindlefeeder, I can skip the last three steps–I just copy the full text of the article, paste it into the Kindlefeeder form, and hit send.

The service is an extension of Kindlefeeds, which was created by Daniel Choi so that he could download RSS feeds into a format suitable for his Kindle. In fact, if you know what you’re doing with computers, he’s distributing the code here so that you can set up your own private Kindlefeeder if you like.

Visit Kindlefeeder.