You should never judge a book by its cover, and certainly never judge a Kindle by what it says on the box. There is more to your average Kindle eReader than meets the eye. The Kindle is advertised as the superior alternative to normal books because of its advantageous features; such as being able to store hundreds of titles, and give you access to a wealth of free reading to download and read at your leisure. But what about the not so obvious advantages? The Kindle eReader can do a lot more than store books and preserve your eye-sight.
Instapaper
Instapaper is a free application that you can store on your PC Internet homepage which allows you to save articles and pages from the web to read at a later date. Not only does it store the material at the touch of a button, but it can also send the item wirelessly, straight to your Kindle. (Isn't it great when one piece of technology supports another?)
This means that if you are in the office reading something you shouldn't be and your boss appears out the blue, you can hit the "Read Later" button at the top of your PC screen and close the page immediately; then pick up where you left off with your Kindle during your lunch break!
Simply go to Instapaper to set up your free account. Don't forget to alter the settings so that your saved material is sent directly to your Kindle. If you enter your free Kindle email address then you won't have to pay any fees, and documents will be sent to your kindle when it is connected to wifi. Make sure you remember to allow instapaper to send documents to your device via email from your Amazon account.
Keep a Notebook on your Kindle eReader
Everybody knows that you can annotate ebooks on the Kindle. There is, however, a tricky way of creating your very own notebook which you can use as a daily thoughts journal, or just somewhere to tap out notes, or your latest novel during your commute.
Simply create a new text document on your PC and title it Notes.txt, or Journal.txt, or Recipes.txt, or whatever you want your notebook to be. Open the document and write a line of text that you will recognise when it appears on your Kindle - such as - "Notes for Kindle" and save the file. Now send the document to your kindle via USB Cable or wirelessly. When you open the text document on your Kindle press "Menu" and "Add Note", then type your note and click "Save". You can view your notes by pressing "Menu" and "View my notes".
The Kindle doesn't have that querty keyboard for nothing, so make use of it!
Don't Pay to Read Blogs on your Kindle eReader
Most people are aware that you can subscribe to blogs via Amazon and read them on Kindle eReader for a small monthly fee. But did you know that you can also read your favourite blogs on your kindle for free without having to subscribe? Yup, a little something that Amazon has left out of the loop...
Daniel Choi, a talented developer, created Kindle Feeder. It is a website that sends your favourite feeds straight to your Kindle. You can have up to 12 feeds delivered to your Kindle for free. Great stuff!
So as you can see, Kindle eReaders are handy little gadgets that do a lot more than store your virtual library. Perhaps the best thing about Kindle eReaders is that you can keep discovering new tips and tricks that transform the device into something else, and something else, and something else. Have fun exploring the endless possibilities; technology is a wondrous thing!
