I was recently looking around for an easy way to open FB2 eBooks on one of my Kindle. I’ve tried some FB2 to Mobipocket converter in the past and it failed miserably so I gave up on the idea for a while. Recently I gave it another try. This time around I’ve tried to convert FB2 files to PDF. I’ve stumbled upon a marvelous web-service – http://fb2pdf.com/ – it does what it’s name implies. You upload FB2 file and download PDF. The service can even save you a roundtrip and download FB2 files directly from websites like http://lib.rus.ec/. When converting you can specify target device: Kindle 2, DX, Sony, etc so the resulting PDF is optimized for a particular screen size. I couldn’t me happier!
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On this blog we will track down the latest Amazon Kindle news. We will keep you up to date with whats hot in the bestsellers section, including books, ebooks and blogs... and we will also bring you great Kindle tips and tricks along with reviews for the latest Kindle accessories.
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This updated version of Kindle Unicode Fonts Hack works on all versions of Kindle software including the most recent 2.3 and installs on Kindle 2 US, Kindle 2 International and Kindle DX. I’ve added more font combinations:
Visit the Kindle Unicode Fonts Hack page for detailed instructions.
Their connection with the Kindle is simple — they have a service by which your recent articles are emailed to your Kindle or Kindle DX. You get charged $0.15 by Amazon for each email but in the end it is worth it to be able to read it on your favorite e-text reading device. But there is a problem with this service, the emails do not reach the Kindle users every time they are sent. This is in all likelihood a technical problem between the Instapaper’s service and Amazon but it is taking its time getting fixed. So the Instapaper developer thought up an alternative solution. Instapaper now allows you to download your 10 most recent articles to a .mobi file that can be transferred to your Kindle. You cannot go more than 10 articles per file for now but you can probably save multiple such files. Syncing is via USB, so it is not completely hassle free but it has three distinct advantages for now. One is that you get to use this service for free. You will not be paying for the emails that Amazon relays from Instapaper to your Kindle. The second advantage is that you are guaranteed that the sync feature will work all the time. The third is that it works for International users as well. The email feature was only for US users. It is still in beta, so you might run into problems but those who use the Kindle with Instapaper know that it is a fantastic service to have. It adds to our already great Kindle experience.  Kindle UK Wikipedia One of the blog subscribers, Ilya who has recently purchased an Kindle 2 International in the UK has confirmed that despite the Amazon statement that experimental browser and blog subscriptions don’t work in the UK, Wikipedia access actually works. However pictures do not load and all other websites are blocked. Update: It has been confirmed by several people that pictures in wikipedia now load. My post about international release of Kindle received more attention than any other post on this blog so far. A lot of readers are asking questions so I’m going to answer these in this FAQ to the best of my ability. Some of the answers are going to be guestimates since I haven’t received my World-ready version of Kindle 2 yet. I’ll keep adding and changing content here as I learn together with you. What countries is Kindle available to?As of October 6th, 2009 Amazon has revealed international version of Kindle 2 eBook reader that officially ships to 169 countries. However you should be aware that some features like wireless, experimental web-browser, blog subscriptions (including this one) are not available everywhere. Number of books that you can buy is also different for every country. Complete list of countries, book counts and other details can be found here. Why isn’t Kindle available in my country? When it will become available?Although I can’t know for sure since I don’t work for Amazon and never had, from my experience with eBook industry I can guess that it may be related to one of the following:
I’m sure that there are no political/religious/etc reasons behind these limitations. Amazon is in the business of making money. And you can’t make money by turning down paying customers. That’s why I’m sure that they are making efforts to overcome these limitations and ship Kindle worldwide. But I really want to buy a Kindle now. What should I do?There is a way to buy Kindle when you are outside US. It has been known and used long before Kindle became internationally available. As of recently you will also need to use proxy server, VPN or similar solution to overcome geographical restrictions. I have already used gift-cards to purchase Kindle and use it outside of the US. Can I re-register it to my “non-US” account now?I absolutely see no reason why you can’t. You can de-register your Kindle from your “fake US” account, and then register it with your local account. The downside is that you will loose the ability to download books that you’ve purchased from your “fake US” account. So before de-registering you should download these books to your computer make a secure backup copy. It may be a good idea to use one of the secure online backup services. You can then copy these books to your re-registered Kindle and you should still be able to read them. Why does the coverage map show that Whispernet will work in my country but I still can’t buy Kindle?Wireless coverage merely indicates where Kindle wireless will work. This only depends on roaming agreements AT&T has with wireless operators around the globe. However more is needed for Amazon to sell Kindles in particular country as was stated above.  Kindle International Coverage Map Where can I find Whilspernet coverage map?You can view the large map by clicking on the small map image to the right. Or you can access the interactive map here. Is international Kindle DX available for purchase?Currently only international version of Kindle 2 was released. However there are some rumors and speculations that international Kindle DX will be released next year. What network does international Kindle use for wireless connectivity?International version of Kindle 2 uses AT&T 3G GSM network in the USA. Outside of US it uses 3G GSM wireless networks of AT&T roaming partners. Can I use WiFi with Kindle?No. Not directly at least. You can download books and magazines to your PC via. Amazon.com website using WiFi Internet connection and then transfer them to Kindle using USB connection. Does international version of Kindle support non-Latin Unicode characters?Although I can’t tell for sure until my international Kindle 2 arrives, there is nothing on Amazon website that indicates any changes compared to the US version of Kindle. You can still use Kindle Unicode Font Hack to expand the character range Kindle can display. Is it possible to upgrade my US Kindle to international version? Will firmware update solve the problem?No. GSM and CDMA networks require different hardware. This hardware is not easy to replace and doing so will surely void your Kindle warranty. Even if you were able to replace the hardware, you would still need to make lots of software changes to make it work. Nobody was able to do this as far as I know. What is the story with international book download surcharge of $1.99? Who will pay it? Where? When?International data roaming is expensive. When I visit Canada with my US iPhone, I’m offered a rate of $15.35 per megabyte for data roaming. Average book is at least 300 kilobytes. This would translate to around $5.00 additional cost per book. So Amazon’s surcharge of $1.99 actually looks like a bargain compared to that. There seems to be a lot of confusion around who is going to be charged this amount and when. My understanding is that only customers with US shipping address would be charged extra $1.99 per book when travelling abroad. Customers from all other countries are never charged anything above the actual list price of the book no matter where they download it. However this is reflected in the book price which is $2.00 higher than for US customers. Why Australian Kindle is sold without AC power adapter for charging when customers in all other countries get one?No idea. My guess is that it has something to do with safety regulations in Australia. Why blog subscription and experimental web-browser are turned off for my country?Wireless data costs. You can easily use 1 megabyte of traffic just by viewing several Wikipedia pages. In fact homepage of this blog would amount to roughly one megabyte of data if you factor in all of the images. Since Amazon doesn’t own wireless networks it has to pay for all this data. It would be too expensive for them as profits from book sales would not cover it. My guess is that Amazon was able to strike some kind of special deal with wireless operators in Hong Kong, Mexico and Japan to make this work. Why do newspapers and magazines come without pictures outside of US?Same reason – wireless data costs. Images would increase the amount of data that needs to be transferred causing Amazon to loose money on subscriptions. Hopefully in the future when international wireless data becomes cheaper this should no longer be an issue. Other questions or corrections.Let me know if there are other questions that you believe should be covered in this FAQ. If you believe that some data became outdated or inaccurate – drop me a comment and I’ll what I can do.  Kindle Cover Velcro Fix While there is an ongoing law suit against Amazon on the matter of Kindle leather cases causing damage to Kindle devices, a user on mobileread.com forum has proposed a simple solution. While it will not help if your Kindle is already broken it will prevent you from damaging your device by opening the cover on the wrong side. All you need to do is stitch some velcro tape to the upper right corner of the cover like shown on the picture. If you don’t want to stitch I believe that epoxy or super-glue will also do the trick. The original thread can be found here. Personally, opening the cover on the wrong side never was a problem for me as I always make sure that I see the logo badge before I open it. But it may be helpful to someone. The method to trick Amazon into selling you a Kindle if you live outside of US was long known. There hundreds if not thousands non-US people using Amazon Kindle nowdays. However, recently, according to this thread on mobileread.com forums, please using this method started getting the following message when trying to buy a Kindle book:
There could be several things that are going on:
The last scenario is yet another manifestation of how complex international copyright system is. Usually different publishers have rights to the same book in different countries. This worked well for paper book publishing since few people would like to purchase foreign edition of the book due because they would rather read it in their native language. It didn’t make sense to transport books internationally since they are heavy and it’s cheaper to print them close to where they will be sold. However when books went digital this legacy system started causing a lot of grief to publishers, book sellers and most of all to the customers. This was recently demonstrated by events surrounding Orwell’s 1984. Perhaps in the future publishing industry will adapt and embrace the global economy… In this particular matter I doubt that Amazon would go do great pains to strictly enforce geographical restrictions on Kindle books. Mostly it’s because relatively few people used this loophole and amount of money involved is not significant. If Amazon were to press the issue, it would generate bad publicity just as Orwellioan deletion did. So they’ll only do what is needed to get the particular publisher happy. So I’m sure in time people will find a workaround for this problem. One good way to try would be to have a separate browser that uses US pusroxy for all interactions with Amazon.com website from the day you create your new account. I’d recommend using real HTTP proxy that you configure in your browser rather than anonymizer websites that load destination websites in a frame as these are prone to bugs. The following proxy list would be a good place to start. If you are affected by this issue or can add valuable information about the topic – please post a comment. Update:
So it looks like it is IP-related. Using public US proxy or VPN should solve the problem. I’ll look into the UltraSurf software and will post a review once I’ve tested it myself. Amazon specifically doing the check for people without one click buying option would explain why most US residents travelling abroad like me will not be affected by this change. Update 2: I’ve just received the following email:
So it looks like this might be a side effect of upcoming international release or a simple bug. Thanks to everyone who helped contribute information on the issue.  Kindle Copy-Paste As I was playing around with my Kindle DX, I’ve found an undocumented feature that can be used in a couple of ways. I checked and it also works in Kindle 2. It’s possible that it is known in the Kindle community or even documented but I wasn’t aware of it until I discovered it by accident the same way as I’ve found Kindle calculator easter egg. If you start selecting text in Kindle book or document with 5-way controller but instead of pressing the controller the second time to highlight the selection press any alphanumeric key or space bar, the highlighted text would get copied into the search box as shown on picture. From here you can go two ways:
I hope you will find this tip useful.  WildCharge for Kindle By the looks of it, WildCharge products are going to be a hit. As reported by netbook-expert.com, wireless inductive charging soon is going to be available for over 500,000 products of all sorts and shapes. It works like this: WildCharge pad is connected by wire to a power outlet and acts as power transmitter. There are several power receivers available that when placed on the charge pad will provide power for the devices they are connected to. For phones (including iPhone and iPod Touch) everything is nice and simple – there are neat thin sleeves that have the power receiver integrated in them and also protect your phone from scratches. For other devices there is PowerDisc with PowerLinks that allows system to be used with a wide range of devices with standard connectors. Kindle (except for first generation) is one of such devices as it uses micro-USB connector for charging. Unfortunately this has little advantage over plugging it into AC outlet or PC since you are unlikely to carry around Kindle with this thing dangling from it. However the fact that they chose Kindle as an example device allows me to hope that they will come up with sleek Kindle sleeve soon enough. The moment it hits the market I’m buying it. Just placing the Kindle on a mat would be some much easier than plugging it in twice a week. It would also help me develop a habit of piling up all my electronic gadgets in one place so that I don’t have to look for them all over the house. I’ve come across yet another way to crash Kindle DX: connect it via USB cable to your PC and try copying over a dictionary file. After copying around 2MB of data Kindle drive disconnects from the computer, Kindle goes into home screen and then freezes. I discovered this when trying to copy over Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary without using WhisperNet (since I’m currently outside the coverage zone). The bug was pretty consistent regardless of which folder I tried to copy the file to. However after I’ve successfully copied the file over (I’ll explain how in a second) I couldn’t get my Kindle DX to crash with this file again. Copying the same file to Kindle 2 also worked out fine. I’ve noticed that once some portion of file was copied you can append to it and it will not cause crashes. So I used robocopy.exe to resume the copy operation. To do it you need to put the file you want to copy in a separate folder and then run robocopy.exe /z . k:\documents after resetting your Kindle DX, assuming K: is your Kindle drive letter. If you are running Windows Vista it already comes with robocopy installed, for other versions you can download it here. After the process was complete it seems that my Kindle works fine and there is no lasting damage. However if you would like to try reproducing this bug please to it at your own risk as your mileage may vary. Let me know if you experience something similar. Later I did some additional testing and found out that other dictionaries would crash Kindle DX in the same way as well and for some dictionary files the robocopy workaround doesn’t seem to work. I’ve notified Amazon so hopefully it will get fixed sometime soon. With any luck this had already happened in Kindle 2.1.1 update that some people are getting already and that’s listed in the Kindle source code section along with Kindle 2.0.4 update. I’ve published the script that I’ve been using personally for quite some time to make plain text files that were preformatted to specific page width nicely reflowable on Kindle and other eBook readers (I’ve tested it with Sony PRS-505). It can also strip any HTML tags and convert between character encodings. This should make downloading books from websites like lib.ru and gutenberg.org easier for some for some people. More information about how to use the tool as well as download link can be found here. I’ve also created a summary page for all Kindle hacks and tools that I currently know of. Feel free to let me know if some information needs to be added to updated.  Kindle DX cant download PDF (by nirmalpatel.com) Although Amazon added native support for PDF to Kindle DX they didn’t add the ability to download these directly from the Internet. I believe that this feature was left out deliberately rather than by chance because Amazon pays Sprint $0.12 for each megabyte downloaded. In the case of PDFs cost of downloading PDFs to users for free can easily top profits from book and device sales because as we know Amazon’s profit is not that big as they are trying to grab as much market as possible. Recently Nirmal Patel created a hack for Kindle DX (based on the source code of UFHack) that enables direct PDF downloads. Since at the moment I’m outside US and don’t have WhisperNet coverage I can’t truly test it however I looked at the hack – it’s very simple and should work. It installs and uninstalls just as any other Kindle hack:
PDF download hack is compatible with other hacks such as unicode fonts hack and screensaver hack. While I congratulate Nirmal Patel on this hack I do urge you to enjoy it responsibly and don’t abuse Kindle’s 3G connection because should this become a significant financial liability for Amazon they can easily start signing update packages with strong cryptographic keys and this would prevent any other hacks from working altogether. Also keep in mind that when you download stuff using your Kindle, Amazon knows:
Folks at mobileread.com have updated their screen saver hack to work with Kindle DX. It allows you to replace default screen saver images (mostly of famous writers) that appear when Kindle goes into sleep mode with any set of images of your own choosing. You can download binaries and source code here. Installation is very similar to other Kindle “feature enhancing” hacks: Instructions for use:
To go back to the default Kindle DX screen savers:
More Information:
This hack is compatible with Unicode Font Hack and you can install and uninstall both independently of each other. Fine folks at the-ebook.org (translated version) have found a way to mod Igor’s python script so it can create valid custom updates for Amazon Kindle DX. I’ve compiled Kindle Unicode Font hack with the updated tool and verified that hacks work on my Kindle DX. Everything works fine – there are Unicode characters in both books and basic web, hack installs and uninstalls just fine and is safe to use. Just as before there are 2 versions of the hack: one based on liberation fonts that have fewer international characters (no Asian characters) but preserve serif styles and one with droid fonts that has more characters but turns everything into sans-serif. I have updated Unicode Fonts Hack page with new download links and instructions. Enjoy!  Kindle DX Unicode Font Hack With Kindle 2 if you wanted to read books that contain non-English characters like Cyrillic, Chinese, Japanese, Hebrew etc you had several options:
With Kindle DX option 1 is ruled out for the time being since Unicode font hack doesn’t install on it. (Update: Unicode Fonts Hack now works on Kindle DX as well). However because Kindle DX supports PDF natively there is another way. PDF supports “font embedding”. This means that fonts that are used in PDF file are stored within the file itself or at least a subset of font that describes all the characters that are actually used. So Kindle can display Russian text in PDF files even though there are no Russian fonts on Kindle DX itself. Luckily creating PDF files is easy as printing documents. There are dozens of PDF “converters”, “creators” or “writers” out there that all work in a similar way. They are installed as virtual printers that instead of printing documents on paper save them on your PC in PDF format. So any file that can be opened in program that supports printing (and 99% of them do) can be converted to PDF.  Kindle DX Russian Text I tested several such programs and all of them produced files that I could read on my Kindle DX. Visually files produced by all of them were identical and of similar size (on disk). The only difference is how particular program behaves itself on PC. In the end I went with PDFCreator because it’s easy to install and use and doesn’t come with junkware.
There are many more free and paid PDF converters out there. I’ve reviewed just a few free ones. If you think you know of a better one – drop a comment here and I’ll take a look. You can see a sample (click to zoom) of Russian text that was downloaded from lib.ru, copy-pasted into Microsoft Word, font bolded and converted ot PDF using PDFCreator. Looks like I’ve found a new Easter Egg in Kindle DX. I’ve just tested my Kindle 2 and it doesn’t seem to do the trick with 2.0.3 software. If you type mathematical expression like 2+2 in the search box on the home page the result shown would be result of this expression. See screenshot:  Kindle DX Calculator Easter Egg I’ve played around with it and it seems to support following operations:
I found this by sheer chance as I was trying to use search to find one of the two hundred PDF files I’m testing Kindle DX with right now by a portion of it’s name (6-2-3). Turns out Kindle DX doesn’t index file names but it did tell me that 6-2-3=1 :) As I was comparing Kindle DX and Kindle 2 I’ve noticed that some of the keyboard shortcuts that originally worked in K2 now don’t. Pressing Alt-6 used to type question mark, Alt-7 – comma, etc. Now these don’t seem to work in my Kindle 2. It looks like this functionality got disabled with one of the software updates: 2.0.1, 2.0.2 or 2.0.3. Can you please check your Kindle 2 and verify if this works or not and post your Kindle software version. You can see this version in the bottom portion of the settings screen. Ok, lets pick up where we left off: My Kindle DX has just arrived…  Unboxing Kindle DX …  Kindle DX power up Post #301… Exterior & ErgonomicsKindle DX is much larger and slightly heavier than Kindle 2. In fact If you put K2 on top of DX, K2 would be almost the same size as DX’s screen. It’s still comfortable to hold and flip pages, at least for right handed people like me. Of course it works upside down and it’s usable this way but I will pass on making a judgment on how comfortable such setup would be for left-handed people. One thing for sure – alphanumeric keyboard is not usable this way. Landscape mode is comfortable. As Kindle is rotated, 5-way controller is automatically remapped so left remains left and right remains right. Amazon leather cover now comes with two magnets to keep itself shut. If you are still using floppy disks from the previous millennium you shouldn’t put them next to Kindle DX if you are using the cover.  Kindle DX vs. Kindle 2 Screen and fontsIt’s large. That’s for sure. 824×1200 pixels. It seems to update faster than Kindle 2 and whiles seems to be slightly lighter. There’s minimal ghosting sometimes just as on my second K2. The first K2 that was bricked by airplane didn’t have ghosting problem. Screensaver pictures seem to be the same as in K2 but upscaled and they do look gorgeous on the big screen. Fonts seem darker. So looks like Amazon took complaints about low contrast in Kindle 2 seriously and decided to address them. Spatial resolution is slightly lower – 150ppi comared to 167 in Kindle 2. I’ve downloaded samples of some of the “books that look good on Kindle DX’s large screen“… Really they should be called “books that would have looked great on Kindle DX should have looked great on Kindle DX if images were not downsampled to lower resolution… I’ve checked 3 books and none looked as good as screensaver images. You could clearly see that illustrations in these books are much lower resolution than the screen. Hopefully this will get fixed as some point. There are 7 font sizes just as in previous models. However the smallest font on Kindle DX seems to correspond to second smallest on K2. I can’t say for sure because I have Droid fonts installed on my K2 so that I can read Cyrillic. When font size dialog is invoked there are 2 additional options there that are specific to DX: “Words Per Line” and “Screen Rotation”. The second one is pretty much self-explanatory: you can explicitly select one of the four rotations or set it auto and let the accelerometer control it. “Words Per Line” really controls left and right margin width. Three available options are: default, fewer and fewest. At the moment I don’t quite understand the use of it. If I would want smaller screen area I’d just use K2. As this option is changed inline pictures as downscaled as well. Screen rotationWorks as advertised – the image rotates as you rotated the device. Refresh time is good. Changing scren orientation is as fast as flipping a page.  Kindle DX Landscape KeyboardKeyboard layout is QWERTY. Numeric row is merged with top letter row. To enter numbers you need to hold the “Alt” button. If you just need to enter one digit, you can press “alt” and digit in sequence (”alt” is “sticky” just likethe “shift” button). On DX buttons stick out more and are harder to press. Overall I found K2 keyboard more comfortable and easy to use than DX. Except “Next page” button being larger on DX, buttons on the right edge of the device are identical. 5-way controller stick is higher on DX. PDF supportKindle DX relies on it’s large screen to display PDF files “as is”, without re-flowing the text (which would be next to impossible with PDF since the format lacks any concept of paragraphs or text continuity). The only way to zoom that I could find is to switch to landscape mode. It’s not such a big problem because most PDF files that people would want to read are preformatted for either Letter or A4 page size and Kindle DX screen is comparable in size to these formats. Although there is concept of pages in PDF and you can navigate to any given page, both internal and external links in PDF files are disabled. Structured table of contents that is present in some PDF files is not usable either. Graphically PDF files look fine and crisp. Rendering time is also good. It usually takes around 5 seconds to open the file initially and after that pagination speed is the same as when reading ebooks. It’s not possible to download PDF files to your Kindle via WhisperNet. Most likely this is because Amazon pays 12 cents per megabyte to Sprint while keeping Internet connection free for Kindle owners. Given decent support that Kindle DX has for PDF files, abundance of PDF files on the Internet that people would like to download and read and relatively large size of these files it wouldn’t be a good idea for Amazon to enable such downloads. It so happens that in my past life I spent a lot of time writing software that would process PDF files. Some time later I’ll run a comprehensive test of PDF support in Kindle DX and publish the results here. Basic WebWeb browsing seems to be that same as on Kindle 2. “Advanced mode” is now called “Desktop mode’”. Basic mode is still much faster and usable than desktop mode. I tried to render BlogKindle.com in desktop mode and DX actually rendered it quite well. The only problem I could see was the lack of PNG transparency support.  Kindle DX Basic Web 9 inch screen definitely makes browsing a better experience. Text-to-SpeechThere are seemingly no changes in this feature. Funny thing that I’ve noticed as I experimented with it that female voice seems to have trouble pronouncing word USB. With male voice turned on is sounds much more natural. SoftwareApart from PDF support, changes to font size dialog, picture viewer mentioned above and additional game mentioned below Kindle software remains the same. Kindle DX comes out of the box with firmware version: 2.1 (337560062). Source code for Kindle DX is already published by Amazon and I’ll take a look at it. What seems important is that it has a separate section for Kindle DX sources code. On this basis I would speculate that next version of software for Kindle 2 is going to be 2.0.4, for Kindle DX it’s going to be 2.1.1. These will come from separate branches of code so I wouldn’t hope too much for PDF support being ported to Kindle 2 any time soon. HackingUnfortunately Kindle DX was unresponsive to the “old way hacking”. When I created a small “update” using Igor’s tool to dump the system log along with full directory listing to the root of Kindle drive the “Update Your Kindle” menu item remained disabled. Either Amazon has changed the format of the update files or they’ve come up with some way to digitally sign them to prevent hacking. Either way this means no unicode fonts for Kindle DX for the time being :( Easter EggsI did a quick check on Kindle 2 easter eggs.
ConclusionsKindle DX is a nice device. Perhaps it’s not as much better as people hoped it would be but Kindle 2 sets the bar quite high. For day-to-day book reading I would still recommend Kindle 2 because of greater portability. If you can’t get by without PDF support and don’t want to use Savory hack (that would add similar or better level support than what’s available in 2.1) – Kindle DX is right for you. Hopefully with time there will be digital media that would take advantage of Kindle DX’s large screen. Stay tuned for more detailed reviews, second impressions etc… I’ve received several messages from people who try to install an update or a hack (for example Unicode Font Hack) and Kindle enters infinite install update-fail-reboot cycle. Some believe that the device is bricked. I also saw people posting on forums about similar problems. Good news is that if it happened to your device chances are it’s not bricked. All you need to do is put your device into Recovery Mode by holding “Home” button when the device boots up. Once in recovery mode, connect it to your PC via USB cable and remove the update_*.bin file that fails to install from the Kindle drive, unplug the USB cable and then press “R” to reboot the Kindle. It should boot normally. Once it boots you can make another attempt and installing the same update. Most likely you will not have the same problem. It’s unclear what causes this problem. I saw it happening with hacks as well with official Amazon updates. Deleting and copying the same update will fix it. I can guess that there is some bug in Kindle USB disk related software and sometimes update file is not stored correctly which causes update unpacker to fail. Good way to test this theory would be to make a copy of the faulty update file from the Kindle drive when in recovery mode and compare it to the original. I’ll test it if I get a chance. To view ePub of PDF files on your Amazon Kindle normally you would need to use Amazon email conversion service (either free of $0.10 per document) or you could convert documents on your PC using Mobipocket Creator. Well, not anymore… Jesse from “Massively Parallel Procrastination” blog has created a Savory hack that adds almost native support for these formats to your Amazon Kindle. Installing this hack does two things:
I installed and tested it and it took just under 2 minutes to convert project Gutenberg version of “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland”. There were some formatting flaws but overall book converted well. This hack is fully reversible. There is an uninstaller provided. However it should be noted that because of the way uninstaller currently works, if you have other hacks installed (like unicode hack or screensaver hack) it can potentially partially revert these as well if they were installed after Savory. So for now it’s safer to uninstall in the reverse order of how you installed hacks. As with all other Kindle hacks it should be used with care because although tested by many people (myself included) it can potentially brick your device. Also having this hack installed will prevent official Amazon updates from installing so you’ll need to uninstall it and the install Amazon update manually. This makes Kindle even more PC-independent than it was to begin with. And this is good. Personally I believe that PC-independent gadgets are the way of the future. Just look at how successful iPhone is (I only need to tether mine to upload new audiobooks and flash new firmware). This is because most people don’t wan’t anymore just to use computers for the sake of using computers but to get done things they need done in their everyday lives and the simpler – the better.
Patches were tested by several volunteers and all results were positive. The patch works and doesn’t cause any problems. You can now read books on your Amazon Kindle 2 in Russian, Chinese, Japanese and probably number of other languages. Currently I’m releasing hack with two different fonts: Liberation that comes from RedHat Linux and Droid that comes from Google Android project. Both fonts are open-source and they are the best ones I could find that suit the needs of this hack. Finding good fonts was much harder than creating the hack itself. Instructions and download links can be found here. Please-please-please-please-please do be very-very-very-very-very careful if you decide to experiment with adding your own fonts to the hack. If you find good free or reasonably priced fonts that work – please let me know – I’ll test them and make more versions of the hack available here and give you proper credit. Please spread the word about this hack as it will increase chances of someone finding better fonts that can be used with it. Here are some screenshots of what Kindle 2 with hacked fonts looks like:
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I would like to thank John, Ted and some other folks for helping me test this patch. Another big thank you goes to Igor who created the python script that creates Kindle 2 update packages. I’ll now shift my attention to figuring out creating custom recovery mode updates. Once this is done – I’ll have much more freedom in messing with fonts and other settings without fear of bricking my Kindle 2. Recently I had to take a couple of long trips on airplanes. And supposedly Amazon Kindle is just perfect for such occasions. I stuffed mine with tons of books and even more samples so that I could browse though them on the first leg of my trip and then buy the books that I’ve liked while I waited for a connection flight. WhisperNet rocks! However this wasn’t meant to be. As the airplane started to gain altitude and I paged though “The Waste Lands [The Dark Tower III]” I noticed that some lines didn’t update as I turned the pages. At first I thought that it was some weird software glitch and rebooted my K2. However the stubborn lines persisted. As I kept paging though the book more and more lines got stuck. Until soon enough it wasn’t possible to read anymore and my Kindle 2 looked like this:
My speculation is that eInk display has a lot of wires connected to it from the “motherboard”. It’s usually done by gluing a sticky plastic band with metallic wires on it to the display that has metallic contacts. Most likely during the production of my particular unit an air bubble was caught under the plastic band. However it wasn’t big enough to cause trouble during quality assurance. However when airplane gained altitude and cabin air pressure dropped a bit, the bubble expanded and gradually ripping more and more of the contacts apart. Oh, well. No big loss because I ended up having a very interesting chat with a guy in the next seat. As I arrived I had several hours until my next flight so I phoned Amazon support and let them know what had happened. I initiated an RMA so that at least there would be a working Kindle 2 waiting for me at home when I arrived.Once again: Kindle warranty rocks! What really struck me as odd is that Amazon confirmed my suspicion that the only way you can buy Kindle is from Amazon.com website. I realize that Amazon is an online business but wouldn’t they make a killing in sales if they had kiosks selling Kindles in the airports? Imagine an automated kiosk that allows you to get a Kindle device just by swiping a credit card and create an Amazon.com account in case you don’t have one yet. And then you can immediately start buying your reads right from the device. What also struck me as odd is that there were Sony eBook readers readily available for sale in several airport stores. I guess that they may be useful if you have a notebook computer with WiFi ready to fill it with books. I didn’t though so they were as useful to me as my bricked K2… Oh, and BTW – no problems with TSA whatsoever. There is a way to get custom images to display in Kindle 1 screensaver instead of standard ones that are supplied by Amazon. I found these instructions on MobileRead Wiki page:
I’ve tried these instructions on Kindle 2 with no effect other than freezing the picture viewer and having to soft reboot the device. Please read my other post on how to hack screensaver in Kindle 2. Please realize that these hacks can potentially void your warranty. For people who wanted to replace author pictures in Kindle 2 Screensaver with any pictures of their own there is now a solution. clarknova from MobileRead Forums created a custom update that allows you to replace Amazon-supplied pictures that are shown when Kindle 2 goes to sleep with any pictures of your own. Before you continue with instructions below, please understand that you are doing it at your own risk and this can potentially void your warranty. On the bright side, the update seems small, straightforward and reversable and several people (myself included – see pictures below) have successfully applied it to their devices. Important thing to remember is that this update changes some configuration files. Official Amazon updates verify file checksums before installing. So while you have this hack installed updates that would try to change the same file will fail. Solution is to reverse this hack (instructions below), apply Amazon update and then reapply the hack. Before proceeding you may want to take a look at “Updating Kindle Software Post” and make sure that you have the most recent software on your Kindle. To enable custom screensavers:
If you did everything right you should see the following in at the bottom of your settings screen.
…
… To revert to standard screensavers:
Wikimedia.org may be a good place to stock up on nice copyright-free images. If you try this hack, please take a minute to post your experience in the comments as I”m sure most people who read this post will be interested in them. While researching Kindle USB chargers I found these instructions by Alan from SnarkyBytes.com on building your own USB charger cable for Kindle 1. To make one yourself you’ll need:
In the end you’ll have a cable that can be used to charge your Kindle1 from any PC or Mac with USB port or any other universal USB power adapters available on the market. Please use these instructions at your own risk. |
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