Recently I stumbled upon a blog which describes how to hack Kindle in great details. Even though I’m not a big hacker myself it is quite interesting to see what is going on in my Kindle internals and what steps I would need to take in order to modify it.
In the next post I’ll try to cover more aspects on kindle hack process I read about in Igor’s blog. It will include some hidden features and easter eggs you have in your Kindle.
If you have tried hacking Kindle and successfully done so please send details to me. I would love to post about them.
Amazon.com has partnered up with Chase in a rare limited time offer where you can get up to $100 off the Kindle paying a total of $259 for the device – the offer ends on September 8th.
Get the Amazon Rewards Visa Card and Get $100 Off Kindle
Thanks to Chase, you get $100 off Kindle when you get the new Amazon.com Rewards Visa Card. Limited time only. Here’s how this works: 1)Apply Online. Get a response in as little as 30 seconds. If you’re approved, we will instantly add the card to your Amazon.com account and you’ll get $30 back on your credit card statement after your purchase. 2) Add a Kindle to your cart. 3) Place your order using the Amazon.com Rewards Visa Card and enter this promo code:VISACARD to get the additional $70 savings at checkout. Additional restrictions apply.
Now you might be thinking why is Chase offering to subsidise you up to $100 for a Kindle, well, they want you to start using their credit card called the Amazon.com Rewards Visa card, and over time Chase hopes to recoup the $100 through interest payments. The promotion is offered and paid for by Chase, not Amazon, so for those who have bought the Kindle in the past couple of weeks, Amazon wont refund you the $70 that Chase is subsidising the Kindle.
Once your approved for the card, which Amazon says takes less than a minute, Chase will add $30 in credit to your Amazon.com Rewards Visa card. Once the card is added to your Amazon.com account you can add the Kindle to your shopping cart and apply the “VISACARD” discount code for an additional $70 off. This code will only work if you add Kindle to you cart and go through the normal checkout process and don’t use 1-click, the discount should work even if you already have the Amazon.com Rewards Visa card, unfortunately the $30 credit is for new card customers only.
A Kindle for $259 was an offer too good for me to pass, for the last couple of weeks I’ve been thinking about getting a Kindle for my wife, once I heard about this offer my mind was made up – I was going to get it. Once I was approved for the card, sure enough I put the “VISACARD” code in and a $70 discount was applied to the Kindle. My wife’s shiny new Kindle should arrive on Monday, perfect.
Now I’m not a big user/fan of credit cards in any case, I religiously pay whatever I owe off every month, but since there isn’t a yearly fee for having the Amazon rewards card, I don’t mind applying for it, I guess it will just sit there nicely in my wallet. If you do decide to go for it, make sure you pay it off and don’t drive yourself into debt, if you don’t trust yourself you can always cut the card up as soon as you get it.
Yesterday I came across this great post on Google Groups, its a list of Kindle disorders that Kindle owners tend to suffer from – enjoy;
A few days ago I detected a certain malady that some Kindle users may have experienced. I have come to learn that there are many more conditions, symptoms and maladies of which I believe my fellow Kindle users should be aware. The list is not exhaustive so please feel free to add any additional items as you may have experienced on your own.
Kindle Abandonment Syndrome: The feeling of concern when you cannot find a newly published or previously published book in Kindle format which results in you sending threatening letters to publishing houses or checking the “New on Kindle” site every ten minutes.
Kindle Anxiety Syndrome: Worrying that your Kindle will run out of charge before you can reach your home and your charging cord.
Kindle Separation Anxiety: This manifests symptoms which include trying to tap the next page button on a paperback or hardcover book, if you still read those!
Kindle Agoraphobia: The fear of traveling to a destination that goes not have Whispernet access, like a foreign country, a remote location, or a tunnel.
Kindle Envy Condition: This is when people post negative comments about the Kindle on forums without having ever owning one.
Kindle Curiosity Malady: This is when you spot another Kindle owner in public and you insist he or she show you what they have downloaded on their Kindle.
Kindle Braggadocio: This is when you give a ten minute demonstration of how your Kindle works when someone casually asks if that is a Kindle.
Kindle Confusion Malady: This is when you repeatedly lick your finger when you tap the next page button.
Kindle Hoarding Syndrome: This is a condition where you have downloaded 2000 books from every free e-book website you can find. It is particularly serious when you download the Russian versions of
Tolstoy’s books and you cannot read Russian.
Kindle Displacement Condition: This is a condition where you consider your Kindle a member of your family and purchase seven designer covers and extra SD cards but neglect to buy your family milk.
Kindle Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder: This is when you check the Velcro patch which secures your Kindle to its case every half hour to ensure it won’t slip out again. It can also manifest itself with the
purchase of multiple batteries and the constant checking of your Amazon Media Library.
Kindle Carpel Tunnel Syndrome: Intense pain in your thumbs from speed reading on your Kindle.
Kindle Obesity: This is the insistence that gaining weight is only due to the fact that with a belly you can now read your Kindle while lying prone.
Kindle Perplexity Disorder: This is when a patient insists that any reading matter he or she received must be in either asw, prc or pdf convertible format because “I don’t read anything that isn’t
Kindlized.”
Kindle Grammar Abuse: Using the word Kindle as anything other than a noun: such as is it Kindleable?; can you Kindlize that? Or I don’t do anything unKindled.
You may ask is there a cure for these maladies. I fear that no cure is available. My only hope that is when the Kindle becomes universally accepted like the IPod and the laptop computer, these maladies will be readily accepted by the population.
Some of these are hilarious and are especially true for me. Do you have any Kindle related disorders you would like to share?
The Amazon team have added a new button below any book which is currently not available on the Kindle. The new “Please tell the publisher” button aims to alert publisher of a demand for a particular book by Kindle owners and hopefully prompting them to publish a Kindle version of that book.
This is what Amazon said on its blog;
Our goal is to make every title available for Kindle, and to that end some eagle-eyed Kindle owners and enthusiasts have already noticed and been using a new tool to help us do just that. If you’re frustrated that a physical edition of a book is not (yet) available in Kindle version, just look below the book’s image on its product detail page and you’ll find a box that reads, “Please tell the publisher.” Click on the “I’d like to read this book on Kindle” link and we’ll forward your request. Make your voice heard.
It is a nice feature which will hopefully be used by Kindle owners to highlight old and new books which publishers haven’t bothered to Kindle-ize, yet. It would be also nice if once you have submitted you request to be notified by Amazon if the book does become available on the Kindle,
Next step is magazines and newspapers which should also have this button.
If you have an image that you would like to submit for Kindle Photo of the Day, then please get in touch! you can send the image via email to – please make sure you include your name and a link to your site.
The Kindle has popped up on Time Magazines “25 Gotta Have Travel Gadgets”
Appearing at number 9 on the list, the Time Magazine article says;
Amazon’s first-generation e-book reader certainly needs improvement — the page-turn buttons are awkwardly placed, among other things — but anyone who likes to read on the road should consider it an essential companion. That’s because you can take a veritable library with you.
Time still couldn’t resist a quick jab at the Kindle.
Other gadgets which made it onto the list include, Airport Express, MacBook Air, Panasonic Portable DVD and a PSP amongst other things, interestingly not a single bad word was said about any of the other gadgets.
If you have an image that you would like to submit for Kindle Photo of the Day, then please get in touch! you can send the image via email to – please make sure you include your name and a link to your site.
If e-book readers are to ever catch on then they must be able to display all kinds of documents and information, from novels to picture albums to technical documents. This presents a challenge for publishers right now because whist e-book readers are catching on, they don’t posses the technology to display anything other than just words and simple black and white images. A lot of publishers are wanting to put their technical documents on to e-ink devices, however technology in the e-ink industry is limiting how those documents can be displayed.
Once such publisher is Dave Thomas from Pragmatic Programmer which publishes technical programming books, as you can imagine, programming books will be full of diagrams, tables, code lists and images — they are really tricky to reproduce for e-book viewing.
This is what Dave had to say
About once a week, we get a request from a reader to have our books available in a format that can be read on an eBook reader (typically, nowadays, the Amazon Kindle).
In fact, we’ve had a prototype form of that capability for a while now, but we’ve always held back. Frankly, we didn’t think the devices worked well with our kind of content. Basically, the .mobi format used by the Kindle is optimized for books that contain just galleys of text with the occasional heading. Throw in tables, monospaced code listings, sidebars and the like, and things start to get messy. The .epub format (used, for example, by Adobe Digital Editions) is slightly more capable, but it also has issues.
You can see exactly what Dave is talking about because he has uploaded his tests, you can see the results here;
Dave goes on to say getting to this stage required a lot of hacks, for instance the code listings have been converted to images so that they render better, however they don’t scale when the user changes the font size — i’m sure many more hacks were used to get to this stage, Dave finises with a good question:
So… what do you think. Is this workable? Should we make these available, even though they’re not very good, or should we wait for a later generation of eBook that’s closer to the capabilities we need? Comments are open… :)
What do you think, should publishers wait or press on knowing this is the best possible outcome given the current technology?
If your one of the many people interested in buying the Kindle, but unfortunately you live outside the US, then until Amazon decides to release Kindle in your local you cant enjoy the benefits of owning a Kindle. Kindle owners here in the US are also interested in knowing whether using their Kindles outside the US is possible. Amazon states in it’s FAQ section that it is working on releasing the Kindle for international markets and asks that international customers to sit tight for the time being.
That’s not good enough for some.
Where there’s a will, there is way. A post by Nerdgirl on her site offers a solution for those unwilling to wait for the official Kindle release in their country. The hack involves tricking Amazon into thinking that your billing address is associated with a US address — apparently Amazon does not verify the address unless you purchase a dead-tree book. This then allows you to associate a Kindle device with your Amazon account, once your Kindle is associated with your account you can use gift certificates to buy e-books. But if your expecting them to be delivered wirelessly then think again, they wont be, you will have to transfer the e-book via USB.
The very fact that someone has discovered this hack proves that people outside the US are itching to get their hands on the Kindle.
You can read the full instructions on Nerdgirls website by following the link below.
It might be hard to spot, but they are talking about the Kindle. The guy in the middle is actually holding one! Photo by imogen_ph
If you have an image that you would like to submit for Kindle Photo of the Day, then please get in touch! you can send the image via email to – please make sure you include your name and a link to your site.
Whenever you purchase an expensive new gadget you dread about dropping it, you take it out of the packaging with care and handle it like a newborn child, but as the novelty wears off and you start using, odds are that you will occasionally drop it – eek!
Now it’s a good to know that just in case you drop your Kindle, your device wont be smashed into a million tiny pieces, to put your mind at ease Amazon did a drop test for the Kindle, now the video has been around for a while, but it hasn’t been posted on this site, so here is the Amazon Kindle drop test from 30 inches (76 cm).
Oh my god, why is everyone is looking at me??!!!… are you the type of person who gets paranoid about what people are thinking when you indulge in the latest self-help book? Lets face it there are some books which are just plain embarrassing to be seen with, The Amazon Kindle official blog has a humorous post about one bloggers addiction to self-help books and how they make her feel, she lists what’s going through her mind when she’s reading on the bus;
Me (reading): He’s Just Not That Into You: The No-Excuses Truth to Understanding Guys
Bus passenger (thinking): “That chick probably gets dumped a lot.”
Me (reading): How Not to Look Old
Bus passenger (thinking): “She should have read that a couple of decades ago.”
Me (reading): The Secret
Bus passenger (thinking): “She watches too much Oprah.”
Me (reading): Ask and It Is Given: Learning to Manifest Your Desires
Bus passenger (thinking): “Geez…yesterday she was reading The Secret.”
For those of you who are conscious about what other people are thinking when you read your book the Kindle makes reading your weird little titles a little more bearable in public, no longer do you have to hide the cover or find a secluded spot to read your book, the Kindle offers protection because the title you are reading remains anonymous. However now people will now think you are cool because you own a Kindle, or are they just saying that because you own a Kindle?… hmm
Has the Kindle made you more a adventurous reader in public?
The images above are from a test conducted by Cartwright Reed, with the iPhone on the left and Kindle on the right showing The Stand by Stephen King.
From Cartwright Reed
The smaller, brighter iPhone screen is showing the same number of words as the Kindle. The Kindle is the premiere ebook reader, but I think that the eReader/iPhone combination is compelling. Listening to music while reading off the iPhone screen is a great experience.
The Kindle is still the winner when you’re buying ebooks, though. I bought a few titles from Fictionwise and eReader from the iPhone, but it’s not nearly as easy as Kindle’s Whispernet experience. Of course, you can only go to one bookstore on the Kindle :-).
What is interesting is that the iPhone can squeeze the same amount of words onto the screen as the Kindle, however I suspect you will be squinting quite hard as you try and read the the tiny font on the iPhone. The only solution would be to increase the font size which means less words per screen, which means more page flipping.
Amazon updated the Kindle product page this morning with a 10% reduction in the price of the Kindle, the price drop is a welcome one and also includes free 2-day shipping. So if you have been waiting for the price to drop before purchasing a Kindle, now is your chance to get one before stocks run out again!
The price drop was expected, as predicted by most analysts, further drops are expected in the future but that all depends on a stable supply of Kindle devices. The reason Kindle has been out of stock so frequently is because a single factory has been manufacturing the Kindles, so far supply has FAR exceeded demand, but just over a month ago Amazon brought on-line a second factory, which should create a more stable supply of Kindle devices.
Amazon is expect to drop the price around 15% a year, so by 2010 the device should be priced at around $300 in line with expectations, meaning I wouldn’t expect another price drop until around Christmas time.
As it turns out, not only can you read books on your Kindle, you can now eat it!
LilPeaPod from Team Sugar spent her Sunday afternoon cooking up this geeky cake delight and what a result. At first glance it actually looks like a Kindle device, we think it’s a shame it has to be eaten!
Looks delicious! We love the “Kindle Kake”! Check out the cake gallery.
Last December the news was that the Kindle’s up for auction were selling like hot cakes, I thought now that the hype and buzz surrounding the Kindle has calmed down a bit, we should go back and see what the situation is over at eBay.
In December, the Kindle was selling for an average price of $864.04, that was more than double the retail price. Predictably, since then thing have changed and this week the Kindle is selling for an average price of $421.33. The most a Kindle was being auctioned for that I could find $600.00, contrast that with the $1500 just a couple of months ago and its seems like Kindle has truly lost x-factor, at least on eBay it has.
So if you don’t like your Kindle it seems as though you can still sell without losing any money. So when Amazon gets more Kindles back in stock, the auction prices should drop a bit more so those of you who don’t own one already might be able to pick up one at a bargain price. That’s assuming Amazon ever gets any back in stock because it seems like forever now that there hasn’t been any in stock, of-course we’ll let you know as soon as Amazon gets them back in stock.
Amazon has just added two more newspapers to the selection of available newspapers, they are: Les Echos and The Philadelphia Inquirer.
This brings the total number of newspapers on offer to 13 (unlucky for some, apparently not to Amazon!), the 13 newspapers are;
The New York Times
The Wall Street Journal
The Washington Post
Investor’s Business Daily
San Francisco Chronicle
San Jose Mercury News
The Seattle Times
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Le Monde
The Irish Times
Frankfurter Allgemeine
Les Echos
The Philadelphia Inquirer
I would personally like to see The Finiancial Times and The Los Angeles Times on the list. I really do hope that newspapers jump onto the Kindle, as traditional newspapers continue to lose circulation, Kindle might solve a few problems. Be sure to check out the links and sign up for your 14 days free trail. Which newspapers would you like to see on your Kindle?
Les Echos is France’s preeminent financial daily, and covers all subjects relating to the economy and the business world at large. Available in the French language and organized into two sections of macro and micro economics, Les Echos also features property market developments, industry & technology, financial analysis and share tips, personal finance information, and lifestyle news.
Whether it’s local headlines, sports scores, arts, business, or travel and leisure information, read The Philadelphia Inquirer to find out what’s happening in the City of Brotherly Love. In addition to local fare, the major world news stories of the day are also featured.
The Kindle Edition of The Philadelphia Inquirer contains most articles found in the print edition, but will not include all images and tables. Also, some features such as the crossword puzzle, box scores and classifieds are not currently available. For your convenience, issues are automatically delivered wirelessly to your Kindle so you can read them each morning.
Yesterday I blogged about the Kindle being opened up. Not satisfied with just pictures, I opened up Google in search of something more detailed. I struck gold! I found this article on Dr. Blip’s PC-Doctor’s blog (awesome name and blog btw! you should check out the rest of the blog), its a detailed dissection of the Kindle and shows each component and what it does. It is quite technical and it’s a fascinating read.
The comments at the bottom of the article make for an interesting read as-well, some of the commenter’s speculate that Amazon are selling the device at a loss, although that is purely speculative since we don’t know how much it cost to manufacturer the Kindle or the R&D costs.
Kindle only allows you to read DRM protected eBooks, so how would you can you read other eBooks on the Kindle? one way would be to add the Kindle DRM to your eBook!
Hacker Igor Skochinsky who hacked open the Sony e-reader has done it again, this time he has hacked open the Kindle to allow you to read mobipocket eBooks on the Kindle, its a novel solution, by using a couple of Python scripts, you can convert an eBook into Amazon’s AZW format, the scripts add a serial number DRM, unique to an individuals Kindle, which allows you to read them on the Kindle device.
Now there is a chance that it Amazon can ‘fix’ the hack, since Amazon owns Mobipocket, however I don’t think this is the path that Amazon will take. Aarjav Trivedi over at Kindle Hacks has blogged today about how the ‘Director of Kindle’ over at Amazon has no problem with the Kindle being hacked.
CAUTION: USE THESE SCRIPTS AT YOUR OWN RISK! WE CAN NOT ACCEPT RESPONSIBILITY FOR ANY DAMAGE CAUSED AS A RESULT OF THEIR USE.
Lets face it, we all want to see what this little baby look like on the inside. Rapidrepair.com were one of the lucky few who were able to get their paws on a Kindle before it sold out. Being the geeks that they are, they decided to dissect it.
I must warn you that its not pretty! She may look sleek, slender and understated on the outside, she is anything but that on the inside.
I’m no hardware engineer, so I can not tell you exactly what each component does or how it was assembled, but it looks like there are an awful lot of gadgets in there, Kindle is essentially a mobile phone/PDA with a fancy e-ink screen, the thing that makes Kindle unique is the software. So if there is anyone out there who knows what each component does then don’t hesitate to leave a comment.
Does it seem that far fetched? Rick Aristotle Munarriz over at The Motley Fool doesn’t seem to think so. Munarriz says that Amazon’s Kindle probably won’t change the world but what it will do is rock the publishing world to its core. Kindle will do this by offering an avenue for aspiring authors a way to get published, and Munarriz seems to think that not only will authors benefit, but bloggers as-well. Perhaps he’s right… maybe the old ways of doing things are ending and Kindle is ushering in a new era.
I’ve been one of Kindle’s biggest critics. When Amazon.com (Nasdaq: AMZN) rolled out its electronic reader last week, I described it as a $399 paperweight.
Who would pay up for a juice-sapping device that’s too chunky to pocket and too tempting to steal to leave out in the open? I let my cynicism rip even deeper, suggesting that the company was trying to orchestrate demand in an attempt to turn its Kindle into the next Wii or Tickle Me Elmo.
For those more tech savvy Kindle readers out there Amazon has provided the source code for Kindle to be freely downloaded. I cant wait to see what developers will do with this information.
After selling out in just 5.5 hours, prospective Kindle buyers are turning their attention to eBay where the price of an average Kindle is $864.04, that’s more then double the retail price of $399.00, one desperate bidder paid $1500 for theirs! Prices on eBay.com range from $600 to $1500.
Dont you wish you had ordered a couple of Kindles on launch day, you could have sold one of them on eBay which would have easily paid for the other one. With the remaining cash you could have downloaded a couple of titles from the Amazon store as-well.
Aside from limited availability, buyers from outside the United States are likely driving the Kindle’s price up, as they are not able to buy it directly from Amazon. However, prices will surely fall once more Kindle owners try to make a quick buck selling their device, just as many did with the Apple iPhone over the summer.
You can keep up to date with the latest Kindle auctions by heading over to Terapeak
Yeah it’s old news from November, but I still think it needs to be mentioned on this blog. It’s still amazing to me that Kindle sold out in just 5.5 hours.
However this was over a month ago and Amazon.com still says that Kindle is out of stock, and there is still no word on when new units will be available. With Christmas just one week away many people will not be able get one in time, so what do you guys think? is Amazon purposefully holding onto new units in order to build up buzz about the device ?
We will let you know the minute that Kindle is back in stock.
A Library in New Jersey has begun to offer Kindle’s to loan out. How cool is that?
The new Kindle ebook reader from Amazon.com is certainly not oriented for the library borrowing model, given that books purchased are limited to the device itself. But that hasn’t stopped the Sparta Public Library, NJ, in an affluent suburb 50 miles west of New York City, from buying two $399 Kindles and preparing to loan them to patrons. “[Director Carol Boutilier] is very proactive; she wants us to be on the leading edge of any technology,” explained assistant director Diane Lapsley. Unlike many libraries, Sparta doesn’t shy away from loaning devices along with content; it previously circulated iPods loaded with audiobooks as well as an earlier generation of ebook reader.
has partnered up with Chase in a rare limited time offer where you can get up to $100 off the Kindle paying a total of $259 for the device – the offer ends on September 8th.
The Amazon team have added a new button below any book which is currently not available on the Kindle. The new “Please tell the publisher” button aims to alert publisher of a demand for a particular book by Kindle owners and hopefully prompting them to publish a Kindle version of that book.
– please make sure you include your name and a link to your site.
The Kindle has popped up on Time Magazines “25 Gotta Have Travel Gadgets”
If your one of the many people interested in buying the 
Last December the news was that the Kindle’s up for auction were 
Les Echos is France’s preeminent financial daily, and covers all subjects relating to the economy and the business world at large. Available in the French language and organized into two sections of macro and micro economics, Les Echos also features property market developments, industry & technology, financial analysis and share tips, personal finance information, and lifestyle news.
Whether it’s local headlines, sports scores, arts, business, or travel and leisure information, read The Philadelphia Inquirer to find out what’s happening in the City of Brotherly Love. In addition to local fare, the major world news stories of the day are also featured.
Kindle only allows you to read DRM protected eBooks, so how would you can you read other eBooks on the Kindle? one way would be to add the Kindle DRM to your eBook!
Does it seem that far fetched? Rick Aristotle Munarriz over at The Motley Fool doesn’t seem to think so. Munarriz says that Amazon’s Kindle probably won’t change the world but what it will do is rock the publishing world to its core. Kindle will do this by offering an avenue for aspiring authors a way to get published, and Munarriz seems to think that not only will authors benefit, but bloggers as-well. Perhaps he’s right… maybe the old ways of doing things are ending and Kindle is ushering in a new era.
For those more tech savvy Kindle readers out there Amazon has provided the source code for Kindle to be freely downloaded. I cant wait to see what developers will do with this information.
Yeah it’s old news from November, but I still think it needs to be mentioned on this blog. It’s still amazing to me that Kindle sold out in just 5.5 hours.
A Library in New Jersey has begun to offer Kindle’s to loan out. How cool is that?
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