Eddie On Everything » amazon

Why Can’t I Remove Items from the Kindle Fire Home Screen Carousel?

eddie — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 23:48:01 +0000

Psst. Hey, Amazon.

You know all those eBooks I’ve bought at your site over the years?

You know which ones I’m talking about?

Yeah, you do. And so does everyone else who picks up my Kindle Fire, because every book I’ve ever purchased from you is listed in the carousel!

Never mind the fact that I’ll never need to re-read the dozens of trashy titles that I finished years ago, which only clutters up the interface. Never mind the fact that this carousel thing is a mess with its jumble of apps, documents, videos, web page screenshots, and book covers.

But did you ever stop to think that I might not want my friends, family, and anyone who wants to play with my Fire at a coffee shop knowing that I secretly read Twilight?

Or that some people might be *embarrassed* for others to know they’ve read “Coping with Depression,” or “Transgender Explained For Those Who Are Not?” Maybe someone had to check out “Understanding and Addressing Adult Sexual Attraction to Children: A Study of Paedophiles in Contemporary Society” for research project 3 years ago, and here it is on display on their Kindle, for all comers to see, for the rest of eternity.

Or maybe I recently became pregnant and don’t want my family and friends to know just yet. But that “What to Expect When You’re Expecting” sure is a mighty big hint, don’t you think?

You’d think you’d know better.

Sure, you’ll probably respond by saying, “The Kindle is a personal device.” Yep, sure is, Amazon. It’s so personal that I can’t let anyone else ever touch it. I might as well keep it on my nightstand, locked in a small safe. Or, hey, maybe I’ll just send it back.

Fix it now, Amazon.

Or I’ll start getting my eBooks elsewhere.

How to Root Your Kindle Fire

eddie — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 03:39:52 +0000

First off, I’d like to say that I love the Kindle Fire. And I don’t really see a good reason to root it, at least not for most users. Amazon really did do a great job with the OS. Kudos, guys & gals.

And If you have a Kindle Fire, you’re probably more interested in streaming things via Prime, something that won’t work on a rooted Kindle. So consider why you want to root it in the first place before stepping into the morass.

But me, I like to play with things. I’m a Unix guy, and I like to have an SSH daemon running on my devices. Call me a control freak, but hey, it’s what I’m used to. And I need a rooted device in order to do that.

User death2all100 over at Android forums discovered a method for rooting the Kindle Fire. Here’s a link to the thread. You’ll need to have the Android Development SDK installed, and will have to know how to edit files & stuff. But it’s not that complicated.

For me, the only tricky part was getting Windows to find the new driver information. If you’re not getting adb to recognize the device after editing the INF file, you’ll have to change the driver manually via Device Manager.

I’ll refrain from posting the exact steps here – just visit the link at Android Forums and you should be set.

But again – once you root your device you will no longer be able to stream videos from Amazon. Though there is a work-around for that.

Fix for Kindle Fire no longer configured to stream video error – Why can’t I play or download?

eddie — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 03:14:02 +0000

Of course I had to get a Kindle Fire as soon as it came out.

And of course I had to root the device just a day later, as soon as an exploit was discovered.

Everything went well, or so I thought. I popped into bed and thought I’d watch a little Arrested Development before dozing off, courtesy of Amazon’s free streaming videos for Prime members. But the “Watch now” link was greyed out, and I saw a little informational link that said, “Why can’t I play or download?” Clicking it revealed the cryptic message, “Your device is no longer configured to play video content.”

Really, Amazon? Really? Just because I rooted a device that I own, which is my right, for perfectly legitimate reasons, you’re going to kick me out of Prime videos? Lame.

Fortunately, I found a workaround. There’s an app in the Android Market called Voodoo OTA Root Keeper. It’s free, and it will let you “unroot” your device after rooting it.

The tricky part for some people will be that the app isn’t in the Amazon App Marketplace. That’s OK – you have a rooted device, and you may have already sideloaded the Android Marketplace.

But if not, here’s one way you can get the OTA RootKeeper app onto your Kindle.

1. First, install it to your phone using the Android Marketplace. Also install an app called Astro, it has app backup capabilities.

2. Then start up Astro on your phone & tell it to “back up” OTA Root Keeper. (And any other package that you want to move to your Kindle Fire.) Take note of where you choose to back the files up – maybe create a directory on your SD card called “backups.”

3. Now that the apps are backed up, move them off your phone using Astro’s networking capability or by connecting your phone to your computer.

4. Get the backed up files on to your Fire in some way. The easiest may be by connecting it to your PC.

5. Now install Astro on your Kindle Fire. (It’s in the Amazon App Store.) Check that – Astro is NOT in the Amazon Store. Instead, install a package called “File Expert.” It’s like Astro, only different. Use the file manager functionality to browse to the packages you just backed up from your phone. Click each package file and watch the Kindle Fire install each of the apps.

6. Now that you have OTA Root Keeper installed, you can start it up & choose to temporarily “unroot” your device.

7. That’s it. Videos should now stream once again. (Note: You may have to reboot your Fire. I didn’t have to, but some people have reported having to do so.) And you can get root back at any time by running OTA Root Keeper & undoing the un-rooting.

What irks me about Amazon blocking streaming to rooted devices is that it makes no sense. What, do they think I’m going to configure my 8GB device (with 6 GB of effective storage) to “rip” the complete works of Richard Dean Anderson and then burn them off to DVD’s or something? What a pain the ass that would be. There are much, much, much easier ways to “acquire” these files, believe me.

No, Amazon, I want root on my device so I can run a VNC server. And an SSH daemon. I find them to be incredibly useful tools, and they don’t work without root access. Believe me, I have better things to do than steal content from you. That’s why I paid you good money for this, my third Kindle, and it’s why I continue to buy books & periodicals from you. Hey, I also pay for Prime membership. And I “subscribe and save” to a bunch of grocery items. And I buy lots of other stuff, too. In fact, when someone wants to give me a gift & asks what sort of gift card I would like, I always say “I can always use Amazon gift cards.”

I’m not really offended or anything, I’m more confused. The restriction seems so… pointless.

Popcap’s Peggle – How not to make an Android App

eddie — Tue, 21 Jun 2011 18:40:50 +0000

I installed Amazon’s Appstore on my phone, an application that offers a free download of a “paid” app each day. Today, the free app is “Peggle” by internet gaming giant Popcap. I’m not a big gamer, but I thought I’d check it out mostly for research purposes. I’m looking to get into Android development myself, and I thought I could learn something from a company like Popcap.

And I did learn something – namely, I learned exactly how NOT to make a phone-based application.

I started the download and it seemed to be taking forever. It was only then that I noticed that the download was nearly 80MB. 80MB for a phone app? Seriously? That’s about half the size of the entire Android operating system!

I wanted to abort the download, but Amazon’s app store provides no way to cancel a download once it’s started.

Also, once downloaded, Amazon’s App store offers no way to delete the file without installing it first. So here I have 80MB stored somewhere on my phone, and the application gives me no way to free up that space.

I poked around and little and found the downloaded file located at /mnt/sdcard/Android/data/com.amazon.venezia/cache.

—-rwxr-x system sdcard_rw 77724360 2011-06-21 12:12 vnz49829.apk

All 80 Megs of it.

I opened up the file to see how they managed to use 80 MB of data, and found the following.

14 MP3 files taking up 21 MB of space.
A 6 MB file called Peggle.dz that contains a bunch of WAV files and some data files
A 49 MB file called Peggle.480×320.dz that contains mostly graphics. png, jpg, gif, they’re all in the there.

So there you have it – 76 MB of this 78 MB download consist of images and sound files. And that’s exactly how you DON’T make an app for a phone.

My Kindle’s Screen is Broken! But Amazon is Replacing It – For Free

eddie — Tue, 31 May 2011 17:21:31 +0000

I can’t believe it happened to me.

I was settling into bed, and I grabbed my Kindle for a little bedtime reading.

But boy was I in for a shock.

ACK! The screen was broken!

Turning it off and on didn’t fix the problem, nor did doing a reset or gently massaging the screen with my fingertips.

As you can see from the photo, the top-half of the screen was not refreshing, but was instead showing portions of various screensavers, along with a number of other non-descript blobs and globs. The bottom half continued to display text properly. The text does update when I turn the page, but still – this isn’t very usable.

I spent the night trying to figure out what I was going to do about it. The Kindle is significantly less expensive now (I paid $360 for mine), but there are other readers out there as well. I thought I owed it to myself to at least head to Barnes & Noble and check out the Nook Reader.

Before I did, though, I called Amazon support, and I’m glad that I did. The very helpful CSR offered to replace my Kindle free of charge, even though it was no longer covered by warranty, and even though she said it sounded like “impact damage,” which I think is code for “Well you probably dropped it, dummy.”

My new replacement Kindle should be here tomorrow (overnight!) and I have 30 days to return the broken Kindle.

How’s that for great customer service? This is exactly why I continue to shop at Amazon, and why I would much prefer to own a Kindle (and buy my e-Books via Amazon.com) than use another e-Reader. Had Amazon not replaced my Kindle for free, I may have purchased a B&N Nook or another e-Reader, and Amazon would have lost out on my future purchases. A win-win situation for both of us.

Contacting Amazon support is really easy, too: I used the Kindle support link on their website, and when they called me (yes, they called me within seconds, and my wait time was less than a minute) their rep already had all of my account information at hand. Great job, Amazon.

How Amazon’s Kindle is Revolutionizing the Publishing Industry with 99-cent eBook Titles

eddie — Sun, 13 Mar 2011 22:48:31 +0000

I recently ran across a story about a young Minnesota-based author who’s having tremendous success selling her books in eBook format via Amazon Kindle’s web store.

Her name is Amanda Hocking, and she’d collected hundreds of rejection letters from publishers before turning to self-publishing. Unlike traditional publishers, she offers her eBooks for about $1.00 per copy.

The result? Check it out:

February 2011 sales for Hocking, as evidenced by online proprietary accounts shown to the Pioneer Press: Amazon (via its e-book portal, the Kindle) 227,515 units for all nine of her works, including about 60,000 for her best-selling novel, "Switched." Barnes & Noble (the Nook): 55,135 units. CreateSpace, an online "print on demand" service: 2,948 units.

That’s about 280,000 sales in a single month. Amazon’s revenue split model pays her 70% of the total sales figures, which means that she earned about $200,000 in February alone. Not bad for a young author that none of the publishers wanted to cut a deal with, eh?

In browsing the Kindle bestseller list, I noticed another independent author calling himself “John Locke.” Locke has four titles on the best seller list, each selling for just 99 cents per copy. According to his Amazon author biography page:

Every 7 seconds, 24 hours a day, a John Locke novel is downloaded somewhere in the world.

If those figures equate to actual sales, Locke is selling 500 books per hour, 12,000 books per day, 370,000 books per month. He’s pulling in $260,000 per month selling his titles in electronic format for just 99 cents a pop, all without a publisher or publicist. All without touring, and all without a single mention in the oh-so-sacred New York Times. He’s successfully cut out dozens of middle-men, and is generating more income in a single month than most authors see in a lifetime.

I downloaded the free preview of Locke’s Lethal Experiment: A Donovan Creed Novel and after reading just a few chapters, I was hooked. No, it wasn’t War and Peace, but neither are most of today’s printed best sellers. Hell, it wasn’t even all that original – the book’s premise seemed to be lifted from one of my favorite Twilight Zone episodes. But it was easy to read and entertaining. That’s all I’m looking for in a casual, “time-for-bed” book, and Locke’s 99-cent title easily fits the bill. I gladly ponied up the 99 cents to purchase the full book, and I’ll surely purchase the other titles in the Donovan Creed series as well.

Locke’s books are just as good if not better than what you’d see from pop-fiction stalwarts like Sidney Sheldon, James Patterson, Robin Cook, and Clive Cussler, to name a few. The user reviews on Amazon are overwhelmingly positive, which tells me that the reading public agrees.

I’ve been critical of Amazon’s eBook pricing schemes in the past. If large publishers can’t see that lower eBook prices are the way to mass sales, I’m glad to see that individual authors are successfully filling the void.

I don’t know what it takes to make the New York Times Best Seller List, but I’ve been told that selling 20,000 copies in a month will usually do it. Both Locke and Hocking are easily crushing that figure, selling hundreds of thousands of copies each month.

Kudos to Amazon for making it all possible.

GWB’s “Decision Points” Kindle eBook more expensive than actual printed copy

eddie — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 19:55:47 +0000

I’ve been hearing a lot about George W. Bush’s new book, Decision Points.

I’m not normally one for politically-themed reading, but I’m a sucker for presidential history, so I thought I’d pick up a copy.

I went to Amazon & was shocked to see that the Kindle edition is actually more expensive than the print version!

Are you kidding me, Amazon? Let’s go over the reasons why this is ridiculous.

It costs nothing to produce a copy of an eBook. Nothing. Here’s how you do it: cp book copy_of_book. Not that hard, now was it? On the other hand, it does cost money to print an actual, tangible book. Yet somehow the more costly version is cheaper. WTF?
If I pay for the eBook edition, it’s locked to my Kindle via a DRM protection scheme. One reader, one copy. Publishers don’t have to worry about lost revenue via loaning, gifting, or resale. You’d think such a heavily restricted copy would be cheaper than a book that you could read then re-sell, wouldn’t you? Of course you would, because that makes perfect sense. Apparently not to Amazon.

I’m sorry, but I see this as a big “F**K YOU,” from Amazon to me. I was an early adopter who paid $360 for my Amazon Kindle. And they thank me by charging me more for my purchases?

Thanks, Amazon. Thanks a lot.

How to Buy US/UK-Only Restricted eBooks on Amazon Kindle

eddie — Fri, 15 Oct 2010 21:23:50 +0000

Imagine that you wanted to give me $10 for reading this blog post. You saw it, you liked it, and you thought, “Hey, I want to hit that Eddie guy’s tip jar for $10.” Good for me, right? Now imagine if, upon seeing your $10 in my PayPal account, I refunded your money with the message, “Sorry, I only accept gifts from readers in the UK.”

Crazy, right?

But that’s pretty much what the publishing industry is doing by restricting their titles based on a prospective buyer’s geographical location.

I recently tried to purchase a particular eBook & went to the Amazon website, only to find that while a Kindle version did exist, it was only available to U.K. purchasers. I live in the U.S., so I was out of luck. Or so I thought.

I found out that buying the book was as simple as changing my US address to a UK address on the Kindle management page. Since nothing is ever mailed to the address listed there, you don’t have to worry about them sending anything to the address that you pick.

A word of caution, though: while researching the topic, I learned that some people have had their Amazon account suspended for changing their address too often. Which got me to thinking, why is Amazon making it so difficult for me to give them money? After all, here I was, begging them to let me fork over $10 or so for a copy of a book that it would cost them nothing to produce. And they wouldn’t take my money simply because of where my two feet happened to be contacting the Planet Earth at the time. It sure is hard to be a customer these days, isn’t it? :)

I’m sure that the reasons come down to a lot of complicated contract issues between the author and the publisher. The author of the book likely only granted his publisher UK distribution rights, and the author either hasn’t yet assigned the US rights or the assignee has chosen to do sit on them. Amazon is just doing what they can to honor the contracts that these parties have in place, so they’re not at fault. On the contrary, what they’ve accomplished is astonishing. As of July 2010, Amazon is now selling more eBooks than it is print books.

The publishing industry needs to catch up with the year 2010. Yes, I know that they like to have their theatres of operation and their fancy contractual assignments and whatnot, but at the end of the day, all I wanted to do was pay someone $10 for the privilege of legally reading their book on my Kindle. Would they have preferred that I instead checked it out from the library for free? Or simply, ahem, “acquired” a free copy of the eBook? (‘Cuz I could have.)

How To Tell If Someone Is Lying About Their iPad Experience

eddie — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 16:20:40 +0000

OK, maybe that title is a little harsh.

Perhaps a better title would be “When someone tells you they love their iPad because it functions as an eBook reader, you should be a little suspect of their claims, because they’re starting to sound like a fan-boy, simply parroting the ad-copy dreamed up in Cupertino, and have probably never actually tried to read a book on the device.”

Somehow, that seemed a bit wordy.

I’ve read a lot of iPad reviews that herald the iPad as the greatest thing since the invention of the internet. “OMG, it can play movies, it can check email, it can be a book reader, it even changes the oil in my car and picks my kids up from school! I kid you not!”

The iPad is certainly a fun little toy, but lets be honest here – it’s a device for casual internet surfing and watching movies. For that, it beats the Kindle hands-down. No contest. The iPad may have an “eBook reader” built-in, but so does the computer you’re sitting in front of right now. It’s called “displaying text on the screen,” and it’s nothing new. For actually reading books, the iPad sucks.

Here’s why.

First, the screen is a backlit LCD, which causes eyestrain in most people. Sure, you can read a few pages of a book no problem, but read more than a dozen pages and you’ll start feeling a little bit queasy. Contrast this with a dedicated eBook reader like the Amazon Kindle or Nook – each of those uses an “e-Ink” display screen that is pretty much just like reading off of paper.
Glare – The iPad comes with a sleek glass screen that is highly reflective. So unless you like staring at your own reflection more than you enjoy comprehending the content of your book, the iPad isn’t ideal.
Weight – I like reading in bed, and the iPad is just too heavy.
Ergonomics – How are people who claim that they read books on their iPad holding this thing? Please tell me, because I can’t figure it out.
Battery life – Maybe not a big deal if you don’t mind plugging the thing in every 6 hours or so, but if you’re doing any extended reading, the Kindle’s week or two long battery life is nice.

For these reasons, I seriously doubt the veracity of any report that holds the iPad up as an excellent eBook reader. When someone says that the iPad is great because it contains a book reader, it’s like saying that you prefer not to have a home stereo system because your car already has one built-in.

To paraphrase Jeff Bezos, “Reading is important. It deserves a dedicated device.”

I’m not saying that the iPad sucks. On the contrary, I think it’s pretty cool. I can see where it’d be useful for travel, as long as you don’t have to type too much. And I can see how it’d be useful for sitting on the couch and browsing Facebook, or even watching a movie on a plane. But it’s no replacement for a dedicated eBook reader, and anyone who says that it is probably doesn’t read all that much.

How To Fix Your Kindle 2 When It Won’t Charge

eddie — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 01:30:06 +0000

Egad! My Kindle stopped charging!

I settled in to bed the other night and grabbed my Amazon Kindle, looking to pick up where I left off in The Hades Factor. I was met with a familiar “Your battery is running low” message, so I plugged the Kindle in to the charger for the night and instead settled in with an old-fashioned, low-tech, printed-on-dead-trees style book.

The next morning, I unplugged my should-have-been-fully-charged Kindle & sat down to read the morning paper, only to be met with the “your battery is CRITICAL error!” Zoinks! For some reason, despite being plugged in all night, my Kindle had not charged!

I quickly ran to my computer & attached the Kindle. My Windows XP PC popped up that dreaded “USB Device Not Recognized” balloon. “It’s OK,” I thought. “It’ll be OK. I’ll just power the Kindle off by holding the power on/off slider for 15 seconds, and I’ll check back later.”

I returned later and … No dice! The Kindle was still not charging!

Thankfully, I was able to find a solution to this problem. (Whew!) After searching for things like “Kindle reset,” “Kindle hard reset,” and “Kindle soft reset,” I learned that while the Kindle 1 can be reset with a paper clip, or by using the Shift-Alt-R trick, these methods didn’t work on the Kindle 2.

I eventually came across a page that relayed a tip by Amazon Kindle Tech Support. I followed these steps, and within a couple of hours, I was back in action.

How to reset your Kindle when it won’t charge

1. Slide the power button and hold it for 30 sec.

2. Release and wait for 20 sec until the screen begins to flash.

3. As soon as it does, plug in the power and keep it connected for 2 hours.

Big thanks to The Epistemist for pointing me in the right direction. Now, back to my Robert Ludlum book…

Eddie On Everything » amazon

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