http://play.callisto.fm/podcasts/in/The-Kindle-Chronicles/by/LenEdgerly/ The latest ten episodes in The Kindle Chronicles 60 Mon, 21 May 2012 20:06:18 EST en-us http://play.callisto.fm/podcasts/by/LenEdgerly/in/The-Kindle-Chronicles/episode/TKC-198-Pastor-Mark-Pierce/ News - CNET hosts a video "prizefight" between the Kindle Touch and the Nook Simple Touch with Glowlight.  Reuters quotes a source offering details of a front-lit e Ink Kindle Touch in July and an 8.9-inch Kindle Fire by the holiday shopping season. AdAge reports that Amazon has approached at least two ad agencies with a pitch for ads or special offers on a Kindle Fire. Tech Tips - Brett McNeil McNeill on Collections for the Kindle Touch, Tom Semple on images for the Touch, and my construction of a homemade Kindle Fire stylus to use with the 99-cent Smart Writing Tool app. It was a fun project, but afterward I ordered the real thing. Interview (Starts at 17:48) - Mark Pierce, pastor of Church Requel in Mansfield, Ohio, met me for breakfast on May 15th at the Paul Revere Family Restaurant in Lexington, Ohio. Since he had a successful career as a financial analyst before turning to the ministry, I asked him for his take on Amazon as an investment. We then moved on to technology at his church and what he has learned in the last year sharing 1,200 e-books on one Amazon account among 12 family members using about 20 Kindles and Kindle apps. After our interview, we switched microphones, and Mark recorded a separate conversation that will appear on his Church Requel Podcast Monday, May 21st. Content - Bible by YouVision, and the debut this week of unglue.it . Also: Inside Higher Ed's post on unglue.it . Thanks to Tom Atkinson and Bob Anderson for leaving the first two reviews of The Kindle Chronicles blog subscription at Amazon. If you'd like to receive blog posts directly to your Kindle, please consider a Kindle Subscription for 99 cents a month, with a 14-day free trial. And if you've already signed up, I'd greatly appreciate your leaving a review! Next Week's Guest  (Rescheduled from this week) - Paul Slack, co-founder of Splash Media and author of Social Rules, a soon-to-be-published 319-page step-by-step resource on how to use social media tools for bottom-line results. Mon, 21 May 2012 20:06:18 EST http://play.callisto.fm/podcasts/by/LenEdgerly/in/The-Kindle-Chronicles/episode/TKC-198-Pastor-Mark-Pierce/ http://play.callisto.fm/podcasts/by/LenEdgerly/in/The-Kindle-Chronicles/episode/TKC-197-James-McQuivey/ News - 1) International Data Corporation (IDC) estimates that the Kindle Fire's share of the worldwide tablet market tumbled from 16.8 percent in the last quarter of 2011 to just over 4 percent in Q-1 of this year. Geoff Duncan at Digital Trends analyzes the report. 2) Target boots the Kindle. Tech Tip - Tom Semple offers these instructions on how to use the pan/zoom mode of the Kindle Touch running the latest software version, 5.1.0: - tap and hold until the '+' icon appears over the image - tap the '+' icon to zoom full screen (or 100% whichever is smaller) - pinch/spread to zoom in further, drag to pan - touch 'x' icon to exit zoom. John McCormack notes that the Touch can be used as a gallery for images. Kindle Tech Support helps me solve a nagging WiFi connection problem for my Kindle Fire. I had to enter the password of our home network every time I put the Fire to sleep. The solution: Restart the Kindle Fire by pressing and holding the power button on the bottom of the Kindle for 2 seconds and tapping "Shut Down." Hold the power button for 2 seconds to turn the device back on. While the Kindle is restarting, unplug the network router for a full 15 seconds. After plugging the router back in, wait until the router has finished rebooting before attempting to connect to your Wi-Fi network again. Interview (Starts at 12:32) - James McQuivey, vice president and principal analyst at Forrester Research, puts Q-1 Kindle Fire sales estimates into perspective but warns that poor results in the "Moms, Dads, and Grads" second quarter would be bad news indeed for Amazon's tablet. He welcomes the Microsoft-Barnes & Noble partnership as bracing evidence of disruption in digital media. And he predicts "a mess" for e-book pricing if the federal court approves settlement terms for three of the Big Five publishers while the other two and Apple fight the Department of Justice antitrust suit in court. Content - Andrys Basten notes another good Android app for reading ePub files on the Kindle Fire. It's Mantano Reader, available in a Premium version for $4.99 and a freeone. You can't download it to your Fire from the Amazon App Store, though. From your Fire, try this link to Slideme for the download; you'll need to set up a free Slideme account. Pottermore reports impressive sales for Harry Potter ebooks. Laura Hazard Owen and Nate Hoffelder wonder what wizardly announcement Amazon was teasing early this week. NOTE AFTER AUDIO WAS RECORDED: The suspense ended Thursday morning with Amazon's announcement that it has purchased a license making all six Harry Potter books available for free borrowing at the Kindle Owners' Lending Library. Bufo Calvin analyzes results of Amazon's Thomas & Mercer mystery imprint and finds them impressive. Next Week's Interview Guest - Paul Slack, co-founder of Splash Media and author of Social Rules, a soon-to-be-published 319-page step-by-step resource on how to use social media tools for bottom-line results. Links mentioned - Grieg - 100 Supreme Classical Masterpieces: Rise of the Masters for $1.99. Sun, 13 May 2012 21:28:45 EST http://play.callisto.fm/podcasts/by/LenEdgerly/in/The-Kindle-Chronicles/episode/TKC-197-James-McQuivey/ http://play.callisto.fm/podcasts/by/LenEdgerly/in/The-Kindle-Chronicles/episode/TKC-196-Dr-Temple-Grandin/ News - 1) The announcement of Microsoft's $605 million investment in as-yet-unnamed Barnes & Noble entity sparks some far-out reaction.  2) The Nook Simple Touch with GlowLight is pretty cool for reading in bed, but in my opinion what it lacks in sophisticated reading tools available on the Kindle Touch far outweighs the innovative built-in light. Tech Tips - Don't forget you can share Audible content on your Amazon account. Tom Semple points out that the Kindle Touch 5.1.0 update enables zooming on larger-than-standard-size images.  Via Eolake Stobblehouse, an article by Adam Engst tipped me off to Aldiko Reader,  a good Kindle Fire app for reading ePUB files. Interview (Starts at 16:44) - I visited Dr. Temple Grandin at Colorado State University in Fort Collins, Colorado, on April 30 and brought with me an array of Kindles and an iPad. Her considerations of the devices as reading aids for those on the autism spectrum were candid and astute. Her bestselling books include Animals Make Us Human: Creating the Best Life for Animals and The Way I See It: A Personal Look at Autism and Asperger's. The story of how she used her personal experience of autism to revolutionize the livestock business was dramatized in an HBO special starring Claire Danes. I recorded video of my interview with Temple, available at YouTube in two parts. (Part 1 is live, and Part 2 will be up by the end of Friday May 4.) Jean Remple Recommendations from Paris: French Kids Eat Everything: How our Family Moved to France, Cured Picky Eating, Banned Snacking and Discovered 10 Simple Rules for Raising Happy, Healthy Eaters by Karen Le Billon. French Children Don't Throw Food: Parenting Secrets from Paris by Pamela Druckerman (not available on Kindle in the U.S.) An alternate AVAILABLE FROM DOUBLEDAY FOR THE U.K. AUDIENCE, RETITLED AS U.S. Kindle title by Druckerman: Bringing Up Bebe: One American Mother Discovers the Wisdom of French Parenting. The Next TKC Google Plus Video Hangout will be held Monday, May 7 at 2 p.m. Mountain Daylight Time. I hope you'll stop by during the hour to join a lively conversation about all things Kindle and e-books. If you have not participated before and would like to receive an invitation when I start the hangout, please email the URL of your Google Plus profile page to me at PodChronicles AT Gmail DOT com.   Fri, 04 May 2012 21:59:07 EST http://play.callisto.fm/podcasts/by/LenEdgerly/in/The-Kindle-Chronicles/episode/TKC-196-Dr-Temple-Grandin/ http://play.callisto.fm/podcasts/by/LenEdgerly/in/The-Kindle-Chronicles/episode/Revised-TKC-195-Corrects-Audio-Glitches-in-Final-Few-Minutes/ The final few minutes of TKC 195 contained audio errors which I have corrected in this version. There were no problems in the first 40 minutes of the podcast, including my interview with Mike Shatzkin. If you have already listened to the episode, the only information that you will find in this one that you haven't heard is the date and time of the next TKC Google Plus Video hangout. As this file states, the next hangout will be Monday, May 7 at 2 pm. Mountain Daylight Time. If you are linking to episode 195 of The Kindle Chronicles, please use this link to this revised audio. My apologies for letting the earlier episode slip out onto the Internet with the audio glitches. --Len Edgerly May 2, 2012 Denver Fri, 04 May 2012 01:14:37 EST http://play.callisto.fm/podcasts/by/LenEdgerly/in/The-Kindle-Chronicles/episode/Revised-TKC-195-Corrects-Audio-Glitches-in-Final-Few-Minutes/ http://play.callisto.fm/podcasts/by/LenEdgerly/in/The-Kindle-Chronicles/episode/TKC-195-Mike-Shatzkin/ News - 1) Amazon beats financial analysts' expectations with its first-quarter earnings report. 2) E Ink Holdings, on the other hand, has its first first-quarter loss since 2009, thanks to Amazon's "digestion" of E Ink screen inventory that exceeded demand for the last quarter of 2011. Thanks to Sri Peruvemba of E Ink Holdings for providing me with the link to this account in the Taipei Times. Tech Tip - 1) If you have a Mac and a Kindle, you're in luck. Amazon this week released Send to Kindle for Mac, which enables you to send personal documents to your Kindle from your Macintosh computer. It works great, providing a "Send to Kindle" option from any print menu, and other handy tools. If you have a PC, you'll want to check out Send to Kindle for PC.  2) The latest version of the Kindle Fire Firmware, 6.3, made some nice improvements, but I discovered today that there's something missing from the WiFi settings. You used to be able to forget or save a WiFi network and password, but that option doesn't exist any more. I confirmed this with a Kindle support tech, because I was getting tired of entering the password for our home network every time I turned on my Fire. I think the WiFi connection itself is improved in reliability, but the customer interface took a step backward, IMHO. Interview (Starts at 6:03) - Mike Shatzkin, founder and CEO of The Idea Logical Company in New York, spoke with me on April 23rd by Skype about why there was so much hand wringing at the recently concluded London Book Fair, what's ahead for authors and readers if Amazon's dominance of the book business grows, and how his father, the late Leonard Shatzkin, who also had an illustrious career in publishing, probably would have been more inclined to applaud Amazon's disruption than is Leonard's son. Other topics mentioned: Mike's Kobo-inspired collection of blog posts, The Shatzkin Files - Volume I, Richard Kennedy of the Drongos playing "Don't Touch Me,"  Joe Konrath, "Funny or Die," Jane Litte on the Department of Justice antitrust suit, and Mike's comments on it. Content - This interview with the co-producer, Matty Simmons, made me think it might be fun to recommend watching "National Lampoon's Animal House" on your Kindle Fire. So I rented it for $2.99 and watched a half hour of it while working out this morning. Let's say it's still not for the faint of heart, so proceed at your own risk. For your reading terror, Stephen King and his son Joe Hill have a new Kindle Single titled Throttle, available for 99 cents. Mentioned in Comments - Is Jeff Bezos now "dictator for life?" The New York Times's account of the small publisher who removed his books from Amazon. All of Beethoven's symphonies for just $5.99 at the Amazon MP3 Store. Readdle. The case for paper, by a paper company, and its useful Knowledge Center. The Next TKC Google Plus video hangout will be Monday, May 7 at 2 p.m. Mountain Time. If you'd like to receive an invite, please email your G+ profile page URL to me at PodChronicles AT Gmail DOT Com. If you have no idea what that means  and you want to participate in the hangout, email me and I'll be glad to walk you through it. Next Week's Guest - Dr. Temple Grandin, author of The Way I See It: A Personal Look at Autism and Asperger's, discussing how the Kindle and other technology can benefit those with autism and other disabilities. If you are unfamiliar with Dr. Grandin's work with animals, which revolutionized the livestock industry, you owe to yourself to to watch the BBC's unforgettable 2006 profile of her titled "The Woman Who Thinks Like a Cow," available at YouTube in five parts, as follows: One, two, three, four, and five. Sat, 28 Apr 2012 18:24:46 EST http://play.callisto.fm/podcasts/by/LenEdgerly/in/The-Kindle-Chronicles/episode/TKC-195-Mike-Shatzkin/ http://play.callisto.fm/podcasts/by/LenEdgerly/in/The-Kindle-Chronicles/episode/TKC-194-Doug-Lance/ News - 1) More commentary on the Department of Justice's antitrust action against Apple and five publishers over e-book price collusion: Brad Stone and Felix Gillette in Bloomberg Business Week, Mike Shatzkin, and Stephen Windwalker.  2) Kindle Touch 3G goes worldwide sooner than expected, via Andrys Basten. Tech Tip - A comparison of Audible audiobooks on the Kindle Touch/Kindle Keyboard, Kindle Fire, and Kindle for iOS. Recommended: The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg. Audible sounds better with this Phillips speaker for $19.99. Interview (starts at 27:28) - Doug Lance, 22, a recent graduate of Western Michigan University, is making a decent living with his eFiction magazine, available at the Kindle Store for $1.99 a month. I spoke with him by Skype on Monday, April 16, but contrary to what I say in the podcast, I don't think it was a Casper-Kalamazoo connection. The pleasing aliteration led me astray. He's in Michigan, but it's too late tonight to fact-check the correct city. NEXT MORNING: And the answer is, Ann Arbor! Content - Laura Hazard Owen's e-book Bestsellers Breakdown. Amazon Publishing inks an exclusive deal for Bond, James Bond. If you like to tango, $5 will get you a reason to move: the La Revancha Del Tango album by Gofan Gotan Project. The best thing about the Sketch n Draw app for your Kindle Fire is the price - free. I found the ads distracting, and it seemed to take too many taps to pull up the drawing tools. Still, you can make some cool designs with it when you should be doing something else. Next Week's Guest: Mike Shatzkin. Sat, 21 Apr 2012 18:13:12 EST http://play.callisto.fm/podcasts/by/LenEdgerly/in/The-Kindle-Chronicles/episode/TKC-194-Doug-Lance/ http://play.callisto.fm/podcasts/by/LenEdgerly/in/The-Kindle-Chronicles/episode/TKC-193-Jim-Cheshire/ News - 1) The Department of Justice files an anti-trust suit against Apple and five publishers, three of whom have settled out of court. Click here for the 36-page Complaint and here for the Proposed Final Judgment as to defendants Hachette, HarperCollins, and Simon & Schuster. For a look at where at least one of the alleged conspirators' meetings took place, click here. 2) Meanwhile, Jeff Bezos talks about The Power of Invention in his Letter to Shareholders. Tech Tips - RepliGo Reader app for reading PDFs on your Kindle Fire. Amazon's 5.1 update for Kindle Touch. Interview (Starts at 24:02) - I spoke with Jim Cheshire, author of My Kindle Fire, by Skype on April 10. Other links of interest: MyAmazonKindleFire.com - The My Kindle Fire companion site. The "On" podcast that Jim did for Que, including a tip on using LastPass with the Kindle Fire and also on using ES File Explorer to access files on your network without having to pay for an app. (The podcast is available via iTunes and Amazon as well.) Jim's review of Kindle Fire. Jim's first visit to The Kindle Chronicles in 2008. Content - Kids Place - with Child Lock app for Kindle Fire, Readability, John Tayman's A Single Story, and War and Peace.  Upcoming Guest - Mike Shatzkin for TKC 195 on April 27. Sun, 15 Apr 2012 22:24:41 EST http://play.callisto.fm/podcasts/by/LenEdgerly/in/The-Kindle-Chronicles/episode/TKC-193-Jim-Cheshire/ http://play.callisto.fm/podcasts/by/LenEdgerly/in/The-Kindle-Chronicles/episode/United-States-v-Apple-and-the-Big-Publishers/ Thu, 12 Apr 2012 13:49:40 EST http://play.callisto.fm/podcasts/by/LenEdgerly/in/The-Kindle-Chronicles/episode/United-States-v-Apple-and-the-Big-Publishers/ http://play.callisto.fm/podcasts/by/LenEdgerly/in/The-Kindle-Chronicles/episode/TKC-192-Panio-Gianopoulos/ News - 1) Devin Coldewey of TechCrunch has the Kindle scoop of the week, with his first-person description of a new e Ink Kindle with a front-lit screen, apparently coming to the market later this year. 2) Amazon announces "eBooks Kindle en Espagñol Español." 3) CNET UK reports the Kindle Fire is coming to the U.K. and Europe "sooner rather than later," with a video review. 4) Google pulls the plug on its eBooks reseller program for independent bookstores. The American Booksellers Association promises an alternate way for bookstores to sell ebooks. Neil Strandberg of Denver's Tattered Cover Bookstore agrees it can be done, with a lot of work. Tech Tip - Two more things the Kindle Fire can't do compared with the Kindle Touch: Text to Speech, and swipe up or down for the next or previous chapters. Are you planning to give a used Kindle to someone? The process we use to prepare Kindles for E-Books for Troops might give you some ideas. Click here for information on donating a Kindle for use by a U.S. Soldier overseas. Interview (Starts at 20:53) - Panio Gianopoulos, publisher and creative director at Backlit Fiction, sees a bright future for Young Adult literature. I reached him by Skype in Los Angeles on April 3rd to learn more about the innovative plan his startup company has for revolutionizing YA with old tricks and new technology. Click here for a well-done Forbes profile. Other links mentioned: The Encyclopedia of Exes: 26 Stories by Men of Love Gone Wrong by Panio Gianopoulos, Joel Stein's essay, Panio's response, and A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan. Content - My rave review of The Start-Up by Sadie Hayes, published by Backlit Fiction. An edgy test movie for your Kindle Fire: "I Think My Facebook Friend is Dead." And BookBub will email you a manageable dose of one free-book suggestion a day, like this one: The Price by Alexandra Sokoloff. Audio Note: After using GarageBand to create TKCs 1 through 191, with this episode I have moved up to Logic Pro 9, a powerful audio editing program that I have just begun to learn. One objective was to increase volume levels to match other podcasts I listen to. I would love to hear feedback from you on how this episode sounds, and how you listen to the podcast - earbuds while running? Bose speakers at your desk? In the car? Any suggestions would be appreciated! Sat, 07 Apr 2012 17:41:45 EST http://play.callisto.fm/podcasts/by/LenEdgerly/in/The-Kindle-Chronicles/episode/TKC-192-Panio-Gianopoulos/ http://play.callisto.fm/podcasts/by/LenEdgerly/in/The-Kindle-Chronicles/episode/TKC-191-Margaret-Atwood/ News - 1) This just in: Reuters reports that a settlement in the anti-trust investigation of Apple and some of the Big 5 Publishers may be reached in a few weeks that would end the so-called agency model of e-book pricing. 2) Scientific American in its 60-second science podcast reports on a survey highlighting advantages young readers see in the Kindle. Click here for the research paper cited. Laura Hazard Owen reports on Association of American Publishers data showing a big jump in e-book sales in the children's/young adult category. 3) Le Figaro and TechCrunch report that the Kindle Touch is coming to Europe on April 27. But, alas, no Fires anytime soon. 4) TheNextWeb reports that Amazon is readying three new Kindle Fires this year. Tech Tip - You will miss the good, old one-click method of buying an e-book when you start here and travel to Pottermore. But it's worth the effort to land a Harry Potter book on all your Kindle devices. And with no discernable DRM, you can download an ePub copy to your computer and convert it to Kindle format with Calibre for very convenient personal use. Also, click here for info on the Kindle Fire 6.3 download. Interview (starts at 22:54) - Margaret Atwood, the award-winning author of The Handmaid's Tale as well as forty other books of fiction and nonfiction, including The Blind Assassin, Oryx and Crake, The Year of the Flood, and Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth, which has been made into a new documentary film, spoke with me by telephone on March 29th from Toronto. Her dystopian short story, "I'm Starved for You," was published this month by Byliner and is available as a Kindle Single for $2.99. Atwood, who maintains a lively and generous presence on Twitter, says e-books have revived the opportunities to publish short stories as traditional magazine outlets have declined. Would she advise a major younger author not constrained by current publishing contracts to make a deal with Amazon's New York publishing arm? Will there be a sequel to "I'm Starved for You"? Listen in for some surprising answers. Content - Amazon's new Weekend Deals and two apps for the Fire: MapQuest (with faux GPS capability provided by Skyhook) and Xiant Mobile, a new email app. Next Week's Guest - Panio Gianopoulos, who founder of Backlit Fiction . Next Google Plus TKC Video Hangout - Monday, April 2, at 2 p.m. Mountain Time. Please stop any time during the hour for an informal chat about Kindles, e-books and everything else. If you are not in my TKC Hangout Circle, just email the URL of your Google Plus profile URL to me at PodChronicles AT Gmail DOT com for an invitation. Mon, 02 Apr 2012 14:19:17 EST http://play.callisto.fm/podcasts/by/LenEdgerly/in/The-Kindle-Chronicles/episode/TKC-191-Margaret-Atwood/