Back and Forth Forever

After debating with myself for a long time I finally decided to make the plunge and grab an Amazon Kindle.  After a few days of playing around with it I’m very impressed it.  My biggest concern was if the battery life would really hold up during a long weekend away from home and potentially without power.  The result was all I could hope for.  After having the device powered on and actively used I’ve managed to get about 25 hours of use out of the device with it still being at 1/2 charge.  Most impressive indeed.

The screen is definitely easy on the eyes and does a great job rendering text, although pictures don’t look so good.  It’s about what I’d expect from a greyscale E-Ink display.  There iss minor ghosting of the previous “page” but not enough to be overly distracting.  After switching to the next page the screen will go black for a split second then render the next page.  This is a bit distracting at first but I’ve gotten used to it.

The biggest downside of the Kindle is most definitely the shell’s form factor.  The device itself is small and very lightweight but there doesn’t seem to be an easy way to hold it without accidently hitting either the Next Page or Prev Page buttons accidentally.  Maybe with more use or a protective case I’ll be able to get past this obvious design flaw, but out of the box it’s definitely cumbersome.

The Kindle reads a good variety of formats: .mobi, .prc, .txt, .jpg, .gif, HTML, MS Word, and Amazon’s own .azw format.  After a bit of browsing I found that Mobipocket can convert .pdf files to .prc with little effort.  All in all, you should be able to convert any eBooks to a format the Kindle will recognize.

One of the biggest benefits of the Kindle is the considerable discount on purchasing a book from Amazon.  After unboxing the Kindle for the first time it was pretty cool to see that it had been preconfigured to my Amazon account with a personalized “Welcome Aaron” message, which is a nice touch.  I recently purchased “Out of Mao’s Shadow: The Struggle for the Soul of a New China” which can be bought in hardcover form for $18.48 (list $25) or through the Kindle for $9.99.  Most New York Times best sellers are all $9.99 or under so if you’re an avid reader the Kindle should pay for itself in no time.  Whether you purchase the book on the Kindle or on your computer in under a minute the book will automatically download over a free CDMA connection to your Kindle.

One of my favorite features is the search.  I did a search for China and five results came up in the books on my device or I could select Dictionary entries, Wikipedia, Web, or Kindle Store.  Also if you come across an unfamiliar word while reading if you scroll up to that line and click the scroll wheel you’ll get definitions from The New Oxford American Dictionary for all words on that line.

Besides reading books and E-Books you can use the Kindle to play mp3s browse the web and grab RSS feeds.  It’s a wonder that you can do all this without any additional fees.  The internal storage space is relatively small at 200mb but that should be more then enough space for most people, and if not, it’s expandable via an SD memory card slot.  All in all, it’s very impressive for a first gen device and if you’re not interested now I’m sure the next iteration will turn more then a few heads.

There’s a small but active Kindle hacking community that I’m still discovering I’ll talk about that and some cool shortcuts and Easter Eggs after the break.

Here are a few shortcuts you won’t find in any manual:

Global keys
Alt-Shift-R reboot Kindle
Alt-Shift-. restart GUI
Alt-Shift-G make screenshot
Shift-Sym start demo

Home
Alt-Shift-M Minesweeper
Alt-Z rescan picture directories
Alt-T show time

Reader
Alt-B toggle bookmark
Alt-T spell out time
Alt-0 enable/disable slideshow
Alt-1 start slideshow (if enabled)
Alt-2 stop slidehow
Alt-PageForward/PageBackward go to next/prev annotation or one “chunk” (1/20th of a book) forward or backward

Settings
411 show diagnostics data
511 run loopback call test
611 diagnostic data service call
c/e/s
126 Lab126 team members

Font List
J show/hide justification options

Picture viewer
Alt-Shift-0 set current picture as screensaver
F toggle fullscreen mode

Minesweeper
I,J,K,L up,left,down,right
M mark mine
R restart
Space open cell
Scroll move cursor up/down
Alt-Scroll move cursor left/right
H return to Home screen

Text input
Alt-Backspace clear all
Alt-H/Alt-J move cursor
(the following don’t work in search field for some reason)
Alt-6 ?
Alt-7 ,
Alt-8 :
Alt-9 ”
Alt-0 ‘

Browser
It seems there is a location capability (GPS?) in the CDMA module. I cannot check it as I’m not in USA but the following shortcuts are programmed inside the browser.
Alt-1 show current location in google maps
Alt-2 find gas station nearby
Alt-3 find restaurants nearby
Alt-4
Alt-5 find custom keyword nearby
Alt-D dump debug info to the log and toggle highlight default item
Alt-Z toggle zone drawing and show log

Audio Player
Alt-F next
Alt-P play/stop

List thanks to Igor Skochinsky.