Month: February 2012

From Kindle 2 to Kindle Touch (Kindle 4)

I seldom upgrade my gears even the gears’ new version / generation are released, instead I always skip one generation between each upgrade. That applies to my M4/3 cameras, iPhone, iPad and of course the Kindle as well. My previous Kindle is a white color Kindle 2, and I skipped the very good Kindle 3 (now the Kindle Keyboard) but waited for the Kindle Touch. So, the day Amazon made the Kindle Touch available to customers outside US like us, I ordered the fourth generation Kindle and the Lighted Leather Cover …

Kindle 2 and Kindle Touch

Without a keyboard like Kindle 2 / 3, the Kindle Touch is very small and lightweight. And with the same reason, you need to touch the screen to turn pages and change any settings … quite frankly touching the screen to action is not as easy as pressing a button in previous Kindle verions. However the E Ink display is still very good for reading.

One thing I note from this latest Kindle is the menu options will change depends on what you’re doing – for example, the menu in the main homepage is different with the one while you’re reading and in the Settings screen. Anyway, first few things you need to do after you receive your Kindle Touch:

  1. From the home screen (the book list screen), press the Menu button in upper right, and turn on the Wi-Fi (“Turn On Wireless” option). If needed, in the same menu, select “Settings” and use the “Wi-Fi Networks” option to connect to the right Wi-Fi Access point.
  2. Then register your Kindle with the “Registration” option in the “Settings” screen.
  3. Set the password of the device, the time and personal information with the “Device Options” in the “Settings” screen.
  4. You can also set the social network through the “Reading Options”
  5. Once connected, and registered, go back to the home screen and you shall be able to download all the books to the new Kindle one by one.

I also tried the Kindle Shop (the shopping cart icon on top) and bought my first ebook for the new Kindle Touch – Likeable Social Media: How to Delight Your Customers, Create an Irresistible Brand, and Be Generally Amazing on Facebook (& Other Social Networks)

Lastly, in case you want to take some screenshots of Kindle like what I did for this blog post, all you need to do is to hold the home button for a while and then tap the screen. The screenshot in GIF format will be stored in the root directory of the Kindle where you can copy to your PC once connected via the USB cable. Hope it helps.

Enjoy !!

Organize your files and desktop around Dropbox

Following is a screenshot of my laptop at home (no kidding !!) and as you can see, there are only 5 icons in the Windows 7 desktop. How neat … In fact, my computer at work has the same desktop view.

This post is about how I organize my files to declutter the desktop, but more importantly, how to make it work around the Dropbox service (and any other cloud storage services or your private Internet accessible NAS). That basically makes all your important files accessible from Internet, whenever you want, and whereever you are.

Before we start the work, you need to answer yourself one question, that is “how many ways you want to access your files ?”. In my case, I have computers at work, at home and of course mobile devices like smartphone and tablet. Therefore, I can classify all the files I ever created into the following categories, in terms of access methods:

  1. I want to access files created from my home computer;
  2. I want to access files created from my office computer;
  3. I want to access files created from my mobile devices

If I further elaborate those access methods, I have a combination of:

A) Files and folders created by home computer,

i) access from home computer only;

ii) access from any computers;

B) Files and folders created by office computer,

i) access from office computer only;

ii) access from any computers;

C) Files and folders created by any computer,

i) access only from locally;

ii) access from any computer;

As you can see A (i), B(i) essentially are the same as C(i) in the cases of home and office computer, so in principle the access method of files and folders are:

  1. Files created by any computer but access only locally; (i.e. the computer that created the files)
  2. Files created by home computer and accessible by other computers;
  3. Files created by office computer and accessible by other computers, and;
  4. Files created anywhere, but accessible by other computers.

To make the above works, all I need is to create 4 folders, of which 3 of them are created in Dropbox. And they are:

  1. A folder names – “Desktop – Local“, this is a folder in each computer and stores the local created files / folders and will not share to any other computer and the Dropbox;
  2. A shortcut to a folder names – “Desktop – Home“. The folder is created in Dropbox. Files / folders that created by home computer but like to share with other computer shall store here;
  3. A shortcut to a folder names – “Desktop – Office“. The folder is created in Dropbox. Files / folders that created by office computer but like to share with other computer shall store here;
  4. A shortcut to a folder names – “Desktop – Virtual“. The folder is created in Dropbox. Files / folders that created by any computer but like to share with other computer shall store here.

Lastly, don’t forget to install the Dropbox software to your computer to synchronize all these folders. In summary, with this approach, I minimize all sorts of files and folders in all my computers. In addition, any files and folders that need to be shared are nicely organized and stored in the Cloud storage Dropbox.com and I can easily distinguish where the files are created (home computer or work computer – for personal or work files).

Hope you will find it useful !!