Category: Services & Products

Kindle 2 US vs. Kindle 2 International version

I bought my Kindle 2 (now the US version) last March, with a dozen of Kindle books afterward (see update 5 of how to purchase Kindle US books from outside US). Unfortunately, I broke the screen exactly six months later and therefore I decided to buy the Kindle International version to replace the broken one.

The new Kindle certainly looks the same as the US version, the screen is still easy to read and the keyboard is still difficult to use. Some minor differences are though:

  • The packing of Kindle 2 International version looks cheap, compare to the US version.
  • Once connected to my computer, the drive number of the Kindle is now I: drive (I suppose it stands for International version) instead of previously K: drive.
  • There are some new screen-savers.
  • The firmware version is 2.2.

Once fully charged the new Kindle, you may want to register the device first. Since the new device supports the phone network around the globe (US version support Sprint network only), you can now do it by submitting your Amazon account email address and password thru “Home” / “Menu” / “Settings” / “Register”. The submission is slow. Looks like the network connection is GPRS only, even though 3G is available everywhere in Hong Kong.

However, two important questions came to mind …

  1. Can I transfer the books to the new Kindle 2 ?
  2. Can I read the US ebooks in the Kindle 2 international version ?

First, I tried to copy the ebooks (as I have a backup in my computer) to the new Kindle 2 and it didn’t work. I believe it is a protection to prevent people copying the books (.azw files) from one device to another … each of the books may have stamped some information of the registered Kindle(s) in your account.

Luckily, there are three ways to do it :

  1. Provided you registered your device to your Amazon account, you will find your previously purchased book in the “Archived items” in your Kindle (of course you needed to register your device first). Just pick the books and redownload again thru the phone network – again the process is quite slow.
  2. I also tried another approach – that is log into your Amazon account, select “Manage your Kindle”, then in the “Your Orders” section, pull down the “Deliver to …” menu and select your new Kindle as the destination device. It also works. But that may incur the extra US$ 1.99 download fee.
  3. The third approach is to download the book again to your PC and transfer to your new Kindle. As long as your new Kindle is registered, the book shall be able to copy to your new Kindle without any problem (the ebook probably now stamped with your new Kindle information).

You can select the “Sync and check for new items” from the home menu to force the Kindle to connect to download the books. The books showed in the Home menu of the Kindle a while later, one by one … and I can read the books again. Even the books are purchased for my US Kindle, I can read it with my new Kindle international version – looks like there is no regional check here.

So far, so good …

Kindle international version in box

Kindle US, Kindle International verison

Kindle accessories

Other than the Kindle reader itself, you may think all you need is the leather cover from Amazon:

But sometimes, you need better protection than the standard cover (I broke the screen of my first Kindle because the Amazon cover is not that tough …), a stand for your Kindle and may be, a reading light as well. And here are my recommendations … turn out a better cover can also works as a Kindle stand and it can fit a reading light as well !!

Lastly, other than Kindle for iPhone, what else is better than reading your Kindle books from your PC ? Yes, the Kindle for PC is almost ready, register here !!

What is Google Wave ?

Yes, I got the Google Wave account (Thank you … you know who you are). The “wave” concept is not difficult to understand and the application is not hard to use, but the big question is what can I do with it ?

Here are two videos about Google Wave and also one great example of using this powerful (?) tool … believe it or not, movie script writing. Enjoy !!

Oh by the way, my Google Wave id is michael [dot] yung [at] googlewave [dot] com.

Facebook effect on blog

According to Facebook’s own statistics, they now have over 250 million active users. In other words, if Facebook were a country, it would be the fourth most populated country in the world, just behind China, India, United States. So what does it mean to a blogger ? I actually don’t know / care until I checked the web traffic of my tiny blog last night.

First I checked the top 10 posts of my site, and here is the list:

  1. Facebook photo album image size
  2. Using Kindle outside US
  3. Buy Kindle 2 from outside US
  4. Buy Kindle books from outside US
  5. Reading PDF documents in Kindle 2
  6. Registering Kindle 2 from outside US
  7. Kindle for iPhone from outside US
  8. Gallery
  9. WordPress Thesis theme
  10. Kindle 2 vs. Kindle DX

Yes right, even though I wrote many posts in the last six months on Kindle 2 and Kindle DX (and in fact sold quite a few units of them via Amazon), but as you can see the top post is Facebook photo album image size. That is, a lot of Facebook users really care about how to format their photos, and make it crisp in their Facebook albums.

And then I checked the most popular search terms which led to my site, here are the results:

  1. Facebook photo size
  2. Kindle outside us
  3. Facebook picture size
  4. Facebook image size
  5. Kindle hong kong
  6. Using kindle outside us
  7. Kindle 2 hong kong
  8. Kindle 2 singapore
  9. Register kindle outside us
  10. Buy kindle books outside us

Similar findings here – lots of searches about Kindle reached my site, but 3 of the top 4 searches are actually related to Facebook photo / picture / image size. So, the lesson learnt ? Keep writing good blog posts related to Facebook, as long as it is one of the most popular websites in the world.