Here are some pretty simple changes you can make to changes to take Google out of the picture for most things.

Applications

Something to keep in mind with applications is how you purchase them now. You likely have a credit card number on file with Google Wallet to make purchases easy. When you use a service like Amazon, you can have a card on file with them to make the purchase of applications just as smooth. Other markets may require a Paypal or offer other payment options.

Amazon App Store for Amazon

The Amazon App Store for Android is the most popular app store aside from Google Play (formerly the Google Market). A cool feature of the Amazon App Store for Android is there is a free application everyday that would normally cost you money.

Most of the applications in the Amazon App Store for Android are what you will find in Google Play. There are some difference though. You can’t get the Google applications like Gtalk or Google+ apps. There are other 3rd party apps that can manage these services though if you need to access your accounts.

GetJar

Getjar is a smaller alternative Android market, but GetJar has several applications for free. The Free Android applications are in the Gold category. When you use Getjar, you will be more likely to find lesser known applications that would normally get buried in the larger app stores.

Email

There are a lot of email providers out there. Choosing one that suits your needs can be easier for some people than others. While email is basically for sending and receiving information, Gmail offers a lot of cool features that are hard to pass up. Getting an email service offering most of the same abilities will be tough, so you will need to decide what is most important to you in an email service.

Yahoo Mail

Yahoo is an ever-evolving email service. The Android application is pretty basic and will let you send and receive emails. You can also move emails from folder to folder. Syncing your contacts is pretty much the only extra feature.

Hotmail

Your MSN, Live or Hotmail account will fill a basic need for email on your Android phone. If you have an organizational folder system in your Live account, you can see these folders and transfer emails to other folders from your inbox. You can choose to sync your contacts and your Hotmail calendar with your Android.

Calendar

People are pretty particular about their calendars. If you use your Android calendar a lot, you may rely on Google Calendar too. If you switch to a service like Hotmail, you can sync their calendar with your Android phone.

Keeping your calendar in sync is a breeze with Hotmail. Add an appointment in either your phone or your web account and it will sync.

Browser

For those who browse the web from their Android phone, you may not want to give Google information about how you search and what you search for. Using a different browser other than the pre-installed Android browser will help.

Firefox

Firefox is a really cool mobile browser. The Android version of Firefox offers a lot of the same add-ons you may be using for your desktop Firefox making the download to your Android a good choice.

Dolphin HD

Dolphin HD is a feature-packed Android browser that gives desktop browsers a run for their money. You can download extensions to customize Dolphin HD to create your ultimate mobile web browsing choice.

Music

Music lovers will be happy to see there is another choice to using Google Music

Amazon Cloud Player

Google music is pretty cool. However, Amazon has a similar service letting you store your personal library and MP3s you purchase through Amazon on their servers. Amazon Cloud Player was also around before Google Music too. You can stream your songs right from the cloud or have them available for offline playing.

Conclusion

Google is awesome at what they do but too much of a good thing can be bad. Sure,by putting all of your information in one spot, you can make your life easier, but if you aren’t comfortable with every bit of your life being in one place, know there are other options while still using an Android device.

Now, to the poll of the week: How comfortable are you to entrust your personal data to Google?

Take Our Poll

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It’s not like it was ever a bother to launch the apps to read the same material you have on your Kindle. It was never even a second thought until Amazon launched a new Cloud Reader web app that somehow makes the old app outdated. In addition, they launched a new Kindle Store web app to make shopping for ebooks even easier.

You can start off in this new experience by heading to the iPad-optimized Kindle Store page. Sure, you can get the same content at Amazon.com, but it’s doesn’t give you that same rich experience you’ve come to recognize from the iPad. Originally the Kindle app allowed you to buy new ebooks directly from the app, but they eliminated that option last year. Now you can once again have that rich experience, either on Safari or with a created app. It’s your choice.

You can begin this new experience by heading to the iPad-optimized Kindle Store page. Sure, you can get the same content at Amazon.com, but it’s doesn’t give you that same rich experience you’ve come to recognize from the iPad. Originally the Kindle app allowed you to buy new ebooks directly from the app, but they eliminated that option last year. Now you can once again have that rich experience, yet do so in in Safari.

This message lets you know that you might not have enough memory allocated to the web app. However, it guides you through the process of changing that and allowing more memory. Not that it’s a difficult process, as it just comes up with a message letting you know how much additional memory it will allocate, and asking if that’s okay.

Once enough memory is allocated to the web app, it opens up your Kindle library, assuming you have an existing Kindle account. Again, it’s optimized for the iPad, and scrolling through your entire Kindle library is a cinch. It’s now easy to switch back and forth from your library to the store, just as it was with the original app, as a link back to the store is provided in the upper right.

The text of your book is displayed in a very easy-to-read fashion leaving no distractions. Flipping through pages is made simple with swipes. Options are made possible with a long tap. This brings  up a menu across the top that includes bookmarks, and the pages are then indicated at the bottom. It tells you what page you are on and shows a percentage of how much of the book you have read. Sliding the bar left to right advances you through the book or returns you to earlier pages.

You can customize the experience to fit your own preferences and needs. The type size can be adjusted through five different sizes, and the background color can be changed from white to ivory to black. Forget your reading glasses? No problem; just set the type to extra large. When you have them again, return to the type to a smaller font size.

If you don’t like having to access the Cloud Reader and Kindle Store on Safari on your iPad, you can use the Sharing link in the Safari browser to make an app that will sit on your home screen. You can either make two separate apps or just one. You don’t’ have to be limited to just reading on your iPad, however. It’s still just as easy to switch back and forth reading your books on the iPad, iPhone, PC or Mac, and Kindle device, as the place you leave off reading is kept and synced. No matter which device you use to read your book the next time, it will  pick up where you left off.

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Here’s how to remove your credit card detail in Amazon AWS.

1. Go to Amazon.com (the main Amazon site where you do your shopping) and login with your Amazon AWS username and password.

2. Click on Your Account and scroll down till you see the “Manage Payment Options”.

3. Here you should be able to delete your credit card detail.

That’s it.

Image credit: BigStockPhoto

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A Bit About “The Cloud”

As with many tech buzzwords, you might get a different definition of this term from each person you ask. Some might describe it as a way of scaling your computing resources to fit your needs.

Let’s say ABC Books, a local book store wants to run a site where their customers can buy books online. The “traditional” approach would be for someone to dust off a server, install an OS, run a webserver application and load their site on it.

When virtualization was becoming popular, people started using another method called the Virtual Private Server or VPS. With this method, you can have multiple operating systems running on the same machine, each with their own setup and applications.

This allows each user to have full control over their system, but without the expense of dedicated hardware. ABC Books, our example complany, would likely save money by switching to VPS, as they don’t need the server’s full power and can share the cost with other users. The “cloud” method takes virtualization even further. Since you’re already virtualizing the software, what happens if you virtualize the hardware too? The essence of cloud computing is taking a huge collection of computing resources and intelligently assigning them as needed. Take this diagram for example.

You can see that most of the portions are different sizes. ABC Books might only need a portion of one server, but Bob’s House of Free iPads might generate more traffic and need multiple servers. One of the greatest benefits of cloud computing is that you can scale your resources up and down as needed.

Let’s say a huge celebrity talks about their love of ABC Books, and suddenly the site is getting hundreds of times the amount of traffic it normally would. Their dedicated server is probably not equipped to handle that. Likewise, a VPS (though more flexible) will still need a hardware transfer or upgrade to keep up. A cloud based server, however, could just be “turned up” to handle the excess traffic. When the buzz has died down, you just reduce your resources back to normal.

Signing up for EC2

Note: The free account is indeed free, but during the signup, you will be asked for credit card information. See Amazon’s terms for details.

Log in or create your Amazon EC2 account. Unfortunately, new user registrations can sometimes remain pending for several hours.

Once your Amazon Web Services account is set up, you can access your management console by clicking the Sign In to AWS Management Console link in the top-right corner of aws.amazon.com or clicking here.

Creating an Instance

Once your account is activated and you’re able to access the AWS Console, you’ll probably want to start by creating server instance to run some software.

The first thing you’ll be asked to do is decide on a base platform. The Amazon Linux is a good bet if you’re looking to demo the service.

The next page lets you set some details regarding your instance. You’ll probably want to leave these settings as they are, seeing as how the free tier only supports the Micro instance type, and Availability Zone should make no difference at this stage.

The next page, Advanced Instance Options, should be left at defaults unless you have a specific reason to do otherwise.

The last step of your Instance Options is the one where you choose tags. This step is optional, and nothing will be broken if you specify no tags, but it’s recommended to at least apply a value to the Name key to make this instance easy to identify.

The next step is to create a key pair. Instead of passwords, EC2 uses cryptographic keys to identify users. If that sounds confusing don’t worry, it’s really not that complicated. The first step is to name and generate a key pair, then download that to your computer. I’d recommend saving it to ~/.ssh/.

Once you’ve got the keys saved, you’ll need to make sure it’s private. You cannot skip this step, as SSH will refuse to use a publicly viewable key. It’s quick and easy to set this, just open your Linux or OSX terminal and type:

chmod 600 ~/.ssh/MyEC2Key.pem

and to actually use it to connect, go with

#You will of course have to wait until your instance is actually running
ssh -i ~/.ssh/MyEC2Key.pem root@your-ec2-dns-address.com

Finally, you’ve just got to open a hole in the firewall for your app. The dropdown list contains several common network options such as SSH, DNS, and of course HTTP. If you want to enter a custom port, here’s your chance.

Once you review and launch your instance, you’re set! You can now use SSH as indicated above to connect to your public DNS (highlighted in the screenshot below).

Conclusion

From here on out, it’s your “server” to deal with as you wish. Applications can be installed and removed however you see fit. The service is can be tailored to exactly the application you have in mind – anything from a web server to VPN gateway to a place to host your files. Good luck and have fun on the cloud!

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For Kindle device

1. If you do not have an Amazon account, go to Amazon.com and create an account (skip this step if you already have an account).

2. Once you have registered an account, go to “Manage your Kindle” page and click the “Country Setting” at the left bottom corner.

3. Change your country to “United States”. If all you need is an account to purchase and download ebooks (and not buying physical product from Amazon), it is better to change your address to a US-based address. There are plenty of online services that can provide you with a free US-based address, just google for it. Personally I used USAddressInc.com.

4. Register your credit card detail. It doesn’t have to be a US-based credit card, as long as it is valid.

5. That’s it. You should be able to purchase ebooks from Kindle store now. Amazon does check the IP address from time to time, so when purchasing ebooks, it is best to connect to a US VPN. Bestfreevpn.com is one VPN service that you can use for free.

For Android devices

The problem with Android is that the Amazon Kindle app is not available in the market for devices located outside of United States. The best way is to search for the kindle apk app online and manually install it in your device. XDA developers forum would be the best place you want to visit for this.

Once you have downloaded and install the app, you can follow the steps above to purchase ebooks from the Kindle store.

For iOS devices

The only restriction here is your iTunes account. As long as your iTunes account is an US account, you will be able to download the Kindle app.

1. Follow the steps here to create an App Store account without a credit card. Remember to choose “United States” as the country.

2. Open your iTunes. Log out of your existing account and log in to this newly created account.

3. Search and install the Kindle app. Sync it with your iOS devices.

Purchasing ebooks from the Kindle app in iOS devices

Ever since Apple changed their in-app purchase policy, Amazon has also changed the way ebooks are purchased for the iOS Kindle app. For your info, you won’t be able to purchase ebooks directly from the app now.

To purchase/download ebooks:

1. Open your mobile Safari and go to the Kindle bookstore site.

2. Log in to the US account that you have created. Search for the books that you want to purchase/download.

3. Click the “Buy now with 1-click.” and select your iOS device in the “Deliver to” dropdown field.

4. When you are done with the purchase, you will see a button “Go to Kindle For iPad”. Click on it.

That’s it. Your Kindle app will launch and download the ebook to your collection.

Related Posts:

• Amazon Cloud Reader: An Improved Reading Experience For The iPad
• Tips and Tricks For Your Shiny New Kindle
• Kindle for iPhone App: Connecting It All Together
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My first foray into the world of e-reading was with the Kindle app on the iPhone. I wanted to be able to read e-books for that portability and cheaper price, but at that time Kindle devices, and most other e-readers, were well over $200. I just didn’t want to spend that much. Not only is the Kindle app free, you don’t have to have the Kindle device to be able to use the app.

The Kindle app works well in conjunction with Amazon. When browsing e-books on amazon.com, you can buy them while on the site, and it automatically sends them to the Kindle app. The next time you launch the app, it’s there. Or, you can shop for books directly from the app itself. If you click on Kindle Store, if takes you to amazon.com on Safari where you can shop for books the same way.

With the books downloaded into the Kindle app, you can read them and not have to worry about losing your place. The app automatically holds that place for you where you last left off. It will also hold additional bookmarks for you if you want to remember other pages other than your current location. Additionally, you can leave annotations to certain selections, and anyone reading the book after this point can see your annotations as well as any others that have been left.

Once Kindle came out with apps for a Mac and PC, the Kindle app for iPhone increased its usefulness. Now if you didn’t want to read a book on your phone, you could read it on your computer and vice versa. Whipersync will keep the two at your most recent reading location so that you can transfer back and forth with ease. It makes reading e-books every bit as mobile as reading a hard copy book.

While I still don’t have a Kindle device, I bought one for my sister for Christmas. I actually started with an off-brand e-reader as a way of saving a few bucks, but with it being nearly impossible to work with, I returned it and bought her the Kindle instead. A voracious reader, she couldn’t have been happier with the Kindle. Amazon ships the devices already synced to your account, so it shipped pre-loaded with all the books I had already bought and read on my Kindle app. We kept it synced to my account, and it seamlessly updates between the iPhone app, the desk app, and the device itself.

After I had already downloaded the Kindle App, the iPhone came out with their iBooks app. Trying both, the iBooks app doesn’t have near the ease of use that the Kindle app does, which is odd for a native iPhone app. It’s on my iPhone, but I rarely ever use it, unless it’s to read something that the iPhone sends to the application. I definitely don’t ever read books in it.

Aside from the fact that some users think reading a book on a smaller screen like the iPhone can be cumbersome, the only other disadvantage to the Kindle app for iPhone is that you can’t read magazines or newspapers on it like you can the regular Kindle device. You also can’t read them on the Kindle apps for the Mac and PC. If that’s the sole reason you’re considering the download, to read your news, it’s not worth it. But if you’re looking for an easy way to read books, a way that is as every bit mobile as you are, then this is the way to go.

The Kindle App can be downloaded from Amazon and iTunes.

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Overview

First, let’s explain a little bit about exactly what Cloud Player can do. The free service gives you 5GB of storage space as part of the Amazon Cloud Drive. Cloud Drive alone is all you need to just store files, and it’s Cloud Player which makes it worth the effort for music. You’ve got your choice between a web-based player or an Android app. This article will focus on the web based portion, as it applies to all readers.

To get your 5GB claimed, just head over to Amazon and log in/sign up (as of this post, the signing up is available for US customers only).

Adding Music

For starters, you’re a little bit limited in what will work with the Cloud Player. It’ll work with DRM-free MP3 or AAC files, no Vorbis, FLAC, etc. If you’ve got DRMed music, you’re out of luck. But then again, you probably already know that.

The “proper” way to work with this service is to use the Amazon MP3 Uploader, which is an Adobe Air application. It’s not the only way, however, which we’ll cover in a moment. For those who wish to use the uploader, you’ll be asked to install it when setting up your Cloud Player account.

It will scan your computer for music on startup, but you do have the option to stop the scan and manually select the music of your choice, or optionally import from software such as iTunes. Unfortunately, it will attempt to scan your drive again the next time you launch the uploader. And the next. And the next…

If you can’t or won’t use the MP3 Uploader, there’s always the plain old Cloud Drive uploader. Just log into the Amazon Cloud Drive just as you would the Cloud Player. Upload the files to your music folder or subfolder of your choice.

And they’ll be available in the Cloud Player web interface. Speaking of which…

Cloud Player Web Interface

Now that you’ve got you music up, its time to do something with it. On the left you’ve got a navigation panel similar to many local music player applications where you can view your collection by Artist, Genre, etc. Cloud Player even handles the fetching of album art (if it can).

Playlists are fully supported as well, and items are added to the playlist by dragging them from any browsing view and dropping onto the playlist name.

The Non-Free Experience

If you wish to go beyond the free service, you can purchase new tunes from the MP3 Store or some additional capacity to hold it all. Amazon worked in some pretty tempting bonuses as well. For example, if you purchase any MP3 album from their web store, the album is automatically added to your Cloud Drive and your drive capacity is expanded to 20GB for free (for a year).

If you’re interested in expanding your storage space without necessarily buying an album, the prices are as follows (as of the time of this writing)

5 GB FREE
20 GB $20.00 / year
50 GB $50.00 / year
100 GB $100.00 / year
200 GB $200.00 / year
500 GB $500.00 / year
1000 GB $1,000.00 / year

Conclusion

Until Google and Apple launch their theoretical competitors, there’s little basis for comparison for the combined Cloud Drive and Cloud Player. This author is still getting used to the idea of Amazon as a leading edge tech company instead of just an online retailer, but to date their cloud offerings have been generally well received. These two new services are certainly impressive in their simplicity, and both do precisely the job they were designed for and seem to do it well. It would be nice to see some external APIs become available to allow things like local client integration or drive mapping, but that may be in the works. For now, Cloud Player seems to be an extremely simple and capable tool. Often when writing software reviews, we try the application, write about it, and move on. This time, I think I’ll really use this in my daily life. At least until something better comes along.

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Note: There is a free giveaway for this great software. Read on for more details.
Update: the free giveaway contest has ended.

Why Amazon S3?

Amazon S3 is a online storage service offered by Amazon. It is a paid service and users have to pay for the storage space used and the utilized bandwidth. While it is not free, the true advantage of Amazon S3 is that it is secure and reliable. For your info, you are using the same infrastructure that host millions of Amazon products and transaction detail. If that is safe enough for Amazon, you should have no worry about the security of your data. Furthermore, there is no monthly fee to tied you down. You pay for what you use, nothing more, nothing less.

CloudBerry Backup

Most of you will have heard about the CloudBerry Explorer that allows you to manage your Amazon S3 account from Windows desktop. CloudBerry Backup is built on top of the explorer technology and allows you to backup your files to Amazon S3. There is also a restore option to restore the files in the event that your computer crashed.

Setting up a Backup Plan

The usage of CloudBerry Backup is simple. After you have installed the software, you have to spend a whole good 5 minutes to setup a backup plan. The backup  wizard is lengthy, but is nonetheless important. Once you have finished setting up the backup plan, all you need to do is to run it manually, or schedule it to run automatically at regular interval.

On the dashboard, click the link “Setup Backup Plan”. It will guide you through the backup wizard.

There are several useful features in CloudBerry Backup that are worth mentioning. First is the ability to compress and encrypt your data. This will reduce the size of the file (and reduce your cost) and also add an extra protection to your file.

Secondly is the data versioning. it can keep several versions of the same file so you can restore to an older version if you have mistakenly make some changes.

Thirdly, other than Amazon S3, you can also configure it to backup to other location, such as external hard drive, Azure, Mezeo, Dunkel and Walrus. That should give you enough options to choose from.

Once you have setup your Backup Plan, you can go to the “Backup Plans” tab and click the “Run Backup Now” button.

Restoring your files

Restoring your files is as easy as running the Restore Wizard and follow its instructions. It will prompt you to choose the version to restore and the destination to restore to.

There are plenty of backup tools in the market, but CloudBerry Backup has its own niche by allowing you to backup to Amazon S3 and several other services. The backup wizard might be lengthy, but it is really a set-it-once-and-leave-it solution. With the security and reliability of Amazon S3, it really take worries off your mind.

Free Giveaway

Here’s what you have been waiting for…free giveaway. The developer of CloudBerry Backup has kindly sponsored 5 license keys for CloudBerry Backup desktop edition. The usual price is $29.90, but you stand to get it for free today. Just follow the steps below:

Step 1

Be our Facebook fan or follow us in Twitter :

(If you have already done this, skip to step 2)

STEP 2

Fill up the form below. This is to make sure that we can contact you when you win the license. We promise that we won’t spam you.

Update: the free giveaway contest has ended.

STEP 3
Share this post either in Facebook or Twitter, or leave a comment below.

This giveaway begins now and ends Wednesday, 10th Mar at 2359hrs Eastern Time. The winners will be selected at random and announced via email.

Share and enjoy!

CloudBerry Backup

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Generally speaking, a Kindle book is just HTML and CSS. The part that can be difficult is figuring out which tags the Kindle actually supports. There are also a couple of unique tags that are not standard HTML but that you can use to add formatting to your Kindle book.

Getting Started

If you are using Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) service, it is quick and easy to publish your book. This guide assumes you already have the book finished, know how to use Amazon’s KDP website, and have a basic knowledge of HTML.

The first thing you should do is sign up for KDP, and after you have an account, click “Add a new title”. Enter in all of the information you have about your book and add a cover image if you want. The last thing you will do on this page will be to upload the actual book. For now, do nothing else or save the book as a draft and come back later.

Formatting

Since the Kindle is formatted in HTML, you could export your current document from OpenOffice.org or other software directly to HTML using the KDP upload interface. The important thing to note is that some formatting may not work correctly. I found the best method to be using plain text and reformatting the entire book. To do this, follow these steps:

1. Use your HTML editor of choice to create a new document. You can use standard XHTML in the DOCTYPE. Save the new document in a new folder.

2. In the title tag, put the title of your book:

<head>
<title>My New Book</title>
</head>

3. To create a title page, you can use the header tag (<h1></h1>) or use an image. To center-align any text, use an inline css style (or simple stylesheet), for example:

<h1 style=”text-align: center”>My Centered Text</h1>

4. The Kindle does not recognize whitespace, so artificially inserted breaks will not show up. If you want to skip a page or simply start a new page at the end of a chapter, you must use a special tag:

<mbp:pagebreak />

Any place you insert that tag will automatically start a new page.

5. For every new paragraph, use the <p> tag, and the Kindle will automatically indent it.

6. For any images, save them in the same folder with your document and link to them with the normal tag:

<img src=”name.jpg” alt=”My Name”>

7. If you absolutely need to add white space, you can use formatting like this:

<p height="40">&nbsp;</p>

8. For italics, use <em> and for bold use <strong>

Finishing and Publishing

There is really not much else to it. If you add too many styles and try to get fancy, you may find that they do not work or do not show up correctly. Remember, Kindle readers are accustomed to reading a black and white screen with plain pages and text. Adding too many spaces or strange formatting will probably just annoy them. You should leave it up to them and their configuration options to make any subtle formatting changes. They just want your readable content, not your visual artistic creation.

Once you have the book formatted, compress the entire folder with your HTML, optional CSS file and images to a zip file and upload it into Amazon’s KDP interface. Once uploaded, click “Preview book” to make sure it looks the way you intended. Generally speaking, the preview will show you how it will look on the Kindle. If it all looks good, go ahead and publish. If something is out of place, edit your HTML again and re-upload it until it is right.

Once the work is published, you may find that something is not quite right on the actual Kindle. In that case, you can still edit it and resubmit it to Amazon, without losing any of your other settings. E-book formatting is different for every reader, so you will still need to learn how to format your book for the Barnes and Noble Nook and others. Enjoy your new publishing audience and be sure to share your books with us.

Image credits: Wikipedia and Flickr

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DragonDisk is a desktop client for the Amazon S3 Service. It currently supports Linux and Windows, and with plans to expand to Mac and mobile platforms. It comes with Window explorer style of user interface and its users can easily manage their files with drag and drop.

Using DragonDisk in Linux

Linux users, download the tar version of the DragonDisk software. Extract the tar file to your Home folder.

Open the DragonDisk folder and run the dragondisk script. When prompted, click “Run”.

Go to “File -> Amazon S3 accounts“. Click “New” and enter your Amazon S3 access and secret keys. You can also choose to use HTTP or HTTPS protocol.

One good thing about DragonDisk is that you can encrypt your S3 account so others cannot access your account just by opening the application.

The main user interface comes with two pane. You can decide which pane to use for local and remote files. Generally, I would prefer to use the left pane for local directory while the right pane for the S3 storage.

Transferring of files (to and from S3 account) can easily be done by highlighting, dragging and dropping.

DragonDisk features

There are several features that I like in DragonDisk.

Metadata editor

After you have uploaded your files to your S3 account, there are several properties that you can set:

Reduced Redundancy Storage

ACL permissions

HTTP headers (and expiry date)

Web URL

Define whether the file should be accessed with HTTP or HTTPS protocol and should it be signed or as a torrent.

Folders synchronization

DragonDisk allows you to synchronize your local and remote folder. In another word, you can easily use DragonDisk as a backup software, much like the TimeMachine in Mac.

You can even configure the synchronization options whether to replace the files if it exist in the remote location.

Other useful features

• Support for versioning
• Proxy support.
• ACL inheritance.
• Support for CNAMEs
• Copy and move files between Amazon S3 accounts
• Detailed operations logs

In term of popularity, Dragon Disk is mostly unheard of. But when it comes to functionality, Dragon Disk is definitely one of the best that I have come across, not to mention that it is free and supports Linux while most S3 clients don’t. If you have not tried it, I urge you to try it now.

Let us know if you know of any other free S3 desktop client for Linux.

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Since buying the device last week, I have the chance to play around with the device and I have compiled a short list of tips and tricks that every Kindle user needs to know. These tips generally apply to the latest generation Kindle, however most of them work with the older versions as well.

Search and Indexing

Immediately after adding books to your Kindle you will notice that the battery meter drops very quickly. This is because after your books have been added to the Kindle, it will start indexing the text inside all the books. This is useful when you want to use the search feature. To check if the indexing has completed, search for a random word (e.g. “qwerty”) and you will see the number of items that are yet to be indexed.

In some cases you may notice that the indexing is stuck at a particular book. In this case you will have to reconnect the Kindle and re-transfer that particular book as it may have been corrupted during the earlier transfer.

Third-Party Apps

Calibre

The Kindle’s biggest failing is that it does not come with any companion software. However, Calibre attempts to fill this void by providing a multi-platform, feature-heavy eBook manager. We have already covered Calibre before, so I will not go into detail on what the software is capable of. Suffice to say, Calibre is the iTunes of eBook management.

Kindle Collection Manager

Another problem faced by Kindle users is the fact that the Kindle does not sort by folders. In fact it can only sort by “Author”, “Title”, “Most Recently Read”, and “Collections”. Collections are essentially custom tags that can be assigned to particular books. So, for example, you could have the book “To Kill a Mockingbird” in a Collection called “Crime” and in another Collection called “Fiction”.

While Calibre has a number of sorting methods, it does not have any way to manage the Collections on the Kindle. Fortunately, a member of MobileRead has taken it upon himself to develop the application Kindle Collection Manager. As the name suggests the sole purpose of this application is to sort the books on your Kindle into Collections.

Taking Screenshots on your Kindle

You will have noticed that I have a number of screenshots from my Kindle in this article.

To take screenshots on the Kindle simply hold the buttons “Alt + Shift + G” and the screen will flash momentarily. To retrieve your screenshots browse to the root directory of your Kindle and navigate to the “documents” folder. This folder contains all your saved books and the screenshots will be saved as GIF files.

Changing Your Default Country

Once you have registered your Kindle, you can manage your Kindle account through Amazon’s online portal.

If you live outside the United States you will find that some content (including certain books) which are unavailable to you. To get around this, you can simply change your country to the United States by adding a dummy billing address based in the United States.

Note: Erez from Download Squad has reported that Amazon is charging a higher price for its books for International users. Thus, no matter where you are from, it might be a good choice to set your country to United States.

Bonus: Games!

The Kindle is hardly a gaming platform but it does come with a few games and you can even download a couple more.

The Kindle comes built-in with Minesweeper which you can start by holding “Alt + Shift + M”. The controls are as follows:

• Up/Down/Left/Right: Cursor Keys
• Mark Mine: M
• Open Cell: Enter
• Restart: R

While in Minesweeper if you press the letter “G” you launch the game GoMoku. This is a variant of tic-tac-toe where you have to create a row of five crosses horizontally, vertically or diagonally. The controls are as follows:

• Up/Down/Left/Right: Cursor Keys
• Place X: Enter
• New Game: N
• Return to Minesweeper: M

Finally, you can also download Shuffled Row and Every Word for free from Amazon’s store.

Shuffled Row

Every Word

The above are the current tips and tricks that I have discovered. If you happen to know of any other useful Kindle tips let us know in the comments.

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While the iTunes store gives you access to a wide range of music and a one-click no-fuss purchase experience, it does come with a DRM restriction that prevents you from playing your favorite track on other devices. On the other hand, Amazon enables you to buy DRM-free high quality MP3 track, but you have to put in the extra effort to go to the Amazon site and search through the extensive database for that particular track. Now, wouldn’t it be great if you can combine the best of both World – search for the song in iTunes and buy the track in Amazon?

Advantageous MP3 is a mini iTunes script that is able to detect which song you are searching at iTunes store and brings you directly to the purchase site at Amazon. It is only 60kb in size and supports both Mac and Windows iTunes.

Download Advantageous MP3 for Mac here. Windows user can download it here.

Install the downloaded file.

Open your iTunes. You should see the Advantageous MP3 icon at the menu bar.

Now, go to your iTunes store and search for the song/album you want.

Click on the Advantageous MP3 icon and select Get MP3 From Amazon.

[For Mac users only] At the first run, it will prompt you to activate the GUI display at the Universal Access menu.

Check the box beside Enable access for assistive devices.

Back to your iTunes, click on the Get MP3 from Amazon again.

This time, your default browser will pop up and bring you to the album purchase page in Amazon. Proceed on to buy your MP3.

Once you have finished downloading your MP3, simply drag and drop it into iTunes to sync it with your iPod

That’s it.

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