Calibre Companion on Kindle Fire HD

May 26, 2014Oct 17, 2018 rjnorwich Kindle Calibre, calibre companion, Kindle Fire HD

Calibre Companion (CC) is an android app that can be used with the Calibre book library program on your PC. The app provides for:

wireless transfers of books from PC to android device,
indexing of books by author, title, tags or other metadata,
comprehensive book metadata synced between devices and
cover or list browsing for books.

The app requires that the main Calibre program be running on your computer in order to do wireless transfers or sync metadata. Also, metadata and tags can only be edited in the main Calibre program (not on your android device). The CC app is available in the Amazon App Store for $2.99.

The screenshot at the left shows the main browsing window of the app running on my Kindle Fire HD 8.9 (1st gen), with the books sorted by author.

Tap a book cover and the screen changes to show the book and metadata page.

Long-press a book cover and the app opens a reader app on the Kindle Fire HD to read the book.

The first time you select to read a book it will ask what reader app you want and does include the native Kindle reader app as a choice.

This screen shows the book details view. The command bar at the top changes to let you “Read” or “Delete” this book from this page.

A book “List” view with the grouping slider pane open, shows how to use tags to filter the display of books in the library. This is a very handy feature if you have a large library of books.

You can do a wireless book transfer as follows. In the CC app go to Settings>>Wireless Device Connection. I have IP address and port set to “Automatic” and it works with my home Wi-Fi.

However, it didn’t work the first time I tried to connect from Calibre on my PC. Eventually, I realized my firewall was blocking Calibre from making the connection. In my firewall program I had to find Calibre.exe, which was listed as “The main Calibre program” in the “T” portion of the list, not in the “C’s” where I expected it. Once I set it to “Allowed” all worked as advertised.

Inside Calibre on my computer, I added the “Connect/share” choice to the main toolbar. Now I can use it to “Start a wireless device connection” and press the “Connect” button in the CC app running on the Kindle Fire HD. If it’s successful the Kindle shows up as an active device in Calibre and I can use the regular “Send to Device” commands to send books or see books on the Kindle without a wired connection. This feature and the library off-line sorting and browsing make the Calibre Companion app worth the money.

Setting Up Your New KINDLE FIRE HD

Dec 14, 2013Dec 14, 2013 rjnorwich Kindle Kindle Fire HD

First Steps (wireless & e-mail)

First setup your wireless connection on the Kindle. On the home screen (tap the little house icon at bottom left to go there) swipe your finger down from the top of the screen to reveal the settings page. Tap Wireless and a list of wireless networks around you will be shown. ¹Tap your network in the list, enter the Wi-Fi network password and tap Connect.

Next setup your e-mail accounts. Tap the Home icon and swipe down from the top again to get the Settings screen. If you don’t see a heading of “Settings” followed by a list, tap the More icon which looks like a plus sign inside a white circle. Tap My Account. Tap Manage E-mail, Contacts, Calendars. Tap Add Account and choose your email provider from the next screen. Enter your e-mail address and password using the on-screen keyboard.² Add more accounts if you have them.

¹ The Kindle Wireless setting must be “ON” — if you have a hidden network that’s not shown in the list, (you chose to not broadcast the network SSID from your router) then you need to choose the Add Network + choice and enter a network ID and password.

² If you need capital letters tap the “up arrow” key to shift. For numbers and symbols tap the “?123” key (tap the “ABC” key to go back to letters). Tap the “Next” button to go to the next field in the entry form.

Tip: If you are ever on a screen where the home icon is hidden, you can get it back by a single tap at the bottom center of the screen.

Amazon Prime

You get one month of the Amazon Prime service for free when you registered your Kindle Fire HD. This entitles you to free 2-day shipping from amazon.com and several other services. After a month you’ll have to decide if you want to pay for an annual subscription.

You can “Shop” on amazon.com for Amazon Instant Video (shown as a Prime Instant Video) and stream them to your Kindle Fire HD for free. If you have a Roku media streamer or smart TV you can use its Amazon Instant Video app to stream movies and TV shows to your home theater.¹ You can “buy” one free “qualifying (Amazon.com Prime)” e-book per month as part of the service. There is also a Kindle Owners Lending Library where you can borrow a book for 30 days. For simplicity, “Amazon Prime” is a separate shopping category on the amazon.com site.

¹ An alternative is to buy a mini-HDMI to HDMI cable to plug your Kindle Fire HD into your TV’s HMDI port to watch and listen to your content on the home theater system.

Tip: If you do nothing else, get your free e-book before this offer expires.

Apps for Kindle Fire HD

There are already apps on your device and they are worth checking out. You already setup the e-mail app and if you went to the Amazon store you were using the Shop Amazon app. The Amazon AppStore for Android has thousands of paid and free apps that will work fine on your device. And it offers one (normally paid app) for free each day.

But first, a warning. Some Amazon apps on the site look to be things you’d want on your Kindle Fire HD (for instance, the Kindle Reader and Kindle AppStore apps) but these are already built-in to your device. They are offered in the store for users of Android phones or tablets which don’t have them built-in. Also, lamentably, many free apps are so riddled with ads and offers for paid upgrades that they are unusable. It’s OK to try them for a while then uninstall them¹ when you can’t stand them anymore.

And finally, many (most?) of the apps are designed for smart phones and their display doesn’t take advantage of the screen on an HD tablet. Look for apps that have “HD” in the name or say “for Kindle Fire”. Read some of the user comments and see if it’s worked well on the Kindle Fire HD. It’s still not a foolproof method, but it improves your chances of actually liking the app.

¹ To uninstall an app: from the home screen tap Apps on the header bar. On the Apps screen tap the “Device” button at the top center. Scroll to find the app to uninstall. Long-press the app icon and tap “Remove from Device” in the pop-up menu. You may have to confirm this action.

Tip: When you purchase an app on the store it is sent wirelessly to your Kindle, so be sure you have wireless turned on to receive the app.

Recommended Free Apps

Your local TV news station (search the AppStore for “tv news”)
ES File Explorer (manage & play files on your device or network)
DuckDuckGo Search (a Google alternative that saves nothing about you)
Evernote (organizes and creates notes and reminders)
Mahjong Deluxe HD Free (game)
NeoCal Lite Calculator (scientific calculator with history list)
News Republic (a news aggregator with pictures)
Avia Media Player (play media and can send to a media renderer wirelessly)
Sudoku Free (game, set your difficulty – tiny ads)
The Weather Channel for Android (local weather, maps, videos – fast)

Other Apps

Explore what you can get that lets your Kindle interact with your services at home. For instance if you are a Netflix subscriber try the Netflix app. I have apps that interact with my media streaming box and an app that interacts with my PC music studio. You may find an app that lets you use your Kindle as a remote control. One of the apps that comes pre-installed on the Kindle Fire HD is Skype. Microsoft recently bought Skype as a replacement for Microsoft Messenger. Text messages and video calls are free for Skype-to-Skype messaging.

Other Considerations

Your device is Bluetooth-capable so you can use a Bluetooth wireless keyboard with it.¹ Hard plastic covers are available which offer some protection. Some apps (like drawing/sketching, crossword games) work a lot easier if you use a stylus designed for touch screens. If you have media you want to transfer to your device from your PC or network you can either hook it up with the USB cable (and copy mp3 music files to the Kindle music folder, for example) or you could use the ES File Explorer app to wirelessly transfer files from public network sources.

There is a lot more you can do to customize your experience in the Settings, but I leave that for you to discover.

¹ There is a Bluetooth setup in the Settings list.

Syncing ‘Last Page Read’ on Kindles for non-Amazon Books

Oct 26, 2013Dec 5, 2013 rjnorwich Computers and Internet, Kindle Calibre, Kindle, PC transfer, sync

If you buy an e-book from the Amazon.com store and send it to multiple reading devices, chances are good that they will remember the last page read for that book between devices. This feature (sometimes referred to as “syncing”) doesn’t work if you “sideload” (directly copy a file from another device) a non-Amazon book. For instance, if I copy an e-book file from my computer to both my Kindle Keyboard and my Kindle Fire HD via the USB cable that book will not remember the last page read between those Kindles. So what is the solution? I know two ways to make this work.

Send to Kindle for PC

The first is using the “Send to Kindle” program provided by Amazon. You can download the program Send to Kindle for PC from the Amazon.com site. Once it is installed, and you register with your Amazon.com account information, it can be called up by right-clicking a file (formats: DOC, DOCX, TXT, RTF, JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP, PDF or MOBI) on your PC.

Choose which devices to send to and be sure that the “Archive documents..” box is checked. Once this window is opened you can also drag-and-drop multiple files on it. “Send to Kindle” will also appear as a new printer in your Print menu, but if you choose this option it will always send a PDF document to your device(s).

To specifically use this to sync last page read on your books they need to be in one of the acceptable formats (MOBI, for example, will work fine). Just use the program to send a MOBI-formatted book file to your devices with the “Archive document in your Kindle Library” box checked. As a pop-up says, it may take several minutes for it to be delivered by Wi-Fi.

Calibre

The other way to sync your e-books is to use the Calibre e-book management program on your PC to convert your file to MOBI format. Even if you obtained the file already in MOBI format, use Calibre to re-convert it before sending to your devices. Also, if you are a long-time Calibre user and converted your files with a version of Calibre prior to 7.44 you need to re-convert those files with a newer version of Calibre.

To get the e-books to sync using Calibre just send the MOBI format file to your devices through a USB cable.

Summary

Both methods require installing and using a PC application. With “Send to Kindle” you don’t need to hook your devices to your PC with a USB cable and you can sync more formats. However, the books do pass through the Amazon cloud server. With Calibre, only the MOBI format will sync properly and the files are transferred directly to the devices via cable — by-passing Amazon.com entirely.

Unexpected Benefits of a Network Media Player

Sep 18, 2013Dec 5, 2013 rjnorwich Kindle, Waste time HD700, KDlinks, Kindle Fire HD, media player, network media, Windows media, WMP 12

I have a Kdlinks HD700 Network Media Player, but the model doesn’t matter much in this context as long as it is DLNA (Digital Living Network Alliance) certified (with digital media renderer). DLNA devices on your home network can use each other for media sources or as media players.

The primary function of my HD700 is to play media files from my network storage drive to my home theater, so I have full-time access to music and movie files without leaving any computer turned on. So I can get my movies and music onto my home theater system, laptop or Kindle Fire HD over a wired and wireless network connection. That’s why I bought it and it does the job well. But over months of use, I have discovered some unexpected benefits related to using it as a DLNA device.

From Networked Computers

In Windows Media Player 12, networked DLNA devices can be used as an output destination. Just right-click a media file name in WMP12 and choose the “Play To..” option to start playing on your network player (In this case my home theater system).

Or create a playlist in WMP 12 and choose the little “Play to device” icon to start playing to your device. This is a great feature for my use, since the HD700 isn’t very agile at making playlists on-the-fly.

See how it referred to my device as a “Media Renderer”? That’s the key. If your network player has a compatible media renderer you’ll be able to set this up.

Apps From the Kindle Fire HD (or other Android device)

Two come to mind here, Skifta and Twonky Beam. Both are free at the Amazon App Store.

Skifta lets you connect a network media source to a network media renderer from the Kindle Fire screen. The sources (in my case) include the files on the Kindle Fire HD, files from network computers (that are turned on), online files (like at DropBox) and files from my network storage. Then I can choose my HD700 (Realtek Media Renderer) as the player. This set up allows me to control the media through the Kindle screen, which is convenient. You can also install a desktop version to allow you to use your computer as a player destination.

Twonky Beam lets you send streaming media from selected internet sources to your media player device. It only works through a few select web sites, but does include YouTube. When viewing an internet video on the Kindle Fire HD using Twonky, a “Beam” button appears. Click “Beam” and the video starts playing on your selected destination device. This makes it easy to watch some internet streams on the TV screen.

Read EPUB Books on Kindle Fire Without Conversion

Dec 13, 2012Dec 19, 2012 rjnorwich Kindle app, epub, Kindle, Kindle Fire, Kindle Fire HD, Side-loading

Yes, it is possible but will require “side-loading” the necessary app (Aldiko Book Reader Application). Once loaded, the Aldiko app works perfectly on the Kindle Fire (HD).

Step 1 Change a system setting on the Kindle Fire

On your Kindle Fire use the pull-down settings menu, choose “More” then “Device” then turn on the “Allow Installation of Applications from Unknown Sources” option.

Step 2 Download the APK file

Download the application “apk” installation file. The apk file can be downloaded directly from the source at the originators web site to your Kindle Fire. Open the web browser on your Fire and type in “Aldiko”. From the search results go to their Home page. Go to “Support” from the green menu bar.

On the Support page follow the first topic link (“Download the Latest…”).

On the Download page click the apk file link (“Aldiko Book Reader Free 2.2.3.apk” at the bottom of the page.

Download the file to a folder on your Kindle Fire.

Step 3 Install the APK package

Open a file manager app on your Kindle Fire, like ES File Explorer or Browser for SkyDrive (discussed in a previous posting and available from the Amazon App Store) and navigate to the folder where you put the apk file (usually “Downloads” by default). Touch the file name to launch the installation of the app.

Step 4 Get Books

Aldiko has a built-in Store for buying epub books, or get books from any source and copy them to your Kindle Fire by WiFi or USB cable. To add books to your Aldiko library use the “Files” widget on the main screen to specify epub files on your Kindle Fire. It is also capable of aquiring school and library books from the library’s “overdive” system without having to install a separate overdrive app. Enjoy!

Two Great Apps for Kindle Fire HD

Dec 11, 2012Dec 18, 2012 rjnorwich Kindle app, File Manager, Kindle Fire HD

If, like me, you have files spread across your home network and in the cloud, you are going to want to have theses two file handling apps for your Kindle Fire HD: ES File Explorer and Browser for SkyDrive. If you are going to side-load android apps you will need a file manager app like one of these.

ES File Explorer by ES Mobile

This is a free app at the Amazon Apps for Android Store. And is packed with useful features. You can perform the usual cut/copy/paste/delete of files and folders as well as create new folders and use multi-select for files or folders. It includes a player which can play music and video files when you tap their file names. It’s most outstanding function allows you to specify storage locations local to the Kindle Fire, on your LAN (access wireless drives like NAS storage), via FTP, Bluetooth and on the Net ( non-Amazon cloud drives like MS SkyDrive). These are organized in tabbed groups. Navigation to folders is done in a single pane which “side-scrolls” amongst tab groups. Most used locations can be set as favorites for quicker access.

As for customization you can choose from 5 themes or set your own picture as a background. You can hide tab groups that you never use (like FTP and Bluetooth in my case). A manager function (from the main settings bar) lets you make settings for security, apps, backup of apps, view tasks and manage bookmarks.

Browser for SkyDrive by Bolero

While I can access my SkyDrive files using ES File Explorer, the interface in this app is more convenient. It also has a dual pane mode where you can select files on one side (say local photos) and transfer them to the other side pane (maybe your SkyDrive Public Photos folder) just by touching an arrow icon. You can also view the transfer status of files, and always login automatically when the app starts. It’s not quite as customizable as ES File Explorer, but it is specifically tailored to work with your SkyDrive and your local files on the Kindle.

Two very useful Kindle Fire HD apps and both are free at the Amazon App Store.

How to Read Kindle Notes on Your Computer

Jul 1, 2012Aug 28, 2012 rjnorwich Kindle annotations, highlights, how to, Kindle, notes, PC transfer

The Kindle allows you to make notes in your books by typing any text while you are reading. You may also highlight any text by moving the cursor to the start, clicking to select, moving the cursor to the end and clicking again to complete the selection. These two types of user text (notes and highlights) are stored on the Kindle in a file called ‘My Clippings.txt’. Here is how you can get to the text on your computer.

Hook up your Kindle to your computer with the USB cable.

On your computer, look for the Kindle to show up as a new ‘Drive’.

Click on the Kindle drive and open the ‘documents’ folder.

Find and copy the file ‘My Clippings.txt’ to your computer.

Open the ‘My Clippings.txt’ file with your word processor application.

Below is a picture of an example file. If you have many notes in the file, use the ‘Find’ feature of your word processor application to look up what you want. You can also manage your notes by periodically renaming the “My Clippings.txt’ file to some other .txt file on the Kindle, or just copy it then delete it and the Kindle will start with a fresh one next time.

KindleClip

UPDATE (for Calibre users):

As of Calibre version 06.44 you can use the “Fetch Annotations” feature to transfer your notes and annotations into the Calibre database (for Kindles only). They will then be merged with the “Comments” shown under each book in the “Book Description” pane in Calibre. From the mobileread forums:

Connect a Kindle via USB and wait until the Reader icon is displayed next to the Library icon.
Click the small down arrow to the right of the Send to device icon, then select Fetch annotations.
The Jobs icon spins while Calibre is retrieving annotations from the Kindle.
A progress dialog is displayed while the annotations are merged into the database comments.

Recommended Free Science Fiction Novels at ManyBooks.Net

Apr 2, 2012Jul 10, 2012 rjnorwich Kindle audiobook, download, ebook, free ebook, science fiction

You can download 29,000 free ebooks in 25 different formats for compatibility with your ereader (including some audiobooks) at ManyBooks.net. Here are some of their science fiction novels that I can recommend.

A Princess of Mars

by Edgar Rice Burroughs (1912)

This is the first book in the ten-book Barsoom series written by the creator of Tarzan. All of the books in this series are also available as audiobooks.
John Carter, a Civil War soldier, falls asleep in a cave and wakes up on a war-torn Mars. He must learn the local cultures and languages and choose a side in the battle between native races to control Mars. (All ten books in the series are available).

Th e Ware Tetralogy

by Rudy Rucker (1982-2000)
Four novels: Software, Wetware, Freeware and Realware. The series of novels features: robots, artificial intelligence, viral intelligent fungi, bio-augmentation and super evolution. I know of nothing comparable to this series as far as way-out extrapolation is concerned.

The Mysterious Island

by Jules Verne (1874)
A sequel to Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Also available as an audiobook.
Soldiers escape a Civil War prison camp by stealing a balloon, which is carried by storm to a remote volcanic island. Surviving on the island is complicated by giant plants and animals as well as blood-thirsty pirates and a dangerous volcano.

Star Maker

by Olaf Stapledon (1937)

The book describes the past and future of human life over a vast 2 billion year span and across the universe. Breaking away from contemporary thinking, it hosts many imaginative and philosophical ideas of the far future.

The First Men in the Moon

by H.G. Wells (1901)

Two men, one an eccentric scientist, construct a space vessel and use it to travel to the Moon. Unlike popular Lunar fantasies, Wells gives his best scientific picture of the journey to and exploration of the Moon.
(The Time Machine, The Invisible Man and The War of the Worlds are also available)

Metrophage

by Richard Kadrey (1988)
One of the few post-1930 selections available. A cyberpunk novel in a future Los Angeles plagued by hunger and disease.

Is Your Kindle Ready for TEOCAWKI?

Mar 3, 2012May 12, 2012 rjnorwich Kindle ebook, free ebook, Kindle, survival guide, teocawki

That’s right, The End Of Civilization As We Know It! Maybe you and your trusty Kindle will survive the disaster. It would probably be handy to have some useful information on the Kindle, besides that copy of Robinson Crusoe. I’ll get you started with a reformatted survival guide book. This is from the US Army and was written for soldiers in need of wilderness survival tips. It’s a large, comprehensive guide with illustrations that I found in an old MS Word doc format.

I’ve resized and reformatted it into an Adobe PDF file that fits my Kindle 3 display perfectly without any need for conversion to another format. You can download the file here (Wilderness Survival Guide (+TOC).pdf). So snatch up this guide before it’s too late, and you will be the most knowledgeable survivor in your neighborhood (until your Kindle battery runs down).

Use a Password Database: Keepass Password Safe

Jan 20, 2012Feb 13, 2013 rjnorwich Computers and Internet, Kindle database, encryption, freeware, Keepass, password, security

The last time that I checked, I found I was using at least 16 different user names and over 20 different passwords to log in at various sites across the internet. This proved to be quite a memory test — especially for the less visited sites. (No, I was NOT writing them all down somewhere or putting them on Post-Its stuck to my monitor frame.) And since the other obvious alternative of simplifying to one or two passwords seemed an equally bad security practice, I decided to find a software solution.

A quick search for password databases turned up a great (and totally free) solution: Keepass Password Safe.

This is Open Source software that comes in four flavors (all are free): Classic Edition, Professional Edition and a portable edition for each that is suitable for installing on a USB flash drive. The Professional Edition supports more operating systems (Mac, Linux, all Windows from 98 to 7) and some customizations that the Classic Edition doesn’t support. Keepass has also been ported to versions compatible with your smartphone. You can read all about the program and its features at their webpage.

I found it easy to use (the site, lifehacker.com picked it as the best password manager) and I liked these features:

Strong security (the entire database is strongly encrypted)
One Master Password decrypts all others
One database file to transfer between computers
Auto-type can be setup with a hot key sequence and a URL address to automatically fill in the right credentials for the webpage you are on. For instance, if Keepass is running and I’m on the log in page for my Amazon.com account, I just type ctrl-alt-a and my username and password are filled in for me.
The expected database goodness: categories, sorting, searching, updating, comments
It’s free! No ads, toolbars or junk installed.

And there are many more features that I don’t use.

Edit UPDATE (Feb 2013): I now also use this on my Kindle Fire HD. This version is called KeePassDroid and is available from the Amazon Apps for Android store (for free!). The interface is optimized for phone use so it’s a little simplistic for a tablet, but it works.