Onno's Blog

Ever since a California Avenue Starbucks meeting with Graham talking about hacking his Kindle and getting my own Kindle I’ve wanted to check up on what people manage to get their Kindles to do that they don’t do right out of the box that Amazon.com sends it in.

A simple Google query – “Kindle hacks” – brings a bunch of entertaining links to the surface. About playing Minesweeper on a Kindle, about Google Maps and GPS, how to make screenshots, load pictures onto the Kindle and play slideshows, use the Kindle to check email and send text messages for free, install Ubuntu 9.04 on it, and where to get books for free.

And that is really the subject of this post. Previously I expressed disappointment that there was no Dutch content for my shiny new gadget. I spoke too soon! One search result from the aforementioned query was a pointer to manybooks.net. This site features downloads of free books in many languages including the quirky one generally spoken in the territory between the cities of Maastricht and Delfzijl. Most of the listings on Manybooks appear to be of books whose copyright terms have expired. For example you’ll find works from Charles Dickens, Mark Twain, Victor Hugo and William Shakespeare.

Speaking of Shakespeare, for English exams at high school in The Netherlands I had to read one book of before 1850 (well, I had to read more books than that but one of them had to from before then). I picked the Merchant of Venice. Didn’t understand it at all. Which turned out to be a good thing. During the oral exam mr van Hofwegen, my English teacher, asked about that book. I replied that I had read it but that I didn’t understand it. He went on to explain the story, quote left and right from it. I sat there inserting appropriate responses at appropriate times (“ah!”, “oh, very interesting”, “hmm”, “really?”) and I came away with a very good mark.

But this is not about the Sweet Swan of Avon, this is about how my Kindle became bilingual.

Manybooks’ list of books in the Dutch language includes many translated works (De Koopman van Venetië !) but also original Dutch works from Louis Couperus, Johan Huizinga, Lodewijk van Dessel, Willem Kloos and Multatuli.

[For the English reader: there will be quotations in Dutch below. At those points please rehearse your favorite Shakespeare quotes. There will be a test later.]

At school I skillfully avoided having to read Multatuli’s Max Havelaar and here the download for my Kindle is staring at me. And so now it is on my device. Being a few chapters into the book I quite like it! Batavus Droogstoppel, the teller of the story in the book, has a sense of humor that very much speaks to me.

During his tirade against plays, poetry and fictional literature:
“En dan komen later weer andere leugens. Een meisjen is een engel. Wie dit het eerste ontdekte, heeft nooit zusters gehad.”

One of his critical remarks against Busselinck & Waterman:
“Dat zyn ook makelaars in koffi, doch hun adres behoeft ge niet te weten.”

During his summation of the contents of Sjaalman’s package:
“Over de lengte op zee. (Ik denk dat op zee alles wel even lang zal wezen als op ‘t land.)”

And I am already most intent on seeing what today is at Lauriersgracht 37 on my next trip to The Netherlands.

Yesterdays exploration of free books yielded several other items:
Darwin’s On the Origin of Species
Plato’s Republic
2BRO2B by Kurt Vonnegut
Thus Spake Zarathustra by Nietsche

Heavy reading perhaps but the morale of the list: if the book is 70+ years old then you can probably find it for free rather than purchase it from the Amazon store (with apologies to mr Bezos).

Free books:

1. Manybooks
2. Feedbooks

Hacks, hits and tips:

1. Top 25 Kindle Hacks
2. Kindle 2 hack list
3. Resources and tutorials to get more out of your Kindle
4. See a Kindle in your city

(On that last link, if you are in the Rochester area and are intrigued about getting a Kindle I’d be happy to demo over a latte at Spin Caffe or Starbucks)

I got mine a few weeks ago and I have to say I am terribly pleased with it. Loved that USPS delivered it two days before the estimated date. Loved the packaging and getting started process with details like the Kindle already registered to my Amazon.com account. Love that the screen saver consists of author portraits and other literary-related imagery.

So far I have two newspapers (New York Times and Frankfurter Allgemeine), a sci-fi magazine and six books on the device. And two days ago I finished reading my first Kindle book (Alan Furst, Kingdom of Shadows).

I suspect that Amazon had a very close look at Apple and its iTunes store. Both companies have made it delightfully easy to spend money with them. In the case of Amazon.com I can buy new content directly from the Kindle, or from my computer browsing Amazon.com and have it sent from there directly to the Kindle. For its free wireless connection the Kindle uses something called Whispernet. If I am correct that works via the same technology as one’s cell phone. I am a little curious how Amazon.com manages to provide this access for free while the cell phone service providers happily charge when you access their networks.

Just like my iPhone I am starting to carry my Kindle everywhere. As in the case with the iPhone regarding music, it is just very pleasant to have all your reading material with you all the time. No need to estimate beforehand whether after leaving the house I desire to read the newspaper, a spy novel, a biography or whatever. It’s all there. Immediate and continuous gratification.

In the few weeks I have not found anything that bugs me about the device but I wonder if that changes as over time the content collection will grow. It seems that all items are listed in order. Will I be wanting an ability to create folders and categorize books? I don’t know yet about backup strategies. I trust that Amazon.com keeps track of what’s on my Kindle. So if the device fails or is stolen, lost or needs to be replaced for any reason does all my content just come down from the cloud onto the new device?

A book I am reading now on my Kindle is The Library at Night by Alberto Manguel. The author writes about his love for libraries. Having a Kindle and reading this book by means of this device has some aspect of irony to it. Like the author I am very fond of libraries and bookstores as well. To walk around without too much of a plan and just let yourself be taken and interested by what you happen to encounter is delightful. When I came to California and discovered stores like Borders and Barnes&Noble that stay open late, have a cafe inside of them, well, that was just fantastic. I remember Chris Borton taking JC and me to an Ethiopian restaurant in Berkeley. We had to wait for our table to be ready. The hostess said: “You can wait at the bookstore next door. They serve tea. We’ll come and get you when your table is ready.” And it was a secondhand bookstore as well. “Take your time with preparing that table,” I was thinking while we happily hopped next door.

Secondhand bookstores may well be my favorite. The often random order in which the books are kept, the level of chaos. A very favorite one is Know Knew Books on California Ave in Palo Alto, and also the small bookstores in the pedestrian gate near the Universiteit van Amsterdam. I can easily spend hours just browsing.

In comes the Kindle. In a few decades where will the bookstores be?

The other day I read that it now happens that during signings authors are asked to sign someone’s Kindle. Understandable development butin the current state of affairs a little naughty of the Kindle owner. Book signing are a tool for the stores to get customers in the store and to buy books, to spend money there.

But this did bring up a thought: maybe there are collaborative opportunities between Amazon.com and brick bookstores: ability to buy Kindle versions of the books while I am browsing there? Of course I can do that now: Whispernet after all. But I am wondering whether there is a way – via promotions, coupons, branding – to make both sides benefit? But perhaps not and will brick bookstores be overtaken by human-technology evolution like recordshops.

A bit back in this story I admitted to having a German newspaper on the device. Why German, why not Dutch? Those are actually two different questions with separate answers. The German newspaper because I use it to help me practise that language somewhat frequently. No Dutch newspaper because there is no Dutch newspaper, or any Dutch content for that matter, for the Kindle. Yes, very disappointing. Since living aboard I have been disappointed in how poorly our culture travels or is promoted beyond the country’s physical borders. Would love to have De Volkskrant or Vrij Nederland magazine or Elsevier on my Kindle.

Tim Bray alerted me that one can add one’s blog to the collection of Kindle blogs. That means that someone can subscribe to the blog via the Kindle and have entries show up on the device as the blog is updated. As Tim writes this gives someone a choice between reading ongoing (Tim’s blog) for free via the world wide web, or pay $.99/$1.99 for the pleasure of reading it on your Kindle. Of course, quick to recognize an opportunity to get rich I signed up this blog as well!