(no subject)
Half a year ago, I bought a Kindle. I bought it mostly because it was a cool gadget that I had wanted to get my hands on for a while, but also because I'm getting older and my eyes are protesting reading stuff on the computer monitor all day. I thought the Kindle would be a good alternative, but it turned out that academic journal articles are actually kind of hell to convert to a format readable by Kindle. Kindle will read a pdf file, but the screen is too small for it to be a pleasant experience, since it can't reflow the text (which I don't understand. Seriously. I have a free app that can reflow pdf files on my smartphone! How hard can it be???). There are various ways of converting pdf files, one of which is Amazon actually doing it for you (which is by far one of the best ways I've found). None of them are, however, ideal, since the footnotes kind of goes out the window. Amazon, get on it! This should not be so hard. Hrmpf.
ANYWAY. Turns out that I'm not reading as many academic articles on my precious Kindle as I thought I would be. It is, however, a godsend when travelling since it weighs so little, holds battery power really well, and holds so many files. When I was in Venice recently, I had spent half a day converting and uploading the entire curriculum beforehand, which meant I didn't have to drag half a forest's worth in paper with me. That was nice (both for my back, and for the environment).
And then there's this: Push to Kindle
I am not even kidding when I say that this changed the way I use my Kindle. What it does is, it converts any webpage into a Kindle file (or a pdf or epub if that's your preference), with just a single push on a button. If you have a Kindle with internet connectivity then you can just have the file sent to your account, and your Kindle will download it automatically the next time it's online (if not then you can just download the file and transfer it yourself). It's free, and reliable, and so, so easy to use. Whenever I see an interesting blog entry, or a newspaper article, or a fic, or a case, or whatever, but I don't have the time to read it here and now, I just push it to my Kindle, and then I can read it at my leisure. It's amazing.
(There are a few sites it doesn't handle well, but there's a pastepad which lets you paste the text you want into a box and create a file from that.)
[This post brought to you by a serious case of procrastination before tackling those 90 cases I uploaded to my Kindle yesterday using this app. Ahem.)
ANYWAY. Turns out that I'm not reading as many academic articles on my precious Kindle as I thought I would be. It is, however, a godsend when travelling since it weighs so little, holds battery power really well, and holds so many files. When I was in Venice recently, I had spent half a day converting and uploading the entire curriculum beforehand, which meant I didn't have to drag half a forest's worth in paper with me. That was nice (both for my back, and for the environment).
And then there's this: Push to Kindle
I am not even kidding when I say that this changed the way I use my Kindle. What it does is, it converts any webpage into a Kindle file (or a pdf or epub if that's your preference), with just a single push on a button. If you have a Kindle with internet connectivity then you can just have the file sent to your account, and your Kindle will download it automatically the next time it's online (if not then you can just download the file and transfer it yourself). It's free, and reliable, and so, so easy to use. Whenever I see an interesting blog entry, or a newspaper article, or a fic, or a case, or whatever, but I don't have the time to read it here and now, I just push it to my Kindle, and then I can read it at my leisure. It's amazing.
(There are a few sites it doesn't handle well, but there's a pastepad which lets you paste the text you want into a box and create a file from that.)
[This post brought to you by a serious case of procrastination before tackling those 90 cases I uploaded to my Kindle yesterday using this app. Ahem.)