Based on what I’ve seen around the web so far, Amazon has removed the Alt+Shift+0 shortcut that would let you set any image as a new screensaver image on the Kindle 2. For now, at least, it looks like custom screens are one area where Kindle 1 owners hold an edge.
This is unfortunate, because customizing your Kindle with new screens is a nice feature. Not only does it allow you to make the Kindle feel more personalized, but it has practical advantages, too. You can create the ebook equivalent of a bookplate–a “please contact me if this is lost” message–or a list of shortcut reminders to use as a reference. I hope Amazon didn’t really remove this feature entirely, as that would seem like an example of the company locking down their device against what should be a pretty harmless modification.
I’ll keep looking around for some news of a hack or workaround, but for the time being, it looks like you’re stuck with the default images.
(Kindle 1 owners, just click here to start adding your own images!)
Do you know where your Shift key is on your Kindle keyboard? This is where:
I’ve had a few troubleshooting emails from frustrated Kindle owners who can’t export their images to screen savers. Frequently, the problem is that Amazon’s confusing choice of icon for the font-size key makes it appear to be the shift key. I made this mistake myself the first time I tried adding a screensaver. Now you know!
If you read a lot of online content, you need to know about Kindlefeeder, because it will drastically improve your reading experience on the Kindle. Kindlefeeder does two things extraordinarily well:
- It lets you pick up to 30 rss feeds from blogs, magazines, whatever you can find online that you like to read, and it converts those into a single document with full navigation and lets you wirelessly send it to your Kindle on a schedule you determine;
- It lets you copy and paste any text you find online into a simple form and, with one button press, send it wirelessly to your Kindle.
Thanks to Kindlefeeder, I get a little giddy when I pick up my Kindle each morning and see that day’s new blog feeds waiting for me. It would cost me well over $50 to “subscribe” to this many blogs through the Kindle store, if I could even find all of them on their store, which I can’t.
Option 2 is a real time saver for me. I subscribe to the print version of The New Yorker, but of course I’d much rather read each issue on my Kindle. Currently I have to look through the print issue for articles I’m interested in, go to their website and download the full text, paste it into a Word doc and clean up the formatting, save it and email it to my Kindle. With Kindlefeeder, I can skip the last three steps–I just copy the full text of the article, paste it into the Kindlefeeder form, and hit send.
The service is an extension of Kindlefeeds, which was created by Daniel Choi so that he could download RSS feeds into a format suitable for his Kindle. In fact, if you know what you’re doing with computers, he’s distributing the code here so that you can set up your own private Kindlefeeder if you like.
Visit Kindlefeeder.
Stanza is an iPhone app that lets you read public domain books on the iPhone and iPod Touch. Why do you, a Kindle owner, care? Because the company behind Stanza is working on a desktop version of the app (OS X and Windows only, no Linux, boo) that not only greatly improves the PC reading experience, but also lets you convert any text you’re reading into the Kindle format without having to use Mobipocket Creator.
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