How to make the most of Kindle 2.5.2

So let’s say your Kindle is now upgraded to the most recent version of the software, which as of today is 2.5.2 2.5.3. Now what do you do? Some geeks (like me) keep going on about how awesome it is, but what’s the big deal?

Here’s a quick rundown of what’s new, and how to take advantage of everything your tuned-up Kindle can now offer.

Your Settings screen is now two pages instead of one to make room for added features. These include:

• Popular Highlights
• Social Networks
• Device Password

Don’t worry, the older settings haven’t gone away–they’re just on page 2.

Read on for quick tours of the new features.

Toggle to turn on or off–by default it will be on.

What it is: Amazon anonymously collects all the highlights that all Kindle customers make in the books they buy from the Kindle store, then combines them and displays a list of the most frequently highlighted passages of the most popular books at kindle.amazon.com.

How it works: If you leave the option turned on under Settings, whenever you sync with Amazon’s servers, Amazon will retrieve your highlights and send you a list of the most popular highlights for the book(s) you’re reading.

The first time you open a book, the option to view popular highlights might not be available; if that’s the case then after a sync or two it should become active. If you’re not seeing it, add a highlight to the book and then go to the home screen and manually force the Kindle to sync with Amazon.

If you click “Manage” next to “Social Networks” on the Settings screen, your Kindle will open an Amazon browser window. (Unfortunately, you can’t manage these settings on a regular PC browser, so read on.) You’ll see two login options, one for Twitter and one for Facebook. Follow the instructions and prepare to wait for the slow browser to do its work.

After authorizing either or both, go back to reading as your normally do. Whenever you want to share a highlight, you’ll see an option to “save & share” on the screen. If you want to share a previous highlight you already saved, open your “Notes & Marks” file and find it, then hit Alt+Return.

Don’t worry, you don’t have to memorize the Alt+Return command–it’s printed on the bottom of the screen when you’re looking at your notes and marks.

You can organize your books into Collections now. These work pretty much like labels in Gmail, in that you can place a title in multiple collections at the same time. (Thanks to Elisa for correcting me on this issue!)

To create one, from the home screen click the Menu button, then select Create New Collection. After you hit Save, it will automatically appear at the top of your list of books. Note that Collections always remain at the top of your list, regardless of what you last read. (Note however that the order of the Collections will change depending on the last one you were in.)

To add a book to a collection, move your cursor to the book, then press right using the 5-way controller. You’ll be taken to an info page for that book, and the first option you’ll see is “Add to Collection…”

If you want to add the book to more than one collection, use the 5-way controller to navigate to each collection and click it, and a check mark will appear next to it. Clicking it again will turn the check mark off.

To rename a collection or delete it, move your cursor to it and press right just like you did to add a book. You’ll be taken to the info screen for that collection. Don’t worry, you can delete collections as much as you want–the books inside just return to your main list, they don’t go away.

If you want extra privacy and security on your Kindle, you can now go to Settings and set a password. The set-up for this is pretty self-explanatory, so I’ll just include some screen shots to give you an idea of how it works:

Commenter Joel notes below that password protection works even when you connect your Kindle to a PC. It will prompt you for the password, and won’t show up on your desktop until you provide it.

Again, maybe some screen shots will suffice:

Finally, it should now be easier to read PDF files on your Kindle, particularly the 6″ model. When you’re zoomed in, you can use the 5-way controller to pan around, so you can view things like maps, charts, diagrams and illustrations more easily.

So that, in a fairly oversized nutshell (probably one of those giant walnut shells I’m guessing), is what the 2.5 update is all about: social sharing, organizational improvements, security, and better readability. If it wasn’t pushed to your Kindle automatically and you haven’t installed it yet, head over to Amazon’s software update page and try it out for yourself.

Oh, and if you have any font or screensaver hacks installed, you’ll have to uninstall them in order to update. It’s a tough decision to make but hopefully someone will get those hacks updated sooner rather than later.

(Sunrise photo by Mara 1)