I'm nearly 90% of the way browsing through this remarkable file of free downloadable titles from Project Gutenberg the file seized up or was not well downloaded. The dialogue box said, "delete and reinstall the file." So I did and all is well. From the thousands of audio, print and foreign language titles, my eye was attracted to some of the rare and old stories: Marco Polo in two volumes, early accounts of visitors to Korea and Japan, and some of the classics like BlaisePascal or KarlMarx. Being able to browse (or do a specific search) and click to wirelessly download a book is pretty amazing. One thing the eReader cannot do, though, is to supply the hours needed to enjoy the books. But certainly it gives new life, form of presentation, and convenient accessibility to some of the world's backlist of titles.
I've started to get into the habit of placing longish things that appear via email or on a webpage onto my kindle, since it feels much closer to reading on paper than does PC (lcd) screen reading: the e-Ink uses reflected light instead of backlighting, and it offers more sharply defined letters on the page than does LCD reading. As a result I can focus (no blinking advertisements or urge to hop between several Windows) and read at length. Since the conversion to AZW adds a few steps, I find myself often pasting the content into a text file (Notepad or Word> save as... txt) because Kindle can directly display txt and pdf, in addition to mobi/prc/azw. But moving the content from PC to kindle involves USB cable. So I really would like a way to move content from PC to kindle wirelessly (e.g. bluetooth). As it is the most immediate flow from content to eReader is either:
-kindlestore or MagicGutenberg catalog: browse, then click for wireless download
-webpage links to TXT, AZW (or mobi, or prc), or PDF content: dialogue box asks, "do you want to download"
A close second-best is the paid (using 3G towers) or free (using the wifi connectivity on kindle) wireless delivery: just send the document with the subject line "convert" (for supported filetypes other than azw, txt, pdf; such as, RTF, DOC, HTML, or the various image files - jpg, gif, png). But if you don't want the instant response of paid-delivery, then there will be a gap between sending the file (for conversion and/or delivery) and actually having the content aboard the device. These intervening steps drag out the process of preparing material to read. That's why I'd like to see a way to highlight Web content and right-click to send the material straight to the kindle queue.
A half-way step could be to use a browsing notetaking program such as Evernote.com and their WebClipper: with all excerpts gathered, Evernote lets you export the batch as HTML which can then go to the kindle using the converter/delivery service at Amazon.
=-=-=-=-= Two recent finds
1) http://kinstant.com has optimized hotlinks for kindle-based browsing
2) http://www.edukindle.com/downloads/kindlepedia/ lets you paste a Wikipedia article (URL) into the service box to produce a self-contained mobi file for download onto the device.
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