Physical Address
304 North Cardinal St.
Dorchester Center, MA 02124
If there is Kindle yourself for reading e-books – perhaps a completely new model like this one Kindle Paperwhite Signature Edition or Kindle Colorsoft— then you will know that these devices are very simple in terms of interfaces and controls. The focus is on the text and everything you read.
Behind the simple and friendly interface, though, the Kindle has more features and tricks than you might expect. Of course, these e-readers won’t compete with iPads in terms of functionality, but there’s a lot you can do with them – from customizing the reading experience to including content other than e-books on the screen.
1. Look at the words
Don’t worry about the unknown words you come across while reading. You can get definitions for anything on the screen by simply holding down the word. When the definition appears, you can swipe left to see if the word has a Wikipedia entry, and swipe left again to translate the word into another language.
2. Send Web Articles to Kindle
You can also use Kindle to track your online reading by sending web articles to the device. Perhaps the easiest choice official Kindle extension For Google Chrome — as long as you only want to post articles from a desktop web browser. After logging into your Amazon account, article transfers are just a few clicks away.
The Kindle extension is fast and free, but it doesn’t always get the web page format right and doesn’t work on mobile. Instapaper does a better job with its own Kindle-syncing service, but you need a $6-a-month premium plan to access it. Click on Kindle is also good, but requires a subscription of $3 per month to post more than 10 articles per month.
3. Take a screenshot
If you want to show off your library or share an excerpt from a book, for example on social media, you can take screenshots on your Kindle. Just tap in the corner, two diagonally opposite corners. The screen flashes and the screenshot is saved. Connect your Kindle to a computer with a USB cable and you’ll find all your screenshots saved in their own dedicated folder.
4. Sort your eBooks by collections
As you add more and more ebooks (and web articles) to your library, it can get a bit overwhelming and difficult to sort through to find your next read. You can mitigate this to some extent by creating collections. These are folders for sorting titles by genre, author, or how quickly you want to read them.
To get started, tap the three dots on the top right of your Kindle’s home page, then Create a collection. Name your collection and mark it as a favorite if you like (this makes it more prominent on different screens). You can then choose to sort the Library page by collections—just tap the sort icon, the three horizontal lines in the top right.
