I have heard a lot of people complain about the number of blogs that are available for subscription on Kindle. After all, people like to read anything they like on their Kindles and not be limited to Boing Boing or Slash Dot. But the truth is, you can read any blog you want on your Kindle for free! Thanks to the little miracle service called BlogLines. All you have to do is add your feeds to your Bloglines account and then use your Kindle browser to read them on a daily basis.

But here is the bigger problem. Not all blogs are meant to be read on Kindle. Those that are image heavy or not code compliant make look awkward on Kindle. Now if you are hoping to get the latest industry number from a report on a text heavy blog, then Kindle will do just fine. But as of now, Kindle is not yet ready for Prime time for blog freaks like me. Besides, who doesn’t want to monetize their blogs with Kindle. Right now, there is no easy way to monetize your blog on Kindle store. But industry insiders are telling us that the plan is to introduce a blog/feed solution for publishers to monetize their content. If that is true, then a whole lot of people are going to make a buck or two with this device, and all this would make Kindle even more attractive, but until then, I am going to stick with Bloglines and avoid those subscription fees (let’s hope Amazon doesn’t block Bloglines).

The Kindle nation has been really active about finding hidden shortcuts for the Kindle. There are simple shortcuts to start the minesweeper game or go directly to Wikipedia. There are just so many of them, but here are my favorite ones:

1. ALT + #: If you have 100 books on your Kindle, and want to see the books on your Nth page, then use ALT+N to go to that page. But you can do the same by just pressing the number!

2. Search @Wiki: Say you want to search Wikipedia for something fast and you are in the middle of reading a book, the best way to go is to use the search button and then type @Wiki.  The other shortcuts available are @Web and @store.

3. ALT + SHIFT + M: Mine Sweeper Game. Enough said.

4. ALT + SHIFT + A: Sort your documents based on when you received them on your Kindle.

5. ALT + SHIFT + R: Reset your Kindle if you are having major problems with it.

6. ALT + T: Time. Shows time on the left bottom side of your screen. Very handy!

Now there are a bunch of other short cuts that you can use to get more productive on Kindle. To be perfectly honest, the keys are too small to maneuver so short cuts can sometimes be a hassle. Having said that, I’ll put together a set of advanced shortcuts that are more than about just putting  time on your screen.

As you may have found out by now Kindle has a proprietary DRM in order to allow Amazon to protect their interest by restricting the number of times that you potentially share Kindle Content. So you may ask what the limits are. It’s hard to find but here it is:

• You can not share Amazon content between two Kindles that are registered under different Amazon accounts. That includes books, magazines, and subscriptions (unless of course you hack your Kindle).
• You cannot share subscriptions with any other Kindle regardless.
• You can share books between two Kindles registered under same account, but that would be only 6 times.
• Your books are stored online by Amazon and there is no limit as far as the number of times you can download an eBook.

So basically if you do not have eBooks (PDF or any other format) of your own, and you decide to go with Amazon content, you are pretty much limited to one Kindle. If your Kindle dies, you can transfer data to your new Kindle that is registered under the same Amazon account. Now this would be a fair deal if Amazon dropped the prices from $9.99 to $4.99 or something like that. I think $10 is too expensive especially since you can’t sell these books after you are done with them!

Are you still struggling with putting your favorite eBooks on your Amazon Kindle. Well, you are not alone. While Amazon has assured us Kindle fans that it will support pdf and other ebook formats in the future, there are many ebooks that simply can’t be converted to a format that Kindle can understand. In an earlier post I mentioned there is a way to fix/rebuild your pdf in a way that are understandable to Amazon Kindle. That has worked for me every time, but if you are not interested in doing that, then you can use a lifesaver service called Koolwire. Koolwire.com allows you to send your pdf documents to be converted to word documents (.doc), which is coincidentally Kindle compatible.

Koolwire works similar to Amazon Kindle’s PDF conversion system in some ways. All you have to is send an email to doc@koolwire.com, and it will be converted and returned to you as a word document. Then you can use a SD card or your USB cable to put the file on your Amazon Kindle. Life with Amazon Kindle just got a little bit sweeter with this super cool online service.

I remember a few months ago, in the pre-Kindle era, people were complaining about the fact that Amazon uses a proprietary eBook format on the Kindle device. What people didn’t know then was that there would be indeed a way to convert PDF document to a format compatible with the Amazon Kindle. So basically there are two ways to go about this:

Simple Way: The most simple way to convert a PDF document to .AZW format is by emailing your PDF documents to your Kindle email address. If you go to manage your Kindle section on Amazon, you can see the e-mail that is authorized by you to receive document for your Kindle. Let’s say it’s paul@kindle.com. If you send a blank email you that email with your eBook as an attachment, it will be converted to the right format and will be sent to your Kindle automatically (don’t forget to turn your wireless on!). Amazon will charge you .10 for every wireless delivery but that’s not too much really. Also, you can follow the same process and use paul@free.kindle.com. That way, you will receive an email back from Amazon with your converted book as an attachment. This time though you won’t be charged, but you will have to put the book on your Kindle yourself. (more…)

I know a few excited Kindle owners who have ordered Kindle content even before they get their Kindles (of course you want to make sure that your Kindle is registered with the username that you have bought those books under). But here is how you can view what’s waiting to be delivered to your Kindle:

Go to Amazon.com and click on your account tab. Then click on manage your Kindle link way down the page to view your Kindle settings. On the right side of the page you should see a “Delivery Status for” title at the top of it. On the same page you can see your recent orders and changes at the very bottom. So if you have ordered anything from Amazon for your Kindle, you can view it there. Here is how it will look on your account: