Barnes & Noble Formatting

For christmas i receieved 50 or so dollars of Barnes & Noble gift cards, so naturally, my first impulse was to check out their ebooks section online.

After a little bit of research, it seems (according to http://www.barnesandnoble.com/ebooks/help-faqs.asp) that Barnes & Noble is releasing their e-book in .pdb format. I'm downloading this free program: http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html to try and convert these books to something that i can use on my kindle.

I'll be back to let you know if it worked or not.

Also, i'm sure i mentioned it before, but the MobiPocket Creator software was invaluable for getting things onto my kindle 2. And i'm sure i'll eventually be using it again in this process to get B&N books on my kindle2. Get it here: http://www.mobipocket.com/en/DownloadSoft/DownloadCreator.asp

Regarding Tunes

So, after putting the final mixes of the music on the readers. I've found that the Kindle has support for changing between mp3s on the fly. (pressing alt + f switches tracks, alt + spacebar pauses the song) However, the support for music beyond that is actually quite pathetic. There is no way to see what mp3s are on the kindle without plugging it into the computer, and putting the songs in the order you wish them to be listened to is quite a pain.

The Sony Reader (i'm working with a PRS-505) , while not allowing for a key-stroke to control the music, does give a display of what you are listening to, what other songs are in the storage, and allows you to switch at will. If you want to listen to music on the sony while reading, you have to start the mp3, then hurry back to the file that you are wanting to read. This causes a slight offset the audio in reference to the text, but all in all, an easier interface to work with.

something that was helpful to me as i tried to navigate the kindle 2: http://www.geektonic.com/2009/03/kindletips-ultimate-kindle-2-shortcuts.html

Moment of Truth

Well, its done.

I have it formatted and working in both a Sony Reader and an Amazon Kindle 2.

...epic win.