So, where exactly is the information I seek? The big difference with the Kindle/Overdrive lending system is that all the mechanics of book lending take place at the Amazon site, and that, indeed, is where the return or expiration date information resides. Just go to “Manage My Kindle” (an important page for any Kindle owner), find the book in the list that pops up (“Your Kindle Library”), noting that it is labeled with the words “public library,” and click on the little plus (+) sign next to it for book information, which includes the expiration date.

Never mind that the first time I opened this info it told me the book would be returned in, like, 1969 or something. Further trials have produced the more likely return date of October 9, 2011. So all is well in the Kindle lending world!

Oh, and in case you were wondering about the economic drivers behind this hugely expensive system, you will find a link to purchase the book conveniently located right next to the return date…

Amazon recognizes the problem, according to the article from Reuters: “Undifferentiated or barely differentiated versions of the same book don’t improve the customer experience,” Amazon spokeswoman Sarah Gelman wrote in a June 14 email to Reuters. “We have processes to detect and remove undifferentiated versions of books with the goal of eliminating such content from our store.”

Amazon is to be credited with policing the store to reduce this glut of public domain titles that were easy to list and sell in the past, creating really muddy results for users. Now, the problem is a glut of seemingly useful titles, not redo’s of public domain works, that seem to operate like, well, spam in their attempt to get you to read them, indeed buy them, before you discover that they are essentially advertisements or worse.

From the Reuters article:

Some of these books appear to be outright copies of other work. Earlier this year, Shayne Parkinson, a New Zealander who writes historical novels, discovered her debut “Sentence of Marriage” was on sale on Amazon under another author’s name.

The issue was initially spotted and then resolved by customers through Amazon’s British online forum.

“How did I feel? Shocked and somewhat incredulous, but at the same time, because of the way I found out, very grateful that someone had taken the trouble to let me know,” Parkinson said.

Kindle spam has been growing fast in the last six months because several online courses and, ironically, ebooks have been released that teach people how to create a Kindle book per day, according to Paul Wolfe, an Internet marketing specialist.

One tactic involves copying an ebook that has started selling well and republishing it with new titles and covers to appeal to a slightly different demographic, Wolfe explained.

This is a problem with many tentacles. The very virtues of digital text praised in these posts for over two years become vices when there is no natural way of regulating the proliferation of words. “This is why email spam has become such a problem — it costs nothing” says one expert cited in the article. “If people can put out 12 versions of a single book under different titles and authors, and at different prices, even if they sell just one or two books, they can make money.” For educators, the problems that have arisen regarding the digital distribution of term papers come from the same source. Someone once called the internet “a giant copy machine,” and here is where we see that principle at work.

So what can you do to avoid purchasing a spam book? What characteristics of spam books can you teach your students to look out for in their searches?

Piotr Kowalczyk, self-published author and blogger at eBookFriendly.com, has complied a guide to spam book identification. Here is our summary of his findings and recommendations.

First, take a close look at the title. Is  the title wordy and extensive? If the title of the book seems to be cramming as many keywords in as possible, often displaying the key search terms in all caps, you may have some spam on your hands.

Next, take a look at the author. Does the author seem to write in a variety of topics- from Italian cookbooks to auto mechanics? Authors who seem to be very thinly spread over a variety of topics may also be an indication that the book you are looking at isn’t the one you desire. One should also steer clear of e-books that have no author listed, but instead an editor.

What about the cover? A poorly designed cover that features generic font choices and pixilated images also can serve as a red flag. If the image remains poor quality once enlarged, this often indicates that this image was taken from the web.

The price of the book may also confirm your suspicions. Spam books are often priced at $ 0.99 to entice a reader to purchase the book without downloading a free sample (beware of the free sample: malicious links are often placed in the opening pages of an e-book to ensure their viewing). The price may exceed $ 0.99, but this is a common characteristic of e-book spam that one should take notice of.

Although this next tip may seem obvious, one should still make note of it: the book will often have no Reviews and Ratings, or terrible reviews. Heed these reviews!

However, do not base your decision on the seeming popularity of the text as gauged by the Amazon Bestseller Rank, since people buy these spam book unintentionally and consequently improve the spam’s popularity. When looking on Amazon’s best seller list, however, you may want to notice what categories the book is listed under (unrelated, irrelevant?), and if the text is listed under both books and Kindle Store.

Notice the product description which in cases of spam is often short, poorly written, or a random book excerpt. Look to see if there are any other versions of the e-book available (print, audio). If the e-book is spam, the e-book edition will be your only option. Check the e-book’s file size; spam books have a small file size indicating a short book.

Thanks to Piotr for this helpful analysis. Sadly, even for books, if it’s digital it can be spammed. Knowing the signs of spam-books is just another one of those 21^st-century skills you need to help your students acquire.

ARGH! We are not allowed to purchase gift cards using our purchase order accounts and that means I have no way to purchase the Kindle even though I have money. We received the check but it’s made out to our school. This means it must go into a school account and we must use a purchase order. Not quite sure what to do next…

She needed what I am beginning to call a “Kindle Workaround” to purchase her Kindles, and, a few days later, the absence of said workaround let to her next post, entitled We Had to Get Nooks!: ” Our Purchasing Department does not want us to use Amazon and they are in control of the Grant Funds.” So Kathy is now blazing the trail of using the Barnes and Noble Nook as the ereader at her school.

So, what is the “Kindle Workaround” that Kathy needed to purchase those Kindles? That’s the topic of today’s post.

First, you need to find a link at the Amazon website that, while not hidden, certainly isn’t obvious to the casual user. That is the link for “Corporate Accounts,” toward the bottom of the left sidebar on the main Amazon page. Diane Bushman, the board secretary for the Seneca Grade School (Seneca CCSD #170) outside Chicago, tells me that once you find this link, setting Amazon up as a vendor is pretty much the same process as setting up any other vendor for your district. The steps in the process are as follows:

1. Click on Corporate Accounts link at Amazon.com
2. Scroll down to Corporate Accounts by Segment
3. Click on the box labeled K-12 Schools
4. Below the intro you will see “Purchase Order Payment: Apply for an Amazon.com Corporate Credit Line to pay by PO”
5. Click the link “Amazon Corporate Credit Line” to set your school up for purchase using a P.O.
6. On the application page, you will be offered the chance to apply for a “Pay In Full” line or a “Revolving” line
(Note: Dianne opted for the “Pay In Full” line as she planned to pay for the Kindles in full once she got her invoice)
7. Once you select the type of line you want to apply for, you will be asked to log into Amazon
(In Seneca’s case, Dianne used the account associated with the purchasing card that they typically use for Amazon purchases)
8. Set up your corporate account and provide the application information required on the following screens

Dianne mentioned that approval for a $5,000 line of credit was painless and took a couple of days to complete. (Note that the Amazon.com Corporate Account Credit Line is issued by GE Money Bank, so you are dealing with a third party provider when you put in your app.)

BUT, since Seneca was interested in purchasing 80 Kindles, the $5,000 line of  credit was insufficient. This triggered a more involved but straightforward process of getting an adequate line approved, which involved providing GE Money Bank with the district’s financials. Again, Dianne found this part of the process took a bit more time and a call or two to the help line (number provided on the site), but was straightforward. In a few more days, SGS received approval for the appropriate line and then received its 80 Kindles just a few days later. (And that’s when I showed up to participate in the Kindle set-up procedure with Kathy, as detailed in my earlier posts.)

So, aside from the relative merits of purchasing Nooks rather than Kindles (and that is a reasonable debate–see Kathy Burnette’s comparison of the two devices here), no one has to feel that they can’t purchase their Kindles with a purchase order. You can. It’s just that your business office will have to cooperate and jump through Amazon’s hoops to set up an account. I believe that one reason schools that buy Nooks do so is that they already have a corporate account set up with Barnes and Noble. No problem! the news here is that you can do the same with Amazon.

(And now that it looks like the price war between Kindle and Nook will squeeze out many smaller players in the ereader manufacturing and sales arena, getting an account set up with both of these mega-vendors may be the best idea of all.)

Where do you get the serial number? Well, it is printed in extremely small print on the back of each device (have your magnifying glass handy if you look there), so Kathy takes the serial number off the box each Kindle came in. This is why it’s important to keep the Kindles numbered from the beginning, and also to jot the number on the box itself when you put the sticky on the Kindle. (Kathy keeps the box associated with each Kindle around in case the Kindle has to go back–apparently Amazon likes it that way.)  Ugh.

OK, anyway, now it is time to put that serial number from the box into the Manage My Kindle page at the mother ship, which will enable Kathy to track her content downloads to specific devices, even if it is a broken Kindle that a student has brought back to her. Registered properly, “Kathy’s 53rd Kindle” will mean the same thing to Amazon as it does to Kathy, and as it does to the student who has it in her bookbag. It is time for Kindle to Phone Home.

If this is beginning to sound like an assembly line operation, well, that’s because it is. Sitting at her desk, Kathy calls out for one of the helpers to bring her a stack of charged and stickered Kindles. Not just any stack, but the one with the next Kindle number in her system. Why? Because when Kathy registers the next Kindle, Amazon will assign it the next number in its sequence, meaning that if Amazon knows that Kathy has 52 Kindles, the next one she registers will become “Kathy’s 53rd Kindle” by default. No time for confusion this. The conversation goes as follows:

Kathy: I’m ready for more Kindles!

Helper: What number are you on?

Kathy: 54.

Helper: You have Kindle 54 or you need Kindle 54?

Kathy: I need Kindle 54.

Helper: Ok, who has Kindle 54?

Helper 2: I think its on the table by the door.

Helper: No, this says Kindle 78.

Helper 2: Maybe it’s in the server room.

Helper: I’ll look.

You get the picture. Registering the Kindle that has the number 55 on its back in the 54th position, a misstep with grave consequences if not noticed immediately, is to be avoided at all costs. So an orderly exchange of Kindles is essential at the moment of registration.

On the Manage My Kindle page, Kathy scrolls down to the “Register a new Kindle” link at the bottom of her list of Kindles and clicks it, opening a text box into which she can type the serial number from the box. Sixteen digits in, a push of the button, and that Kindle is officially connected to home base. Kindle Phoned Home. On to the next. Eighty times. Ugh.

But, you know, it was kind of fun. Kathy is so enthusiastic about the benefit to her kids that the time flies with smiles all around. In May, Kathy put out a tweet about how much the Kindles meant to the kids at her school this year:

8th grader 2 mention being first “Kindle 8th Graders” in her commencement speech tonight. Jeff Bezos you impacted ed.

Whether you meant to or not, Jeff Bezos, you impacted ed.

Well, Amazon’s consumer bias also makes setting up multiple devices a chore for folks like Kathy. The system is designed to work with a single device, or a few that a family might have on a single Amazon account. So, setting up 80 Kindles at a time involves repeating a process that a consumer might do once eighty times in a row. And that’s before you even start downloading books to the devices, another serial process that must be repeated 80 times for each book you want to put on all the Kindles.

But all of this didn’t seem to disturb good-natured Kathy, pictured above with the author, near the table where a dozen of the new Kindles were receiving their first charge. Kathy immediately starts the charging process once she gets the Kindle boxes open so that she can tell right away if there is a defective Kindle among the bunch. So far, on this shipment, she has only found one, which Amazon will quickly replace.

As she sets the Kindles up for charging, Kathy also numbers the Kindles with a sticky note. This step accomplishes a few things. First, it creates the first identifier that Kathy will use to record the Kindle in her district inventory. Second, it tells Kathy where each Kindle stands in the queue to be registered in her Kindle account at Amazon. Linking the physical number of the Kindle to the name that the Kindle will ultimately hold in the Amazon system (e.g. “Kathy’s 52nd Kindle,” visible at the top of each device’s Home screen) is key to managing content on the individual Kindles once they are in the hands of students.

But I have gotten a step ahead of myself. You can’t get to this stage until you have opened up each Kindle’s packaging by pulling the little tab across the end of the tight little box the Kindles come in. (Anyone remember the big, white book-like enclosures for the first generation of Kindles?) Kathy’s assistant in the process, husband Steve (himself principal of a nearby school that is using Kindles), showed me what a chore that is, since the tabs don’t really sit up where you can pull on them. For this batch of Kindles, at least, a fingernail couldn’t quite do the job (and I tried it myself!). Steve discovered that some kind of implement is required–a letter opener or pocket knife–to lift the tab so the sealing strip can be pulled off and the Kindle liberated for use. This seems like a small thing but, repeated eighty or a hundred times, it adds a significant step to the batch processing of Kindles for student use.

Once the Kindles are opened, labeled, and charged, they are ready to be registered with Amazon. The details of that procedure will follow in Part 2 of this post.

Let me explain. Amazon makes it possible for you to read a book that you have purchased on whatever reading device that you happen to have with you at any time, as long as two requirements are fulfilled:

Requirement 1: Amazon software must be installed on all reading devices.
Requirement 2: An internet connection must be present.

When these two requirements are met, Amazon allows you to access your whole library of books that you have purchased through the Kindle store no matter where you am or what device you happen to have with you at the time.

Very cool.

For me, it means being able to fire up Drive or How We Decide or Iconoclast while waiting for a haircut or for a movie. My Michael Connelly novel is with me during rain delays and long lines at the supermarket. Synchronization means that I have achieved a state of multiple-platform nirvana wherein all my books are with me all the time.

Even better, I don’t have to remember what page I was on in any of them. The mother ship at Amazon always offers to “synch to furthest page read” when I open a book on a different device than the one I was reading on last time. This way, I never lose my place and the reading experience becomes, as Jeff Bezos would say, “frictionless.”

Except when my wife is reading the same book on her Kindle. Then, the “furthest page read” may not be MY furthest page read; rather, it may be HER furthest page read. The synchronization feature also means that her highlights appear in “my” copy of the book. In this case, the ability to share books among multiple Kindles/devices registered to the same account creates a conflict with the ability to synchronize one’s reading among those various devices.

This conflict raises a special problem for teachers who may be leveraging the ability to load books on multiple devices and make more texts available to more students for the same price. What to do?

I only recently learned that you can “de-synchronize” the Kindles and other devices registered to a single account, and if the downside of synchronization is just too great–Josh keeps underlining all the text in everybody’s copy of Old Yeller–then it is easy to take care of the problem.

Just go to the page at Amazon called “Manage My Kindle” and scroll to the bottom, where you will see a link named “Manage synchronization between devices.” This is where you will find the following guidance from the Amazon team (see below, #1):

“You should turn synchronization off only if:
* You and someone else are reading the same book, AND
* The Kindles are registered to a single account”

The recommendation seems sound, if a little bossy. So many advantages of the Amazon Kindle system flow from the synchronization feature that it only makes sense to keep it on (which is the default setting) unless it is creating a problem for you.

If you decide to “de-synchronize” because you want each device in the classroom (or at the house) to operate independently of the others, then look for the button on the right that allows you to “Turn Synchronization Off” (see illustration, #2).

Click for larger image

Remember, teachers, that turning off synchronization does not in any way interfere with your ability to load books onto Kindle, or with the students’ ability to highlight passages or make notes. Those highlights and notes will simply be stored “locally,” saved only on the specific Kindle on which they were made. They can still be accessed by your or the students by tethering the Kindle to a computer with the USB cord and accessing the text file where those notes and highlights are stored.

Now, sometimes it might be cool to have multiple students commenting and highlighting a book across multiple devices. That might even become a best practice for Kindle/ereader use in the classroom. A literature circle or book club of kids take on a read together, share their notes and highlights, and then each create a summary piece of writing explaining a passage or two that received particular attention from the group. Or make the marked up text a group project, finding six passages that seem significant and each making a comment that the teacher could read and respond to or even grade.

Hint: one special power of the synchronization feature is that the highlights and comments that are made in the text by an individual or a group are available for viewing online here after login. Sign in and look at the column to the right; there you will find a icons for “Highlights” and “Notes.” Students could be required to put their name at the end of each note they create, and the teacher could browse these notes easily without have the Kindles handy or any file transfer reqquired.

So, in the end, whether you keep your devices synchronized or not just “depends” on the kind of reading experience multiple readers on a single Amazon Kindle account want to have.

For an educator, this upgrade is a win. First, the K2 will now support PDF files directly, without conversion. On top of that, Amazon is offering a PDF conversion via email that will make the text reflowable. Interested to hear what people who have tried that think.

Second, the battery life has been extended. Since the same battery is in the device, the software must manage the connection to the Whispernet better in some way. I have to say by manner of recantation that my whining about the departure of the exterior Whispernet switch in an earlier post was wrong. The battery management on my DX has only gotten better and better, and this update promises even more.

Finally, the firmware update apparently enables manual control of the page orientation on the K2, a must-have feature for the reading of PDFs and the viewing of images. Even with the zoom and the landscape orientation, the Kindle resolution still isn’t good enough for the detailed illustrations from, say, an AP Biology textbook. But it’s getting there…

I knew something was up when I got up this morning and saw Ralph Ellison staring at me from my sleeping Kindle DX. Just a little extra touch from the Kindle folks, and a nice one at that.

Ereader software for computers is one area in which Amazon has NOT led the way; many, many companies have created ereader software for devices from the Palm Pilot to the netbook. These providers have contributed to the current plethora of formats for ebooks, and each has tried, in its own way, to lock readers in to a particular format, all the better to lock in business with them. This is a game that Amazon knows well and has played aggressively with its closed system and its proprietary format.

Adding a desktop app that integrates with your Kindle library and, of course, the Kindle Store, can be construed as just another tactic in the battle for business. But for educators, “this time we win!” (to quote Brad Pitt’s line from The Mexican). Why? Well, let’s start with the fact that, while there aren’t a whole lot of Kindles in schools these days, there sure are a heck of a lot of computers! Now, any student who goes to the library to study or who fires up the computer at home can view content in the format exclusive to the Kindle. With the popularity of the Kindle and the “cool factor” that it brings, this may be the way that schools and educators begin to think about making academic reading content available across their networks. Kids “get” the idea of a Kindle, and now that idea is readily available at every school in the country.

Could kids have been reading ebooks at school before Kindle for PC (KFPC)? Sure they could have, but in fact they weren’t. Now there is a model in place for a “anywhere, anytime reading” that includes the PC on the desk over there and the ereader device in my bag (and the iPhone in my pocket). Could this arrangement have been cobbled together before KFPC? Sure it could, but it wasn’t very convenient. Now it is. A win for the consumer mentality applied to the schoolhouse.

David Rothman at TeleRead has a nice review of KFPC from an ebook reader’s perspective that I don’t need to repeat here. The software is very basic, with a plain interface, and very few tweakable options that allow you to customize the interface. No two-page reading pane, that sort of thing. Can’t make notes while reading (a limitation for educational uses that amazon is working on correcting). But teachers like simple, teachers like things that don’t crash. So, for me, I think this app is a solid step forward for doing business with Amazon in an academic context.

And what is even better, maybe, for folks like Kathy Parker and her Kindle Crew out there in Seneca IL, is that a PC station qualifies as one of the six devices onto which most Kindle books can be downloaded and viewed. The minute I loaded the app and connected with the mother ship, a new mobile device popped up in my list of such devices on the “Manage Your Kindle” page: “William’s Kindle for PC”, right there next to “Will’s iPhone.”

Educators should not be confused by others’ confusion over whether KFPC will display books not obtained form the Amazon Kindle Store. It absolutely will. In fact, once you open a “free” book that you got from Project Gutenberg in the Mobipocket format that the Kindle prefers, it will appear in your onboard KFPC library unless you remove it. In fact, all the books on your computer that are formatted a Mobipocket files will take on the KFPC icon image shown here. If you look quickly, you can watch the transformation take place. This makes it easy to check a file, a position number, a Table of Contents–whatever–on your PC before you view it on your Kindle. Handy.

For example, I created an article from Wikipedia using the Kindlepedia tool about the Berlin Wall. You can download it here. Once it is on your desktop, the icon will look like the book above, and it will go into your onboard library (NOT the library at the mother ship) and open up for reading. Note that this version of the article appears in full color and nice, sharp resolution on the screen. And if you don’t finish reading it in KFPC, just pop the file onto your Kindle and read up on this topic later. Really handy.

So its a big thumbs up for Kindle for PC from an educator’s standpoint. I will look forward to comment from other Kindle-curious educators about KFPC and the ways it makes ebook reading a reality in schools.

Kindle for Mac, anyone? (Amazon says it is on the way.)

I was drawn to this ereader because of the size. My Kindle DX spends most of its time on and end table in my living room because of its size–the DX is just not that convenient to carry. The DX needs to go inside my bag next to the folders and legal pads (where it fits very nicely), but it’s not the reader I grab in the car waiting at the drive-thru or at the dentist’s office. (Right now, I grab my Kindle 1.) But the Sony Pocket Edition is a great candidate for the quick, easy, have-a-minute read that these devices make possible. In this regard, size matters.

Now, I have read chapters of books on my iPhone using the Kindle app, and that is good in a pinch as well. But the thing that hooked me on ereaders in the first place is the e-ink screen. In this regard, I just don’t get Nicholson Baker and the others who find e-ink screens to be a muddy mess. The Kindle and the Sony both produce a crisp e-ink display that I find pleasurable to read, and the Sony not a bit less than the Kindle.

From a Kindler’s perspective, the greatest limitation of the Sony Pocket Edition is the absence of wireless connectivity to a source, any source, of reading material. This is the Kindle’s gift to the world, and soon to be matched by other devices.

But what I found is that the Sony interface through their “eBook Library” software provides an experience very similar to the one that I have happily participated in with my iPod Mini and iTunes. The Sony software, once installed on your computer, looks like a primitive version of iTunes. There is the list of folders and devices on the left, the list of items in the selected folder or device on the right. Plug in the Pocket Edition and it is recognized, just like my iPod with the iTunes software. The Sony software certainly doesn’t offer all the bells and whistles that iTunes does, but it gets the job done. It allows you to access content and transfer it, create collections, and otherwise manage your reading, both on and off the device.

Now the BIG up for Sony is its integration with Google Books, where a treasure trove of Epub-formatted public domain texts await. And the Library+Sony Bookstore make it VERY easy grab and load those books.  More on that wondrous process in the next installment of my look at the Sony Pocket Edition.

With larger readers all the craze these days, led by the Kindle DX and by the promised arrival of the Plastic Logic reader in the new year, I was quite surprised to find myself drawn to this smaller “pocket” reader. Maybe that comes from finding the iPhone to be a better ereader than I expected it to be, or maybe it grows out of the fact that I still love my Kindle 1 for its portability. The DX is just a tad too big for my everyday reading, with the exception of my morning perusal of the New York Times.

So I saw this little unit and decided to give it a try. A fuller review from an educator’s perspective to follow!