EduKindle

If you are like me, your pocket is full of little notes and reminders written on tiny, crumpled slips of paper. With the full keyboard, I always wondered why the Kindle did not provide for personal notetaking as part of the basic set up.

In order to solve my problem, I thought I would just convert and upload a singe page document and then keep my notes on the Kindle. Then I could view them in “My Notes and Marks” from the document menu using the scroll bar clicker, or save them to my computer through the “My Clippings” file that is kept as a text file on the Kindle itself.

Next, interested as I am in how documents can be properly formatted for the Kindle, or “Kindle Optimized,” I decided to create a document that could help keep my notes organized. What I came up with is the “notepad” document. Once it is loaded on your Kindle, this is what the screen will look like:

On this one, I have made one note, and you can see the little “note” icon next to the Note #1 text highlighted. When you click the menu and select “My Notes and Marks,” you will see the notes listed in order. You can also view (and edit) the note by selecting it with the scroll wheel; if you access your note this way, you will also be given the option to delete it.

Of course, editing or deleting a note will not affect the text of the Notepad document itself.

Nifty, huh? I have included this document for free download on the Downloads page.

Enjoy!

Not sure why I couldn’t figure this out but I finally got my answer on how to place hyphens and underscores into URLs that I was typing into the Kindle’s basic web browser. Hit the SYM key (right next to the HOME key in the bottom row and a list of symbols pops up along the right side of the screen. Select anything from a dollar sign to a curly bracket and you are good to go!

Blessedly, the designers anticipated the need for the @ and / characters–these occupy their own keys on the physical keyboard.

Also, when the input box pops up for you to input a note or other text, there are several options for special characters shown across the top of the box. Each requires that you press the ALT key and another key to create the special character. ALT+6, for example, creates a question mark, ALT+8 a colon, and so forth.