Copy/Paste limitations for Facebook, Kindle Notes, Annotations Webpage

MORE INFORMATION ON COPY AND PASTE OF HIGHLIGHTS INSIDE YOUR KINDLE NOTES ON THE KINDLE, AT FACEBOOK, AND ON YOUR ANNOTATIONS WEBPAGE

In the Comments area the other day, a commenter (Anonymous) brought up a limitation I'd not noticed when copying a passage by highlighting it and then pasting it to a Kindle Note as described in the blog article on how that's done.

In response to the commenter's question about this, I experimented a bit with three Kindle models to see, for each Kindle, how much of a highlighted passage IS:
  1) pastable to a Kindle Note that is to be referenced on the Kindle
  2) forwardable and displayed at Facebook
      (Twitter tweets take only 140 characters total anyway)
  3) displayed on one's own private,
       password-protected Amazon Kindle Annotations webpage


THE Q & A ON THIS

' Q: Anonymous said...
"I've tested and it works as you said but the selected text is *always* limited to 3 lines of text cutting it with an ellipsis.  I've tested it with an Instapaper sync publication and with a PDF document.  Is that the usual behaviour?"

A: I'd not checked this out as far as length of note because with the Kindle 2 and the DX's, which are using software version 2.5.7 (the Kindle 3 uses v3.0.x), there was no limit that I'd come across with earlier Kindles -- but I had never highlighted (to copy) particularly large passages that much either.
  However, I always copied more than 3 lines.

  Kindle 3  (UK: K3)
  You're absolutely right that with the Kindle 3 software, they've limited it to 3 lines when you copy a highlighted passage TO a note on a Kindle 3

  Kindle 2 and DX's
  I saw that we're not limited to 3 lines when including highlighted passages to a Kindle Note on the earlier models, which use software v2.5.7, when I tested it yesterday.

  I guess a different team worked on the new Webkit browser used on the Kindle 3 and decided to assign that limit.

  For a workaround on Kindle 3's, you can highlight the amount you want from the current pages, a full copy of which will go into the "My Clipping" file anyway without the 3-line restriction placed on the Kindle Note, and then add a separate note -- and they'll show up in the same spot when you're reviewing your notes, if you add it after completing the highlight.  The "My Clippings" file logs highlights and notes in chronological order from your work in all your books.

  As for the Kindle book you're reading, the highlighting of a passage will not be truncated in the book, and any separate note made for that passage will show up right there.

OTHER tests on this:
Facebook-sharing (a Kindle feature)
When I highlight a couple of paragraphs of the same material and 'share' it (via the Kindle's Social Networking feature) on Facebook along with an attached short note we can add, that feature does allow more than 3 lines.

  However, there is a limit to that also, though it's a more reasonable one. You can see how that looks at the Amazon page's display, which is linked to from the Facebook message page.  Am not linking to the Facebook message, as that requires a Facebook account to see.  Someone noticed my forwarded passage as a Facebook message update and had not known that was possible with the Kindle and thought it a neat feature.

  I mentioned that sending passages to Facebook or Twitter can be done even when you're away from your computers if you have the 3G cellular network Kindle 3.

  Our private Annotations webpage on Amazon
  I also went to my private password-protected annotations webpage that we all have (if we allow backup of annotations in Settings) and checked the highlighting and note that I forwarded to Facebook.  Facebook shows most of it and links to Amazon for the display of the rest of your highlighted passage and note.

  When I checked that Amazon Annotations webpage where we can review our notes and highlights for all our Kindle books, the entire highlighted section shows up, along with the short note that goes with it when doing the sharing on Facebook. '

  SIDENOTE:  It was discovered in April 2009 that some publishers do set limits to the amount of highlighting we can put in our "My Clippings" folder.  Apparently, some allow only 10%, some 40% and some don't put limits on it.

  When we highlight a passage, it is normally auto-copied to that 'clippings' folder so that we can edit and print from it if we copy that text file to our computers.

  The limit applies to that, but not to how much you can highlight in the Kindle book.
  The basic highlighting done for a book is kept in a non-text file associated with the Kindle book file, and all the highlighting will still show up in the book despite the limits on how much can be copied as text to the "My Clippings" file (and probably similarly limited on the webpage annotations page).


Kindle 3's   (UK: Kindle 3's),   DX Graphite

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Check often: Temporarily-free late-listed non-classics or recently published ones
  Guide to finding Free Kindle books and Sources.  Top 100 free bestsellers.
UK-Only: recently published non-classics, bestsellers, or highest-rated ones
    Also, UK customers should see the UK store's Top 100 free bestsellers.