How to import music from iTunes or Windows Media to your Amazon library ... Shortcuts to find Prime Music for Echo and Prime Instant Video for FireTV and Stick+tablets ... Today's Kindle Daily Deal: 45 'Summer Reads' instead of one .

I've been collecting my PRIME-info shortcuts for friends new to FireTv and to Amazon Echo, which I still haven't done a fuller report on -- still hunting things down when here.

  These shortcuts include what's available on Instant Prime and --for the Echo --  what is included in Prime Music (and helpful for getting Echo to play what you intend).
  Details will follow on another post I'm working on today.

  Re Kindle books -- I noticed today the changes to Kindle Owners Lending Library and where that appears on Kindle Fire tablets now, as that was changed recently.  The e-Ink Kindle eReaders are clearer in that this borrowing feature appears in the main store menu, up front oon the older Kindles, the Paperwhite and Voyage readers.  So will show that later today and/or tomorrow with some screen shots.

  In the meantime, included with this post are shortcuts for Prime Instant Video info and the less easy to find Prime Music pages that are very useful for the Echo.

  With the Echo, you've a lot more to work with if you join (for free) iHeart Radio and Pandora, which now both work well with Echo.  Echo users use these sites by identifying them and your free accounts in the Echo app's Settings/Music after joining those two music sites. Both are free for the basic service.

  Until then I say, 'Alexa, play [artist] from Prime Music' if wanting to hear something I don't already have.
  If you're a Prime shipping member, the Prime music songs are free, and there are well over a million involved.
  From your own playlists, you can just say, 'Alexa, play playlist [playlist-name]'

Will have somewhat more interesting things in the follow-up Echo report - these are just what some are asking about on the first day of use.

At any rate, here are some Prime feature shortcuts for finding what you want in connection with accessing them on  Fire TV, tablets, or the Amazon Echo.

Prine Instant-eligible Video: Movies and TV
1. http://amzn.to/primeinstantvideo3 (by category)
2. http://amzn.to/primeinstantvideo
    (Listing of ~18,000 Prime Instant-eligible videos
      You can narrow these down by using the search box at the top of the page. )
3. http://bit.ly/instantvideowebplayersetting
    (Settings to use for instant video web player -- for tablets use, 'flash' instead if 'silverlight'

Prime Music for streaming from your library at no added cost/
1. http://bit.ly/primemusicpage (by category
    (Free Prime music by categories. You can just add these to your library
    On tablets and on Fire TV many songs have scrolling lyrics w/ current line highlighted
2. http://bit.ly/primemusic-amazon (help page)
3. http://bit.ly/primemusic-who
    (Who and what's included in Prime music (artists and albums, as of 6/12/14)


Importing Music from iTunes or Windows Media Player to your Amazon Library
  (source: Amazon help pages)

  To import your music:
Go to your Music Library from a web browser on the computer you want to import music from.
Click Upload your music in the left menu,
  If prompted to install the Amazon Music Importer, follow the on-screen instructions.
Once you've opened or installed the Amazon Music Importer,
  click Start Scan to automatically scan your iTunes and Windows Media Player libraries for songs to import.
  You can also click-Browse manually to choose files on your computer to find music.
    This process may take some time to complete.
After the Amazon Music Importer has located your music,
  click Import all to add the entire selection to your music library.
    OR, click Select Music to choose which songs you'd like to add."

  However, what is free and what isn't when importing music?
  Amazon limits free uploads to 250 songs.
  Anything bought from Amazon does not count against the 250 songs limit.
    The alternative they have is to pay $25/yr to be able to import up to 250,000 songs...



Saturday's Kindle Daily Deal - today only (May 23, 2015 only)

Sending this mid-day for people who didn't check the Kindle Daily deal today, which is good for only one day (or remaining night for east coasters, at the time I write this).

This consists of not the usual one book but 45 books, some of which are priced considerably higher usually.  For instance, I never got Amy Tan's latest book, but at $1.99 I will probably click on that today.

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  For daily free ebooks, check the following links:

Temporarily-free books - Non-classics USA: by:    Publication Date      Bestselling   High-ratings UK: PubDate   Popular The Kindle Daily Deal What is 3G? and "WiFi"?       Battery Care Highly-rated under $1,  Newest: $1-$2, $2-$3

Most Popular Free K-Books U.S. & Int'l (NOT UK):    Top 100 free UK-Only:    Top 100 free USEFUL for your Kindle Keyboard(U.S. only, currently):   99c Notepad 1.1,   99c Calculator,   99c Calendar,   99c Converter

  *Click* to Return to the HOME PAGE.  Or click on the web browser's BACK button

Library resources online - explore your regional libraries for some amazing resources. Also, my Amazon ECHO arrived yesterday. Initial brief report.

LIBRARY RESOURCES ONLINE FOR MANY REGIONAL AREAS

  I've mentioned this earlier and am updating the info -- there is a treasure that many of us have at our fingertips without realizing it -- none of my friends knew we had the access I'm describing in this updated posting although we are all somewhat heavy readers.

One day, while looking for information on something, I wanted to access Infotrac which has articles going back to 1970s or so, in full text, for participant institutions like my city library.  I live in California, and the requirement for accessing my library's special online resources is California residence.

  To give an example of what may be available in your area -- the Berkeley and San Francisco libraries both give its members access to databases that would otherwise be prohibitively expensive for most of us.  And merely as a California resident, I am able to access both.  (I didn't look for others.)  Many of you will have similar access in your areas.

 Infotrac is one of the offerings and a more common one.
  See http://www.berkeleypubliclibrary.org/services_and_resources/online_resources.php for an example of what is often available through public libraries in the U.S.
.  I saw, on a web search, that many remote county libraries have the same access, so it's not just where a university might be.

  Besides Infotrac, I clicked on one of the gazillion links that came up on my screen, this time:
  http://0-proquest.safaribooksonline.com.www.berkeley-public.org/home
  This link will work only for people with a Berkeley Public Library card, even if California residence is all that's needed.  A similar link should work with your own public library's link, which you can google.  That'll depend on the state you're in.

Safari Books Online
To see, OTHERWISE, what Safari Books Online is like without the special public library access, here's their own site.  The regular situation (without library access) -- They have a free trial, but the monthly cost is, at $39/mo. for full access to all their books (see what's included, below) in the Safari "Bookshelf" option.  In this blog article, I'm describing the (free) "Library" option instead.
   I have no affiliation with Safari Books Online.  And, at $39/mo, or $399/yr for full access to all their books  (no limit on time spent online)  their regular offerings may be worth a look for any who need such books regularlyh for their work or study.

  The rest of us may have, though,  free public library access to what we need from that collection.

  The free library access version, if your library has it, is to almost all the current major computer/technical books that I've browsed at Barnes & Noble while lamenting that I couldn't justify spending that much money, since I wanted to read so many of them. It gives access to most of the current offerings I'd browse at the store.

 Included in the free Safari Books Online are O'Reilly Media, Prentice Hall, Addison-Wesley, PeachPit Press, New Riders, Sams, que, Adobe Press, and many others.

 It's all current -- books on items like Photoshop CS5, some on using Facebook :-) --  and so I tried it at the library (from home) for free to see what the various e-books are like, to read on my desktop or netbook.

 These offerings are FULL TEXT and speedy online reading if you have fast Internet access.  Every now and then a graphic image might not show up where it should but all the text is there as well as most of the graphic images. I did a tutorial on fixing photos from a book that normally costs $40 to buy.

I hope that most reading this will be able to find similar resources at their regional or state libraries.

Pennsylvania's Free Library of Philadelphia offers a library card for out-of-state-residents for $50/year (the link is to www.freelibrary.org/register/getcard1.cfm ).  No in-person visit required in Philadelphia.
  HOWEVER, while they do carry Infotrac and a myriad of other reference databases, they unfortunately don't carry Safari Online books.  They DO carry Overdrive for ebooks (for those of you who don't get Overdrive for easy Kindle book public library borrowing on Whispernet and need to rely on 3M instead but would prefer the easier to use Overdrive).

My Amazon ECHO arrived today
I ordered the almost vaporware Echo in January, and it actually arrived yesterday, after I had really lost interest.  But I'll report tonight on my initial explorations and I have to admit it's more fun than I had guessed.  After reading in the forums about all the things that didn't work quite right at first, from the paying beta-exploration customers who nevertheless related what they did like so far, I found that most of my instructions were working well (without doing the 'training' in my voice and enunciation), after the requested almost daily feedback to the Echo team who are adding features on a regular basis.  For example, lowering the volume while I'm doing something else, normally you'd say 'softer' or 'lower volume' or 'level 4' -- but I just said, naturally, "Alexa, not so loud" and it went down.  It's 'learned' from customer feedback.

Word on the street now is that Amazon has positioned itself ahead of Apple, who had to stall theirs for a while, and mainstream reviewers are more delighted than they'd expected to be.

I'll blog on this tonight when I get back. It's been interesting to see my own reactions to using such an odd duck but also I was surprised at why I like certain aspects of it. A sort of weird but fun experience I'll explain later tonight.

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Check often: Temporarily-free recently published Kindle books
  Guide to finding Free Kindle books and Sources.  Top 100 free bestsellers.  Liked-books under $1
UK-Only: recently published free books, bestsellers, or £5 Max ones
    Also, UK customers should see the UK store's Top 100 free bestsellers.

  *Click* to Return to the HOME PAGE.  Or click on the web browser's BACK button

Kindle tip: Today's Free Android app of the day: White Noise ... Macmillan's Kindle Daily Deal today: 4 Fiction Classics by Flannery O'Connor ... Jetblue airlines to show Prime movies and music to Prime-shipping members

For those of you who could use the 40+ ambient-sounds to help with relaxation or to more easily fall sleep, this $1.99 app may be worth trying.

The White Noise app has received an average 4.4 stars rating as of today, with most quite happy with it.

But some reviewers disliked some app permissions.  Those permission settings were removed from the paid version of the app, which is free today (May 6).


Clarifications seen in Comments area
The app-permissions used to require:

1. your phone number
    The Help description explains that white noise is able to turn off if a phone call comes in. Otherwise, it doesn't access your phone number.

    Version 5.6.3 added a setting,though, to "prevent interruption" and that now "keeps audio playing with phone calls, unplugging headphones, and undocking"

2. your location
    Three months ago, the app maker said that the location-setting permission was being removed.

3. somehow "sharing" the fact that you were going to sleep
The app previously had a setting that unbelievably 'shared' the fact you were going to sleep.
TMSOFT replied that this was "removed from the application."

    Also, a new "setting to "Disable Social" was also added into the app settings."

4. that the app was always running and that you couldn't turn it off - a misunderstanding
    You can press the pause button on the main screen right above the volume control.

5. in the free version, a request that you rate the app was persistent and annoying
    this paid version (for free this Tuesday, May 6) allows you to disable the rating prompt.
    The TMSOFT rep says that when developers update an app to add new features, they developers lose the previous ratings and reviews, which are important to the success of the app.  (I'd think loss of previous ratings and reviews would only be for very heavy changes so that it seems like a new app, but I guess they don't want to take the chance).

6. volume controls affected?
    At the time the comment was written, in January 2015, Amazon installed Kindle Fire updates that seemed to reduce volume on some models, including mine, and I didn't have the sleep app.


A couple of customers advise not to use the alarm feature as it doesn't work reliably.  There was no response to that comment. And some people haven't had problems with it.

What you can do is download, for free, new sounds when they're available

Also, "new sounds from import, create mix, and recording are now added to top of sound list" is on the new features list.


The Kindle Daily Deal today is from Macmillan books:
"Four Fiction Classics by Flannery O'Connor, $2.99 Each


Jetblue's interesting partnership with Amazon
Yahoo News reports that "Passengers with Amazon Prime memberships will be able to watch tens of thousands of movies and TV episodes, including Amazon Original Series at 35,000 feet, at no additional cost to their membership.

'In the latest enhancement to its Fly-Fi and in-flight entertainment products, JetBlue has announced a partnership with Amazon that will let passengers enjoy unlimited, on-demand entertainment through JetBlue’s high-speed Fly-Fi broadband Internet.
. . .
Passengers also get access to more than 1 million songs available from Prime music, and can buy and download songs from the Amazon Music store, eBooks from the Kindle store, and apps and games from the Amazon Appstore.

Some in-flight purchases made on JetBlue’s free Fly-Fi broadband will earn TrueBlue points and the airline will run TrueBlue promotions on the service. '

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Check often: Temporarily-free recently published Kindle books
  Guide to finding Free Kindle books and Sources.  Top 100 free bestsellers.  Liked-books under $1
UK-Only: recently published free books, bestsellers, or £5 Max ones
    Also, UK customers should see the UK store's Top 100 free bestsellers.

  *Click* to Return to the HOME PAGE.  Or click on the web browser's BACK button

News scraps and Kindle tips: Kindle Convert software ... New features for Amazon Fire TV and Fire TV Stick + availability in the UK and Germany ... Echo's new social network features and its If This Then That 'recipe' capability ... May's free contemporary Kindle books

AMAZON'S RECENT ACTIVITIES + SOME TIPS

The big news this week is what's happening with Amazon's Echo

But first, a couple of things that have happened with Amazon products in the last couple of months that weren't reported here yet + the regular beginning-of-month searchable links for free contemporary (non-classic) Kindle books:

May's free Kindle books (contemporary or non-classics)
    April 2015  May 2015.
    Also, all currently free non-classics sorted by:
    Publication Date   Bestselling    High ratings

  As ever, there are only a few shown on the first few days of any month, and these include pre-orders due that month -- most of these are listed as "free preview" of whatever chapters chosen, some are short stories, and a few (overnight) not-entirely-family-safe titles may show up.  Since this is May 3, the listing will not include more already available, full books.


Kindle Convert - new software
Amazon announced back in February -- in a Kindle Community Forum post -- new software that, for PC owners, will help you convert print books and printed personal documents into Kindle files that can be read on your Kindles.  The forum link just above is to a description of what the software, Kindle Convert can do.  The first paragraph:

' ... a new software application that allows you to convert scans of your most treasured personal books, documents and keepsakes into high quality Kindle books so you can digitally safeguard and enjoy them forever. Kindle Convert preserves all the things that make your books and documents unique, such as hand-written notes, autographs, photos and images, so you can maintain the look and feel of your printed books. '

The forum post explains more.
I didn't blog on this because initial reports and reviews cited difficulty of the process involved in doing this, and I felt later updates may improve the process.

  But I'm mentioning it here because there were a number of reports that "pdf files" did not convert well after all the effort.
  However, the software focus is on valued printed books and documents that you want to be able to read and keep on the Kindle.

  We already have an easy way to get PDFs converted to Kindle book format.  Amazon's own "Send to Kindle" programs works for documents from a web browser, an Android tablet, your desktop, and most of all, from your email.

  We all have Kindle email-addresses assigned to our Kindle devices.  It's in the format [you]@kindle.com and can be found at the Manage your Devices and Content page (formerly called "Manage-your-Kindle" page).

  There, under the image of each of your devices, you'll see the email address for your devices.  You can edit your device's email address name there to something that's easier to remember than the automatically assigned email address.

  Only you can send documents or books to that email address (which wind up in your Cloud area) so that no spam can invade your Kindle or Android tablet (my Windows phone doesn't get one of these addresses) and you can designate those whose email addresses can send docs to your Kindle (if, for example, doing a subscription not available from Amazon Kindle store).

  VIA EMAIL to your [you@kindle.com] Kindlebook-reading email address, you can send any personal text file or *.mobi book file (often an eBook in .mobi format acquired from a non-Amazon source) to your Cloud, to read in Kindle format, with annotations posible.

  Amazon converts these emailed documents for your Kindlebook-reading device.
  If you send a PDF to an email address for an e-Ink reader, it will arrive as a readable PDF on the Kindle and if you put the word "convert" in the Subject field of the email, Amazon will automatically convert the PDF to a searchable Kindle book format but the PDF's special layout of tables or charts and columns will be different.

  For a novel for and one-column docs, this usually won't matter and is free although the older Kindle Keyboard devices with only 3G wireless used will see a 15c fee for a novel-sized file.  It's cost-free for WiFi readers otherwise.

PDFs are easily readable on tablets via a number of PDF-reader apps.  Scanning print books to PDFs yourself can be an arduous task but likely worthwhile for very valued print books you want to have in eBook format.


Bew Features for Amazon Fire TV and Fire TV Stick
In late March, Amazon announced the following new features for Fire TV and Fire TV Stick

' Amazon Fire TV adds expandable USB storage and private, wireless listening with Bluetooth headphones

Watch on the go—Fire TV and Fire TV Stick now support captive portal so you can connect to Wi-Fi at a hotel or dorm room that requires web authentication

Fire TV Stick now available in the UK and Germany — Amazon Fire TV already the #1 streaming media box on Amazon in the UK and Germany '

For now, I'll just link you to the Businesswire announcement for the details on all this.


NEW ECHO FEATURES announced this week
The Verge's Josh Lowensohn reported that the Amazon Echo, usually called 'Alexa' by its owners, will now work with Twitter, Gmail, and Evernote plus a few others, thanks to the newly installed feature of "If This, Then That" ("ITTT")

  Lowensohn mentions the recent updates already reported here, "things like Pandora, traffic reports, sports scores, and support for Belkin's WeMo and Phillips's Hue products" and describes the new features' capabilities:

' ... the IFTTT 'recipes' for Alexa let you send your shopping and to-do lists out to third-party services like Google Drive, Evernote, and Todoist

... There are 54 combinations in total.  Enabling them requires signing up for IFTTT, then linking it up with your Amazon account. You also need to go through the motions of activating the various third-party app channels, and approving your accounts there so IFTTT can link everything up behind the scenes. Some of the really good examples so far are:

. Adding your Echo shopping list items to Evernote
. Sending someone a short email with your voice
. Sending someone an SMS with your voice
. Adding Echo shopping list items to the iOS Reminders app
. Adding Alexa to-dos to Microsoft's OneNote '

See the Verge's full article for illustrations and more details.

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  For daily free ebooks, check the following links:

Temporarily-free books - Non-classics USA: by:    Publication Date      Bestselling   High-ratings UK: PubDate   Popular The Kindle Daily Deal What is 3G? and "WiFi"?       Battery Care Highly-rated under $1,  Newest: $1-$2, $2-$3

Most Popular Free K-Books U.S. & Int'l (NOT UK):    Top 100 free UK-Only:    Top 100 free USEFUL for your Kindle Keyboard(U.S. only, currently):   99c Notepad 1.1,   99c Calculator,   99c Calendar,   99c Converter

  *Click* to Return to the HOME PAGE.  Or click on the web browser's BACK button