The Kindle Chronicles discussion

Or here:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/de...

My Kindle for Android app on my Droid Razr M isn't syncing or even showing books I know I had on my phone! Says "unable to sync, please try later." Any idea what's going on? I have Collections on my Kindle 2.

Ann wrote: "My Kindle for Android app on my Droid Razr M isn't syncing or even showing books I know I had on my phone! Says "unable to sync, please try later." Any idea what's going on? I have Collections o..."

When I launched for the first time, it took a little while to sync up, maybe a minute or two. I was a little nervous, nothing was showing up but then it did. You might want to make sure you have solid wifi before launching next time.

Also the app is a bit of a pig in terms of storage required, some people are saying it takes 1GB or more but their libraries are much larger. On my Xoom, it is only 200MB which still seems a bit bloated but more reasonable. I think there's some sort of storage consuming bug that affects some people disproportionately (maybe KitKat issue? large library issue?).

Hope that it resolves for you.

Ann, recently I couldn't find a new book on my kindle for MAC. Support told me to delete the app and reinstall it. It worked.

Thanks, Mary. I'll try that.

Update: finally called Amazon tech support. Took nearly an hour to get app working properly, & process was not intuitive. Good customer service, but I think this update has problems.

Note that you can now get TTS-ish functionality by enabling Talkback and learning some of the associated gestures (on Android 4.1 and later). I'm trying it out a little on 4.1, and it is a little weird but workable. I think 4.2 and later has a little more granularity to the accessibility features that would make it a little more pleasant to use for this purpose.

Cloud Collections is a little nicer than on the latest Fires: you can view collection in List as well as Grid, you can sort by Title or Author as well as Custom, and you have more choices for manipulating the items (can remove from device, add to another collection, view shelfari description etc.).

Marc wrote: "May 2014 and still no Goodreads integration in the Kindle for Android application. :-("

I don't think you are missing much, unless you want to share highlights/notes to Goodreads while you are reading something, or add a star review when you finish.

The Fire/PW Goodreads integrations do not update reading progress, or even have a way to directly add a book you are currently reading to one of your GR shelves. I wind up using the GR app (pretty much the same as the one in Google Play) most of the time to do all of that.

But Kindle for Android now does have typeface choices and a TOC navigator. That's progress.

I read on my Paperwhite but go to my iPad Goodreads app to comment on what I've read. Goodreads on the Paperwhite is next to useless. Why put it on the Paperwhite without all it's functions? And when are my reviews from Goodreads going to be available on Amazon? I absolutely refuse to do them twice!

Marc wrote: "I recently purchased an Amazon Kindle Paperweight version 2 . I must say that I am horrendously disappointed with the pathetic implementation of good reads integration.

I purchased the Paperwhit..."

You can certainly sort collections alphabetically on the PW if you like. You need to be in Collections 'View' mode, not 'Collection' sort order, and then you can sort by title or recent. Collections View is similar to the implementation on Fire and iOS and Android apps. All you see is a list of the collections, without any other items mixed in. I leave that as my Home screen view almost all of the time. Again, this is very similar to the Fire and iOS/Android implementations and it seems 'cleaner' and more logical to me. Previously you'd have collections and items co-mingled and to me it was ugly and inefficient.

Collection sort order is more of a legacy thing, reflecting the pre-cloud implementation of Collections. I guess that makes people who have used Collections previously more comfortable. But I never use it.

I never had any use for collections until they became Cloud Collections and there were apps and devices that share (more or less) the same implementation. I never saw the point of going to the trouble of setting up collections, then getting a new kindle and having to do it all over again. Way too much work. And I believe that is the way it is with Kobo, Nook, etc. But now you can set them up one time and they will follow you to the other devices and apps linked to your account (and any future ones), so time spent organizing is not a complete waste of time and subject to destruction if your Kindle is lost/broken/etc. And (most importantly) you do not need to have items on the device to be able to organize them. I realize side-loaded stuff has issues, but that is what send to kindle is for (but they need to increase or, better, remove the size limit).

I would have to disagree with you about the Paperwhite. It's the best reading device Amazon has ever done. Not perfect, but it is a joy to navigate through and between books now (page flip, popup footnotes, cleaned up bookmark and note navigation), and the collections meet my requirements well.

Two areas I'd like to see improvement in are:
1) make it easier to export notes (from any book, without having to go to kindle.amazon.com (which itself needs serious redesign). For example, it could compile the notes/highlights and sync them to your cloud storage (especially now that it is easy to download personal documents from there), or send them as an email attachment, or at least dump them so you can pull them off over USB (and get rid of myclippings, which is a total hack). I would make more notes if it were more convenient to extract them and re-use them.
2) hyphenation, better automatic typography, orphan control etc. and better consistency across Kindle devices and apps.

Amazing how people post not recommending something without even knowing how to operate the device.

I am sure Amazon will happily take your Paperwhite back

No need to be so dramatic, I was just commenting in the same way you did.

At the top
Is a link that says "Group Home". Click that, then next to the book cover is a link that says "edit". Click that then the next page will have a link to leave group.

I think there is an option here to delete your own posts. Lower right hand corner

I think it would have been better to explain what you wanted the Paperwhite to do and then asked for help. Instead you just trashed the paperwhite right off the bat.

You strike me as some that does not want to figure out how to do things. For example your request to make Len remove your posts and you from the group. Why should he have to when you have the tools, and they provide them for you to do it YOURSELF.

Marc wrote: "Tom, what are you talking about when you refer to the Collections view? I do not have such a feature on my PW2. All I have is "All Items", "Books", "Periodicals", "Docs", and a greyed out "Active..."

Yes, choices should be All Items/Books/Periodicals/Docs/Collections/Active Content (greyed out if there are no items in that category). Perhaps you need to update the software? The most current update for PW2 is 5.4.3.1, I think you need at least 5.4.3. The addition of Collections view is fairly recent, within last couple of months.