Does anyone have the first clue how to make this blog kindle friendly?
Reader Interactions
61Comments
Comments are closed.
Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
Historically it was a little unusual for the president to be an incoherent babbling moron.
The next time the wall street journal editorial board speaks the truth will be the first.
The Giant Orange Man Baby is having a bad day.
Wake up. Grow up. Get in the fight.
Since when do we limit our critiques to things we could do better ourselves?
The party of Reagan has become the party of Putin.
Republicans don’t lie to be believed, they lie to be repeated.
“Until such time as the world ends, we will act as though it intends to spin on.”
Yeah, with this crowd one never knows.
When I decide to be condescending, you won’t have to dream up a fantasy about it.
Do we throw up our hands or do we roll up our sleeves? (hint, door #2)
Celebrate the fucking wins.
Republicans don’t want a speaker to lead them; they want a hostage.
Marge, god is saying you’re stupid.
Republicans choose power over democracy, every day.
They love authoritarianism, but only when they get to be the authoritarians.
You are so fucked. Still, I wish you the best of luck.
Consistently wrong since 2002
If ‘weird’ was the finish line, they ran through the tape and kept running.
The fight for our country is always worth it. ~Kamala Harris
This must be what justice looks like, not vengeful, just peaceful exuberance.
They were going to turn on one another at some point. It was inevitable.
Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity
The media handbook says “controversial” is the most negative description that can be used for a Republican.
Comrade Darkness
What you want to do is get yourself on this list. Then you get paid.
Kindles also have a web browser, built in, but it is a little crude. I only have version 1 to test on, so bear with me a minute on testing.
Marked Hoosier
How about PSP friendly? Or Playstation 3 friendly?
Come on, I surf the web on all the toys! :)
Mark
Also, it frequently looks screwy on the iPhone browser.
kindleboy
kindleboy says, dash symbol not easy to find
JK
Kindle Support Phone Number
866-321-8851
Keith
Bring back the insipirational photos of Joe The Plumber looking upward and onward…even if you don’t get paid to. The Kindle likes this because the Kindle understands Real Working-Class America.
xero
Create an additional stylesheet for smallscreen/handheld media, or a stylesheet using WCSS (wap css).
Billy K
You don’t make yourself Kindle-friendly, Amazon makes you Kindle-friendly. That is, if you have any more soul to sell.
Do you really want people reading this stuff, anyway?
Comrade Darkness
Well, that was weird. I submitted a comment from the kindle, it spun a bit and came up with a page that looked like I’d submitted an empty search box, rather than a comment, so I backed up and resubmitted it (on the kindle you click on a line, then tell it what from the line you want to actually activate, so it’s easy to mess up and reminds me of a mainframe line editor, that way). But when I resubmitted, it gave me the duplicate comment warning, so the comment must have been flagged as spam. But unlike on my usual browser, when I reload the comments I don’t see my comment with a "In purgatory" flag on it.
JK
How to Get Your Blog on Amazon Kindle
Step 1: If your current RSS feed includes advertising (like AdSense for Feeds) or you offer only partial feeds, create a new feed for your blog that is both full-text and ad-free.
Step 2: Go to Amazon.com and fill their interest form https://www.amazon.com/gp/html-forms-controller/Digital_Periodicals_Sign-up . This is the official approach but Amazon says they have a huge backlog so you never know how long will it take for Amazon to approve your blog for the Kindle store.
Step 3: Other than the official Amazon channel, you may also want to partner with Newstex http://www.newstex.com . Become a content provider at Newstex by filling this form (http://www.newstex.com/contact-us/content-provider/) and they’ll directly work with Amazon to get your blog listed on the Kindle store.
That’s how Digital Inspiration got into the Kindle store. There’s no listing fees and Amazon will pay you 30% of the revenue per Kindle user who subscribes to your blog.
Source: For Bloggers: How to Distribute Your Blog through Amazon Kindle Store, December 19, 2008, http://www.labnol.org/gadgets/get-blog-listed-on-amazon-kindle-store/6140
WereBear
John, you might check into the WordPress Plugin, WPTouch, which I used to make my blog mobile friendly. I am very pleased with it.
Don’t know how it might optimize for the Kindle, but it’s a similar principle…
Buck
I read Balloon-Juice on my Kindle a lot. I guess it could be said that it is not very "friendly" but keeping up with the reactions of Aunt Milly Whitehead and reading comments like "I once had coffee on a train" is well worth any minor aggravations.
I just try to make damn sure I am not drinking anything that I don’t want pouring out of my nose when I read Balloon-Juice.
The safest thing is to have your Kindle in a zip lock baggie when reading the comments.
UncommonSense
Your time would be better spent making it easily readable in mobile browsers like the BlackBerry.
Thomas Allen
Talk to Josh Marshall –he’s been researching it for TPM.
Dennis-SGMM
Fuck Kindle, just make Balloon Juice Etch a Sketch friendly.
The Other Steve
It’s more readable on the blackberry then it used to be.
Billy K
@UncommonSense: Balloon Juice does quite well on Mobile Safari. One of the best-looking blogs I’ve read on my iPhone.
Bill H
I was trying to figure out what a "Blog Kindle" was and why you wanted it to be friendly. Silly me.
I’m not only ignorant, I make comments on blogs to tell people how ignorant I am.
Cris
Personally, I’m looking for some blog kindling.
djork
I read BJ from my Kindle all the time. The block quoting is non-existent, so it can be kind of hard to follow who’s saying what, but it’s not too bad.
I assume if you go through Amazon to make it more kindle friendly, they’ll try to charge us a subscription fee?
UncommonSense
@The Other Steve and Billy K:
My remark was more a commentary on the BlackBerry’s browser, which provides what I consider to be a truly wretched Internet experience.
I’m going to have to get myself an iPhone one of these days.
Zifnab
@Billy K: Ditto that.
Have you tried sacrificing your first born child on an alter of the bleached bones of your enemies while naked during the first full moon of the spring solstice? I forget if that works, or if you need to apply a patch first.
DougJ
Fuck kindle. Use Stanza for the iPhone instead.
srv
Regardless of the juvenile behavior we often see here, I don’t think this blog is the proper place for the kinder-folk.
Punchy
Toss the Mac and use a PC.
El Tiburon
Yes. You must have a Mac and a PC networked together.
Then twitter a link to your Facebook account with an embedded reference to your Myspace page.
Then, use Google Maps to pinpoint your URL, copy and paste into your Firefox browser.
Using a secure Paypal account, deposit sufficient funds into the El Tiburon account post haste.
And you are welcome.
Cris
@srv: But this blog is an excellent place for the Kindly Ones.
Shinobi
Sell your soul to Amazon. Easy.
Punchy
It’s become a disaster reading it on a Palm Centro. It used to be good, when the phone would eschew all the fancy graphics. But John musta changed sumpin to force my phone to d-load all the damn colors and art, and now the comments section resembles an abortion.
Michael D.
Your blog is already Kindle friendly. I read it on my Kindle with no issues every day. Only thing I don’t get a videos and images.
Svensker
Sidle up to the kindle making soothing noises, offer it a cup of coffee and some chocolate truffles, then, when it’s defenses are down, give it a backrub and make your move.
A.Political
In the browser use File>Print>Choose PDF and Print it.
Oh wait, you cant load up your own PDFs on kindle. Stupid machine without that ability….just another content-lockin machine, kinda like the MPAA version of Napster, woohoo, cant wait for PDFs to cost more than software!!!
Dennis-SGMM
Print it out on something flammable?
chuck
You get a BJ from your Kindle? How do I activate that?
passerby
@Dennis-SGMM:
This. I have a miniature Etch a Sketch that I could dial in on. That way, I wouldn’t have to invest in new hardware. And besides, it’d be a great way to capture that ever-desirable younger audience.
: D
Comrade Darkness
Ah, so my kindleboy message survived. Well, it works, mostly. A little annoying, as others have stated above, but functional.
The kindle here belongs to my SO, who did not need another gadget and so has received quite the ribbing from me regarding this object. But last week Wednesday, I said, crap I need to get this book for a class on Friday and none of the local stores have it in stock. And the SO said, just order it from Amazon, and I’m all upppity like, dude, it won’t get delivered on time. And like living in some bad 1950’s advertisement, the SO hands me the kindle and says, you can have it in 5 minutes. Aye. Now I must worship the kindle in its sparkly silver cursor greatness.
Dennis-SGMM
@passerby:
And Etch a Sketch’s are way better than PC’s because they’re easier to use and they never get viruses.
Lab Rat
Buy us all a Kindle!! That would be friendly.
WereBear
@ JK: Thanks! Must investigate.
I have the Kindle app for my iPod touch, and first got hooked on the free books, then looked up a book I’d been wanting, and it’s cheaper and instant, and then it’s all over.
Only real drawback is how you cannot lend a book to anyone with it… but reading on it? Nice.
Michael D.
FYI: Marriage equality in Vermont – by an act of the legislature!
Mar
The Kindle uses a specialized system called DTP that supports some, but not all, HTML tags. For a list of the HTML tags that DTP supports, look here.
Essentially, it looks like in order to make your blog kindle friendly, you need to limit yourself to the HTML tags DTP will actually process. Which might mean that you’ll need to change how you do blockquotes and whatnot.
passerby
@Dennis-SGMM:
Not to mention, you can reboot an Etch a Sketch much faster than anything out there.
nar
I can sometimes read Balloon Juice on my mobile phone when it is using the "basic" stylesheet but not when it is using John’s custom stylesheet. Does anyone know how to switch between stylesheets so I can use the simplified one when I’m on my phone?
I like reading Balloon Juice on my phone while commuting between DC and NYC because otherwise I wouldn’t have much else to do.
GMC No Relation
The main advantages of a Kindle listed blog are (1) it downloads automatically on the K somewhat like an RSS and (2) you get a piece of the subscription revenue without additional cost or, once set up, much if any effort. I read BJ mainly in an RSS reader now, but only when at the computer. I read the Orange Satan more, just because of the convenience. C&L is available there, too, but because it uses so much video, it was frustrating, so I do RSS for it, too. Kindles don’t always do great (or even well) on graphics/photos, and you have to go to the browser or a computer to comment, but the convenience is worthwhile -m especially for lurking.
Zifnab
@Michael D.: An act of legislature that trumped a governor’s veto. Suck it, Jim Douglas.
geg6
@UncommonSense:
I could not agree with anything I’ve ever read on this blog more than this.
And just because I’m on a crusade of sorts against insidious crap like the Kindle, can I just say that I will never, never, never, never, never own one? No one who loves books, truly, would own such a thing. And I don’t mean loving reading. I mean loving books. If you read a beloved author’s works on Kindle, you may like reading. Maybe. But if you’re using the Kindle as your primary source of reading "pleasure," you definitely don’t love books.
/rant
MikeJ
In order to make anything kindle friendly, strike your flint with a steel until sparks form (Sparks like Cool Places, BTW). Let the sparks fall on tinder, and when the tinder starts, the kindle should also.
Robertdsc-iphone
Count me as a satisfied iPhone reader. In fact, I give major props to you, John, for making things so accessible in the first place, let alone trying to make it Kindle-friendly.
Buck
I will give up my Kindle when they pry it from my cold, dead fingers.
Calming Influence
@Dennis-SGMM:
My only complaint with my Etch-A-Sketch is that it connects at 9600 baud. That said, I’m convinced the problems I have reading Balloon Juice will clear up once I finish downloading the latest version of Mosaic.
Comrade Darkness
@geg6, There are two camps: books as objects and books as text storage. I would submit that loving the text without regard to loving the object is a greater test of love of reading.
/rant back
GMC No Relation
Reading and owning/appreciating books are related, even overlapping, pleasures, but distinct. I have always bought a lot of disposable but enjoyable crap, which works very well on the Kindle. Shakespeare reads the same also. I love my illustrated versions and won;t be looking for graphic novels on the Kindle soon, but I can enjoy reading and enjoy owning/collecting objects whether they are the same or different. Of course, everything’s been downhill since illuminated sheepskin.
Cris
And on that note, send some of those major props to John’s tech goddess.
Calming Influence
I just upgraded my Etch-A-Sketch CPU with a chip from a broken MisterCoffee – it’s awesome!! Who knew there were fonts available other than "system"?
passerby
@Calming Influence:
Awesome. I cannibalized a Krupps with good effect but it still needs a little tweaking. Any ideas on making the color change? The sliver is a bit monotonous. I know conventional wisdom points to LED but I’m thinking about trying out a filament from a black light–that would be cool.
Genine
It’s easy. But you’ll have to pay for than $9.99.
anonevent
@Comrade Darkness: I’m with you. The only reason to keep physical textbooks as the primary storage medium is to limit access.
Rosali
Remember to click on the Amazon link on the left when you buy your kindle
geg6
@Comrade Darkness:
As I said, Kindle users may actually like reading. But they aren’t book lovers. Reading may be a utilitarian task to you, but it’s a sensual experience for me. Books are sacred to me. Precious, sacred, and pleasurable to all my senses with the exception of taste.
tammanycall
@geg6
You love books. Others love reading.
Brachiator
@geg6:
You know, there’s something crazy ironical to read someone talking about the sensual pleasure of books — on a blog.
And as usual, the technology that people grew up with seems more tangible, more real, than new technology, even though the cult of books is a lot more recent than people mis-remember. None of Shakespeare’s original audiences were waiting for the book version of his plays.
Books may soon be consigned to that museum of stuff that we were sure we could never live without until some new stuff came along, next to the telegraph, the Morse code, CDs, LPs, turntables, and physical newspapers.
Now, what’s this about reading Balloon Juice on the Kindle?