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My Kindle Fire Page 4
My Kindle Fire Read online
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The Device screen displays information about your Kindle Fire, such as the percentage of battery remaining, how much storage space you’ve used, the version of your operating system, and other useful information.
1. Tap Quick Settings.
2. Tap More.
3. Tap Device.
4. The Device screen displays.
Turning Off Wi-Fi
There may be occasions where you need to turn off your Kindle Fire’s Wi-Fi radio, such as when you’re traveling on commercial flights and in other sensitive areas. Turning Wi-Fi off also consumes less battery power when you’re just kicking back and reading.
1. Tap Quick Settings.
2. Tap Wi-Fi.
3. Tap Off to turn off Wi-Fi.
4. Tap On to turn Wi-Fi on again.
Searches
All of the content in your Kindle library is indexed for easy searching. Search is more useful than it might at first seem. For example, when you’re reading a novel, you can use search to find references to a particular character. This is particularly helpful when you pick up a partially read book that you haven’t read in a while.
Search results include content both on your device and in the cloud.
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Searching Within Content
You can also search within books and other content. I cover how to do that in the Searching Content section of Chapter 3, “Reading on the Kindle Fire.”
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Searching Your Library
Searching your library returns results from books, periodicals, music, documents, and apps.
1. From the Home screen, tap inside the search box.
2. Tap Library to search your library.
3. Enter the text you’d like to search for using the keyboard that appears at the bottom of the screen. Results appear as you type.
4. Tap the item to either download the item or go to the item.
Searching the Web
In addition to searching for items in your library, you can also search the Web quickly from the Home screen.
1. From the Home screen, tap inside the search box.
2. Tap Web to search the Web.
3. Enter the text you’d like to search for. Results appear as you type.
4. Tap an item in the results to open a search page using your default search engine.
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Changing Your Web Search Engine
I cover how you can change your default web search engine in Chapter 10, “Browsing the Web with Silk,” when we talk about the Kindle Fire’s web browser.
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The Kindle Fire Keyboard
Your Kindle Fire’s keyboard is much like the keyboard you use on your computer. However, unlike your computer’s keyboard, there are obviously no physical keys. Instead, your Kindle Fire’s keyboard uses touch just like the rest of the interface.
At first, you might find the Kindle Fire’s keyboard a bit hard to get used to, but after some time, you’ll find it to be an easy way to enter data. In fact, there are some features that the Kindle Fire’s keyboard provides that you won’t find on your computer.
Entering Text
Entering text using your Kindle Fire’s keyboard is a simple task, and there are a few convenient features to make it easier.
1. Tap an area where text entry is possible.
2. Tap letters on the keyboard to enter your text.
3. Tap a suggested word to insert the word.
4. Tap the Keyboard icon to dismiss the keyboard if you need to see what’s behind it.
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Dismissing the Keyboard
In some cases, the Home icon or the Back icon might be hidden by the keyboard. In those cases, you’ll need to tap the Keyboard icon to dismiss the keyboard.
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A Couple of Shortcuts
You can quickly add a period to the end of a sentence by double-tapping the space key.
You can activate caps lock by double-tapping the Shift key.
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Positioning the Cursor and Selecting Text
As you type, characters are added at the position of the cursor. You can reposition the cursor if necessary.
1. Tap in the text entry area.
2. Tap and hold on the cursor indicator.
3. Drag the cursor indicator to a new position and release it.
Selecting and Editing Text
You might need to select some or all of the text you’ve entered in order to change it or remove it.
1. Double-tap the entered text.
2. Drag the left indicator to the beginning of your desired selection.
3. Drag the right indicator to the end of your desired selection.
4. Press Backspace to delete the section or type to replace the selection.
Copy/Cut and Paste
You might find that you want to copy or cut some text and then paste it somewhere else. For example, you might want to copy some text from one email message and paste it into another.
1. Tap and hold on the text you want to copy.
2. Tap Select Word or Select All.
3. Drag the selection handles to highlight text you want to copy.
4. Tap and hold on the selected text.
5. Tap Copy or Cut.
6. Tap and hold where you want to paste the text you copied.
7. Tap Paste.
Entering Punctuation and Numbers
Punctuation and numbers can be entered by using the number key.
1. Tap the number key to change the keyboard so that it displays numbers and punctuation marks.
2. Tap a number or punctuation mark to enter it.
3. Tap the symbol key to switch the keyboard to symbol mode.
4. Tap a symbol to enter it.
There’s an easier way to enter punctuation and numbers.
1. Tap and hold a letter on the top row.
2. Slide your finger to highlight the desired character and release.
3. Tap and hold on the period key to display punctuation characters.
4. Slide your finger to highlight the desired character and release.
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Hidden Characters
Tap and hold on other keyboard keys to reveal shortcuts to other special characters. Unfortunately, there often isn’t any way to know if a key has hidden characters by simply looking at the key.
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2. Amazon’s Cloud Services
In this chapter, you learn about Amazon’s cloud services that make your Kindle Fire more enjoyable.
• Amazon Cloud Drive
• Amazon Cloud Player
• Amazon Instant Video
• Kindle Cloud Reader
Amazon offers a collection of cloud services that augment the functionality of the Kindle Fire. In fact, your Kindle Fire is designed to be a handheld conduit into these cloud services. You can set up a cloud drive, add all of your music, and that music is immediately available to you on your Kindle Fire anywhere you can connect to Wi-Fi. You can get a movie or TV show from Amazon on your computer or set-top box, watch part of it on your television, and then pick right up to watch the rest on your Kindle Fire while in bed or while traveling. You may as well think of your Kindle Fire as a window into the world of Amazon’s cloud services.
Amazon Cloud Drive
Your computer has a hard drive in it where you can store your stuff. When you’re sitting at your computer, that stuff is easy to access, but what about when you’re not at your computer? If you have Internet access, that’s when cloud storage comes in handy. The cloud is just another word for the Internet, so when you have something stored in the cloud, you can access it from anyplace where you have Internet access.
Amazon provides 5GB of free storage that you can use for music, pictures, videos, or anything else you want to store in the cloud. You can buy additional storage for a nominal fee.
While your Kindle Fire’s Music screen does provide access to your music stored
in the cloud, you’ll need to use Silk (the Kindle Fire’s web browser) to view other file types stored in your Cloud Drive.
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Unlimited Space for Music
As of this writing, if you purchase any paid Cloud Drive plan for as little as $20 per year, Amazon gives you unlimited space for music files, whether purchased from Amazon or not.
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Accessing Your Cloud Drive
You can access your Cloud Drive using Silk on your Kindle Fire or using the web browser on your computer.
1. Open your web browser and browse to www.amazon.com.
2. Point to Amazon Cloud Drive.
3. Select Your Cloud Drive from the menu.
4. Enter your email address and your Amazon password if prompted.
After you log in, you’ll see your Cloud Drive and a big Upload button if you haven’t uploaded any files yet. I’ll show you how to create folders and upload files next.
Creating Folders
By default, your Cloud Drive contains folders for common file types. You’ll see folders for music, pictures, documents, and so forth. Those folders are a good starting point, but you might want to create additional folders. For example, if you’re uploading pictures from a recent family vacation, you might want to create a folder inside of the Pictures folder called Family Vacation and upload your pictures there.
1. Click New Folder.
2. Enter a name for the folder.
3. Click Save Folder.
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More Actions
You can copy, move, and rename files and folders using the More Actions button.
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Deleting a Folder
You can delete folders from your Cloud Drive that you no longer need or to free up some space.
1. Click Your Cloud Drive so that your folders are visible.
2. Check the box to the left of the folder(s) you want to delete.
3. Click Delete.
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Deleted Files
If you delete a folder that contains files, the files are deleted along with the folder. If you accidentally delete your files, you can recover them from Deleted Items. Files in Deleted Items remain there until you permanently delete them, and they continue to use space in your cloud drive. To permanently delete them, click the Permanently Delete button in Deleted Items.
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Recovering Deleted Items
You can recover folders that you’ve accidentally deleted. Recovering a folder also recovers the files that were originally inside the folder.
1. Click Deleted Items.
2. Check the box to the left of the folder(s) you want to recover.
3. Click Restore to Folder.
Adding Files to Your Cloud Drive
To add files to your Cloud Drive, you upload them to Amazon.
1. Click the Upload Files button near the top left corner of the Cloud Drive screen.
2. Click the drop-down to select a folder for your uploaded files.
3. Select your folder and click Select.
4. Click Select Files to Upload.
5. Select one or more files for upload.
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Uploading Music Files
If you’re uploading music files, you can use Amazon Cloud Player to upload more easily using Amazon’s MP3 Uploader. Click the Amazon Cloud Player link in the Upload Files dialog in step 2.
Music that you upload to your Cloud Drive can be streamed or downloaded from the Music screen on your Kindle Fire. Other files in your Cloud Drive are accessible using Silk.
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Downloading Files from Your Cloud Drive
You can download one file at a time from your Cloud Drive.
1. Navigate to the file you want to download by clicking the folder that contains the file.
2. Place a check in the box to the left of the file you want to download.
3. Click Download.
4. Select the folder where you want to save the file.
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Downloading Music Files
If you would like to download multiple music files, use Amazon Cloud Player, which only allows for the download of music files and provides a better interface for doing so.
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Amazon Cloud Player
Amazon Cloud Player is a convenient way to listen to music on your Cloud Drive when you don’t have your Kindle Fire with you. You can use Cloud Player on a computer or on most mobile devices.
Launching Cloud Player
Amazon Cloud Player is available as an Android application if you have an Android phone. If not, you can access the Cloud Player from your web browser. While you can use Silk to access Cloud Player, it doesn’t really make sense to do so because the Music screen provides access to your Cloud Drive music.
1. Open your web browser and browse to www.amazon.com.
2. Point to MP3s and Cloud Player on the menu.
3. Click on Cloud Player for Web.
4. If prompted, enter your email address and Amazon password.
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>>> Go Further: Uploading Your Music
You can easily upload your music to Amazon Cloud Player. Click Upload Your Music in the upper left of the Cloud Player to download the Amazon MP3 Uploader. Music that you upload must be in either MP3 or unprotected AAC (iTunes) format. If your music is in some other format, you can find free converters by searching the Internet, but my preferred MP3 converter is dbPowerAmp, available from www.dbpoweramp.com/dmc.htm. Music that you purchase from Amazon’s MP3 Music Store is automatically added to your Cloud Drive by default and does not require a Cloud Drive subscription plan.
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Playing Music
You can stream music from Cloud Player without downloading the music to your computer.
1. Locate the music you want to play. You can browse by song, artist, album, or genre.
2. Click the checkbox next to one or more songs to select the songs to play. You can also check the box at the top of the list to select all songs that are displayed.
3. Click the Play button.
4. To go to the next song, click the Next button.
5. To go to the previous song, click the Previous button.