multicast

Let’s say you own a Kindle 2 and you want to quickly get a few Berkman Center basic readings on there.  Here’s a quick start:  I’m assuming you want to (1) right click on the files below and (2) save them to your computer, then (3) email them to your kindle account for automatic transfer (yourname@kindle.com).  This will cost you 15 cents per megabyte but it is by far the easiest way to get these books onto your Kindle 2.  My notes in parens.

1. The Wealth of Networks by Yochai Benkler — ZIP (each chapter and section will dump into your kindle as an unhelpfully-named separate file [e.g., “ch-11”] in an apparently random order, but the text in each one is well-formatted and readable).
2. The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It by Jonathan Zittrain — PRC (e-book reader format — table of contents won’t show up but footnote links will work)
3. Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig — HTML (as one large file — TOC appears but links won’t work — they’ll launch the Kindle web browser instead)
4. Remix by Lawrence Lessig — TXT (courtesy Internet Archive — some yukky text formatting characters throughout, but overall not too bad)

Surprises:

• Code 2.0 by Lawrence Lessig has no easily accessible HTML or plain text file that I can find!  Surprising, as Code 1.0 was available in many formats.

Back story:

• PDF conversion on the Kindle 2 is awful — perhaps you can install Savory but this is a pain.
• These books and more are available as PDFs so you can read them online for free.  But not easily on the Kindle 2.
• The books that aren’t available above are available as kindle e-books (you can buy them).

I did this for myself, but I hope this list helps someone else.  Of course, if you read all four of these books they will convince you that you shouldn’t own a Kindle in the first place.  You have been warned.

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 25th, 2009 at 2:25 pm and is filed under Research.