Kindle Tools - News from Calibre

Very special THANKS to BG (from Lord knows where) for the little back and forth we have had over the last 24 hours which led to sharing this information with you, dear readers.

If you don't have Calibre (mac or pc) by now, you are missing out on a great tool. You can pick it up at http://calibre-ebook.com/.

One of its neatest tricks is the ability to pick up RSS web feeds, convert them to a nice .mobi file for you, then send them to your Kindle via email. Here is the beginning question from BG:

Love your blog.

Am a current Kindle 3 user with a year or so of experience, and I often read periodicals (magazines, newspapers) on my Kindle, courtesy of Calibre's ability to automatically send them regularly to my @free.kindle.com address. They come into my Kindle complete with pictures -- in B&W of course -- and it seems to me that if I were to get a Kindle Fire, then they'd be in color. However, I know that there are some things that can't be assumed. Do you have any info about this?
==============

Well I did a little experimenting this morning and downloaded a couple of interesting news feeds. Calibre has a lot already set up. You just need to pick the one you want, and choose how often you want to fetch the little darling. Or if you just want to see how one is, but don't want a committment yet, choose Download now instead. This will download the RSS news feed (could be a web site or blog too. RSS is the key), then convert it to whatever file you choose, like .mobi for example. You choose the preferred file format under interface behaviour.

Set up your email in Calibre. You can set multiple email addresses if you want so you can manually send any book you want from Calibre to any email you choose with a right click. When setting up RSS feeds, you can choose to auto send them to your Kindle email address. Send them daily, weekly, monthly, whatever you choose. The only thing you need to do is make sure your Calibre is running when you want something downloaded and sent (makes perfect sense to me!).

Email can be set up initially in the preferences area in the email section.

Certainly do some poking around in Calibre the first chance you get. You will be pleasantly surprised at how much of a help it can be.

More from BG....
Calibre sends it wirelessly (and automatically) to my free.kindle.com address just fine, no need to send it to myself.

I've got it set up to automatically get certain periodicals on a schedule -- for example, it gets Sports Illustrated for me every Sunday at 5AM, then immediately emails it to my free.kindle email address. When I turn on my Kindle later Sunday morning, I turn on the WI-FI and Sports Illustrated soon shows up on my HOME page.  

(You set all that up initially in the Preferences.-- the 'Behavior' button and 'Sharing Books By Email' button.) 
============
and then the light came on for me...
Guess what? If you are using wifi, you don't need to use the free.kindle.com email address. Well you probably do if your Kindle is also 3g. If it is 3g there is a charge for sending a file via whispernet. I just had Calibre send a news file in mobi format to my kindle ...@free.kindle.com and also to ...@kindle.com

Both worked just fine... Actually the files went to the Documents folder on the Kindle and on the new Kindle Fire you choose to see your Books or Docs.

Of course this Kindle Fire is wifi only. I just had no idea they had revised and updated sending personal files. Wow! Thank you for helping write today's article!  As soon as I calm down enough to put two words together :)

Warmest Regards,
Cindy

And about the color? Oh YES! Beautiful color!
stay tuned...