Question on sideloading paperwhite

[slayda]

Does anyone know if DRM free ebooks can be sideloaded from Dropbox to the Kindle Paperwhite?

[Kolenka]

Yes. They can.

[VaultBoy]

Yep. Good thing, too. I've got a large number of them in my db account to pull around.

[slayda]

Next question. I have my own personal cloud using Western Digital's MyBookLive. So could DRM free ebooks also be sideloaded from MyBookLive?

[Kolenka]

It depends. I haven't used that product.

As long as you can access the files using the browser and its not doing anything goofy, like using flash or something like that, it should work.

[HarryT]

"Sideloading" is generally used to refer specifically to transferring books via USB. I'm not sure it's really appropriate for downloading from a web site .

[slayda]

OK Harry, my apology. So what is the proper word for transferring an ebook from your computer, not via USB, to your ereader?

[HarryT]

But the book isn't on your computer - that's the point . If it's on Dropbox's server and you transfer it to your Kindle using a web browser, it's simply a download from a web site.

[slayda]

I guess the cloud has fogged up my mind. However it is on my hard drive with MyBookLive even though I still transfer it across the web. The question still stands as to what the proper term is?

[HarryT]

At the end of the day I guess you can call it whatever you want - it's your Kindle . But personally, if I download it using a browser, I just regard it as a file download, regardless of where it's coming from. I'd reserve the term "sideloading" to mean transferring a file via the USB cable, personally.

[Duiker]

To add another voice as soon as I saw your post I was confused by the terminology. Have to agree with Harry on this one. Sideloading is a USB transfer. Anything else is simply a download. On that note, are you using the Kindles web browser to access Dropbox?

[slayda]

Originally Posted by Duiker

To add another voice as soon as I saw your post I was confused by the terminology. Have to agree with Harry on this one. Sideloading is a USB transfer. Anything else is simply a download. On that note, are you using the Kindles web browser to access Dropbox?

Still in the researching stage. Don't have that Kindle yet & maybe not. Just have the K1. Was looking for something lighter than my iPad 4 for traveling. Would probably still use the iPad at home.

I had never looked up the term "sideloading". My concept of downloading is getting something from someone else, e.g. purchased from Amazon, borrowed from library. And looked at sideloading as loading an ebook of my own to my reader, regardless of the method of transferring it. I.e. my concept was that 'loading' something from one of my devices to another of my devices (regardless of the avenue through which it was loaded) was sideloading. Loading something to someone else's device was uploading and from someone else's device was downloading. Since I saw Dropbox simply as a 'way station' in the avenue of loading from my PC to my reader, it seemed more like sideloading.

Wikipedia (not always accurate) says,"Sideloading typically refers to media file transfer to a mobile device via USB, Bluetooth or by writing to a memory card for insertion into the mobile device."

I would personally have thought that wifi (my own home network) to be similar to Bluetooth. And the Dropbox is 'mine' even though it resides on someone else's computer/drive. I guess it gets kinda of gray there. Comes from talking mostly with yourself.

Oh well, like I told my daughter years ago, "Words don;t necessarily mean what you want them to but what most people you're communicating with take them to mean." So I stand corrected before the 'community'.

[AnemicOak]

Originally Posted by HarryT

"Sideloading" is generally used to refer specifically to transferring books via USB. I'm not sure it's really appropriate for downloading from a web site .

It's kind of come to mean adding anything to the device by a method other than through the store it's tied too. At least I see it referenced that way a lot.