A New Way to Read Web Pages on Your Kindle

[jsingleton]

Hi Everybody,

I just wanted to write to announce a new online utility for the Kindle that's now available. The tool is called "RekindleIT" and you can access it via: http://www.rekindle.it

RekindleIT is an exciting new way to read any content on the web on your Amazon Kindle.

Using simple tools, you can instantly send a web page from your web browser or iPhone for reading on your Amazon Kindle. It's simple, free, and opens up a whole new world of content for the Kindle!

I developed this because there's one killer feature I've always wanted in the Kindle. I love my Kindle, but I've always had the problem where I'll be reading an article on the web and have to run... but I still want to read the article! I've tried various methods for getting the articles on my Kindle, like converting to PDF, but none of these methods were quick and didn't display properly after I had done them.

I hope you all really like RekindleIT. It's totally free, of course. Please feel free to try it out and let me know what you think! Kindle-lovers unite!

Best,
JLS

[daffy4u]

Hi jsingleton!

Welcome to MobileRead.

Do you have any screenshots of what the web pages would look like on the Kindle after conversion?

[jsingleton]

Hi Daffy,

Thanks! I don't have any up yet, but I'll be sure to post some soon. Basically the best pages to "Rekindle" are the "Printer Friendly" versions of the pages, since you probably don't care about the ads on the page, right?

The overall look of the pages is really usable though. Headings and other font stuff is preserved... and of course since RekindleIT converts to .MOBI format, you can read it just like a normal book or document. I'm working on making the HTML conversion even more intelligent, so that the right images are preserved and of course to make non-printer-friendly pages look great too.

RekindleIT was outgrowth of the fact that, well, Amazon's conversion service really doesn't work well for HTML... sometimes not really at all.

Why not pick a page and try it yourself You can have the pages sent to you over Whispernet or for free via email.

Best,
JLS

[jsingleton]

I should also mention that another really cool thing about RekindleIT is that it preserves the title of the page you are reading... so when it shows up on your Kindle it has a proper title.

[Revolutionarybum]

This looks cool ! Thanks for sharing it. Why doesn't Kindle do something like Apple did with the App Store, where they let the public have the core software to build their own applications ? This would really add to the community feeling of the kindle experience I'd think... Has anyone heard of anything like this ?

[elmoglick]

(deleted) (Wish there was a way to delete errant posts)

[Ea]

I don't know if i's your 'fault' or Amazon's, but the files I get through Amazon is named exactly the same (rekindleit-mobi.mobi), and if I want to download for example a handful of articles, I have to manually rename them one after one as I download them from the email. It's overall more work than creating custom-sized PDFs from the web pages. I've so far only tried articles from this site: http://www.alistapart.com , but I don't get the images in the rekindleit file, and I would like to have them included.

[HarryT]

Interesting. Does it only handle single pages, or will it do a "tree" of pages with hyperlinks between them? What happens if I want to repeatedly download the same page, with varying content (eg the BBC News site) - will it let me select which version to read, or does it simply overwrite the old versions with the new?

[Mike L]

JLS,

This looks like it could be really useful. I'll give it a try when I get a chance.

Meantime, a question:

Is there any reason why you can't give the option of receiving the converted file simply by downloading it via the browser? This would be of great benefit to people like me who don't have Whispernet and don't want to receive files via the email facility. Obviously, the user would have to transfer the files himself via a USB cable.

Also, I'd echo Harry's request for the ability to convert an entire tree of documents (perhaps with a limit on the number of levels of linking). That would be extremely useful.

But even without the above features, my first impression is that you have done an excellent job.

[Mike L]

Originally Posted by Mike L

Is there any reason why you can't give the option of receiving the converted file simply by downloading it via the browser?

I'm probably talking rubbish.

I jut realised that what you are doing is reformatting and re-styling the page, but your output is still HTML. It is the Amazon service that is converting it for the Kindle. If we simply downloaded your output file, we would still have to convert if from HTML.

[Mike L]

OK, I've now had a chance to try this out. For what it's worth, here is my feedback:

1. At first it didn't work, but that was my fault. I was confused about the free email delivery. I chose the email option, and entered the free version of my Kindle's email address: XXXX@free.kindle.com. Nothing happened. Then I realised that you only want the bit before the "@". When I put that right, the file arrived OK. (It would have been nice to have seen an error message if the email address is invalid, but I guess there are good reasons why you can't do that.)

2. The actual formatting produced mixed results. I tried it with the main page from Wikipedia. All I could see was the "On this day" section and nothing else. And all the line breaks were lost, so the text was all merged into a single paragraph.

3. With the other pages I tried, the results were better. I tried a bunch of recipes, and and they all came through beautifully formatted, but without any pictures. I then tried some technical articles. Again, the formatting was preserved (including the fixed-pitch font used to show program code), and the pictures came through fine.

4. With all the pages I tried, non-ASCII characters were lost; they just appeared as an empty square. These characters included accented letters, fractions and currency symbols -- all pretty essential.

5. I agree with Ea that it's a nuisance that the files all have the same name (the browser inserts a sequence number to avoid clashes). I realise that the original page title is preserved in the meta data, but it would be nice if the filenames could also reflect the content in some way. That would make it much easier to manage the files on the PC before transferring them to the reading device.

Despite the above negative points, this is a useful service, and I hope you'll be able to develop it further. I'll certainly use it myself, and will keep an eye out for further developments.

[eboyhan]

This is similar to another browser button/app: readability(http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/). Readability re-formats a web page for a device type (ebook is one), font size, and border spacing. It then examines page, attempts to strip out all ads, and other extraneous stuff; and then displays the resultant page with buttons to: reload original page, print reformatted page, email reformatted page (could be to amazon KDX addresses). its user interface seems a little less complex than rekindle.it -- as much info is captured at button creation time. rekindle.it would be better if you could choose free or nonfree conversion, choose reformat or not at button creation time rather than at button press time. It would be helpful if file name sent from amazon conversion service were unique (like perhaps name of web page?). The main problem with this (and with readability) is that the reformatting on anything other than the simplest of pages is completely hopeless. As more and more pages are in effect mashups, this makes these apps not very useful. One possible solution would be to take a page from the firefox addon: "clip to onenote" which is a context menu item which will take the selected parts of a web page (or the whole page if nothing selected), and put them in a new onenote page. It would be great if rekindle.it could take web page selections, reformat them, and either mail to amazon, or detect if KDX is connected, and if yes, drop something appropriate into the kindle's document folder (maybe thru calibre?).

Ideally, one would like to be able to select parts of a web page and then push a "SendtoKDX" button, and have the selections delivered automagically (in a most pleasing format) directly to the KDX (if tethered to PC) or to some staging area on PC if not.