Pages

Monday, March 16, 2015

KINDLE-ING GENEALOGY: SEND TO KINDLE FOR WINDOWS

In Spring,  a young man's fancy turns to love, and a genealogist's fancy turns
to planning trips to archives, libraries, and cemeteries.

We still have snow on the ground here in New England as I type this, but I've
already been thinking about what I may do once it's melted, and how I could
make things easier for myself, like for instance my trips to cemeteries for Find
A Grave photo requests. In the past I'd print out the list of requests for a particular
cemetery. But back in October I bought a Kindle Fire HD 6 tablet, and I wondered
if there was an easier way to take the list with me, even where there was no internet
connection available.

So I did a Google search ro find out.

It turns out there were three ways I could send  the list to my Kindle from my laptop.
The first two was by a USB port connection between the two devices. The second
involved sending the list via email as an attachment. The third, and much easier method,
was the "Send To Kindle For Windows" application from Windows. I read about it in
a CNET review here and it seemed easy enough. I followed the link to the Windows site and
downloaded the app to my laptop and then install the program, which went pretty quickly.
It does require your Amazon account information when you register, so if you don't
already have an account, you need to open one to proceed.

The way "Send to Kind"le works on my laptop is very easy. Whatever document or image
that I want to send to the Documents program on my Kindle, I go to the Print menu for
the document on the laptop, and choose the "Send to Kindle"  as my printer:




I have a wireless network in my apartment, so after a few minutes I check my Kindle to
see if the document has arrived.



((Sorry about the camera reflection in the image.))


I can send images as well as documents.




And I can save the Find A Grave Request screen as well. This is for Mt. Vernon Cemetery
here in Abington. The full list requires two images, and I can zoom in on them to make
them easier to read.:



The only restriction that I can find so far is that the maximum size for the document or
image is 50MB. You also have 5GB free storage available "in the cloud" from Amazon.

The Kindle Fire HD6 tablet is small enough to fit in a pocket like one of the larger cellphones,
and costs less than $100 dollars. The HD7 model costs about $139, but the screen is larger
and it has more memory than the HD6. But either model may be a good alternative to your
laptop or larger tablet when you are out on a genealogy road trip!

1 comment:

Diane B said...

That's an interesting idea, Bill. Especially the idea of saving the request page from Find A Grave. Very easy.