It looks like a smartphone, but it's not.

This rechargeable battery pack can either draw its power from a normal wall socket or the sun. My Kindle doesn’t even have to be plugged into it while it’s storing electricity. Since I don’t have a window at work, I can leave the ReVIVE to charge at home while I read at lunch. It only takes a couple hours to get a decent charge and maybe half an hour to transfer that to the Kindle.

You can check if it's fully charged while it's suctioned to the window.

Compared to the outlet, the solar option only fills the battery up halfway, but that’s about half a charge for the Kindle, which already goes for almost a month at a time on a full battery. (The secret is turning off the wireless.)

No, this isn’t just for Kindles—it’ll charge anything that has a USB plug on one end. But cell phones suck it dry pretty quickly, so the Kindle’s mostly what I use it for. Has anyone else tried something like this?

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Many of these suggestions will end up saving only a few cents a month, but they take less effort than picking up a penny on the sidewalk. Why wouldn’t you use them?

One year ago: Microfibers Cloths Actually Are Miracle Cloths

Our computer turned 10 this year. We replaced it with an energy-efficient NAS that we could access from a laptop, but then we had to figure out what to do with it. Since it still runs, if a little slowly, we’re giving it to my mom. Her computer is newer, but ours is custom built, so it runs faster.

The number one reason people let their old computers gather dust is that they’re worried about their data getting out in the world. I once held onto an old hard drive for five years because I never got around to wiping it.

Most computer file systems are organized so that when you trash a file, you’re only deleting the operating system’s knowledge of its location. The file is still sitting on your hard drive, and someone who knows what they are doing could come along after you, scan the hard drive, and undelete your files.

Ooooh...scary

The solution to that is Darik’s Boot and Nuke (DBAN for short). Download this program, burn it to a CD, and then boot off the CD. It offers several levels of cleaning. Unless you’re harboring military secrets, just select the first level. Now you’ve got a clean hard drive that’s ready for reuse or recycling. DBAN writes and re-writes your hard drive with a variety of different bit patterns until all trace of your original data is gone.

Other levels of DBAN offer Department-of-Defense-worthy erasure, but, honestly, after the first level only someone with significant scientific background and some heavy-duty equipment would be able to find your data again.

If your computer is so old that no one would want to use it, or broken, you should still do this before sending it off for recycling. We’re lucky that our town recycles computers, but if yours doesn’t, there are a lot of manufacturers and retailers that will accept electronics. Engadget lists a bunch of them, but an especially easy service is Recycle a PC from Metech Recycling. They accept 60 pounds worth of electronics through the mail for $30. And they’re e-Steward certified, so you know your computer isn’t going to be poisoning some third-world country.

One year ago: Water Filter Update.

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So what are my options?

Department of Public Works

• Many towns, including Cambridge, recycle cell phones. Keep in mind that they’re collected at the town’s drop-off center, not with the regular recycling.

Retailers

• Best Buy recycles any electronics that consumers bring in to the store—for free.
• Staples collects cell phones and other small electronics at store service desks.
• Office Depot sells Tech Recycling boxes ($5, $10, or $15) for any electronic devices.

Carriers

• Verizon’s Hopeline program refurbishes working phones for victims of domestic abuse and recycles non-working ones. Retail stores have drop-off boxes, and the Verizon site offers a postage-paid label to mail it in. They’ll accept phones from any carrier.
• AT&T’s Reuse and Recycle Program resells working phones to buy phone cards for soldiers and recycles non-working ones. Retail stores have drop-off boxes, and AT&T customers can request a postage-paid envelope.
• T-Mobile and Sprint also collect old cell phones for refurbishing/recycling.

Manufacturers

• LG is really getting into this, with a high school contest and many ways that people can get postage-paid packaging for any phone.
• Motorola recycles any phones; you can print a postage-paid label.
• Sony Ericsson, Nokia, and Samsung collect only their own phones for recycling. If you enter your name and address you can get a postage-paid envelope.

Third Parties

• Call2Recycle collects cell phones and rechargeable batteries through the mail as well as at drop-off locations. You may be surprised at how many are near you! Just within a mile of me I’ve got Economy Hardware, Radioshack, and the Apple Store.
• Greenphone (formerly Flipswap) either pays cash or plants a tree in exchange for your cell phone.

Electronics Takeback is a good source of more information on recycling any electronics, and the EPA has some great lists of recyclers, as well as info on how to prepare your phone properly for recycling. (1. Cancel your contract. 2. Delete your personal information. 3. Remove the SIM card. 4. Drain the battery.)

Unfortunately, out of this whole list, it looks like Samsung and Call2Recycle are the only ones certified by e-Stewards, the most reputable third-party certification program. Since our phones aren’t Samsung phones, we’ll be going with Call2Recycle. And with so many drop-off locations around, I won’t even have to mail the phones in. I would rather use the manufacturers, since we should be encouraging them to consider the whole life cycle of their product, but I think it’s more important to know that the phones are recycled properly.

One year ago: Cat Litter.

Unprotected ePubs

These are available, for example, at Google Books and Project Gutenberg. All you have to do is change the format to one that can be read on the Kindle: specifically, Mobipocket.

The first time:

• Download the Calibre program. Move it to Applications.
• Open it and run the welcome wizard (under the Tools icon in the top right corner, if it doesn’t start automatically).

Each time you download a book:

• Click the Add Book icon in the upper left corner and choose the book you downloaded.
• Highlight the new book and click the Convert Book icon at the top.
• Once it’s done converting, and your Kindle is plugged in to the computer, click the Send to Device icon at the top. I said it was easy, didn’t I?

DRM-Protected ePubs

In order to convert an Adobe ePub book with DRM to a format readable by the Kindle, the DRM has to be completely stripped. This removes the software that makes a library book expire after its due date, so it’s technically illegal. Personally, I would feel comfortable doing this because it’s a library book, not something stolen, and I’d be reading it once, not putting it online or trying to sell it. But you make your own call.

The first time:

• Install Digital Editions.
• Go to this blog and download both the key-retrieval script and the decryption script.
• Double click “ineptkey.py”
• This will bring up an IDLE window. In the menu, click Run, then Run Module.
• You should get a pop-up window that says “Key successfully retrieved to adeptkey.der.” Keep this file. You’ll need that key to convert each book.

Each time you download a book:

• Double click the book file. This opens it in Digital Editions and converts it from .acsm to .epub.
• Double click “ineptepub.py”
• This will bring up an IDLE window. In the menu, click Run, then Run Module.
• You should get a pop-up window that says “Select files for decryption”. Choose the file you want to decrypt. It’s usually in Documents, Digital Editions.
• This should output an unprotected .epub file. Follow the steps above to convert it.

I think this may be even easier than making Mobipocket books readable on the Kindle, mostly because the Calibre program is awesome. But even after doing all this research, I don’t think I’m going to be using this information very often—it’s just so much easier finding books on Amazon than trolling through library sites.

One year ago: Worm Composting.

When we tested all our electronics with the Kill-a-Watt, we found out that the ten-year-old desktop was using a lot of energy, even when it wasn’t powered on. Since we were mostly just using the desktop for storing our music and pictures—we’re primarily laptop users now—we thought it would be a good idea to replace the poor old thing with network-attached storage (NAS for short).

Isn't it sexy?

NASes are mini-servers that are built specifically for storage. If you work in a corporate environment, there are probably more than a few hanging around on your network. Only in the past five years or so have they started to be sold into the home market. It’s basically a tiny computer built around a bay for hard drives. When I started looking, my basic criteria was: 1) something that chews up less electricity than the old Windows Vista desktop (not hard to do) and 2) something that we can access from the laptops and back up our data to.

After some comparison, I chose the Netgear ReadyNAS NV+. It’s a very sexy little silver box that slides right into my entertainment center. The old PC ran at 110W–121W (plus 18W for the monitor) and used 6W when it was off (plus 2W for the monitor). The NAS uses 29W–45W, and just 1W when it’s off. In comparison with other NASes on the market, it’s in the middle of the pack somewhere: not the lightest sipper of electricity but not a workhorse server either. One of the many reasons I chose it is that it has an array of possible energy-saving features, such as:

• A variable-speed fan – it senses the temperature and adjusts how fast the fan spins automatically.
• Automatic disk spin-down – most new computers spin down when they’re not in use, but NASes generally don’t.
• Scheduled startup and shutdown – in case we forget to turn it off at night, although I try to turn it off when I’m not using it.

The electricity draw varies based on what sort of hard disks one puts into the box, so it’s important to look for low-power drives to go with your NAS. I picked the WD Caviar Green drives, but there’s a variety of equally good “green” hard drives on the market now. “Green” in this case indicates only that they spin at a slower speed and thus suck down less energy. This means that they’re a little slower, but you’ll probably never notice on a network-connected server.

Other reasons I chose the ReadyNAS:

• It has a reputation as a reliable device.
• It supports RAID (redundant array of independent disks), which allows me to stuff a bunch of hard disks into the box and, if one of them fails, still keep all of my data. Additionally, if I need more storage in the future, I can just stick another hard drive into the box or replace my old ones to expand my storage space.
• The most silly: I can connect it to my Tivo right out of the box. Tivo’s a funny beast that doesn’t support DLNA like almost every other streaming device on the network (PS3, Xbox, etc). Most other NASes support DLNA, but not Tivo.

All in all, I really love it. I’ve moved my entire iTunes and picture libraries onto it, and they’ve barely dented the total storage capacity (1.8 terrabytes!). It’s hard to describe how freeing it is to finally be able to access all of our files without having to exile myself to the office.

So I decided to investigate the many sources of free books. And by free, I don’t mean stolen—I mean library, public domain, or promotional copies. There are lots of different sources, but the whole thing can be confusing, with different file types accepted only on certain devices, and each source only listing their own few thousand books.

Amazon already lists a few sources: Project Gutenberg, ManyBooks.net, and Internet Archive. Goodreads also has a lot. Just make sure to download the files in the Mobipocket format (.prc) and move them into your Kindle’s Document folder. Project Gutenberg is my favorite. I remember reading The Awakening on Project Gutenberg during my first temp job in 1998. (Sorry, State Street!) Unfortunately, the stock is limited to books whose copyright has expired. It’s a great source of classics, but nothing new.

For that, you’ll have to go to the public library. Getting books from them is not a seamless experience, though. Even their Mobipocket-formatted books don’t work without some fiddling. Kindle Vixen suggests using the program Mobi2Kindle, but I couldn’t get that to work. Here’s what I did, which is a lot more convoluted. (And before you ask, yes Jason did help me out with this.)

Converting Mobipocket Files for Kindle (on a Mac)

The first time:

• Go to http://igorsk.blogspot.com/2007/12/mobipocket-books-on-kindle.html.
• Download Kindle Mobipocket tools. That downloads a folder named azw-0.

If your Kindle serial number starts with something other than B001 or B002:
In that folder, open kindlepid.py. Find the code:

elif serial.startswith(“B002″):
print “Kindle 2 serial number detected”

After that, add:

elif serial.startswith(“B003″):
print “Kindle 2 serial number detected”elif serial.startswith(“B004″):
print “Kindle DX serial number detected”

Save the file.

• Open Terminal (Applications, Utilities, Terminal).
• If the azw-0 folder is on your desktop, type “cd Desktop/azw-0/” and hit enter.
• Type “python kindlepid.py SERIAL#” (with your Kindle serial number in place of SERIAL#—it’s on the back of your Kindle) and hit enter.
• This should give you your Kindle PID; it should look like this: PDFZ4UF*GZ. Your local library will ask you for this number when you register your device there for the first time.

Each time you download a book:

• Download your library book to the azw-0 folder. If you’ve chosen the Mobipocket format, it should have the extension .prc.
• In the Terminal window, type “python kindlefix.py BOOKNAME.prc PID” (where BOOKNAME.prc is the name of your book file and PID is your PID) and hit enter.
• You should now have a book file with the extension .azw in your folder. Drag it to the Documents folder on your Kindle (or email it to your Kindle address). Ta-da!

This seems like a lot of work for a library book that will expire in 14 days. And most library books aren’t even in Mobipocket format—they’re in Adobe EPUB format, which I (and Jason) haven’t been able to figure out yet. It looks like in order to read them on the Kindle you have to strip the DRM. It’s a moral gray area that I’m comfortable with (they are library books, and it’s not like I’m selling them), but I haven’t even figured out how to do it yet. Maybe that’s another post. (Sorry, Lindsay!) Others are in .pdf format, and while it is possible to read them, it’s not possible to change the text size, which makes for a lot of squinting. The convenience alone makes it worth overspending on Amazon, don’t you think?

Too confusing? Did I leave something out? Let me know in the comments.

Didn’t answer your question? Check out part 2, ePub.

Doesn't this just break your heart?

If you look online, you’ll find other examples of this, as well as suggestions for fixing it. So I tried charging it up. I tried resetting it two different ways (by pressing alt-shift-R and by pressing the tiny button next to the power jack with a paperclip). I tried refreshing the screen (by pressing alt-G). The parts of the screen that weren’t covered in black changed, but it didn’t solve the problem.

Since I’ve only had it four months, it’s still under warranty. I contacted Amazon (by phone, since their email response was useless), and they were very prompt about sending a replacement. I received it today, with prepaid packaging to send the malfunctioning one back to be refurbished.

Four months is really not a good lifespan for an electronic device. Technically, I’ve passed the magic number where it breaks even with paper books (22.5), but I expected it to last a lot longer than that. The idea is for it to be more efficient than books.

But this whole thing has underscored just how addicted I am. It’s driven me crazy to go five days without it. That’s only partially because I was in the middle of a good book. Every time I have to close my book because I need to do something with my hands, I miss it. Every time I need to turn the page on the bus, I miss it. It’s just a better reading experience.

I really hope the new Kindle doesn’t develop a problem with the screen, too. I’ll keep you posted.

It fits in nicely there, doesn't it?

A study by the Cleantech Group says yes. According to them, the Kindle breaks even after displacing 22.5 paper books. So far I’ve read 5 books in less than a month, so after 4.5 months it should be all gravy. (Veggie gravy, of course.)

This article in Environmental Science and Technology delves into newspapers and textbooks, as well, but it ultimately agrees.

On top of that, the Kindle is less disposable than, say, an iPod, because it’s designed with an easily replaceable battery. And once its useful life is over, Amazon provides free recycling.

On the other hand, buying books on the Kindle is so easy (and fast!) that I worry that I’ll buy more than I used to. It’s definitely more convenient than getting books from the library or Paperbackswap.com. Luckily the Greenest Dollar has some suggestions for free or cheap ebooks. I’ll have to look into that. Otherwise, this habit could get expensive really quickly….