News - My own exclusive scuttlebutt which leads me to believe Amazon will start shipping the new version this month, ahead of the official announcement in February.

Tech Tip - Ever wonder how much further you have to read before reaching the end of a chapter?  This tip will help you find out.

Interview - Mike Elgan, widely read tech blogger and columnist, who puts the Kindle's phenomenal success in perspective and looks ahead to huge profits for Amazon from the Kindle.  (Part 1 of the interview is in this podcast, and part 2 follows in a Kindle Chronicles EXTRA.)

Quote - from the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius. Downloaded from MobileRead

Comments - Rebecca, Nicholas Schutz,and Linda Hopkins (Amazon's Best of 2008 List)

If you'd like to be on the Kindle Chronicles Email Alert List, please send me an email at PodChronicles@Gmail.com .  I'll be doing a drawing for a $10 Amazon gift certificate, to be awarded at random to someone on the list.

Next week's interview: Leslie Nicoll, author of The Amazon Kindle FAQ.

You can leave an audio comment at 206-666-2713 or a text comment at PodChronicles@gmail.com

The second half of my interview on Dec. 31, 2008 with tech blogger and columnist Mike Elgan.

Part 1 is contained in episode 24 of the Kindle Chronicles.

News - New subscriptions available for the Kindle: USA Today and Narrative Magazine.  Also, new Kindle market intelligence from The New York Times.  A million Kindles sold?  Not according to Mark Mahaney in August.

Tech Tip - How to put content on your Kindle in the middle of Wyoming. Click here to see a map of Whispernet coverage.

Interview - Starbuck, the online name for an Army Captain, Blackhawk helicopter pilot, blogger and Kindle enthusiast serving in Irag.  Check out his Wings Over Iraq blog. What's on his Kindle: Moby Dick by Herman Melville, The Art of War by Sun Tzu, I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell by Tucker Max, Seven Pillars of Wisdom by T. E. Lawrence

Kindle Quote - From Barack, Inc. by Barry Libert and Rick Faulk.

Comments - from Dorian Nisinson, Dan Meyers, Linda Hopkins, and John B.

News - Rand McNally introduces a Road Atlas specifically designed for the Kindle. Featuring a brief telephone interview with Joel Minster, Rand McNally's senior vice president and chief cartographer.

Tech Tip - Will DeLamater of EduKindle creates a sort of Kindle App - Notepad.

Interview - Joshua Tallent of Kindle Formatting talks about how to format books for the Kindle, Digital Rights Management, and other e-topics. Josh will be teaching a session in February at the O'Reilly Tools of Change for Publishing conference.  An example of his formatting work is Lost Sonnets of Cyrano de Bergerac.  The Medialoper's encounter with Jeff Bezos is described here.

Quote - from Tree of Smoke by Denis Johnson.

Comments - Dan Meyer, John B, and Linda Hopkins.  

If you'd like to be on the Kindle Chronicles Email Alert List, please drop me an email at PodChronicles@gmail.com . You'll be the first to know when new episodes of the podcast are posted.

Next week's interview, via Skype: Starbuck, the online name of an Army Captain on active duty in Iraq who always has his Kindle with him, the better to have something to read when unexpected wait times occur. 

News - Publisher's Weekly puts Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos on its cover as "Person of the Year."

Tech Tip - No worries, yet, about ever being charged 10 cents when you convert a .pdf or other document to Kindle format for your Kindle via email.

Interview - Steve Shaw, creator of the Kindlelicious blog . What's on his Kindle: Blonde Faith by Walter Mosley, The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears by Dinaw Mengetsu, Spin Control by Chris Moriarty, The Red and the Black by Stendhal, The Prince by Machiavelli.

Quote - words of love from The Cossacks by Leo Tolstoy. From the MobileReference Classic Books Collection.

Comments - Donna Smith via Linda Hopkins, Tali from Israel, Dan Meyers, Greg Keck, a Twitterer named Jason Packham, and a blogger named Munsey.

Music by "Ra-Monk" by Eval Manigat on the "Variations in Time: A Jazz Perspective" CD by Public Transit Recording, courtesy of IODA Promonet.

News - Via Mike Elgan and HotelChatter.com , we learn that the famed Algonquin Hotel in New York City is loaning Kindles to guests.  Jan Zlendich of The Kindle Reader blog notes that 46 of the 50 titles on Bookmarks Magazine's list of the 50 best books of 2008 are available for the Kindle.

Tech Tip - Amazon Mobile on the iPhone/iPod Touch is pretty neat, but you can't use it yet to order a Kindle book.  For the adventurous - how to update your customized photo screensavers on the Kindle. (Thanks to MobileRead forum member Phuocle for the steps.)

Interview - Will DeLamater, creater of the EduKindle blog, has evidence that the Kindle is making inroads in schools.  Plus interesting educational developments for the Kindle in Utah and at the Harvard Medical School.

Quote - The beginning of The Dip by Seth Godin.  How to be a successful quitter.

Comments - Karen, Linda Hopkins, and Dan.

Upcoming interviews: Steve Shaw, creator of the Kindlelicious blog; Joshua Tallent of Kindle Formatting, and Capt. Crispin J. Burke, who is Kindling while on assignment in Iraq. 

News: The Kindle is sold out just in time for Christmas.  Will the one I ordered today turn out to be a Kindle 2.0? Should Amazon say so? Also, a secret New York Times memo reports more than 10,000 Kindle NYT subscriptions (thanks to Abhi for the tip), and Kindle NowNow is GoneGone. 

Tech Tip: Try pdfdownload.org for a one-click way to move web content to your Kindle.  The results won't always look as good as this, though.

Interview: Linda Hopkins, an engaged and engaging listener of the podcast from southern California. Her first Kindle read was Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. She subscribes to the following blogs: Amazon Daily (free), Reuters Health (99 cents a month) and Reuters Top Stories ($1.99).

Quote: Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe.

Comments: Karen Hagglund and Dan.

News - In a TechFlash Q&A, Ian Freed says no to video on the Kindle.

Tech Tip -Igor Skochinsky's motherload of Kindle tech stuff.

Interview - Sriram K. Peruvemba, Vice President of Marketing at E Ink Corporation, interviewed at the company's headquarters in Cambridge, Mass.  The audio podcast contains excerpts of our conversation, and this video has the full interview.

Quote - "Senior Moment" by Dana Milbank of The Washington Post.

Comments - Audio from Peggy, text from Julie Booth.

News: Thanks to listener Linda Hopkins, we learn from Amazon that Kindle samples are NOT designed to timeout.

Tech Tip: How to put [20,000] 2,000 classics on your Kindle using MobileReference (thanks to Nick for suggesting this one) -
1.    Connect your Kindle to your computer with USB cable.
2.    In your computer’s web browser, go to MobileReference
3.    In the main area of the web site, not the column on the left, scroll down to the section titled “Fiction Books.”
4.    In the last subcategory of that section, titled “Collection:”, click on “Classic Books Collection. Over 2,000 complete works. Only $19.99.”
5.    For use on the Kindle, it doesn’t seem to matter which platform you choose; I’ve just tested the “Desktop/Notebook/Tablet PC” platform, and that worked fine.  So in the row for “Desktop/Notebook/Tablet PC” platform, go over one column to the “Trial Version” column and click “Download Now.”
6.    You will be asked to enter your email address, so do that and then click on the green “Download Application” button.
7.    On the next screen, click on the live link which says “Click here to download: Best-Selling Classic Books Collection. Over 2000 complete works. FREE biographies and works in trial”
8.    From here, what you see will depend on whether you are using a PC or Mac, but the essentials are the same as with any other download from the Internet that you do on your computer.  For the Mac, I see a dialog box saying, “You have chosen to open classicstrial103.zip” which is a zipped file containing numerous separate items.  I click on “OK” to open it with Stuffit Expander.  However your computer works, your goal is to be able to find a folder on your hard drive titled “ClassicsTrial”.  Mine shows up in a Downloads folder.
9.    Open a window that shows you the “ClassicsTrial” folder you just downloaded, and then open that folder so you can see all the items in it, beginning with “AlexandreDumasDEMO.prc” and ending with “WilliamShakespeareDEMO.prc.”
10.    Open another window that shows the Kindle icon, which you should see because your Kindle is attached to the computer by the USB cable.
11.    Doubleclick the Kindle icon, so you can see five folders, including the one labeled “Documents.”
12.    Drag the “ClassicsTrial” folder into the “Documents” folder of your Kindle.   I just tried this on my MacBook Air, and it worked fine – I assume the same process will work on a PC, but if you run into trouble you might try selecting all the individual books in the “ClassicsTrial” folder and dragging them in one big bunch into the “Documents” folder.
13.    Once you have the “ClassicsTrial” contents in the Documents folder of your Kindle, safely eject the Kindle icon and then unplug the USB cable.
14.    Checking on your Home screen, you’ll now see about three added pages of demo versions of classic books. 
15.    I’m pretty sure that once you sample some of the demo books, you’ll want to spend the $19.99 to purchase the actual collection.  I’m going to do that now but make sure they go to my SD card, to keep my main Kindle.
16.    The purchase process via Handango is routine, and you don’t have to wait for a registration code.  The folder is called “ClassicsFull” . It’s about 115 megabytes in size, so even with my speedy Comcast connection (31 megabits per second when I was doing the download last weekend) – it took a while for it all to load to my computer, and then another few minutes for it to load from the computer to the Kindle.
17.    I’ve got a 1 GigaByte SD card in my Kindle. After adding 2,000 classics I’ve got  838 MB left, or room for another 16,000 classics on a storage device that cost me less than $20.
18.    One thing I don’t like is that all these new titles appear in my Home pages on the Kindle, even though I put them on the SD card.  At least they are gathered by author, so you click on an author to see all the titles he or she wrote.
19.    All in all this is a great resource, and I want to thank Nick for suggesting that I follow the process for this week’s Tech Tip.

Interview: Jason Pontin, editor-in-chief and publisher of MIT's Technology Review, a rising star in the Kindle Store.

Quote: "The Lady with the Dog" by Anton Chekhov.

Comments: Bob Boyken, Jim Brooks, Gail Scott, Julie Booth and Will D.

News: Case of the disappearing Kindle Store sample, from Joe Wikert's Kindleville blog.

Tech Tip: From David Emberson's Kindle Cookbook, a clever keyboard shortcut that zooms you through books 1/20th at a time.

Interview: My wife's opinion of her Kindle improves during her first month of use, despite her biggest fear coming true.  NOTE: If you know some great sources for contemporary mystery writers for the Kindle, please let me know, so I can pass them along to Darlene.

Quote: from a book about Afghanistan being read this week by the President-Elect, Ghost Wars by Steve Coll.

Comments: Do you read YOUR Kindle during takeoff and landing?  And, good news on book sales from David Emberson.

Please feel free to leave me a voice comment by calling 206-666-2713 or a text comment at PodChronicles@gmail.com or as a comment here on the show notes page.