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Saturday, September 22, 2012

Kindle Unicode Font Hack

Posted by BAPC Chamikara at 11:32 PM

All credits of this article go to blogkindle all the files host on there server special thanks to blogkindle.com
UFHack is a hack for Amazon Kindle 2 (including the international version) and Amazon Kindle DX (including the international version) that allows replacing default Kindle fonts with different ones, including fonts that support broader range of characters like Cyrillic, Chinese, Japanese, etc. Hack comes in a form of manually installable patch and is fully reversible. Source code is included so you can customize the hack. If you do, please let me know and I’ll host or link to the modified version as I’m sure that one size doesn’t fit all.
This hack doesn’t work on Kindle 1 – check the link at the end of the page for alternate solutions.
Important!:
  • Use this hack and instructions at your own risk after reading ALL OF THEM carefully! Although I tested it to the best of my ability on my own devices I can’t guarantee that it will work on yours and will not be responsible for any damage (including completely and irreversibly bricking your device) it may have caused!
  • This hack works on Kindle 2 (incuding the international version) and DX. For Kindle 1 you’ll need a different one. If you are not sure which version you have it’s best not to mess with it all.
  • Having this hack installed will cause installation of official Amazon.com updates to fail. This is normal. You’ll need to reverse the hack (see instuctions below), install the Amazon.com update manually and then reapply the hack.
In theory this hack should work with any version of Kindle software. However, I’ve only tested it with 2.5.2 and 2.5.3. I strongly advice you to update your Kindle to the latest software version before installing this hack. This is something you should be doing anyway.
Before installing this hack you will need to “jailbreak” your Kindle – see instructions below!
There are several versions of this hack. Functionally they are identical but they are prepacked with different sets of fonts:

GNU Free Fonts SansSerif (recommended for Cyrillic) - same fonts as before but SansSerif family is used instead of Serif. In my opinion it looks better. Bold and italic styles are preserved:


Droid Fallback Fonts (recommened for Asian glyphs) - this hack uses open-source Droid fallback font that is part of Google Android platform. Unfortunately styles and typefaces are missing completely. You’ll only get regular Sans Serif. The upside is the broadest character support. It supports Cyrillic, Chinese, Japanese and a bunch of other languages. This font also looks very good on the Kindle screen (in my opinion way better than native Kindle fonts). This is the patch I currently have installed on my Kindle 2. Here are download links:



Droid Fonts with Styles – Same fonts as above but all families and styles are there. However Asian characters are not supported:



Droid Fallback with Styles SansSerif – Same as above but Serif fonts are replaced with Sans Serif because I believe it is more readable on Kindle screen:



Installing the hack:
  1. Download appropriate jailbreak package for your Kindle:
  2. Connect your Kindle via USB cable and copy the jailbreak package into the root directory of Kindle drive
  3. Use menus to initiate manual update installation: Press “Home” to fo to the home screen, press “Menu” and select “Settings”, press “Menu” again and select “Update Your Kindle”, press the 5-way controller once more to confirm the update. If “Update Your Kindle” is disabled make sure that update version corresponds to your version of Kindle.
  4. The installer will run and report a failure. This is expected and normal. After your Kindle reboots it will be jailbroken and you would be able to install custom hacks (including UFH)
  5. If you have another version of Unicode Font Hack installed – uninstall it first (instructions can be found below). If you do not the fonts may not change.
  6. Download appropriate update file from one of the links above.
  7. Connect your Kindle 2/DX to your PC via USB cable.
  8. Copy *install*.bin  file that corresponds the the desired font family and your device version into the root of your Kindle USB drive.
  9. Use menus to initiate manual update installation: Press “Home” to fo to the home screen, press “Menu” and select “Settings”, press “Menu” again and select “Update Your Kindle”, press the 5-way controller once more to confirm the update. If “Update Your Kindle” is disabled make sure that update version corresponds to your version of Kindle. For Kindle DX you should use _dx.bin files.
  10. Your Kindle Kindle 2/DX will switch through several update screens and then reboot.
  11. Once it reboots, you can test that the hack installed properly and works:
    1. First of all you should see apparent change in all of the fonts if you didn’t install browser-only update.
    2. press “Menu”, select “Settings”. In the bottom portion of the settings page you should see Kindle software version and “+ UFHack 0.3″.
    3. Start web browser and open http://www.wikipedia.org/ – you should see Russian text in the bottom left rather than boxes with question marks. If you used droid patch – Japanese characters in the upper-left will also display.
    4. And of course you can now copy books in different languages and start reading them.
  12. Connect your Kindle Kindle 2/DX to your PC via USB cable and copy *.orig files from the root directory to a safe location. Normally you’ll not need these to reverse the hack but it’s good to keep a copy of these just in case.




Uninstalling the hack:
  1. Connect your Kindle 2/DX to your PC via USB cable.
  2. Download file that corresponds to your device and copy it to the root directory of your Kindle drive. It doesn’t matter if you have droid or liberation hack installed. The uninstaller would remove either one.
  3. If you have UFH 0.3 for Kindle 2.3 installed use these (old) uninstallers:
  4. If you have UFH 0.1 or 0.2 installed you should use the oldest uninstaller from one of the following links:
  5. Optionally but highly recommended: use “Safely Remove Hardware” to “eject” Kindle 2/DX. In order for this to work you need to close all Windows Explorer and other file manager windows that display contents of Kindle drive.
  6. Use menus to initiate manual update installation: Press “Home” to fo to the home screen, press “Menu” and select “Settings”, press “Menu” again and select “Update Your Kindle”, press the 5-way controller once more to confirm the update.
  7. Your Kindle 2/DX will switch through several update screens and then reboot.
  8. Once it reboots, you can test that the hack installed properly and works: there should be no “+ UFHack 0.1″ in the version string at the bottom of settings screen, fonts should be back to normal with boxed question marks displayed instead of unicode symbols.
  9. Unicode font files are not deleted from Kindle but should cause no problems. If you would like to delete them – contact me and I’ll provide a separate patch for that.
  10. You may also want to uninstall “jailbreak” package so that you can install official Kindle updates. Please use appropriate uninstaller from the following list:
Known issues:
  1. There is not perfect one-size fit all font that would preserve styles and display all characters and look nice at the same time. Finding one that is free proved to be more difficult than creating the patch. If you find such a font or even a paid one for which redistribution rights will not cost a small fortune – let me know and I’ll try to arrange a patch with that font.
  2. Unicode titles of .mobi and .prc books will display like garbage. This is not an issue with the hack or the fonts. Amazon eBook reader appliation assumes these fields to be ASCII rather than Unicode so they’ll not display correctly no matter what fonts until Amazon fixes this.
Using your own fonts:
  1. Once again I’ll stress that this is done at your own risk. Using corrupted font files in the reader app will likely brick your Kindle entirely. If you don’t know what are you doing – don’t do it!
  2. In order to roll your own Kindle updates you’ll need to have Python installed. One from ActiveState will do nicely.
  3. In the source code of the hack (you can download it here) you’ll find font files, update scripts and other related stuff. Feel free to look into any of it.
  4. To use your own fonts you need to replace the ones in /custom folder (preserving the file names!) and then run build-updates.cmd. This will generate installer .bin files for all versions of Amazon Kindle.
  5. If you use your own fonts it would be a good idea to test the browser-only update first. Keep in mind that browser-only update uses only Serif*.ttf fonts. So you will want to replace them with the ones that you are testing regardless of the actual typography. Replace all of the files even if you are using same font file.
  6. To uninstall use one of the standard uninstallers provided here.
Good luck and enjoy!
Please spread the word about this hack as it will increase chances of someone finding better fonts that can be used with it.

Credits go to - http://blogkindle.com/unicode-fonts-hack/#ixzz27Gun1xBp
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How To Update Kindle Firmware

Posted by BAPC Chamikara at 12:35 PM
Updating Kindle Firmware is one of most popular search among Kindle users most of them don't know how to update kindle firmware successfully .If you were checked User’s Manual on how to update the Kindle software indeed there is very little information on it.From this article I'll teach you how to update Kindle Firmware Successfully.



Normally Kindle 2 would automatically download appropriate software updates if it is connected to the WhisperNet and automatically intall it when Kindle goes into sleep mode. Update installation will be followed by a reboot.

But if you don't have Sprint EVDO coverage mean if you cannot access to WhisperNet You can following easy steps to update it manually

1. Download appropriate update file from Amazon.com. Kindle 1 updates should be downloaded from http://www.amazon.com/update_kindle.bin. Kindle 2 users should download from http://www.amazon.com/update_kindle2.bin. It’s very important not to mix these files as you can possibly brick your Kindle by installing the wrong update.

2. Connect your Kindle to your PC via USB cable.

3.Once Kindle USB drive is mounted copy the downloaded file to the root folder of it.

4. Unmount the drive using Safely remove installed hardware icon in the system tray (next to the clock, volume control icon etc)

5. Disconnect Kindle from the PC.

6. Go to the Home Screen, press Menu and select settings and then select “Update Your Kindle”. If your Kindle is already updated the menu item will be gray and you will not be able to select it.

7.Once update is installed your Kindle will reboot.

You have to do those with your own risk.If you have a Problem Comment below and I can help you


credits - http://blogkindle.com/2009/03/updating-kindle-firmware

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How to Publish a Kindle Book to Amazon Easy 6 Steps

Posted by BAPC Chamikara at 9:12 AM

I found this amazing article from one of my friends blog all credits go to him.This Article will guide you to how to Publish a Kindle book to amazon successfully.If you have any question you are free to place a comment below.I f you want convert your any kind of document to kindle format check my fiverr gig


if you have plane to upload book to Amazon, then you should know these points also

1.       Automatically publish to Kindle stores on Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.de, simultaneously
2.      Choose  several languages including English, German, French, Spanish, Portuguese, or Italian
3.      Price Setting for US Dollars, Pounds Sterling, or Euros and choose between 35% or 70% commissions
4.      Kindle apps expand your reach beyond the Kindle and onto iPad, iPhone, iPod touch, PC, Mac, Blackberry, Android-based devices and Windows Phone 7
5.      Submit your e-book to the Amazon Kindle Singles storefront
With all these advantages, Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) is best described as simple, flexible and far-reaching.
Lets Start Uploading your well formated (HTML, MOBI,PRC) file to kindle store via your registered Account
Step 1 – Write (and Format) the Book!


What file format does the Amazon Kindle use?

Usually .MOBI, .PRC, files.

In addition to the file formats listed above, you can also convert other personal documents to read on your Kindle. The supported file formats are listed below:
• Microsoft Word (.DOC) • Structured HTML (.HTML, .HTM) • JPEG (.JPEG, .JPG) • GIF (.GIF) • PNG (.PNG) • BMP (.BMP) • Compressed ZIP (.ZIP)
In addition to the above the Kindle can also display PDF formated documents.

NOTE: .MOBI, .PRC files will give you proper formated file and user frenly look on Kindle 
Step 2 – Sign Into Amazon KDP With Your Account

Whether your book is completely finished or a work-in-progress, head over tohttp://kdp.amazon.com and sign in with ease through your pre-existing Amazon.com account information.
Otherwise, you will have to sign up for a free Amazon account to access Amazon KDP.

Step 3 – “Add a New Title” to your  KDP Bookshelf

To create a new publication, click the “Add a new title” button. This will create your new project.

Step 4 – Edit Book Details in the “Your Book” Tab

Now, it’s time to add all the necessary information about your book.
First, you’ll start by adding the book’s name, and optionally include a Series Title, Volume number and Edition number.
Most important will be investing some time into writing a strong description of the book, which is actually what will be displayed below your book’s basic information on Amazon Kindle Store (and ultimately help sell the book). This is how it will display:



Now Time to Upload Cover
Upload Your Book Cover also
Moving on to the next step of your book’s details, you’ve given the option to upload a book cover, which I highly recommend.
Amazon recommends either a JPEG (.jpeg) or TIFF (.tif or .tiff) image with dimensions of 1280 pixels wide by 550 pixels tall, and a standard resolution of 72 dpi.

After you upload your cover image, you can choose whether or not you want to enabledigital rights management (DRM) which intends to (keyword intends, but does not guarantee) the unauthorized distribution of the Kindle file of your book.
This prevents your customer from being able to share or “lend” your book to a friend for any period of time, and is irreversible once your book is uploaded.
Step 5 – Properly Format Your Book for Upload
NOTE: .MOBI, .PRC files will give you proper formated file and user frenly look on Kindle 

Finally, hit Save and Continue to carry onto the final page of your book’s upload.
Step 6 – Wait Till Amazon’s Approve the Book

When you are finished with providing all of the details and price specifications of your book, your submission will take usually 24 hours for Amazon to officially approve.

 Credits go to - http://computertipssupport.blogspot.com/2012/07/get-your-ebook-on-amazon-kindle.html
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