Amazon
Amazon
Amazon has apps that run on all the major platforms, both PC and Mobile. There is also a cloud reader that runs in the browser.
Amazon is in business to make money, but they provide an enormous number of free services and products. There are also some extradorinary deals to be had for one or two dollars.
Create an Account
The first step is to create an account on Amazon if you do not already have one. There is no need to create a separate account for this course, as we will not be publishing anything on the site that will be likely to compromise your anonymity.
Buy books
There are a large number of books on Amazon that are now in the public domain. I want you to add at least 10 books to your Kindle Account. These books are free. Sometimes there will be two versions of a book, one that is free, and one that costs money. Please get the free version.
Search on D. H. Lawrence and “buy” for $0.00 the following books:
- Sons and Lovers
- The Rainbow
- Women in Love
Here is a screenshot of the page where you can find these books, along with a listing of their price:
Search on Rudyard Kipling and “buy” for $0.00 the following books:
- The Jungle Book
- Captains Courageous
- The Light that Failed
##Check out a book from the Library
Create an account on the King County Library System. Check out a book and “send it to your Kindle. In the screen shot below, I have searched on the author Isaac Asimov. Looking toward the bottom half of the screen shot, you can see that I have found a number of books in the ebook format. Look on the left, about half way down, and you can see that I have filtered only on ebooks. I then clicked on the “Request this Download” link and it popped up the dialog shown near the top of the screen shot. It shows that the book is available in kindle format. I might have seen a screen showing that all copies were checked out, or that is was not available for Kindle. But in this case, I found just what I wanted.
You will then be presented with a link that says “Continue with Kindle Download here”:
After clicking the link you are taken to the Kindle page:
Now you can “Get library book” and send it to a particular device.
##O’Reilly
Most of the books on O’Reilly.com cost money. It is, however, also possible to get book samples and even free books. For those interested there are also a few open source books released on the web in HTML format.
“Purchase” the books called CSS and Documents by Eric Meyer and The Web Platform by Simon St.Laurent. After you make the purchase, you will be sent to your books page. Select the book you “bought” and send it to Kindle.
It may not be possible to view the books you “Send to Kindle” or email to Kindle in the Kindle Cloud Reader. You can see the library loans and regular Kindle books in the Cloud Reader. If possible, see if you can download a standard copy of the Kindle reader to your phone or PC. You should be able to see the “Send to Kindle” books in those apps. If you can’t do that, just include a screenshot of you “sending to kindle” in your assignment. The screen shot should look something like the one I provide above.
##Read your Book
If you have a mobile device, install the Amazon Kindle edition for Android, IPhone, Windows Phone, etc.
After installing the device, you should go to the settings page and find out the name of your Kindle. That way you will know which Kindle to send a book to when you “purchase” it.
Finally, you want to find the book in your library, and begin reading it.
If you don’t have a mobile device. Then perform this same operation in the Kindle Cloud Reader.
##Manage Your Kindle Go to the Manage Your Kindle page on Amazon. Provide a screen shot showing the at least the last seven books that you “purchased” on Amazon. At least one of the books should show “borrowed”, designating that you checked it out from the library.
##Turn it in.
Create between 6 and 8 screen shots similar to the ones found in this document. Save them all to Google Drive and embed them in a markdown document along with a few words explaining each screen shot.
When you are ready to submit your assignment, use the file upload option, and turn in:
- The text of your markdown file as an attachment.
- The URL for an HTML file running on Google Sites. (Supply this URL in the comment section for the submission of you assignment.)
| To complete the assignment, you want to use stackedit.io or some other markdown editor to create your markdown document. Save the markdown produced by stackedit.io by choosing **Export to disk | As markdown**. Then save the file a second time as HTML using a similar process to that for exporting the markdown. Use the HTML to create a page on Google Sites. Note that when you edit a page in Google Sites there is an HTML icon on the toolbar. Click on that icon and then paste in the HTML you got from stackedit.io. |
Then, as explained above, do two things:
- Attach your markdown document to your assignment when you submit.
- In the comment area provided when you submit he assignment, include a link to your Google Sites page.
Please note that when you submit your assignment I:
- Want the raw markdown file with an .md extension. Don’t embed the file in Word document.
- Want a link to a nice looking HTML page on Google Sites. It doesn’t have to be beautiful, but please use what you know about markdown to include screenshots, create lists and headers, etc, so that you produce clean HTML that is easy to read. Something like this, but use your own words and pictures, and it need not be as complex or detailed.
Further Comments
A little research with Google will reveal information on how to take screen shots on your device and on your computer. Once you have the screen shots, import them into Google Drive. It will probably make sense to store them in the folder you have shared with me, as that way I can see that you have them, even if you have trouble with other parts of the assignment.
In Google Drive, select a file you want to display on your web pages. Click on the Man icon with the plus by its head to get a link to your screenshot. The highly stylized icon shows a man’s head and shoulders. It is near the top right of the screen, beneath the search icon and between the chain and eye, as shown here:
In the dialog that appears when you click the icon, create a link you can share with anyone by clicking the “Get a shareable link” icon. Copy the link and use it in the markdown document you create for this assignment. Here, in blue, is example of the link that you want to copy:
The links you get from Google look like this:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B25UTAlOfPRGUlprZXF5ajM0aXM/view?usp=sharing
The link that you get directly from Google takes the user back to Google Drive. In this case, we don’t want that. We want to show the picture directly on our web site. Or, to put it another way, we want the link to work in StackEdit, and on our Google Site. To make this link work in StackEdit, you need to transform it so that it looks like this:
Now you should be able to see the picture in StackEdit. All you need to do at this point is copy the HTML and paste it into your Google site by first creating a page on Google Sites, and then clicking the little HTML icon on the Google Sites editor toolbar.
If you have more questions, ask them in the discussion area.