Wednesday, May 7, 2014

How to Hack Kindle Android App to work in Indonesia (or any other countries outside of the USA)

(PS: For my fellow Indonesians: Perlu post ini dalam Bahasa Indonesia? Aku bisa buatkan kalau ada yg mau. Tolong tinggalkan comment ya)

I love ebooks. I have been reading them in all kinds of devices for years (including tiny Blackberry, more post on how to do that in the future). And my favorite reader in Kindle (and Kindle's app for Android). Of course Kinde "should" only work in the USA. Kindle Android App should only work on Android in the USA. Luckily for us the 6 billion other people, there is a back door.

Android can install app from other sources than "Google Play". And the site www.androiddrawer.com has kindly enough kept an installation file for Kindle Android App for anyone to install regardless what country they're from.

Here is my Kindle App link, shortened for easy typing in mobile browser: bit.ly/kindledw. Just go there in your Android's mobile browser and install, or follow the step-by-step instruction below.

NOTE: AndroidDrawer maintains many versions of Kindle Android App. I use version 4.0.2.54 because this version allows me access to my non-amazon-purchased .mobi files that I upload myself. I believe the later versions remove this (material for future post?).

STEP 1: Enable your Android to install from outside of "Google Play"
- Follow this article from CNET for instruction on how to do that.

STEP 2: Open the Kindle App page of AndroidDrawer
- Use your mobile browser in your Android
- Type in (or click) my shortcut link to get there: bit.ly/kindledw

STEP 3: Download and Install a version of Kindle App that fits your need:
- Click the "Download This Version" link
- When the download completes, open in and OK to install it on your Android.
- You're done.


How To Enable ‘Delete Confirmation Dialog’ In Windows 8

This one is sourced from How To Enable ‘Delete Confirmation Dialog’ In Windows 8 by Usman Javaid.

There is one thing that has been bothering me ever since I was forced to move to Windows 8 (because I bought a new computer), and that is by default, there is no DELETE CONFIRMATION when I delete, sometimes accidentally, anything on Window Explorer. I am a fan of keyboard shortcut and "SHIFT-DELETE" which permanently delete files, and today, I accidentally delete 2 GB worth of files with a "single" keystroke. So I finally got around to finding out how to turn "Delete Confirmation Dialog" back on. I found this article by Usman, and "copy" it here for my own archiving.

What bothers you most when moving to Windows 8? Let me know!

Here is the steps to turn on "Delete Confirmation Dialog":

STEP 1: Open Property Tab of Recycling Bin.
- Locate your recycling bin, it is on the top left of your desktop.
- Right click it to display the menu.
- Select "Properties"


STEP 2: Activate "Display Delete Confirmation Dialog"
- Check the box next to "Display Delete Confirmation Dialog"
- Click OK button to save this change.
- And you're done!



Now you can see this dialog every time you delete:


Friday, May 2, 2014

Sharing Subfolder in Dropbox

This is taken mostly from Sharing subfolders of shared folder – dropbox by Sebastian Suchanowski.

I need to share my business card scanning subfolder to my assistant (who is to properly type them out and create a contact (VCF) file for me to import to my Outlook and sync-ed to my Gmail, Blackberry and Android(s). (a subject of another post). But for some reason or another, I want to share a subfolder of my scanning directory, not all.

Dropbox (unlike Box.com) still cannot handle this as as of May 2014, so the workaround is to create a new folder in the root of your dropbox account, and create a symbolic (junction) link that act as a subfolder from wherever you want it to be in your directory tree. With a symbolic link, Windows explorer will act as if the link is a sub-folder, but dropbox only see a small ".lnk" file. Dropbox actually synchronize/share the new folder.

For this post, I assume you have used dropbox Sync to sync your dropbox account to your local drive at:
  C:/Users/Me/dropbox

and you want this subfolder to be shared to another person
  C:/Users/Me/dropbox/MyCurrentFolder/WantToShareSubfolder

I also assume you know how to invoke "cmd.exe" and get the window command.exe dos shell.

STEP 1 - CREATE THE SHARED FOLDER IN DROPBOX

a. Create a folder in the root directory of your dropbox account.
   mkdir C:/Users/Me/dropbox/NewShare

b. Share it with whoever you want.

STEP 2 - CREATE THE LINK IN YOUR DIRECTORY STRUCTURE

a. Create the symbolic (junction) link using the "mklink" command.
  cd C:/Users/Me/dropbox/MyCurrentFolder/
   mklink /J WantToShareSubfolder C:/Users/Me/dropbox/NewShare

That's it.