Amazon Echo - your own personal digital concierge!

Amazon has launched nifty device named Echo - which is like a stand-alone "Siri" - but more like a personal digital concierge for the family. The cost is pretty reasonable at $199 and Amazon is running a promotion right now where Prime members can get it for only $99.

Check out the Echo on Amazon - looks pretty interesting but is available by invite only.

Porting and managing your E-Books on Kindle

If you have a lot of books in electronic form and want to port them to Kindle and then manage them well, here are a few tools you will find very useful.

Use caliber or mobipocket creator to convert books from their current formats to Kindle format. In fact caliber can even transfer them properly to the Kindle for you. I know that a similar conversion can easily be achieved by sending the file to your Amazon Kindle email id and then receiving it when you are connected to Wi-Fi. However, I personally prefer to be in control of this process and I like to use caliber.

Then use Kindle Collection Manager to create collections of books and organize your books in them. As the books get organized in collection which are nothing but a form of folders, the list of books you see in the home screen of Kindle becomes a bit smaller and more logically organized.