Cover via Amazon
Today I want to mention a nice tool I found for Kindle (and Kindle reading app) users: Klip.me. Klip.me allows me to quickly send a web page to my Kindle. This has worked great for me with both Chromium 16 and Firefox 13.
Klip.me comes as a browser extension for Google Chrome (or the open source Chromium) and Apple Safari, as well as a (beta) bookmarklet supporting Firefox, Opera, Chrome, Safari and IE9.
Only three simple steps are needed to setup Klip.me:
1. Install
Install the browser extension by clicking the appropriate icon, or drag the bookmarklet to your bookmarks bar.
In Chromium the extension shows up as a little orange square with a “K” on it to the right of the address bar. In Firefox it shows up as a bookmark labeled “Send to Kindle”.
2. Set your Send-to-Kindle email address
While open to the Klip.me Send to Kindle page, click the button/bookmarklet. This takes you to the options page, where you fill in the email address used to send files to your Kindle. There are a few other options you can play with as well.
3. Give Klip.me permission to send to your Kindle
Go to the Amazon Kindle page, sign in, go to “Manage Your Kindle”, then “Personal Document Settings”, and click on the “Add new approved e-mail address” link. Add kindle@klip.me. This gives Klip.me permission to send files to your Kindle.
Start clipping web pages
Now comes the fun part: whenever you’re on a web page that you would like to send to your Kindle, just click the button/bookmarklet. Klip.me will cleverly reformat the web page with all sidebars, headers, ads, and so on removed, so you just see the main article. To the right is a big orange “Send” button. Clicking this will send the article to your Kindle, and change the button to “OK”. Clicking on the “OK” will return you to the web page the way it was before Klip.me reformatted it.
Note: if the files you send are downloaded through Amazon’s Whispernet 3G network, they will charge you a download fee. Outside the US, these fees can be quite substantial, so keep this in mind. But if you use WiFi for downloading, it’s free.
There is also a “Setting” button on the reformatted page, which gives you access to the same options page as above.
With the browser extension, there’s also a “Save” button that allows the clipped pages to be viewed in other ways, but I haven’t explored these possibilities.
I use Klip.me whenever I run into a blog post or other web page that I want to keep for future reference (e.g. a particularly insightful writing-related post), or that I plan to read but don’t have time now. I just send it to my Kindle, and read it later.
One minor annoyance is that once you click the Klip.me button/bookmarklet, you can’t get back to the regular web page you were on without sending it to your Kindle (or, presumably, by saving it). The browser Back button does not work for this (although if there is a previous page, Back will take you there, then you can go forward again to where you were). But I haven’t found this to be a significant problem.
All in all, I really like it. Have you tried it? Does it look useful? Let me know what you think.
Related articles
- How to Send Anything to Your Kindle for Later Reading [Emailable Tech Support] (lifehacker.com)
- Web to Kindle clipping – service comparison (recantha.blogspot.com)
- Kindle It – A very useful Chrome extension to send any web page to your Kindle for reading later (lifelongexplorer.com)
- 5 Ways To Customize Your Browser & Have Websites The Way YOU Want Them To Be (makeuseof.com)
- How To Turn Any Bookmarklet Into A Customized Toolbar Button [Firefox] (makeuseof.com)
- Web Page Reformatting Services Readable and Readability (filterjoe.com)
- The Elegant Save-to-Kindle (insideview.ie)
Oh very cool. I didn’t know about this tool! Thanks so much.
You’re welcome, Angela, glad to help.
I haven’t used klip.me, but I am obsessed with both Instapaper (for saving articles for later reading) and more recently, readlists.com (from Readability), which allows you to create ebooks from saved articles. While Instapaper is its own app, readlists (like klip.me) lets you send ebook version of saved article collection to various devices.
Thanks for the tips, myaspielife. I haven’t used Instapaper or readlists.com, but they look similar to klip.me.
Readlists looks like it might have an advantage when an article is split over multiple pages. There was one short story in six parts that I read on my Kindle by sending each page separately. It looks like Readlists would be able to put them all together into a single e-book. It also seems to have a social aspect of being able to share read lists. I’ll have to check it out when I get a chance.