Tag: made of win - Part 6

What Happens If You Get Your Lost Or Stolen Kindle / Fire Back?

Regular readers may recall my son lost his Kindle Fire when we were visiting family out of state this past June, and the incident inspired my post, What To Do If Your Kindle Or Kindle Fire Is Lost Or Stolen. Since that post quickly became, and continues to be, among the most popular posts of all time on this site, I’m assuming many of you have dealt with a lost or stolen Kindle or Kindle Fire so I’m back with an update: my son’s Fire was turned in to the airport lost and found, and my parents were able to pick it up and mail it back to me. This post is about what happens next: how to get your formerly lost or stolen device back into your Amazon account’s good graces.

Closed Captions: What’s That All About?

As anyone who regularly reads my missives here at Digital Media Mom knows, I am in the process of switching to an all-digital movie library. I no longer buy new videos I want on disc, and I’m gradually replacing my existing discs with Amazon Instant Videos when I find those titles offered at a discount. Amazon is my digital video vendor of choice because I’m confident Amazon will outlive me, but I’m not so certain about any of the other folks who’re selling digital videos—like my satellite cable provider, VUDU, UltraViolet and so on. But that’s not what this post is about. This post is about those wonderful, useful, practical Closed Captions!

Amazon Review Tips & Tricks For Savvy Shoppers

Amazon is one of my preferred shopping outlets, mainly because I’m an Amazon Prime member and that means I get free two-day shipping on almost everything I buy there. However, it’s also a great resource for any shopper, even if you ultimately make your purchase somewhere else. This is largely because of the customer reviews, but if your approach to Amazon customer reviews is to merely look at the overall average review rating for a given product and maybe spot-check a few of the most positive and most negative reviews, you aren’t getting the maximum level of helpfulness and guidance from those reviews. How To Use Amazon Customer Reviews Like A Boss: The Little-Known Search This Product’s Reviews Feature Amazon reviews are a particularly great shopper resource when you’re looking at a big-ticket item, such as the Samsung Galaxy Player pictured in this post. You may have heard it’s the exact same hardware as…

Amazon’s Instant Video Finder Is A Terrific, FREE Tool For Finding Your Next Great Movie Or TV Show

Whether you get your movies from Redbox, Netflix, Amazon Instant Video, Video on Demand from your cable provider, or even the old-school way, by purchasing discs, you’ve got to give Amazon’s Instant Video Finder tool a try! You know there are LOTS of great movies and TV shows out there you’ve never seen, but you also know there are plenty of clunkers. How can you narrow the field down to the winners? When you’ve got specific criteria, like maybe you need a kid-friendly film to keep the young ones occupied while the grown-ups socialize in another room, how can you quickly drill down to appropriate viewing material, AND choose something the kids will actually enjoy? When you’re in the mood for something fairly specific in terms of subject matter or tone and the usual broad categories of Thriller, Drama and Action aren’t cutting it, how can you find what you’re looking for without spending as…

What To Do When Your Kindle Or Kindle Fire Is Lost Or Stolen

Hey, Thief Who Took My Son’s Kindle Fire: Think you just got a free tablet you can use to order all kinds of stuff on MY Amazon account? Not so fast. When you lose your Kindle or Kindle Fire, believe it or not the loss of the device is not the worst part. No, that would be the fact that your Amazon account is now vulnerable to wrongful charges from anyone who finds your missing gadget. There is a tiny bit of good news, though: as always, Amazon’s exceptional Kindle customer service reps stand at the ready to prevent this from happening. Note: if you’ve already gotten your lost or stolen device back, see this follow-up post: What Happens If You Get Your Lost Or Stolen Kindle / Fire Back? The Thief Not Only Gets A Nifty E-reader Or Tablet, But Full Access To Charge Stuff To Your Amazon Account, Too Remember when…

Carcassonne: My New Favorite Game App

This is a cross-posting of a piece I originally wrote for Kindle Fire on Kindle Nation Daily. It is reprinted here in full with that site’s permission. I am a HUGE fan of games of all sorts, including board games, so it came as a real shock to me that I’d never heard of Carcassonne (4/5 stars, currently priced at $4.99) before I came across it in the form of a Kindle Fire game app—it’s also available for other Android devices in the Google Play store, and for Apple devices in the iTunes App Store. Carcassonne is a turn-based strategy game about empire-building, and even though it was only invented in 2000, it’s become a hugely popular board game in Europe. When you hear “empire building” you may be thinking of Risk, but this game doesn’t involve careful management of invading armies and weaponry. Instead, players take turns laying down tiles with pictures of different…

Rechargeable Battery Problems: Overcharging, Leaving It Plugged In

Does it seem like your thingie isn’t holding its charge as long as it used to, or like a full charge doesn’t give you as many hours of use as it used to? Does it seem like your last thingie died a lot sooner than you expected? It’s recently come to my attention that many folks don’t know two crucial things about charging their devices with rechargeable batteries, and that’s where the trouble begins. DON’T OVERCHARGE Rechargeable batteries lose a little bit of their holding capacity every time they’re overcharged. By “overcharged”, I mean when they’re plugged into an outlet for charging beyond the time it takes to fully recharge the battery. **UPDATE 1/23/14** To anyone who’s thinking it’s not possible to damage a rechargeable Lithium Ion battery by leaving it plugged in too long, see this DMM post, where I discuss the difference between what’s technically correct about Li-ion batteries…

Bargain Hunters: It’s An Ideal Time To Get A Free Amazon Prime Trial

5/16/13 UPDATE: Note that the 30 Day Free Prime Trial offer may no longer be in effect; it was valid as of the writing of this post, and comes back from time to time, but I can’t guarantee it’s still in effect as you read this. I am a bargain hunter par excellence, I know a great deal when I see one. I also know that time-consuming, hassle-filled “bargains” aren’t really bargains at all, and neither are low prices on crummy products or services. Having said all that, I can tell you that taking advantage of free trial periods for premium services is one of the major tools in my bargain hunter’s utility belt. Free Trials: These Days, It’s Easy To Cancel Before The Expiration Date You may be leery of “free” trials, because as we all know the sellers’ goal is to hook you in and hope you forget…

Printing From Kindle Fire, Printing From Android

Today’s post is brought to you by Weekly Shirts, where you can get the coolest custom-designed, limited edition shirts around. Advertisers make it possible for Digital Media Mom to bring you great content each day for free, so thanks for your support. 3/27/14 UPDATE: please see this more recent post on the same topic, which includes links to more printer apps that have been released since the time this post was originally written. Like most people who own one, I LOVE my Kindle Fire. But one area where Android tablet computers and smartphones fall short of their bigger, beefier PC, Mac and laptop counterparts is in printing. Android smartphones and tablets like the Fire aren’t designed to be connected to other devices with cables, like regular computers are. You can connect your Android device to a computer with a USB cable for file transfers, but unless your device has printer driver software installed (a program that…