Send to Kindle

You're scanning the news websites in a hurry, skimming the headlines and making mental notes to return to read the stories. Of course, the mental notes fall out of your head and roll under the bed with the dust-kitties.

If you have a Kindle and also are using Google's Chrome as a browser, you can use a new Chrome extension called "Send to Kindle" to do just as it says -- send the entire text of a web article to your Kindle for later reading. It's terrific and it's free.

Among the sites I visit regularly are Arts & Letters Daily, Bookforum and The Browser, all handy compendiums of interesting but longish articles and reviews published elsewhere. Reading them on the Kindle instead of a backlighted computer screen is much more restful on the eyes.

Stop at an article on your computer. Click on a little check mark box in the Chrome header. Then click again -- and the article is sent to your Kindle mail address for uploading to your e-reader the next time you turn it on within wi-fi range. It takes just a few minutes for Amazon.com to do its thing and relay it to you.

You can get the Send to Kindle extension here. (You'll need to be using Chrome to download it.)

Sorry, it works only with Chrome, not Firefox or Internet Explorer or any of the non-Google browsers.