The Amazon Kindle is primarily a digital book reader, but it can do a lot more than make it easy to carry and read your favorite ebooks. Here are ten additional ways you can use your Kindle.

1. Surfing the Web: Using the browser in Amazon Kindle is not the same as surfing the Internet from your laptop or other computer, but Kindle can get you online when you don’t have your computer handy. You can use it with public Wi-Fi hotspots, and the 3G Kindles give you free access to the 3G network – very handy for checking emails or other simple tasks when you don’t have a Wi-Fi connection!

2. Listening to music and audiobooks: Do you love audiobooks? You can load your favorite audiobooks or music on Kindle for listening on the go. Kindle has a headphone jack for private listening.

3. Converting Text to Voice: Kindle includes a text to speech setting that will read ebooks to you, when needed. It is a synthesized, unnatural voice, but it can be useful when you need to hear something read to you, such as instructions, or if you absorb text best when you both see and hear it.

4. Dictionary: See an unfamiliar word? Quickly look it up with Kindle’s built-in dictionary. And if you want to learn more you can easily surf to Google or Wikipedia to do a search. .

5. Taking Notes: If you are making notes for research, or you just like to annotate your books as you read, you can easily do so with Kindle without damaging the book or making it hard to read through highlighting, underlining and notes in the margins. Kindle has functions that help you add notes, bookmark points of interest, or highlight sentences and passages. With the new @author program, you can even submit questions and comments to the author while you read. (@author is presently limited to just a few authors, but is expected to be expanded soon.)

6. Reading Newspapers and Magazines: Many of your favorite newspapers and magazines can be delivered directly to your Kindle. You get fast access without ink-stained fingers or those annoying subscription cards that fall out while you are reading.

7. Reading Blogs: Many blogs also offer subscriptions through the Kindle. Even though there is a fee (usually about $.99 a month) to read blogs that can be read for free online, the convenience of having your favorite blogs send their most recent posts directly to your Kindle can make this an efficient way to keep up with the blogosphere.

8. Reading PDF Files: Do you download PDF files and then find it hard to get around to reading them? You can send PDFs to your Kindle and they will be waiting for you the next time you turn on your reader.

9. Shopping For New Books: You can access the Kindle store through Wi-Fi or 3G (depending on the Kindle model you own) and get the latest books delivered straight to your Kindle. Because Kindle allows you to download samples of books you are considering, you can download samples. When you want something new to read, just scan the downloaded samples, find the book you want to read next and download it in seconds.

10. Searching for Information: Although you can search books in your physical book library, or use the index to find the passage you want, it’s not nearly as easy as doing it on the Kindle! The Kindle comes with search functions that let you find things fast. You can even organize and personalize the way you store your books based on a number of different criteria.

Kindle makes it easy to take hundreds of books with you and easily read wherever you are, but it does much more. Try some of Kindle’s other functions to get the most out of your ebook reader.