Software, toys, gadgets and computers
In 2000 I asked someone to pick up an alarm clock from Target—something simple, stylish, and loud. Of the three, it was only the latter. Now you can’t unset the alarm! Argh! And I’ve since learned to wake up to much less noise. In my life I’ve averaged about an alarm clock every decade.
I purchased the Vers 1.5R clock radio from Feel More Human.
One of the iPhone updates I downloaded last night was the New York Times app. Trying to figure out how it was better than the previous version I was hit with the announcement that there is a Kindle app for the iPhone.
Here are some screenshots with commentary:
The Kindle icon is nice. I put the app next to Stanza which is, by far, the best free book reader for the iPhone. Yeah, my battery is running out.
This screen is the same as the Kindle 2’s UPC symbol.
All my purchased books are synced and the covers are in color. Nice.
On the other hand, none of my sample chapters synced, none of my documents synced, and my magazine subscription The New Yorker didn’t sync. I was hoping to see the latest cover in color on the iPhone. 🙁
Kindle app wirelessly synchronized my page position from my Kindle 2. Slick! You flick tap to change the page, tap hold to pull up the menu. They’ll probably have to change the navigation UI to be more in line with other iPhone readers.
For some reason the scroll is too slow for page flipping. You flick to fast you just get a white screen. You can change the font size but you cannot rotate the display.
Images on Kindle books are supposed to be color. Not for me! Maybe it depends on the book, but the print version of this book is clearly color, while the Kindle version is black and white. Also you can’t pinch zoom or tap zoom any of the images. So much for using the Kindle for my pr0n needs. Argh!
There seems to be a bug where both “Beginning” and “Cover” jump to the cover. Beginning is supposed to jump to the first readable area.
Note that the app syncs my notes and marks from my Kindle 2.
The jump menu is the only thing clearly better on the iPhone. I can jump to the section with just a flick and tap. Those of you who take a lot of notes know how frustrating it is to navigate the Kindle 2’s eInk display.
BTW, there is no text-to-speech. This is disappointing. I know the iPod has spoken menus and there is a way sync high quality voices to it. I’d love for a high-quality voice like Alex read my books while I’m driving (and then sync my book position back to my Kindle 2.
[If I have time I’ll archive my notes later in this article]
Panasonic DMC-LX1
1/5sec, ƒ2.8, iso 100, 6.3mm (28mm)
No, this is not a sticker. This is the Kindle when it’s asleep. That’s the magic of e-Ink.
I found that you can’t clip from sample chapters 🙁 Major bummer!
To see a definition on the K2, just navigate to the left of the word and it pops up automatically. Here is a tip I found useful when setting your ad-hoc chapter markers just so.
Kindle 2 User’s Guide (Amazon.com)
– Highlight Loc. 524-27 | Added on Thursday, February 26, 2009, 10:26 AMTip: You can quickly create a bookmark by either holding down the Alt key and pressing the B key, or by moving the 5-way up or down to go into cursor mode and then pressing the 5-way controller twice.
I cancelled my New Yorker (print) subscription and started it up on the Kindle. The New Yorker is nearly ideal subject matter for the Kindle. Note that while you get the cartoons, the cover art and any article art aren’t reproduced in the Kindle edition. 🙁 Amazon, please fix! Another note is that since they are Condé Nast, you can, with some finagling get the the print version much cheaper than the Kindle version.
The K2 version doesn’t have the ads so I don’t know how I feel about that. But if I really need such a think, I can just buy The Complete New Yorker.
The New Yorker (The New Yorker)
– Highlight Loc. 1818-19 | Added on Thursday, February 26, 2009, 09:18 PMThe problem with playing someone whose default setting is tabula rasa is pretty obvious, and the primary qualification that Dushku brings to the part is that she graduated with honors from the Royal Academy of Cleavage.
I like the expression at the end of this clipping. The article is a critical review of Joss Wheedon’s Doll House.
Kindle 2 User’s Guide (Amazon.com)
– Highlight Loc. 642-44 | Added on Thursday, February 26, 2009, 10:47 PMTip: You can also play or stop Text-to-Speech by holding down the Shift key and pressing the Symbol key
The Kindle Text-to-Speech is much better than MacInTalk which came with the original Macintosh, but it’s nowhere close to where that technology has gone. I use this tip when I’m showing someone the text-to-speech and I need to stop it quickly.
Kindle 2 User’s Guide (Amazon.com)
– Highlight Loc. 701-2 | Added on Thursday, February 26, 2009, 11:57 PMTip: You can also narrow a search in the Kindle Store to an author’s name by typing “@author” followed by the author’s name.
A shortcut. I use the Kindle Store a lot, but not to buy. I’ve read about a half dozen first chapters today.
Kindle 2 User’s Guide (Amazon.com)
– Highlight Loc. 1043-45 | Added on Friday, February 27, 2009, 12:14 AMTip: If you would like to avoid the fee, address the e-mail so that the second part of your Kindle e-mail address is @free.kindle.com. After sending to the @free.kindle.com address, a link to the converted file will be e-mailed to your Amazon.com e-mail address. You can then download the file to your Kindle’s documents folder via USB using your computer.
What can I say? I’m a cheapskate. 🙂
Nikon D3, Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8G
1/60sec, ƒ2.8, iso 4500, 35mm
As you can see, my Kindle 2 gets more women than I do. I may have a weakness for women who read books, but Marie seems to only have a weakness for books. Major bummer.
Continue reading about getting free books on your Kindle after the jump.
On my way out of the office the other day I happened to glance at the front desk to see a stack of MaximumPC magazines. Curious I flipped through a couple issues and noted:
Why doesn’t the cover of MaximumPC have some hot Asian babe splayed across it?
A friend suggested that it was because maybe hot Asian babes used Macs, but what I was really trying to get at was how similar PC overclocking is to import car tuning.
Sometime just read the covers of MaximumPC and ModifiedMag and tell me they’re not the same magazine delta the modified women?
I’m actually counting the days until the next sequel to The Fast and the Furious will be about your next LAN party.
Well the Kindle 2 came out today so I preordered it.
This morning two people IM’d me about it so I decided to give the first my Amazon referral bucks. I give Amazon bucks semi-randomly to various friends and he asked me how I do it.
I use a “Buy from Amazon” bookmarklet I wrote to make life easier.
You can drag that into your toolbar if you like. One nice thing is to remove the second prompt and just replace the href with the tag to yourself. I keep it this way so that I remember to put the associate ID of one of my friends since I put them on rotation.
Even though it’s been a month, I still have yet to write down my New Year’s resolutions. I think that’s because last year I only completed one of four, after being three for three in 2007, I’m demoralized.
If I were to write one, the resolution would center around becoming a person more honest with myself and, by extension, with others. So far, I’ve found it relatively easy to do the physical aspects like “workout” but rather hard to do emotional ones like “letting go.” This is compounded by the fact that it is relatively easy to write achievable goals for the former, but not so easy to for the latter.
I stumbled across an application this morning after working out. It’s selling for 99 cents on iTunes.
The idea is to write five things a day you are thankful for. Every so often (every day?) after writing in the journal it gives you an inspirational quote. I guess the idea is that if you focus on the positive you can create an abundance mindset and thus be happier. As for me, I just think that we don’t focus on our inner selves enough.
We cannot exercise the physical heart directly, so we do so indirectly with large muscles moving. Perhaps we cannot exercise the emotional heart directly, so we do so indirectly with small gratitudes giving.
Maybe it’ll help, and, if you’re in the same boat, maybe it’ll help you too. The nice thing is, you can even do this without an iPhone.
This iPhone application is amazing:
I remember growing up with Rubik’s cubes in grade school. In college, a friend showed me how he came up with his solution at my age simply by inventing algorithms to transpose any two corners or sides. I never managed to get past two rows myself—a shame to my alma mater no doubt.
It goes a long way to show the sort of person I am that as a kid I would love to “solve” cubes by cracking them open and putting it back together delta a single side piece which I would flip. I would then mix the cube up and put it back.
I guess you have to be a geek like me to get the humor in that one.
Because it is the 25th anniversary of the Macintosh, there is twitter meme going on where you talk about your first mac.
Reading the headlines on Microsoft, Sony, and Nokia, I’m struck with just how impressive Apple’s quarterly’s are. Yesterday, I noticed that Apple’s front page was bragging that they have had over 300 million iPhone AppStore downloads since its launch.
Instead of going back 25 years, I’d rather go back seven when, in October 2001, Apple released the iPod. Now most of us don’t have to eat as much crow as Slashdot did—I purchased my first iPod one month after the release. However when Steve Jobs said then that the iPod was “the 21st-century Walkman” who didn’t think it was laced with more than a little hubris? And yet, now, we’d probably think that the iPod which reenergized the Macintosh, changed the music industry, and was parlayed into the “it” smartphone was the Walkman and much more.
Sony missed the iPod market because its acquisition of Columbia made the huge technology company a victim of the requests of its media division. Instead of learning from this mistake and moving forward, in 2005, this Japanese engineering company appointed an American entertainment executive to lead their company.
“If you look backward in this business, you’ll be crushed. You have to look forward.”
—Steve Jobs, on the 25th Anniversary of the Macintosh
My #firstmac? Well that was just under 25 years ago. I can still remember making Dungeons and Dragons maps with it in MacPaint at my best friend’s house—that computer changed my life. I went home and begged my parents to buy one and I’ve used sixteen macs since that day—I can name every one.
That moment also marked one of the last times I’d spend with my friend—the years play-acting fantasy books in the junkyard behind his house giving way to separate schooling and separate lives. That computer also changed some others lives. It was purchased with the same drug money that would later kill 18 people.
For different reasons than Steve Jobs, I can’t look back, I’d be crushed. I can only look forward.
On Josh Spear’s suggestion, I decided to try out Poladroid. In a nutshell, it turns your digital images into crappy Polaroids.
At first I thought, What’s the big deal? John already has a polaroid framer and the uber-insane Hockneyizer. That was until I used the UI:
Since I’ve been doing a lot of traveling these last couple months (Amsterdam, Chicago, Portland, and Providence) I have been shutting everything down and unplugging it from the wall. My power bill has taken a noticeable dip. The main reason is because of Vampire Power which sounds like a rejected Marvel super hero, but it is actually the power that is drawn from the wall socket when your device is OFF but plugged in. For instance, did you know that when a Mac is in sleep mode it uses 6 watts, but when it is off, it uses 2 watts? When you are someone who is almost never home, this adds up in relieving the stress of worrying about waste usage.
I decided I should do a solution to turn off my multimedia speakers when my computer is off and deal with the 300W subwoofers in my new speakers. I’m sure you’re following me. But a cursory net search yielded the blunt reality that green has become the new black—so popular that I just don’t have time to wade through all the information out there just to save a few dollars/month on my power bill.
So I sent an e-mail to someone in my address book who might know the answer without a thought:
He sent back this tutorial. It is a simple article to follow: start with a electricity usage monitor (or if you have money and style) and progress to to some SmartStrips—too bad you can’t find these anymore. I can only hope that people with real design skills can design these power strips and plugs so that they don’t look like ass. One can hope.
Another thing Frank sent me was this reference database of standby power usage. It’s a nice read.
(I also ran into an article in the Chronicle about the first home in Northen California to win a LEED-H Platinum rating. Cool.)
I thought that I’d share those links with you.