Kindle - first impressions

Yep, I got myself a Kindle! Well, with help from some recent birthday gift certificates that is...
I've been eyeing these things for quite some time now. But I could never justify the price. While I very much enjoy reading, I tend to do my reading before bed each night which means I usually only get a few pages in per night before Mr. Sandman clunks me over the head. BUT I do love books. In fact, I admire others who have or make more time for reading. I am making an effort to increase my reading time as well.

So first let me say, there are some things that trouble me regarding a Kindle.
1) I've never had an issue where I couldn't read anything because I had a dead battery.
2) I've never dropped my entire bookcase to the point where if I did, I wouldn't be able to read those books anymore.
3) I'm very troubled by the tight grips that Amazon is building into their Kindle format.
4) I don't like the high costs of the Kindle editions (on some books - other books are FREE!)

But... I received mine yesterday morning, and upon opening it, and getting to know it as the day progressed, I felt like I was holding a magical device.
It seems to be VERY nicely designed which is important for a device like this. As I was unpacking it (which the packing is really nicely done as well), I couldn't help but notice a heavy "Apple" influence. (Learn from the best).
The device is a tad heavier than what I expected, but it's certainly a good weight.
I so far have "purchased" only one book - which was a wopping ¢99! It was Thomas Paine's "Common Sense" (I started to read this book some time ago, but never finished it). I've also "purchased" a handful of the FREE books. (I had to laugh as many of the "top sellers" are FREE books - I suspect that is because people who buy a Kindle can't afford to buy books anymore!)
There is defintely going to be a price war ahead (happening now!). People are NOT going to want to spend more than the $9.99 base price. They view an e-book as not being as expensive as a paper book (I do anyway). But I'm sure in due time the prices will even out.

As far as readbility and navigation etc...
The e-ink is very nice. The only complaint is that the background is a tad too dark in my opinion. IF Amazon were smart, they would not have made the unit a stark bright white. It only emphasizes that the "paper" is about 40% gray. They should have made the unit a dark gray (abt 80% which would have given the illusion of a brighter "paper". So far though, It is very readable though (I've heard some people complain of eyestrain on long periods).
The navigation is nice, but I think it could use a little work. I'm sure though, once I get the hang of what the buttons do, I'll adapt and it won't be an issue (for example, I tend to want to use the 5-way button to turn pages).

All in all, a really nice device, and I hope to get many hours of enjoyment from it.
One last comment... this is only the "second generation" Kindle... and it's only been out for a little over a year or so (meaning the first gen Kindle). I'm aware that soon my unit will be out of date, but such is the price to pay for adopting new technology.
I will enjoy it for a long time I'm sure.
(note, I'm STILL using my second gen. ipod and like it very much!)

Oh... one more thing... the images they have while the unit is in sleep mode are fantastic! The levels of gray are enough to do justice to a black and white image.

Verizon DSL tech support = fail

Quick rant...
A while ago, I started looking into what bit torrent is. I'm still not 100% sure I can explain it well, but I have a rough idea. Yes, there are a lot of people who use it to "share" "illegal" songs, and movies... But there are also a lot of people who use it for legal sharing. I had bit torrent working on my imac at one point long ago, but barely used it (found the interface confusing). I also know that it can be dangerous as far as viruses, and other nasties... it's sort of like the secret underbelly of the internet. (wikipedia here).
Well, a month or so ago, I tried to find a TV show on bit torrent. It was called "History Hacker" (a good show, but sadly the History Channel did not pick it up). I found it on one of the torrent sites and tried several times to download it. Nothing. I've since tried a few more torrent clients, and have had no luck at downloads. I kinda gave up on it all.
Well, the other day, I decided to try out a screen saver that I've heard alot about... called Electric Sheep. It creates these fantastic animations in these incredible fractal like movies.
I downloaded it, installed it, and tried running it... no luck.
I started digging around tonight on the electric sheep website looking for some sort of troubleshooting section. I found something that caught my eye... a "port test". Turns out, My port is blocked. Now, I'm a geek, but I'm not an ubergeek. Ports scare me because I don't know too much about them, and I don't want to go opening up my computer to unwanted attacks.
I then realized this is why my torrents were not working either (I swear they worked before, so I don't know if my ISP (Verizon) blocked them without me knowing, or somehow 'flipped a switch'. I thought, it might be worth a call, to see if I could find a nice tech support person to walk me through at the very least, an explanation.
Well, that was a mistake.
First attempt... I get a man with a heavy Indian accent,who starts with asking me some basic questions. (I had already made sure I was talking to the MAC tech support). I tried to explain the problem to him. Well, long story short, he had no idea what I was talking about. I didn't really get angry with him. I realize this is not a typical tech support question, but still. Then... he starts asking me "what virus protection program are you runnig?" Not to sound like a smart-a$$ I asked "This is the MAC tech support right?" (He didn't even get my joke). I realized this was hopeless. I asked if I could talk to someone else. Well, he didn't like that. He got snooty with me, and said "I was about to explain this until you interrupted me"... I apologized, and said "Oh sorry, go ahead" - Then it became comical. He floundered. He started telling me that when I "installed Verizon, that they automatically installed and ran a virus program on my computer called "VISS" - yeah right. I again asked to talk to someone else. He said he'd transfer me. Then a minute later, he came back on the line, and said he can't, that I should just call back again. ugh. I did.
Tech support two... (again heavy Indian accent) - he couldn't understand me when I recited my phone number to him. before I even got started, I made sure he was a mac person, he assured me he was. I asked if he was familiar with Bit Torrent... He asked me 3 times to repeat that... then he asked me to spell it (I assume so he could google it). ugh. This was going no where.
Finally, he fessed up, and said he understood my question about blocked ports, but said I would have to call back during daytime hours, to talk to "premium tech support" and that I should go through the billing dept to get to them. Right.
So, after a good hour spent surfing the web, and 30 minutes of wasted phone calls to Verizon, I'm still stuck here with no idea if I want to try and teach myself this, or just let it go.
Maybe I'll give "premium tech support" one more try.
If an ubergeek happens to find this blogpost, can you just tell me in the comments: Is there any real danger to going into my modem setup and opeing up port(s)?
I found http://portforward.com/ and could prob do it myself, but it sounds scary.

Philly maps

I didn't hear any hoopla over this so maybe it's not widely known yet, but Google Maps just added several more cities to it's mind blowing feature called "street view". One of the cities added was "my" city of Philadelphia! (I don't live there but I'm close to it.) And find myself over there at least once a week when my art classes are going on. In fact if you want to see where I go to my art classes you can just hit this link here, then click on the "street view" button at the top. There will be a "little yellow man" icon somewhere on the map, just drag that man to the arrow and you should see the school. It's the second Open door to the right of the big "f" flag. If you scroll/walk east a few doors, you'll see the big stained glass window thats attached to the church that used to be there. It's an amazing building.
It boggles my mind as to the amount of memory and data they must have gathered to do this. Basically a panoramic view was stored about every car length. I'd love to see a documentary about how they did this.
Another reason why this is useful...
My friend just went to a restaurant last night for dinner in Philly. She couldn't remember the name of it. But she said it was on 4th and bainbridge. So I just opened up the google maps street view, went to that corner and looked around. Sure enough there is the "famous 4th street deli" :) Cool huh.

Tech Tags: google street+view google+maps technology maps fleisher philadelphia

iphone eve...

I am a huge apple fan... BUT... I'm going to make a prediction here [drumroll please].... the overly hyped iphone is going to bomb tomorrow. Can you saw "newton"?
I'm seeing more and more negative reviews online, and it doesn't sound good. I'll recap what strikes me most as to why this will fail on it's initial release:
PRICE!!
$500 for the smaller version and $600 for the 8 gig version. Then, on top of that initial cost, you MUST sign a 2 year contract with AT&T (you know the people who "gave" all their customer's data over to the government.) starting at $60 a month. That's $642 for the phone (including 7% tax), $1440 for the 2 years (I'm sure there is tax, and other fees that apply here), So you're looking at over $2000 for a 2 year time period. (That's roughly $87 a month!).
SLOW!!!
I saw that apple is going with ATT's "EDGE" network for the online data. But David Pogue said it is unbelievably slow!! It took almost one full minute just to load the front page of yahoo.com. No one has time for that!
BUGS!!!
I'm sure that a first generation techno gadget will have it's share of problems. All these people rushing out to be the first to buy the phone, who are paying a lot of money are not going to want to hear that a newer phone will be released in a few months with all the bugs fixed. So you're going to get a lot of negative feedback there.
I also think that ATT will hurt the plan too. They are not known for treating their customers right.
All that said, I wish apple a lot of luck with this launch, I think they're gonna need it. Then again, what do I know :)

Tech Tags: apple iphone david+pogue newton att

Electricity from Air?

Just a quick post - Cause ITS FRIDAY!!!
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I just found this link over on the digg site about a new start-up company that claims it can produce small battery chargers that uses the "ambient" energy in the air. There is a much better explanation of it over on the news site, but it sounds almost too good to be true. A little like Steorn (Which I'm still waiting for the big announcement). If this thing is real and it can be marketed successfully it will be awesome. In a nutshell (as I understand it). You plug this small transmitter into the wall, that gathers the ambient energy, then broadcasts it to the small battery which then recharges itself. So no more plugging your cell phone, or portable phone, or ipod into a "dock" now you just have to be in the same room as your transmitter and the device will recharge. Really cool! Man, imagine if this thing could be scaled up... So your new electric car could simply be recharged by sitting outside your house.

tags technorati : science technology electricity powercast steorn

Wired Rocks

I just have to send out kudo's to Wired Magazine today. I've been a long time subscriber... I think I started around issue 4. It's had it's ups and downs, periods where I disliked it because it seemed to be purely corporate run (still has shades of that), but every now and then they nail it. I am into this month's magazine and reading the article(s) about what we don't know (put together by John Hodgman) You can read the articles here online. It's mind numbing/expanding stuff.
Then today I sign on to check wired news and see this article - this is amazing! I hope some information is gathered that will push these machines to becoming open source.
So, thank you wired for all the thinking you've made me do and putting it in an entertaining format.
PS> I like the new design and layout.
PS2> Yes, I still have a tinge of spite for wired though, for stealing so much from Mondo 2000.

Tech Tags: wired wired+magazine thought science technology