Somah

Kindle 3 by Amazon

The iPad Made a Kindle Believer Out of Me
My Amazon Review

 

I resisted buying a Kindle for the longest time, and that's saying something coming from me being an avid reader and a gadget feigned all in the same measure. My argument was that nothing would ever replace the physical book (I still do believe in that argument, somewhat,) and that I'd only try an eBook reader that simulates the book look'N'feel to a T. So I passed on all the eBook readers that came out after until the iPad came out.

I was excited to try out the iBook on the iPad. I knew the backlit screen was going to be an issue for long reading sessions, but again I wasn't planning spending any extended periods of time reading on my iPad or giving up the physical book for any eBook reader anytime soon. In retrospect, I think what I was excited about was the colored book cover, the in-app store access and the cool page turn effect, all of which are superficial and novel. I downloaded a couple of books onto the iBook but never really got to reading them in their entirety and soon thereafter I forgot about the app (or the books) even existed.

It wasn't until the Chairman of my company asked me to read a few business books that I revisited the iPad book solutions. By that time, Amazon had released the Kindle app and platform, which entailed that any book I purchased through that platform would be available on any device (including the Kindle device itself) that Amazon supported. Right off the bat, any book I'd buy would be available on my iPad, iPhone, and Mac. It was a no-brainer, and I downloaded the books onto the Kindle app and speed-read them over the weekend. 

Meanwhile, I was still buying hardcover books. I had no problem speed-reading through a business book to get the gist of the argument, but a novel is something I like to savor, and I just couldn't savor a novel reading it on my backlit iPad screen. I kept buying business books through the Kindle app and fictions books in hardcover.

Everything changed a week ago when I was reading The Final Testament of the Holy Bible by James Frey on the Kindle app on my iPad that I realized that my eyes started to hurt. I downloaded the eBook version of this book because I didn't want to handle the beautiful leather-bound edition I have sitting on my bookshelf. I looked at the clock and evidently I've been reading the book on that backlit screen for over 4 hours straight!

The eyestrain was so bad, I quit the Kindle app and launched the Amazon app and ordered the Kindle 3 right there and then. It wasn't a very hard decision because the price was right and all the books I have previously purchased through the Kindle app on my iPad would still be available to me. It was a no-brainer, frankly.

My Kindle arrived the next day and I picked up reading Frey's book where I left off. That afternoon, I was done reading it and already onto my next one. I immediately felt comfortable with the device. The text, contrast and the size of it were just perfect. I was reading on the beach over the weekend and I didn't have to deal with glare. I loved it.

Although I will continue buying hardcover books, I will now only buy them of books I read and like on my Kindle first. I think I'll end up spending less money that way. I will also keep my iPad for everything else I do online (e.g. Twitter, email, Angry Birds, Words with Friends, ...etc)

Book lovers wanting to take the leap but uncertain, I can tell you this: after a couple of hours, you won't even know you're reading an ebook. This eInk technology is amazing! The Kindle, to me, has one purpose and one purpose only: reading books. It's a perfect instrument that facilitates that function of which many of us are very fond. Don't expect it to be a "tablet" because it's not. If you want a tablet, get the iPad, which I also love.

I'm so happy I finally made the leap and got my Kindle. The skeptic in me is now a believer and I have my iPad to thank for that.

Money for Science May Be Scarce With New Congress - NYTimes.com

Some Republicans were critical of the Obama proposal, saying it cut too deeply into the human space flight program and left the agency without a clear mission. On the other hand, the Republican push to rein in spending could lead to further cuts in that part of NASA’s budget.

via www.nytimes.com

Although money for R&D might shrink with Republicans in control, I think their push to build on top of President Obama's data.gov and Open Government initiative is very promising.

Open Government, or Government 2.0, is something that I'm personally very interested in and think will be the next wave in future innovation on the cultural and social levels. What the Internet did for eBay, Facebook and Google might soon come to local, State and Federal governments.

Size Does Matter in Human Groups

I really enjoyed reading this piece on the science behind human groupings. What is the best size group to effectively and successfully take on a technical project? How about going to war?

I find it bizarre now that much of the science of human groupings is known, that few business schools or HR department pay any attention. They still work in the realm of Alchemy.

via Twitter and the Dunbar Number by Robert Paterson

Sometimes I wonder if the problem with Congress is its size.

No Notes Sync Over The Air (MobileMe)

I have started using the Notes app on my iPhone pretty heavily in the past two weeks but I just noticed that they weren't syncing with my computers. After a quick Google search, I found this on the Apple Support site:

When you connect iPhone or iPod touch to your computer, items are automatically synced according to your preferences set in iTunes. You can, for example, enter phone numbers and addresses of friends and family members on your computer, connect iPhone or iPod touch to sync, then unplug iPhone or iPod touch and tap a friend's name on the touchscreen to call.

You can sync

• Contacts—names, phone numbers, addresses, email addresses, and so on
• Calendars—appointments and events
• Notes (sync with Mac OS X Mail or Microsoft Outlook)*
• Web bookmarks
• Music and audiobooks
• Photos
• Podcasts
• Movies and TV shows
• Applications

*Notes syncing is over USB only and on a Mac requires Mac OS X 10.5.7 or later.

You only have to set which items are synced in iTunes on your computer once. After that, just connect iPhone or iPod touch to start a sync.

At first I thought this was a joke, but when the fact that this was the official Apple statement sank in, I was disappointed. What were the folks at Apple thinking?! You can sync contact information OTA but not notes? It doesn't make any sense! I understand that notes can be big in size, but regardless, this wasn't the way I thought Apple would handle this.

Why is HTML Suddenly Interesting? - O'Reilly Radar

Native mobile applications will soon become a fad and the tried and tested Web will prevail. The rapidly maturing HTML5 coupled with Google's Latitude will dominate eventually.

 

Web developers couldn't stop talking about HTML and its evolution during the 1990s. New features were usually tempting, though not always workable, and the Browser Wars meant that vendors competed by providing and copying features. The HTML standardization process had its twists and turns, moving from the IETF to the W3C, developing standards that reflected immediate needs and tried to channel developer energy in more productive directions.

via radar.oreilly.com

Foreigners Attending US Grad Schools Way Down: Wake Up, Xenophobes

Oh no. This is not good. Will America still lead if it continues to stem the flow of raw, ambitious and hungry foreign talent? The answer is no.

What's really sad is that instead of stopping the illegal, poor masses flooding this country every day, setting us back culturally and economically, we're keeping out the educated, smart guys who can actually lift us out of the state of stagnation in which we've been bogged down for so long.

Foreigners Attending US Grad Schools Way Down: Wake Up, Xenophobes

 

It’s happening: Lou Dobbs’ dream come true and Silicon Valley’s worst nightmare. We’re already seeing the reverse brain drain as smart immigrants take their US educations and experience building companies and creating technology back to their home countries.  But now, xenophobia and the lack of any sensible H-1B visa policy is keeping the world’s brightest minds from coming to the U.S. in the first place.

U.S. grad school admissions for would-be international students plummeted this year, according to the Council of Graduate Schools—the first decline in five years.  The decline was 3% on average, thanks to increases from China and the Middle East, but some countries saw double-digit declines in interest in a U.S. education. Applicants from India and South Korea fell 12% and 9% respectively—with students turning their sights on schools in Asia and Europe instead.

via www.techcrunch.com

iPhone Apps: The Great, The OK and The WTF!

I love my iPhone and even though I haven't upgraded to the 3G one yet, I've been enjoying all its applications with very complaints about the speed. I've downloaded plenty of applications since June. Some were free and some cost money (in case of OmniFocus, a lot of money) so I wanted to share with you rmy experience with each of these apps. I devided them into three categories and I'll start with the most impressive:

The Great

1. Facebook (Free): Seriously, hadn't not been for this app, my FB account, which I created back in 2005, would have probably still been stale. Version 2.0 is full-featured and just amazing!
2. Pandora Radio (Free): Listen to Internet radio customized to your taste on your iPhone even on the Edge network. This app is a full-featured Pandora application. It rarely lags, and the sound is superb. I love it!
3. Shazam (Free): It's impressive on how it finds the song you're listening to (even in a loud bar) and list it for you allowing you to buy it directly from iTunes. So far, it hasn't let me down once! :D
4. Stanza (Free): Always have reading material handy. This app offers hundreds of classic and popular books for free!
5. Obama '08 (Free): The entire campaign putting the iPhone powers to work for YOU! Find out who from your contacts live in a battleground state and call them, find out how you can help out in your area, sign up for campaign updates, check news and local events in real time, view Obama's YouTube channel and learn about Obama's stance on all the issues. Now that's innovation.
6. Urbanspoon (Free): Find the restaurants nearby that are within your budget and cuisine inclination.
7. Exposure (Free): The first version was bad, but they improved it. I now browse Flickr using this app :-)
8. CraigsMobileList ($2.99): It's Craig's List for your iPhone. It's great :)
9. Labyrinth Lite (Free): The classic labyrinth game taking full advantage of the iPhone's Accelerometer. It's too perfect!
10. Twitterrific (Free): Using Twitter on the iPhone. You send tweets and reply to them as well.
11. Summizer ($4.99): Follow the hot topics on Twitter. Put in the tag you're interested in and voila! I used it a lot during the debates to gauge people's reactions :-)
12. iWik ($0.99): Wikipedia optimized for the iPhone. It's incredible!

 

The OK

1. Showtimes (Free): Not too innovative but I still like it :-)
2. QuickVoice Recorder ($2.99): Great for recording sessions. Drains the battery, though :(
3. CalorieCheck ($0.99): Slow and not very accurate.
4. AIM (Free): Being on IM is fun, but still slow.
5. TypePad (Free): It's very limited and doesn't alert Facebook on publishing a new post. There's an apparent disconnect between the iPhone and online prodcuts.
6. Loopt (Free): I find myself never using it, but the concept is cool.
7. Scrabble ($9.99): Slow and the dictionary is limited, but still fun.
8. AP Mobile News Network (Free): News from the AP. Local news is horrid.
9. Google Mobile (Free): I hardly use it :(
10. Weight Tracker (Free): The implementation is lacking. I used it for a week and then stopped tracking!
11. Pocketpedia (Free): Keep track of your media library. Know who has your Ghost dvd and how long you had it for.
12. LocalEats ($0.99): Find the best of restaurants in every category. Make sure your city is listed before you buy it. It's good, but I prefer Urbanspoon.

 

The WTF

1. OmniFocus ($19.99): This is a scam! I gave it a shot for a week but then I felt stupid for paying $20 over this. A major disappointment in the Omni brand :(
2. Weight-Charter ($4.99): Buggy and not very intuitive. What a waste of money!
3. BlocksClassic (Free): Not very smooth. Lost my interest pretty quickly
4. BlackBook Guides (Free): Again, limited cities with information I don't find myself using on daily baisis.
5. WhosHere (Free): Slow, unreliable and useless!
6. gFlash+ (Free): Too pedantic!
7. A Personal Assistant (Free): Consolidating access to all your account, including banks, in one app controlled by a startup ... thanks, but no thanks!

I noticed that most outstanding applications are free. So I guess the lesson I learned here is to think twice before actually buying an iPhone application that costs more than $0.99. Too often, it'll turn out to be a wast of money ... and iPhone disk space.

Abstract Layer for JavaScript Libraries

With all the many helpful Javascript libraries out there (YUI, Dojo, jQuery, Prototype, MooTools, ...etc), does it make sense to write an abstraction layer that allows developers to switch from one library to another without changing their code?

Abstraction layers and wrappers of this sort have proven very successful in hiding differences between database client libraries (i.e. specific implementations) by introducing one, clean and consistent interface to developers. It allows them to switch from one database to another with very little overhead and code change.

Providing an abstraction layer for developers would empower them to decouple their code from the direct implementation of these Javascript libraries. This is a big gain especially when a decision is made to switch from one library to another for whatever reason.

All the aforementioned libraries handle the following:

• Dom manipulation
• Event management
• Ajax management
• Element manipulation
• User Agent awerness
• Object extension
• Drag and Drop

I think I might just give it a shot :-) I'll keep you posted.