Category: reading

  • Ignore the static: Kindle is great for reading

    Wow, the new electronic book reader from Amazon, Kindle, sure is getting a lot of absurdly misguided and factually incorrect criticism. My fingers are getting sore from responding to such a tide of disinformation in comment boxes scattered across a zillion web sites. Just this morning, I’ve been writing a lengthy comment to a Kindle…

  • Can the web solve the BOOK omnivore’s dilemma?

    Always looking for new things to read for those Internet-inclined among us means always looking at new web services that may offer help. Today I stumbled across GoodReads.com, which lets you list, rate and review books you’ve read. There’s obviously going to be some kind of behind-the-scenes suggestion engine voodoo but it seems I need…

  • Tim Grey’s Lightroom book fails to inform

    Adobe’s wonderful new digital photo program, Lightroom, has a lot more bells and whistles than iPhoto or other typical low-end photo software. That’s exactly why I bought it. With a so-called prosumer camera, the Canon Digital Rebel XT, I’m able to do many more sophisticated things while shooting pictures and I needed a software program…

  • Google hears my long-tail e-book plea

    Back in October, when Sony’s new and fairly horrific $350 e-book reader gadget came out, I blasted the company — and some of the people who reviewed the reader — for completely misunderstanding the need for such a product. We don’t need to carry around 87 different best-sellers in an electronic format that’s inferior to…

  • Short-tailed Sony reader needs a much longer one

    Sony’s new e-book Reader certainly seems like a marvel of technology but it’s also an example of a company forgetting to ask the most basic question of new product development: what is the customer benefit over existing products? With a nod to Chris Anderson and his much discussed long tail thesis, the real direction for…