Category: Thoughts

  • Fictionwise improving its e-reader and web site for iPhones and iPods

    E-book publisher Fictionwise opened a new, mobile-friendly version of one of its online bookstores today at the address m.ereader.com (tip o’ the cap to jkOnTheRun). It’s certainly a step in the right direction, especially for people reading e-books on their iPhone or iPod Touch. But it’s another piece of Fictionwise’s confusing and, at times, not…

  • Latest Canon D-SLR simplifies taking great pictures

    I don’t know if the photo experts will be appalled or enthralled, but Canon has taken some creative liberties with its latest digital single-lens reflex camera and that’s a good thing. The new EOS 50D doesn’t have the full-frame sensor that I was hoping for in my post last month “All I ask is a…

  • Links to keep up with Kindle news and commentary

    (Updated 8/26 with some more blogs) I love my Kindle and try to write about it here frequently but I don’t keep up with every development. I have subscribed to a few blogs that are more focused on the Kindle on a daily basis. Since I recently got some traffic from a few links on…

  • Amazon-Tivo ecosystem works for me

    Stumbling around Amazon’s Unbox video store looking for a movie to rent last night, I happened across “21.” It’s the film about a group of MIT students who beat the Vegas casinos to the tune of millions of dollars by counting cards at Blackjack as a team. As I’ve mentioned before, I’m a huge fan…

  • Apple will not slay Amazon’s Kindle, not even close

    The title of this post, the latest in a seemingly unending stream defending Amazon’s Kindle e-book reader from hordes of misguided critics, was almost the exact same title as my June 20 post: The Kindle is for readers, the Kindle is for readers. The subject of today’s push back is a John Conley posting that…

  • New Header Image: the Joys of Wiffle Ball

    Time to switch out the picture at the top of the blog. Spring peepers are long gone. The dog days of August mean lots of Cape Cod wiffle ball. I couldn’t participate competitively this year thanks to my knee surgery so you’ll have to enjoy the rest of the boys at play.

  • Amazon finally allowing you to ping publishers for Kindle editions

    One of the earliest requests from Kindle users has finally been granted by Amazon. Finally, every Amazon book that doesn’t have a Kindle version for sale has link to let Amazon tell the publisher that you want one. As you can see in the picture at left, the link to click is just below where…

  • Upgrade of Adobe’s Lightroom looks just fine

    Adobe has released a major upgrade to its already pretty great digital photo library program, Lightroom. The 2.0 upgrade, available for $99 at Adobe’s site, greatly bolsters Lightroom’s image manipulation capabilities so you’ll need Photoshop even less. In fact, it seems like Lightroom can do almost everything you’d want to do to a picture to…

  • Seeking more interaction from readers, I’m adding post ratings

    A survey of web sites and blogs a few years ago found that only about 1 in 100 visitors are motivated enough to leave comments (tip o’ the cap to ProBlogger for the link). On this blog, sadly, the ratio is even lower. For example, over the past month there were 2,453 visitors and just…

  • Sprint’s old U720 gets GPS functionality on Macs with upgrade

    The other day, for no apparent reason, something went kablooey with my trusty Sprint wireless modem. Maybe it was the OS X 10.5.4 update, but who knows? For the past year plus, when I plugged the modem (it’s a Novatel Ovation U720) into a USB port on my MacBook pro, a little signal strength meter…