Gravitational Pull: A blog about tech and other stuff.
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Ignore that cranky Mossberg and his Kindle whine
I kept meaning to predict that Wall Street Journal gadget reviewer Walt Mossberg was going to pan the Amazon Kindle e-book reader because he’s hyper-sensitive to minor flaws. But life intervened and I didn’t get the chance. And, of course, now he has. Sometimes Mossberg is right on, but unfortunately with the Kindle, he’s far…
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Kindle reviews by folks who actually have seen one
Amidst all the misinformation about Amazon’s new Kindle electronic book reader, particularly coming from people who have never touched or used it, here’s a list of reviews from the fact-based segment of techdom: Gizmodo checks Kindle in the bedroom, on an airplane and atop the porcelain throne. Not quite a home run, just a triple,…
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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…
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Time for a seasonal photo update
It’s been getting colder and colder up in here in the Boston burbs and the leaves are turning all sorts of excellent colors. Seemed like an excellent time to swap out the picture at the top of the blog for something a little more seasonal. If you’re an RSS devotee, stop by to see the…
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Test bed Leopard upgrade reveals some issues
Well, the UPS man finally brought my family pack upgrade copy of Mac OS X 10.5 aka Leopard. As I mentioned the other day, I have no immediate plans to install it on either of my main systems, the 24″ iMac or 15″ MacBook Pro, known respectively as “Gigantico” and “Lunar Excursion Module” or LEM…
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Leopard upgrade? Not today, baby
Excited about Apple’s new Leopard OS X upgrade? Me, too. It’s got plenty of desirable new features, great and small. Did the Fed-Ex guy just drop it off and you’ve ripped open the box and got the shiny disk right in your hands? You’re drooling as you read the back of the package and start…
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Verizon FIOS – wowie, wow, wow
Umm, wow. Verizon arrived yesterday to switch our television, Internet and telephone service to their spiffy, new fiber optic system called FIOS. The tech, who was amazing, spent the entire day at our house installing all the various bits. When he was done, we had super-fast Internet, many channel cable with high definition channels and…
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Back in the New York Groove thanks to HBO
One of the wireless phone companies, I think it was, some years back concocted a crazy service to help identify random songs by calling them in to some all-knowing, tune-analyzing super computer. You know — hear a great tune on the radio, dial up the supercomputer, hold your phone up to the speakers, and find…
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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…
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Netgear’s nearly identical powerline adapters
After my recent whiny post about Netgear’s confusing line of networking adapters which run over your electrical wiring, a friend this week volunteered to take my medium-speed powerline adapters off my hands. So it’s on to the grown-up stuff: the supposedly 200 megabit per second bad boys. Annoyingly, the faster version has no model with…
Got any book recommendations?