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Category Archives: Books

A New Way to Help Kids Learn to Read

LeapPads and the like have been around for a while. Put a specially configured booklet into an electronic pad. Tap a button or two with a special pen. Then let your child page through the booklet tapping on pictures and sentences to hear the story and learn the words.
Tag is different.
With Tag, [...]

Amazon Kindle - First Impressions

I bought a Kindle on Monday (see Amazon, CNet). It arrived on Tuesday. Here are my impressions.

At $400, it is more expensive than the Sony EReader, but the Kindle has wireless (free EVDO) access to the Amazon store so you can buy books while you are away from your computer and start reading [...]

Great so far…

I’m halfway through Bioshock on the PC (widescreenmod!) and William Gibson’s new book, Spook Country. Both are great so far.
I’m also really enjoying this season of Eureka!

Naked Conversations / TechCrunch Party

I’ll be at the Naked Conversations Party tonight (hosted by Michael Arrington at his house). It should be a blast!
Shel and Robert really did a great job on the book. I consider myself fairly knowledgeable when it comes to blogging, so I was surprised to find so many examples in the book that [...]

Bruce Schneier is reading “How to Survive a Robot Uprising”

At least two of my coworkers own this book already. It’s a funny look at the techniques used in hundreds of scifi movies. Good stuff. That’s not why I’m posting about it, though. I skimmed Bruce’s comment section and found a reference to the Daleks in Doctor Who. No context, [...]

Naked Conversations - available now in Redwood City, CA

I’ve been pestering the brick and mortar book stores around town, asking for Shel Israel’s and Robert Scoble’s book, Naked Conversations — I’m not a patient man and I don’t want to wait until the 26th for my pre-ordered Amazon copy to arrive. Today, I stopped at the Barnes and Noble in Redwood City, [...]

Adobe Acrobat Reader for the Palm OS - DRM

OK, so my digital download at Amazon finally went through.  Then, I had to figure out how to get the pdf processed, my palm ‘authorized’, and how to get the file transferred during hotsync.  This was not user friendly.  I almost gave up before I figured out how the process is supposed to work.
Here’s how [...]

How many DAYS does it take to receive a DIGITAL E-BOOK from Amazon?

I purchased an ebook last night(pdf) from Amazon. Here I am 24 hours later and the ebook is still not ready for download. My order info says “Open Order — Being Processed”. I used their click-to-call help service twice today to find out why I should have to wait ANY amount of [...]

iPod Cases Made from Books


Audiobooks

http://www.playawaydigital.com/ is selling self-playing audiobooks at B&N, Borders and OfficeMax.  The books are single purpose audio players.  No need for a tape/cd/mp3 player.  Neat idea!

Cleartype ebooks for the iPod Video

Someone(maybe me) should make a tool that converts plaintext ebooks to a series of QVGA images. The text should be rendered with cleartype.
Scrolling text in the notes section of the iPod video gives me a headache. I’d rather flip pages.

Wolfram on Math

Wolfram discusses the origins of Math notation.

Moleskine

I’ve been wanting to start carrying a Moleskine notebook around. Unfortunately, winter will be over soon and I won’t be carrying around my jacket. I won’t have the pockets to carry around my iPod, Nintendo DS, wallet, phone AND a Moleskine. I don’t want to carry around a backpack or a “fanny [...]

Damaged Goods

Reviews and summaries of Russell’s Doctor Who novel. drwhoguide, amazon, pagefillers, Howe’s Who.

‘Wherever this cocaine has travelled, it hasn’t gone alone. Death has been its attendant. Death in a remarkably violent and inelegant form.’
The Doctor, Chris and Roz arrive at the Quadrant, a troubled council block in Thatcher’s Britain. There’s a new drug on [...]