blogging displaced by that whole work thing

If any of you are still reading, apologies for going dark. Too much work, too much travel. Sitting in the United Club at Heathrow with T-Mobile's WiFi barely working. Just finished a book worth reading, Fooled by Randomness. Jonathan Seelig, of Akamai and Globespan fame, recommended it. Enjoyable, topical, and provides a delightful framework for thinking about how to measure performance against underlying trends -- particularly when the underlying trends change dramatically.

kindle app for iphone

While not quite the technology convergence of a Roomba getting run over by a Segway, being able to read Kindle books on iPhone is pretty darn close. Amazon just released a new app for iPhone that let's you do just this and it is very slick. You connect it to your Kindle account and all your Amazon book purchases are available, with the last page you're on more-or-less properly synced up.

Very cool.

The reading experience is very good for such a small device, the interface is slick, and downloads quick on even a 1G iPhone.

Downsides? Really the only big problem is that there doesn't appear to be a way to send mobipocket, pdf, or other text files to iPhone the way you can for Kindle. This is a real bummer, as currently 23 out of the 135 books on Kindle are Amazon e-books. The rest are mostly from the Baen library. I hope they decide to fix this, as it makes both devices more valuable to me.

Still, combined with Amazon's new digital publishing platform, Amazon is working hard to create a strong ecosystem around e-books. Great opportunity for authors who can move early, I suspect.

kindle 2 review

I've posted a fair amount -- and quite positively -- about my current Kindle, so it should come as no surprise that I was quick to order Kindle 2. It arrived Wednesday and I broke it in with Daemon, Daniel Suarez's impressive debut novel (more on that in a moment).

If you've seen a picture you know that the Kindle 2 is much thinner and sleeker than the original. This translates to a much more solid feel out of the box, although I've found it to be slightly less comfortable to hold, perhaps due to Kindle 1 muscle memory. To first order, it operates the same as Kindle 1. The boot time is much faster, the inward clicking buttons superior and less prone to accidental clicks, and the page flips enough quicker to be noticeable. The new screen's 16-gray levels make photos look surprisingly good, and being able to charge via USB helps me on the road. Finally, while I miss the sparkle, the multi-way stick does make highlighting a lot easier.

Downsides? Moving content over from my first Kindle was a pain, mostly because Whispernet and/or Amazon were clearly slammed Wednesday night. The leather binder doesn't have the original's elastic to hold it closed.

All-in-all, a great set of incremental improvements and an even better device for my needs.

As for Daemon, I really enjoyed it. It has all of the trappings of a first book -- uneven pacing, limited character development, some typos -- but, wow! I've never seen a book that mixes action; this level of understanding of the god complex all game developers have; the technology around robotics, virtual worlds, and the net; and, wraps it all up in book that is speculative while only leveraging real tech. Very cool and quite recommended.

rapunzel's revenge

At the geek formal of the year, we made several visits to Cory's favorite Toronto sci-fi bookstore, Bakkaphoenix. On our second trip, we discovered an amazing graphic novel: Rapunzel's Revenge


We grabbed it, read it when we got home, and decided to give it our 5 1/2 year-old daughter Meridian for Christmas.

Christmas morning, Meridian came down and had a moment of inspired honesty.
"Mom, I'm kind of disappointed."
"Why, honey?"
"There are a lot of really flat presents, so I think a lot of them are books."

The second present she unwrapped was Rapunzel. She opened it up and started paging through it. And kept paging. And kept paging. 45 minutes of obliviousness-to-the-world later -- we were talking to her, getting coffee, and wondering aloud when she'd want to return to her pile of still unopened presents and she just kept reading -- she closed the book and looked up.

"I didn't like that."

Trying hard not to burst out laughing we asked why not.

"More of the faces seemed angry or scared than happy."
"Would you like us to read it you so you can see what happens? It has a happy ending."
"OK"

Several sessions later -- it's a long story -- Meridian decided that she liked it after all. It has since become a regular fixture of her reading schedule, both reading it alone or with other kids and having adults read it to her. It's a great retelling of the fairy tale and lots of fun. Good to know there will be a sequel!

So, kudos, congratulations, and thank yous to Shannon and Dean Hale, and Nathan Hale (no relation). You can read all about how the book came to be on their website.