LarryRoth.net

After releasing the second version of Kindle hardware, Amazon had also release a software version of the Kindle reader for Apple’s iPhone. As cool as the Kindle is—and I have had the opportunity to use one, they are very cool—the $349 price has kept me from getting one.

Now, Amazon is making it clear that they are interested in selling books not hardware. Kindle for iPhone is a free download from the iTunes music store and is capable of reading any of the books available to the Kindle. The app works well, and the reading experience is comparable to other eBook readers available for the phone.

When reading a book or article, the user has control over choosing the font size (from 5 different sizes), bookmarking a page, and jumping to marked sections of the book. You navigate from page to page by swiping right-to-left (or left-to-right if you are going backwards) which I must admit felt like a natural gesture at first, but quickly grew tiresome as even a slow reader like me is constantly flipping pages due to the small screen size.

Books are added very easily via a Web browser. You simply navigate to Amazon, purchase the books you wish, and the next time you start Kindle for iPhone, your recent purchases are downloaded. My first book was Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers. It downloaded in less than 5 seconds on WiFi. I also tried syncing over edge and that worked as well–with Treasure Island downloading in less than 20 seconds. In addition, Kindle for iPhone has Whispersync, which means, anywhere you leave off in you reading is automatically bookmarked and synced to any Kindle device. So, the claim is that moving between your iPhone and Kindle 2 will be seamless.

You can download books by ordering them on your iPhone, but the process is not a smooth experience. You click a Get Books link which takes you to a page describing how to get new books, but then links you off to Safari for you to purchase the books. You must then go back into Kindle for iPhone to download and read the new books.

Currently, my favorite eBook reader for the iPhone is Stanza. It is very similar to Kindle for iPhone, but I feel it does a couple things better. First, it allows you to move page to page by simply pressing once on the right or left side of the screen. Second, it allows you to download tens of thousands of free books directly from Project Gutenberg very quickly and easily. Third, and this is mostly superfluous, Stanza adjusts it’s screen when you turn the phone sideways. In reader mode it will give you a wider column. In title browsing mode, you see your library using Cover Flow.

But, the really great thing about the Kindle for iPhone software is that all these books I purchase will just work if I do buy a Kindle. All these books will automatically be available on my newly purchased Kindle. Also, the selection of books is very competitive in price and fairly substantial.

If you are interested in trying out the software, here is a list of free and low cost books I found that sounded interesting.
Free:

• The World’s Greatest Books Volume 01 Fiction
• The World’s Greatest Books Volume 02 Fiction
• The Three Musketeers
• The Return of Sherlock Holmes
• Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea
• South: the story of Shackleton’s 1914-1917 expedition
• The Island of Doctor Moreau
• Notes to the Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley
• Frankenstein

Less than $1.00:

• The Man Shakespeare (And His Tragic Life Story)
• The Memoirs of Victor Hugo
• The Prince (Machiavelli)
• Remarks of President Obama at the Signing of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act
• The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci

What are your thoughts? Leave me a comment….

We all know that the Apple brand is ease-of-use. But, usability expert Jakob Nielsen contends that this may very well be why Apple has survived all these years:

During its first decade, the Mac offered clearly superior usability compared to competing personal computer platforms…

The Mac’s miserable marketplace performance seems to pose a strong argument against usability. Why bother, if it doesn’t sell?

The counter-argument is that usability is the only reason Mac survived. Compared to the PC, it was much more expensive, had only a fraction of the specialized applications, and was cursed by Apple’s business-hostile attitude.

So why would anyone pay more for less? Because Macs were easier to use.

It’s an inspirational article for usability, with links to many other interesting articles.

If you don’t know already, 2009 is the International Year of Astronomy (more on that here, or here for the US site). If you are already into astronomy, this will be a great year to listen, learn, and share stories with other amateur astronomers. If you are new to astronomy, now is the time to try it out.

Whether you are a new to the hobby or even have a couple years under your belt, one of the hardest parts is learning to “walk your way around the sky”. Even if you are quite astute at picking out major stars, planets, constellations, and other objects, often times you would like a little more info or perhaps you run across something you can’t identify. My biggest problem is I haven’t logged enough time with my scope and I haven’t had the opportunity to be taught by someone experienced at working the night sky. For me, this means many trips between the backyard and my computer—which totally wrecks my night vision.

Finally, for me at least, the problem is solved! The folks at Vito Technology have created an excellent iPhone app called Star Walk that serves as a star guide—and it’s an offical product of the International Year of Astronomy 2009 (IYA2009). This app finds your location (even on a 1st Gen iPhone) and shows you what is in your sky at that moment.

In addition, you can:

• Search for objects—including Messier objects and Meteor showers
• Move time forwards or backwards
• Get summary info of objects
• Pan, Zoom in/out
• Link to the Web for more information

Even cooler, it has a nite-mode which turns the whole screen red to help save your night vision. The interface in this app alone is worth the price ($4.99).

You can find this app via the US IYA2009 site.

I purchased MacKiev's “Dr. Seuss's ABC”, a Mac based educational game for kids. It's a great game to help teach your kids the basics of the alphabet. My three year old loves it and was able to figure it out quite quickly. It comes with the Dr. Seuss book and is sure to be a hit with your kids. Unless you are running you Mac on a drive formatted with case-sensitivity enabled…

If this is the case, the app will not run, but will keep giving you an error message that it can't find the Xtras folder. It turns out there is an easy fix, just execute the following procedure:

• ctrl-click on the Dr. Seuss application
• select Show Package Contents from the pop-up menu
• in the finder window that pops up, go into the Contents folder
• next, go into the MacOS folder
• copy the folder called Xtras to your Desktop
• rename the folder to xtras (little x)
• copy the folder back into the MacOS folder
• close the finder window and run the app
• the app will now work

On a related note, the folks from MacKiev have wonderful tech support. I sent a note on Christmas day and received a same-day e-mail from a very nice person who provided me some basic troubleshooting thoughts. They did not give me the procedure above, but did suggest that the app needs to be on a case-insensitive volume. That tip lead me to experiment and to the procedure above.

I must say, I can't remember the last time something was so hyped and I wasn't woefully disappointed when I actually got my hands on it. I feel the iPhone lives up to the promises. The interface is a actually smoother than I ever imagined, the web browsing is better than any mobile device that I ever used, and setup couldn't have been easier.

The big question is could it replace a Blackberry? I never had one myself, but having tried some of my friend's Blackberrys, I can say it seems like a powerful replacement.

While I certainly can't wait for a new iPhone (is it June yet?), I am really excited about the new Airport Extreme. It features 802.11n, which will help with increase network capacity and range. But what I think is a great feature is the ability to plug in a USB hard drive and share it with the network.

This solves a big issue for me. I hate using a disk drive for backups, it creates clutter and it is also a pain to plug it in every time I want to backup. With the new Airport Extreme I can keep a large hard drive plugged in and back up one or more computers at anytime. For me this means more regular backup–plus I save a USB port.

Most people complain about the cost of the Apple base stations, but I find that the ease of maintenance, setup and the reliability make up for the price. Plus, you can usually find a refurbished on on Apple's site for $30 off.

I find that when I am traveling, one thing that I often need is to have my travel information (directions, reservations, schedule) printed out. This way I don't have to break out my laptop every time I need some information. The problem is I tend to print out lots of full 8 1/2″ x 11″ sheets that are both wasteful and cumbersome. I did start an Java ME app that allows me to sync this information to a Java enabled cell phone, but this is still time consuming having to copy/paste the information into a different format.

It would seem that PagePacker is just the application I was looking for. It allows you to easily drag and drop any PDF or image on to one of 8 “spaces”. These 8 spaces then print out into one foldable 8 1/2″ by 11″ page. There is even a catalog of 84 DIY (do-it-yourself) planner pages, such as to-do lists and calendars. And like any good Mac application it is easy to use and doesn't get in the way of getting the job done.

Right now it's free, but is set to expire in June. There is no mention if the June “upgrade” will be free as well—I guess we will have to wait and see.

At the World Wide Developers Conference, Apple has given a sneak preview of their newest version of the Mac OS. Due out in spring 2007—perhaps before Windows Vista ships—Apple promises some key new features.

You can see the whole list on Apple's sneak preview site, but I have heard from conference attendees that Apple is keeping some really significant features under wraps until launch.

Here are some of the new features:

• Timemachine: a backup solution
• Mail.app updates
• Desktop sharing and custom video effects in iChat
• Virtual desktops
• Full 64 bit support

The server version holds even more promise!

There is a helpful post from the folks at “The Authentic Fake” that has various MacBook Pro shortcuts. I found several I didn't know about. My favorite was:

10. Cool shortcut combo
To finish off, I’l give a cool (relatively) shurtcut combination. Clicking Control+Option+Command+8 will turn the screen in some sort of high contrast mode, but more like an X-ray screen![1]

Pretty cool!

Fintan Darragh posted a tip for a quick way to change the toolbar’s icons and text.
From the article:[1]

Secondly, and this is certainly a hidden feature within Mac OS X, when you Command-click on the top-right-hand button which appears in windows, you can set the toolbar’s icons and text to different sizes and combinations.

Well, he certainly is right about it being a hidden feature—I don’t think I would have stumbled across this functionality.
[1] Mac Tip: Window Dongle, http://www.dech.co.uk/2006/07/mac-tip-window-dongle/, posted July 27, 2006, viewed July 27, 2006