In Technology on
28 January 2010 tagged epub, ereader, format, kindle with 1 comment
I predict that the Kindle will support the increasingly-popular ePub format by year’s end.
There, I said it. (Though apparently I’m not the first to want this. There’s already some kind of app available that can do it natively called Savory.)
Whether it’s by third party app through Amazon’s recently-announced SDK or, hopefully, because Amazon includes it in an upcoming update, you will soon be able to buy and install books on your Kindle more easily from a multitude of sources. The recently-included PDF was the first step toward this, and I believe, the first example of a new format available for the device. For the Kindle to survive in the increasingly-flooded eReader landscape, it’s going to have to be more multi-purpose than Amazon has allowed it to be. And that’s fine. Amazon can still focus on providing a seamless content delivery mechanism and maintain their edge that way.
In Technology on
27 January 2010 tagged Apple, fat, ipad, iPhone, iPod, Technology with 3 comments
Watched some of the live stream from Engadget on the iPad announcement today. It was, as expected, a tablet shaped like a big iPod. It comes with wireless and it can hook up to a 3G network if you buy the big one. Notably, for me, were the things it didn’t do:
- No camera (!)
- Poor battery life
- Limited storage
- Multitasking?
- iPhone OS
It’s kind of neat, but honestly, I can’t see myself using this thing very much. It seems tailor made for air travel, when you want to watch a movie on a decent screen or maybe type up some notes. Pretty-much exactly what Andy Ihnatko wrote for the Sun-Times. I travel a fair bit, but certainly not enough to warrant adding yet another gadget to my collection. It won’t replace my Kindle with its awesome battery life and relaxing screen.
As a gaming device, it may become compelling at some point, but as the iPhone has proven, accelerometers are great for one type of game: Doodle Jump. Virtual controllers through touch are not a great control mechanism.
The lack of any mention of multitasking is even more worrisome, making this not very good for communications. I can’t run an IRC client and a messenger client in the background while surfing the web (on Safari, of course, there will be no Firefox for this due to their restrictive rules). Sure, there may be push notification, but that means leaving whatever I’m doing and launching the app before I can respond, possibly losing context. No video camera means no video chat.
In short, it’s a big iPod. I’ll wait and see how it does over the next year, but won’t rush out to buy one.
In Computing on
17 January 2010 tagged Computing, dell, drivers, Linux, mini, netbook, synaptics, touchpad, trackpad with 1 comment
Late last week I was griping about the poor trackpad performance on the Dell Mini 10 and decided to try to fix it. It was usable, but difficult and caused a lot of erroneous clicks and mouse-moves and was a bit like trying to use a Fisher Price toy to perform brain surgery. Clunky, imprecise, and dangerous.
A quick search found this superuser suggestion to install the Synaptics touchpad driver from the Ubuntu repository. Searching in the package manager turned up libsynaptics and gsynaptics so I installed them both.
Before this would work, I needed to create a file according to the instructions found Kogan Agora Netbook blog:
sudo vim /etc/hal/fdi/policy/shmconfig.fdi
Once opened, it needed to have the following as its contents:
<![CDATA[< ?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<deviceinfo version="0.2">
<device>
<match key="input.x11_driver" string="synaptics">
<merge key="input.x11_options.SHMConfig" type="string">True</merge>
</match>
</device>
</deviceinfo>
]]>
I have no idea of that version number is correct, but this allowed me to move on. Additionally, in /etc/X11/xorg.conf, I added the section (via sudo vim):
Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Synaptics Touchpad"
Driver "synaptics"
Option "SHMConfig" "true"
EndSection
after rebooting (or logging out, or restarting X), you can then run gsynaptics from gmrun or the terminal. Even better, assign a new entry to the OpenBox menu to execute gsynaptics from a System menu item labeled Touchpad. Once you have that, you can decrease the sensitivity of the touchpad, add and tweak acceleration values and modify tapping behavior. It works really well and has radically reduced the number of accidental mouse actions. This tweak alone has made the Crunchbang netbook experience much much better.
In Computing on
14 January 2010 tagged Computing, dell, drivers, mini, netbook, trackpad with 1 comment
A commenter asked about the horrible touchpad on the Dell Mini 10. Not sure if he was using Linux or Windows, but a couple of quick searches found some mention of a better driver. Top link was on superuser.com and has some hopefully helpful links. I’ll post back with results when I’ve had a chance to try it out.
Dell Mini 10 with Ubuntu – touchpad issues – Super User.
In Computing on
27 December 2009 tagged Computing, dell, firefox, laptop, Linux, netbook, thunderbird with 6 comments
Over the past week and a bit, I’ve been playing around with Crunchbang Linux on a Dell Mini 10 netbook. The experience has been entertaining at least and Crunchbang works surprisingly well once you get it configured.
Out of the box, Cunchbang is a fairly minimalist desktop environment, using Openbox and Tint as the desktop and window manager. A bit of tweaking to get menu sizes reduced and it takes up even less space on your desktop. Since vertical space is at a serious premium on this thing, the biggest challenges were getting Firefox and Thunderbird configured to make the most of the tiny screen.
On Firefox, I’m using Full Screen (not necessary in Firefox 3.6, of course), Tree Style Tabs and a combined menu and toolbar to clear up some pixels. Reduced font-sizes from the default make browsing more manageable even when I’m not in full screen mode.
Thunderbird 3.0 was a bit trickier. In the advanced preferences pane, under the config editor, set mail.tabs.autoHide to True to get rid of the tabstrip if there’s only one tab showing. I also found the header area in the message pane was taking up a lot of room, so I installed the Compact Headers extension to take care of those. You will need to disable compatibility checking through Nightly Tester Tools or the config editor to get it to work with Tbird 3. (Thanks to wswmk in irc for the tips!)
Whether I could live with this as my main portable is another matter. The trackpad on the thing is pretty poor, requiring a really light touch to tap-to-click. There are no real buttons on it, but the two bottom corners act as left and right mouse clicks if you press the trackpad down — it clicks. Because the pad itself is so sensitive, this invariably moves the pointer off of your target and you’ll get a misclick. Even more amusing is the right-side scroll wheel. If you’re on the desktop in Crunchbang, this is interpreted as a “jump to workspace” action, randomly skipping you through your desktops. It took me awhile to realize I was doing this accidentally and that it was a feature.
Other interactions between OS and hardware are pretty good. With the exception of networking. Connecting to a wireless network is a bit of a crapshoot. I can connect at home on a wirless G network with WPA2 passphrase, but it takes too long to negotiate initially. I could not connect to my parents’ network after multiple attempts and they have a basic WEP passkey. I installed wicd as my default network manager after failing with Network Manager and it seems a little better, but still slow.
In short, networking in Linux still kind of sucks.
But sound works! And the included A/V apps in Crunchbang are decent if not awesome. VLC works really well and after struggling with SMB to get network shares working, I can even stream stuff off of my fileserver. Also includes Rhythmbox and Audacity among other open source audio-video apps. No Songbird though?
Overall, it’s a fun little machine to hack around on. Screen’s probably too small to do any development, but works just fine as a little internet toy or writing machine. That it’s entirely an opensource software stack helps too. I wrote this post on it, and genuinely like the keyboard (after flipping the Caps Lock and CTRL keys). It sure is portable.
In Technology on
19 December 2009 tagged audio, headphones, Music, reviews with no comments
It’s been awhile in coming, but I think today’s going to be the day I write part 3 in my series of headphone reviews. The deciding factor has been a renewed interest in my Grado SR225s brought about by the sudden and shocking death of my beloved Koss Portapro headphones which finally gave up the ghost. After an amazing 10+ years of life and near constant use one of the connectors inside the right earpiece has come loose and is causing loss of sound and crackling reconnects. Doesn’t look like it’d be easily repaired though I haven’t really dissected them in earnest. They were probably the best $50 I’ve ever spent.
Which brings me to the Grados. The SR225s are the second pair of Grado headphones I’ve owned. I started out with a pair of SR125s which, until these, were my favorite ‘phones for around-the-house listening. Large, soft foam-covered earpieces and an over-the-head style band do not make these ideal “out-and-about” listening devices. They’re also an open design and bleed sound like no other headphones I’ve ever used, subjecting anyone in the same airspace to whatever it is you’re listening to you. Calling them headphones is almost a disservice, they’re more like a head-mounted speaker system.
Which isn’t far off the mark, really. If I could continue the head-mounted speaker analogy, you might find that you need a better amp to drive these without distortion compared to smaller, less demanding headphones. The iPods have long been known for possessing a decent headphone amplifier for a portable device. When driving the Grados, I find noticeable distortion at volume settings that are clear and detailed with my Shure in-ear phones. These ‘phones exacerbate the problems with the MacBook audio circuitry like no others. The noise is painful and may make you want to invest in a decent external audio interface, which, if you’re serious about sound, you’ll want to do anyway.
So far, I’m making these out to be more of a pain than they’re worth, so you might be wondering why I’d have bothered to upgrade the SR125s to the 225s. And why I’d consider myself a serious enthusiast for these headphones.
The reason is that with a decent headphone amplifier, these headphones don’t sound like any other I’ve ever listened to. They have Real Bass. It’s detailed and palpable and extends far below where you might expect a headphone to go. The other reason is they possess an airiness and spaciousness unlike any other headphones. All that moving air your neighbours are being subjected to while you listen to these is the same air the Grados are using to magically create a soundstage inside your head.
If you like listening to music and consider yourself to be a person who likes nice things, and you have a decent sound system, you might want to do yourself a favor and audition a pair of Grados. Honestly, with the type of music I listen to mostly (rock and electronic music predominantly with occasional forays into jazz and classical), I don’t notice a huge difference between the SR225s and the 125s. The bass is a little more detailed and present, I think, but otherwise, without going into fruity audiophile language, I don’t think there’s a whole lot of difference. The build quality on the SR225s is marginally better though and they have a slightly longer and thicker cable.
If you do want to use these with a portable device like an iPod, you should consider an external amplifier. Here are a few links to well-reviewed headphone amps:
• Total BitHead (review on Stereophile)
• Grado RA1
• Creek Audio OBH-21
Also, take a look at Grado Labs’ website. They’ve expanded their product-line in the past couple of years and have some in-ear headphones as well as a slew of truly high-end ‘phones that you probably can’t afford but will lust after because they’re beautiful.
One final relevant link I rediscovered when looking for a place to actually purchase (US only) the Grados online: goodcans.com’s review of Grado headphones. They mention that the Prestige series that the SR225s belong to have been updated and have a new ‘i’ designation. Apparently the bodies have been redesigned and are a bit deeper which can only mean that they sound even better.
• SR225i on amazon.com, B&H Photo Video ($200)
In Web on
7 December 2009 tagged bookmarklets, ereader, iPhone, kindle, reading, Technology, Web with no comments
What do you do when you’re stuck in an airplane at 6am and the cabin lights are off and your seat’s reading light doesn’t work? I guess you could listen to music or watch something on an iPod-like device. But what if you really feel like reading?
As luck would have it, Instapaper Free makes a great reading source for your iPod or iPhone. I’ve been using the free instapaper web service for about half a year now and frequently find something online I’ll flag to read later with the keen bookmarklet. Then, when I have an Internet or phone connection, I can sync my articles in the app on my iPhone. Instapaper even reformats the articles for mobile consumption using something similar to Arc90’s Readability bookmarklet.
Of course, now I’ve finished all my saved articles and am left wonderig what to read next. I have a few books loaded into Stanza, but I’m right in the middle of another book and don’t feel like switching. So I’m blogging. From somewhere above Quebec. The iPhone Wordpress app keeps getting better.
Update! While writing this post I was thinking, “gee, this’d be cool if I could get this content onto my Kindle”. Sure enough, there’s an experimental option on the Instapaper page to download any folder’s most-recent 20 items in .mobi or ePub formats. Nice!
In Technology on
28 November 2009 tagged Books, devices, ebooks, ereader, gear, kindle, reading, Technology with no comments
Unless you’re one of those people who doesn’t really pay attention to technology, and if you are, you probably aren’t going to be reading this, you’re aware that Amazon has an electronic book reading device called the Kindle. If you happen to be living north of the 49th parallel (give-or-take) and within a particular band of longitude, you will also be aware that this device is now available in Canada. We got ours last week.
For this review, I’m not going to post any pictures. I’m giving the word full reign in honor of what the Kindle is supposed to stand for. It’s a “Book Reading Device” on which, the printed word is supposed to be conveyed to the reader. As an electronic device, there are a few logistical hurdles that must be overcome. Amazon have provided a couple of means of doing that as well as what must be a bunch of resources to actually convert these books into an easily-digestible format for you to enjoy.
The first of these delivery mechanisms is wireless. This is no mere wifi, but a 3G cellular radio that should operate just about everywhere in the western world. Amazon has gone to some mysterious lengths to forge deals with the owners of these airwaves so you can buy and download books wherever you happen to be. This is a powerful concept and fairly unique. As far as I know, they are the only company to have forged these blood-pacts with otherwise unapproachable broadcast entities to create something they’ve called “Whispernet”. You don’t even get to know which wireless provider you’re piggybacking on. It just connects when you activate the wireless function on the device.
I’ve purchased a few books through Amazon now and it’s a seamless mechanism. You can browse online on kindle.com from your computer or on the Kindle itself. When you buy a book on your computer, you can select a “send to this device” option and the book magically appears in your list the next time you connect to Whispernet on your Kindle. Magical.
The other, more pedestrian means of getting content onto your Kindle is via good ol’ USB cable. Or USB cable to proprietary Amazon pluglet. Why they chose to create yet another incompatible device connector I cannot fathom. If the white cable is any indication, it’s because they wanted to be somewhat “Apple-ey”. They certainly nailed the packaging and unpacking experience, though it certainly has a distinctive “Amazon feel” to it with the pull-tabs on the cardboard boxes. In any case, USB transfer is pretty straightforward. Just dump your mobi-formatted (and now, as of version 2.3 of the Kindle OS, PDFs!) eBooks into the Documents directory on the Kindle and they’ll show up in your list.
But you may not like what you see there. And now I have to get to the dark part of this review. Not all ebooks are made equal. If you’re downloading books from various sources online and they deliver them as a mobi book it may not be formatted optimally for the Kindle and may look funny, have poor metadata or no table of contents. Worse, if you’re unlucky enough to get something in an HTML, RTF, or plain-text document, you’ll have to convert it to mobi format yourself. There are several tools to help you do this, Calibre being the one I’ve used most so far, but it is a fiddly process, often with several iterations of conversion and checking, usually with mediocre results. If the book you’re trying to get into your Kindle is available on the Kindle store, you might want to save yourself the possible bad experience of messing around with document converters and buy the thing on their site. It’ll look good and be optimally-formatted. [ed. Gutenberg books are good]
Which brings me to the important part of this review. What is it like to read a book on this thing? After a week of carrying the Kindle around with me and reading my first purchased book (the mediocre, The Professional by Robert B. Parker) I can say that it is a very pleasant experience. The Kindle feels nice to hold, even in the leather book-like cover available as an optional extra. It has a heft to it that is somewhat more than a paperback, but it feels more comfortable than reading a hard-cover. Text is very legible on the reflective screen and you have the option of several font sizes to choose from.
My only real complaint is that there isn’t enough space for your thumbs to rest. The keyboard area at the bottom of the Kindle is easy to press buttons on. The 5-way navigation button on the right eats up further real-state your thumb could be coasting on. The large Next page buttons right in the middle of the device are comfortable resting places, but you might accidentally skip ahead. This is a fairly minor complaint though and for the most part, you don’t have to think about it.
Ok, I’ve thought of another complaint. There are nearly 70,000 missing books from the Canadian Kindle catalog. I’m not sure why they’re missing. If it’s some publishing agreements the apparently quite powerful Canadian publishing houses have or if it’s a matter of language. Looking up Iain M. Banks’ Matter I see it’s not available in Canada. I wonder if it’s because the Canadian edition used the UK text and it was “translated” for U.S. readers? In any case, I am confident it will get here and in the mean-time, there are plenty of other books to choose from. I’m currently reading the last of the “back-catalog” of Culture novels, The Algebraist.
If you’re looking for stuff to read, check out dria’s post about Project Gutenberg. I plan on signing up for at least a few books this year.
