(image courtesy of petitinvention) Welcome to the final State of the eBook for 2009! It has been a big year for eBooks, and I am going to do my best to cover a timeline of the high points, as well as a few things to look forward to in 2010. Rather than do a traditional timeline of events, I thought I’d break it down by the year in highlights per company/platform, and then a few predictions and news items to look forward to in 2010!
Welcome to another State of the eBook! First and foremost, a nook update: As Dan reported yesterday, Spring Design has been denied an injunction that sought to prevent B&N from selling Nooks! This is good news and will hopefully stimulate Nook availability. Teleread argues that if Barnes and Noble doesn’t get nooks out to stores, the backlash could undo all the goodwill and positive word of mouth they’ve built so far.
When I first downloaded and played with Questia, I thought, “I don’t get it.” I understood that it offered access to loads of academic humanities texts, and had a free public domain section, but what was the value in it? You could hit up your university library if you needed to do research, and public domain books are available in loads of places. Then I had the chance to talk with Tim Harris, CEO of Questia, and that’s where I learned the true value of this application. “We are a research library, for people who want to access as much…
Sony has seen no end of bad press since just after they confirmed the early leak of the PSP Go. There was the lack of a second analog stick, the high price, the lack of clarity on what happened to UMD libraries, the price, and so on. But now the system has been released, and I’ve had it in my hands for several weeks and been able to evaluate the reality of things compared to the hype. So how does it measure up? Read on and find out.
Actually, make that “Living With Motorola Droids.” Yes, Droids, plural. My initial intention was to post my first impressions of the Motorola Droid after just a few days with it. However, the first Droid that I picked up started locking up and spontaneously resetting itself on the first day I had it, and it continued to do so two or three times per day. A few times it wouldn’t power on at all, and I had to pull the battery in order to get it to restart. The upside, if there is one, is that none of the resets seemed…
Introduction Archibald’s Adventure is a unique action puzzle platform game. The story of Archibald’s Adventure goes something like this:- Archibald and his friends were near a dump behind a mysterious mansion of inventor – professor Klumpfus. Accidentally Archie fell down a pipe and ended up in professor’s basement. In the same time some crazy experiment went wrong and all genetically engineered creatures escaped from their containment in laboratories, while paranoid central computer locked the whole complex up! Now both Archibald and professor got stuck in the mansion! It’s up to you to help Archie to overcome all of the pitfalls…
photos by Kevin It seems as if finding the perfect Bluetooth headset has become a never-ending quest for me; it’s not just about finding one that keeps me from sounding like a fish in a barrel anymore, it’s also about finding one that fits my ear without making me look like a telephone operator or worse – a borg. Just to make things really difficult, so many headsets seem to fall into one of two camps: ridiculously complicated and over-featured or utterly simplistic and featureless. Finding a headset that strikes a balance between sound, comfort, and features has become my…
Last weekend I had the opportunity to be part of a small group of tech bloggers invited to attend several Windows 7 launch events in New York and Washington DC. I wasn’t totally clear on exactly what we would be doing on this trip before going, but I figured no matter what, it would be fun, and the food would be good. I was right… Thursday Tripit is my Friend Travel is almost always an adventure when flying out of San Angelo Regional Airport, and this time was no exception. My 9:05 a.m. flight was delayed, but at least I…
photos by Kevin One of the things that I love about the Kindle – its eInk screen – is also one of the things that makes using the Kindle a bit difficult when lighting is poor. It seems silly in a way to complain about not being able to read a book in the dark, because it certainly isn’t something anyone could do with the dead tree version, but there are a couple of reasons I think it chafes more than expected when people read from non-backlit devices. I think many who use eReaders have also experienced reading on other…
When out and about, sometimes you got a few minutes to kill. SPBTV for Android phones can help you use up a few of those minutes with a little mindless entertainment or a news update from overseas. SPB TV is an application that streams live TV from the Internet directly to your phone. It has a nice interface and some of the streams even have an on-screen guide to what is coming up next.
It is not a so-well-kept secret that I travel quite a bit for my day job. While 2009 has seen a slow down in travel for me, I still will easily make my American Airlines Platinum status for the 4th year in a row. As a reminder to everyone: Airline status is not something to be proud of. It means that you spend too much time on airplanes and that you know exactly which seats and rows have power outlets… but I digress. Since September 11, 2001 the single biggest challenge with air travel has not necessarily been the airlines…
The iPhone shoots video that is “good enough”. The Flip UltraHD shoots video that is better. That allows the Flip to maintain a slight edge over the iPhone but just slight. The HUGE advantage the Flip series had was the inclusion of built-in editing software. Once plugged in to a computer, the software popped up and allowed you to trim video and add credits. That key advantage is now GONE thanks to the $7.99 app ReelDirector. It is pretty impressive…
Where were you when you first heard about the now-infamous “Balloon Boy” incident? On Thursday, October 15th, at a little past 2 p.m. Central Time, Dan and I were IM’ing when he abruptly told me to turn on CNN. Once I did, the screen was filled with the image of a large silver balloon speeding and spinning, thousands of feet above the Colorado countryside. The balloon supposedly carried a six-year-old boy, appropriately named Falcon. For the next hour, Dan and I chatted back and forth – with interjections from the Gear Diary Team as we all emailed about the situation….
Welcome to a new series we are starting here at Gear Diary called “State of the eBook”. Every two weeks or so (more if the news warrants it) I’ll be bringing you the latest news in ebooks, publishing, and the general digitization of our reading lives.
You’re out of the office, get a call and the boss needs a quick change on a presentation. You’re an IT admin, you’re enjoying some time out of the house for the weekend and you need to reboot a server — while your laptop is back at home. You want to show off a photo of the kids from vacation while you’re at a soccer game, but then you realize it’s back on your home computer. What do all of these scenarios have in common? Each situation used to require you to physically use the computer that is in the…
all pictures are thumbnails; click them to enlarge Right before I finished up the HP Pavilion dv2 laptop review, I was sent a couple of boxes containing an HP Pavilion dv6z-1299lx and an HP Mini 110-1036NR. Even though I knew the purpose of the experiment which was about to happen, I couldn’t help but wonder why anyone in the world would need two laptops? The answer to that question is actually quite simple…
I reviewed Sherpa yesterday. While it was very good, it was slow as molasses. Where GPS, or what most of my friends just call Where, is an app that does a lot of what Sherpa does and more. It does it very fast. At the core, Where utilities your phone’s GPS in almost every aspect of its operation. You can manually change to any location by entering in a Zip code, so you can use this for trip planning as well. When you first launch Where, it asks if you are still where you were the last time you ran…
Unlike our Gear Diary friend Larry Greenberg, I only have one case for my iPhone 3GS, and am not sure how much I like carrying it with a case. The case for me has been primarily for protection. Yes, I found a case that I think looks cool, but I do not care for the added size of my phone. There are many cheap clear films to protect your gadget, but few work very well. I carry my iPhone in my front pocket and love to use it in the size and shape in which it was produced. I recently…
photos by Kevin As many of you know, two different MacBook Airs in a row have performed as my main computer for over a year. I can get away with using what others have called an “oversized netbook” because I don’t do a lot of processor-intensive computing beyond basic video and photo editing, and much of what I do can be done “in the cloud.” I would be lying if I didn’t say that part of the Mac’s attraction for me has always been hardware based. From the first time I laid eyes on Mitchell’s MacBook Pro, I knew it…
If you haven’t already, please read our Initial Thoughts on the HTC Touch Pro2. That’s where you’ll find a full gallery of Touch Pro2 pictures as well as our unboxing banter. So without further ado… Drew: The TP2 Rocks! I haven’t been this excited about a WM phone since the Advantage came out and then I was mollified for quite some time with the TyTN II. The gorgeous screen, super keyboard, and excellent phone/sound definitely make it a keeper if you are in the corporate world.
It’s been a while since I reviewed the JayBird JB-200 Bluetooth headphones. In that time, Jaybird has expanded their line from simply Bluetooth audio, and they have introduced two new sets of earbuds. Today I am reviewing one of those, the Jaybird Tiger Eyes Earbuds. These are like the Altec Lansing BackBeat Pros that I just reviewed; they are the in-ear style. They are a little smaller than the BackBeat headphones, and they are not as noticeable as the BackBeat headphones when you wear them. One other difference from the BackBeat Pro is that these have a microphone and a…