A Geek With Guns

You know the new Apple TV that allows you to rent TV show episodes for $0.99? Well Amazon allows you to buy TV show episodes for $0.99.

Competition is good.

My new Kindle 3 arrived last night and I must say it’s pretty sweet.

First thing to note about the new Kindle is the size, it’s notably smaller than the previous model. The screen itself remains the same size but the overall device size is smaller and the device is lighter. Of course to accomplish this shrinkage they removed the dedicated number keys on the keyboard and put them into the symbol menu which I’m not too wild about. The backside is no longer metal but a rubberized plastic making it easier to grip but at the cost of feeling slightly chintzier.

The new E Ink Pearl screen is fantastic. The improved contrast is noticeable the second you see the screen. On previous generation Kindles the background was kind of a very light gray. The new Pearl screen’s background is almost white making the text a little easier to read. Additionally the refresh rate of the screen is faster than the Kindle 2 by a notable amount.

Having both Wi-Fi and 3G connectivity is a plus for those outside of 3G coverage. I hooked mine up to my Wi-Fi access point to test it and it works perfectly fine. With that said I’ll probably just continue using the 3G network because it’s always there and has always worked well for me. Still it’s a nice feature and if you don’t spend a lot of time in areas with 3G Amazon does offer a Wi-Fi only version.

I also like the new color. I’ve never been a big fan of white devices. It’s not that I hate white devices I just don’t like how they look as much. When I purchase a device I want it to be blacker than the blackest black times infinity. Well the new Kindle is graphite which is close enough to black for me to give it the head nod.

Ultimately I only have on real complaint, collections don’t sync. One of the best features of the last Kindle firmware update was the ability to put books into collections. This greatly cleans up the book selection screen which without collections ends up being something like seven or eight pages long for me. With collections I have two pages worth of stuff to dig through. Sadly when I redownloaded my books they did not go into the collections I placed them in on my Kindle 2 meaning I had to manually re-add them all to their proper collections. Really that’s a slight annoyance but it’s something I’d like to see changed in the future.

Overall I think it’s a great device and a good upgrade. Is it work upgrading to if you already have a Kindle 2? Probably not. All the new features are evolutionary instead of revolutionary meaning you probably aren’t going to notice a heck of a lot of difference. If you’re happy with your Kindle 2 you can comfortably remain on it as there are no new features that will blow you away. The improved screen is very nice through and with the upgrade if you plan on selling your current Kindle (I don’t think the improved screen itself is worth $189.00).

So why did I upgrade? Because I’m a device whore that’s why. I saw something new and shiny which meant I had to have it.

Because I’m sure you’re very interested in what I think… OK maybe not but this is my site so I’m going to post my thoughts anyways.

The new iPod Shuffle… meh. I never really found a use for a device that randomly plays from a selection of songs. Don’t get me wrong I have my music players on shuffle most of the time but I also have the ability to listen to songs in order when I chose.

The new iPod Nano… meh. It’s a tiny touch screen device. Of course the touch screen means you can no longer have it sitting in your pocket and skip songs by reaching in and clicking the button.

The new iPod Touch… kind of neat. A full iPhone without having the phone internals or the nicer rear facing camera is a novel idea. It would be a good references platform for anybody wanting to develop iPhone software but no wanting to buy the phone and accompanying contract.

The Apple TV… bleh. I’m not a fan of paying $0.99 to rent a television who and $4.99 to rent a new release movie. Likewise the steaming support is most likely only going to support the few formats that iTunes does which are few and far between. The ability to stream NetFlix is pretty cool if you don’t already have an Xbox 360 to do it.

iTunes 10… meh. Social networking for music? Man I wish somebody would have thought that one up before.

Overall I wasn’t impressed with anything announced. Everything was evolutionary (nothing wrong with that granted) except the Apple TV and that was ruined to me the second they said it was going to work on a rental only model. I will say if I ever decide to start developing iPhone software I may get an iPod Touch as reference hardware but I don’t see that happening anytime soon (if ever).

With all the posts I do about Amazon’s Kindle (of which my new one should arrive today) and Barnes and Nobel’s Nook I often forget to even mention Sony’s lineup of e-book readers. This is mostly because Sony’s line has had a major drawback, it requires syncing with a desktop computer using their software that only works on Windows. The only time I run Windows is via a virtual machine. Some time ago Sony introduced the Reader Daily Edition that included 3G capabilities allowing you to untether from your desktop but by that time the Kindle already had a solid foot in the door.

Today Sony announced some impressive updates to their Reader lineup. Namely all three models now have touch screens, E Ink Pearl (the same screen used in the new Kindles), and the Daily Edition now supports Wi-Fi (because everybody else was doing it). But one major speed bump lies between Sony and relevance, price. The Reader Pocket Edition, their cheapest device, comes in at $179.00. At this price it includes no connectivity options except tethering it to a computer. For $189.00 you can get the Kindle with both 3G and Wi-Fi connectivity and for $199.00 you can get the Barnes and Nobel Nook with the same. The only Sony Reader with connectivity options (both Wi-Fi and 3G) is the Daily Edition which comes in at $299.00.

Of course Sony can point to their touch screen but that really doesn’t enhance the experience enough to justify the massive increase in price. E Ink displays are slow meaning you aren’t going to get instant feedback when you do something that requires the screen to change. Even with a touch screen you’re not going to be able to scroll down through a book on the Sony Reader as you can with your web browser on a smart phone. If you try to flick the page down the entire screen will take a noticeable fraction of a second to refresh. It’s not that big of a deal really but it means the addition of touch screen controls really isn’t going to add anything over the hard button controls the Kindle uses. The Nook has the second LCD touch screen that avoids the Sony Reader’s problem as LCD’s refresh faster than the human brain can notice making it appear instant.

Still the addition of a touch screen E Ink display is pretty cool and I have to had Sony some credit on that.

Apparently PC Pro likes to be late to the game. They are reporting that modern smart phones are vulnerable to “smudge attacks.” So what is a “smudge attack?” It’s a fancy term for saying you can look at the finger prints on the touchscreen of a phone to determine the password or unlock pattern for the phone.

Of course the simple and free solution; just wipe your phone’s screen off on your shirt periodically. Hell I do this naturally already because the finger prints make the screen hard to read.

I must write too much about the Kindle because every possible story involving my favorite little device gets e-mailed to me en masse. No I’m not complaining, let me thank those of you who e-mail this stuff because it’s always good. But this story boarders on stupid as shit.

Apparently in lieu of having real things to do the Justice Department threatened universities with lawsuits for taking part in the trials to see if Kindles would be a good replacement for text books. Their reasoning? Because the Kindle violates the civil rights of the blind.

It seemed like a promising idea until the universities got a letter from the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, now under an aggressive new chief, Thomas Perez, telling them they were under investigation for possible violations of the Americans With Disabilities Act.

From its introduction in 2007, the Kindle has drawn criticism from the National Federation of the Blind and other activist groups. While the Kindle’s text-to-speech feature could read a book aloud, its menu functions required sight to operate. “If you could get a sighted person to fire up the device and start reading the book to you, that’s fine,” says Chris Danielsen, a spokesman for the federation. “But other than that, there was really no way to use it.”

Emphasis mine. Why do I emphasis that? Because the Kindle has a text-to-speech feature while real books fucking don’t! OK the menus are not text-to-speech but it could be added in trivially and honestly a blind person could memorize the series of clicks and movements to activate the features. Even though the feature isn’t perfect (or even close) it’s still far better than regular fucking books which the universities were looking to replace.

Instead of looking to lawsuits maybe those idiots should have contacted Amazon and offered to help improve the text-to-speech functionality. Oh and this makes sense:

The Civil Rights Division informed the schools they were under investigation. In subsequent talks, the Justice Department demanded the universities stop distributing the Kindle; if blind students couldn’t use the device, then nobody could. The Federation made the same demand in a separate lawsuit against Arizona State.

So if blind people can’t use books than nobody can? That should save students buckets of money right there! Maybe this is the Obama administration’s solution to lower the cost of education. As usual the government isn’t actually representing the people they claim to be:

It’s an approach that bothers some civil rights experts. “As a blind person, I would never want to be associated with any movement that punished sighted students, particularly for nothing they had ever done,” says Russell Redenbaugh, a California investor who lost his sight in a childhood accident and later served for 15 years on the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. “It’s a gross injustice to disadvantage one group, and it’s bad policy that breeds resentment, not compassion.”

That’s right actual blind people don’t want this, the government pretending to represent them does. Oh and get this:

One obvious solution to the problem, of course, was to fix the Kindle. Early on, Amazon told federation officials it would apply text-to-speech technology to the Kindle’s menu and function keys. And sure enough, last week the company announced a new generation of Kindles that are fully accessible to the blind. While the Justice Department was making demands, and Perez was making speeches, the market was working.

Wow who would have thought that would happen? Anybody? It’s good to see all of your hands are up. You don’t need to pull out a lawsuit when the company is more than happen to correct the problem for its potential customers.

One of the major advantages to e-book readers over regular books is they can be made accessible to people with disabilities. You can never made a real book read to you but you can make an electronic device read text to you.

Speaking of competition for Barnes and Nobel Amazon has their new Kindle up for pre-order. The new models share the same improvements of their recently released DX cousin. The new Kindle has the options of either black or white and either Wi-Fi only or Wi-Fi with 3G. They screen supposedly has a 50% higher contrast ration and the internal storage has been bumped up to 4GB.

Yes I pre-ordered one; black with 3G. I’m a fan boy of this device and I realize that. But I’ll certainly have a review of it once I have it in my hands for a couple of weeks.

You know I’ve always been a fan of air conditioning. This most likely derives from the fact that I don’t do well in heat and thrive in the -20 degree weather of Minnesota’s winters. I now have another reason to love air conditioning courtesy of the Red Star:

Q What is your theory on how air conditioning has influenced politics?

A In 1960, only about 12 percent of homes were air-conditioned. Then it really took off and made it possible for larger populations to move to hotter regions, the South and the West. The Northeast and the Midwest have increased in population just 27 percent over that time, while the South and West have grown more than four times that much. The economic and political centers of gravity moved along with the population from the North to the Sun Belt, which traditionally is more conservative, bringing more red-state seats to the Electoral College. If we would have had the population distribution in 2000 that we had in 1960, Al Gore would have won the presidency.

That’s right air conditioning may have cost Al Gore the presidency. God I love air conditioning and irony, especially when they’re combined. Speaking of Gore how much do you think he spends to air condition his multi-million dollar mansion?

Do you have a laptop with a trackpad? Do you wish you could take that trackpad and hook it up to your desktop instead of having a real mouse available? If you answered yes to the second question Apple has you covered now. Oh and I question your sanity.

But I also think this could be kind of useful. On one hand I’m not a huge fan of trackpads but on the other hand I’m a huge fan of the multi-touch features of my MacBook Pro’s trackpad.

Yes I’m a Kindle fan boy and no I don’t care if you’re sick of hearing about them. Amazon annouced a new version of their gigantic uber-Kindle, the Kindle DX. The new Kindle DX sports a new color (graphite), a screen that is advertised to have a 50% higher contrast ratio, and a new lower price coming in at $379 (which is high in my opinion).

I have to say going by the pictures I like the new graphite color. It’s muted enough to not be a distraction when reading (as shiny black would be) but also different from the previous white. I would very much like to check out the screen and see how much of a difference the higher contrast ratio makes.

Anyways it ships on July 7.